My first buck

My first buck - Paula Stover's story

by Paula Stove

My name is Paula Stover, I’m 38 years old. My husband, Randall, and I have been married for 20 years and we have six wonderful children. My husband loves to hunt, and I always wondered what excited him so much about it. Now that our children are older and don’t need mom as much as they did when they were younger, I decided to take the hunter’s safety course and take up hunting with my husband.
We got talking with our good friends, Jeff and Robin Hall, and we all decided to hunt together. I was excited about Robin hunting with me, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up with my husband with all the hills he would climb.

Robin and I decided to give bow hunting a try. We would faithfully sit in the woods nearly every morning. We spent the first month and a half seeing nothing. We wondered why, but we knew no matter what, we were having a blast. It got to the point that it seemed like we just went to the woods to enjoy our coffee and a snack that we would bring.

Then finally, we had just arrived at our spot, in Highlandtown, got all situated, loaded our arrows in our crossbows, then all the sudden we saw two animals across the field from us, what we thought were deer. They were so far away that I had to get my binoculars to see them, and to our surprise they were not deer, they were coyotes. Robin got a little nervous and felt we should leave, but I convinced her of how far away they were, and they would be more afraid of us then we were them.

A few minutes later the coyotes left and we discussed from then on I would just lie to her so she wouldn’t be afraid. So we had our laugh, poured some coffee. As I was pouring my coffee, I looked toward Robin and a deer ran past us and into the woods. I looked at Robin and quietly said, ‘be very still a deer just ran past us in the woods’. Robin started laughing and didn’t believe me because we had just discussed that I wouldn’t be truthful if I seen something that might give her a scare.

As the deer ran past us, I lost sight of it and thought to myself, ‘well at least I got to see a deer in the woods’. But the next thing I knew that deer jumped right in front of us. It had stopped and looked at us like it was trying to figure out what we were. By then we had realized it was a buck. I sat my coffee down, grabbed my bow and took a shot. I knew I had hit it because I heard a loud thug noise. The deer turned and ran back into the woods and I jumped up to watch so I would know where to start tracking. Robin said not to chase after it, that we would have to wait, give it time to go down or it would run farther.

So then we decided to run to my car, get my cell phone to call our husbands for help. About 45 minutes later we started tracking my buck. We had a blood trail so thick that it lead us almost 150 yards and right to it. My husband got to it first and I knew by the look on his face it was a nice deer. When I called for help I told him I thought it was a four point, but to my surprise it was a seven point and weighed about 225 pounds.
My husband pulled out the arrow and there was no arrowhead on it, so he thought it was in the deer. We gutted the deer and there was still no arrowhead. My arrow had only went about eight inches into the deer, so we know it should have been in the deer, because it didn’t come out the other side. Later, I found my arrowhead on the ground.

We were all surprised. A lot of people say it was beginners luck, but I just laugh and tell them it was my skills that got my buck.
I never dreamed I would enjoy hunting. I was just wanting to participate and be with my husband. The day I got my buck will always be very memorable for me. A day I will never forget. Robin and I are still hunting, hanging out in the woods until Robin gets her buck.