Hunting: A Family Affair For The Reed Family

Saturday, October 12th, 2019

Father, Chris Reed does not have your traditional hunting heritage background. “I just got into hunting three years ago. I've been an avid bass fisherman my entire life, thanks to my dad, but he never took me out hunting. He used to go with his grandpa but it didn't really stick and so it was never passed down to me. I had a couple buddies that I went pheasant hunting with, with no success I might add, and that was the spark I needed. Walking around in the grass quickly turned into being obsessed with deer hunting” he said. With 3 children all under the age of 10,Chris manages to take each child out with him to hunt at one point or another. Maddox has already seen some success with deer hunting when he harvested his fist doe last year during the youth season in the Kaw Wildlife Area near Ark City.

Getting his kids outdoors is not a problem that the Reed family has. “My wife and I are lucky in that it doesn't take any prodding to get our boys outdoors. They would rather play outside than on the Xbox any day of the week. They have the same wide-eyed wonder that I do just to be able to wander through the woods and watch nature come to life.I work for the railroad, so free time is pretty rare, but I prioritize getting the boys out hunting and getting some meat for the freezer” he says.

On Saturday, October 12th, 2019, Maddox, his younger brother, and dad all went deer hunting together. A hunt that most father’s of boys dreams about. After about an hour and a half the boys spotted three doe that walked out of the treeline into the open field at 240 yards. Maddox, being a young hunter and not as experience, his dad urged him to wait for a closer shot. Around 6:15pm they bedded down in the short grass. Chris knew knew they did not have much daylight left so he asked Maddox if he wanted to continue to sit and wait, or if he wanted to try to crawl on our hands and knees and close the distance in order to set up a better shot. Maddox decided they would try to crawl in closer. Maddox and Chris crawled on their hands and knees in the grass. They covered about a hundred yards in twenty minutes. One of the smaller does got up and started grazing around. Chris set up our trigger stick tripod and Maddox got up on his knees and set the rifle up. Chris ranged the doe at 96 yards. He said that “Maddox learned that it's not always easy, because the animals don't just sit still and wait for you to take a perfect broadside shot. She finally stopped to eat some grass and Maddox pressed the trigger. She disappeared from my binoculars as the shot rang out. We knew that he dropped her right where she was standing. I talked Maddox through gutting the deer, where we discovered he shot her right in the heart, and Miles gave the boys a lesson in the circle of life, as we could hear coyotes howling right inside the tree line near us”. The boys drove the truck up and loaded the doe in the back and met up with the other hunters at the cabin for hot dogs, hamburgers, and tales of their hunts.

If you ask Maddox, his favorite part of the hunt was “sneaking through the grass to get close enough to the doe to get a shot off.” A memory that his dad is awfully proud of as well. However, Chris said his favorite part was, “letting Maddox make the decision on whether to wait for another opportunity or to be aggressive and stalk the deer that we already saw. I think it's important to allow our children to make some decisions for themselves, and reinforce the idea that we as parents trust their decision making. It's also an opportunity to realize that not every stalk is going to end in an animal harvested and that sometimes we fail, and that's okay, because failures are learning opportunities.” Just like in life, while hunting, we learn something new every time we go out. It is important to empower, mentor, and support the next generation of hunters so they can later on give back to others.

Special thanks from the Reed Family: Thanks so much to Brittany with Outdoor Mentors for setting up this hunt. Thanks to Bill, Wayne, and Miles for allowing us to come out and for spreading their love of hunting with our youth and allowing us to harvest an animal from their land.