COOK- For ten-year-old Brex McCormick of Cook, shooting his first big buck two weekends ago was the easy part of the hunt. The hard part?
Waiting.
“It really was hard because you have to be quiet and get up every morning really early and stuff, Brex said. “It’s pretty hard for me because I’m very energetic. I like to do a lot of things and I like to play a lot. So, it’s kind of hard to just sit still in a little enclosed stand.”
And Brex had to endure more than just a couple of weekends waiting for his shot.
“We saw some deer on opening day, and then it was pretty quiet for quite a few days,” said Brandon McCormick, Brex’s dad. “Brexton is homeschooled, so we were able to put in quite a bit more time – I think before shooting that deer we had probably about 35 hours in that stand.”
The pair began preparing for Brex’s first deer hunt last year when Brandon bought a gun for him.
“We bought it last year and sighted it in,” Brandon said, “and that’s when we mainly practiced. This is the first year he started hunting with me with his own gun.”
But Brex also prepared by taking the initiative to watch a lot of deer hunting videos on YouTube.
“Brexton actually did his research in leading up to season,” Brandon said. “We’ve also looked at the pictures that show where to properly shoot deer, but he actually took it upon himself to watch YouTube videos to learn to make good shots and not take bad shots.
Brex said he only practiced for a couple of hours with the gun this year before the McCormicks headed out to a brand-new tree stand on their property north of Cook. And when the two got into the stand, they made a pact.
“We had a rule that it had to be at least six points or bigger for his first deer,” Brandon said. “We passed on a couple of spikes over the season. The numbers are way down, so that’s another reason we were waiting for a nice one, just to let some of them hopefully grow up.
That also was a little hard for Brex when they saw their first buck.
“I was pretty excited – I wanted to shoot it, but we had our rule that it had to be six or more, so I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll let it go – we’ll let it grow a little bigger,’” he said.
But their patience finally paid off on the morning of Sunday, Nov. 17. A doe and fawn they were watching let them know a buck was nearby.
“She had her head up, and she took two big steps forward and she was looking at the trail that we had, and then they both just sprinted out of there,” Brex said. “That’s when we knew there had to be a buck there.”
“It was kind of fun because we had time for it all to play out,” Brandon said. “It’s not like it just appeared and it was a quick shot thing. We could see a deer probably 75 yards up in the woods, but at that time we couldn’t tell what it was. He actually started walking down the trail and Brex was able to get his gun up and scope it out. It stopped a few times, so it was a waiting game, too.”
Brex said he got a little excited but not nervous as he lined up on the deer, and it wasn’t until after his shot rang true, hitting the eight-point buck at the top of its heart, that the emotions really took over.
“He knew right away that he hit it,” Brandon said. “That’s when all the excitement and nerves actually kick in is afterwards. We were high fiving and giving fist pumps and hugging in the deer stand and all that stuff. I told him we had to wait 15 to 20 minutes to let it all play out, so that whole time of us sitting there, the anticipation, that’s where a lot of the excitement was. I think he was shaking the whole time, even when we found it. He just kept saying, ‘I can’t believe I shot a buck, I can’t believe I shot a buck.’”
The McCormicks are having the head shoulder-mounted, and Brex will have bragging rights over his dad, at least until next season.
“I’ve shot a fair amount of deer over the years and I have one that I’ve actually mounted, and the one he shot is bigger than mine, so he beat me in that,” Brandon said. “But I would choose that over shooting my own deer any day – it was so much fun. For his first year and the way it all played out, I don’t think you could write it out any better than the way this happened.”