This years youth mentored hunt with my 11 year old son Kaden was definitely one to remember!rnrnKaden and I hunted morning and afternoons for three days on public land in northern Wisconsin with out seeing a deer. The conditions were tough and he was still battling a chest cold that caused him to caugh every once in a while. On the last day of the rifle season we decided to go walk about in the morning and see if we couldn’t trick a deer into coming to us while grunting and slowly working some bedding areas, with no luck we were headed back to the camper for lunch and had planned on sitting in one of the blinds for the last afternoon of the season. On our way back we passed a big doe crossing the road about a mile from the camper and I decided to try and spot and stalk her. She had crossed the road and was headed down a large ridge into a valley. We drove down about three hundred yards and walked the ridge down to a small opening that i was pretty sure she would walk through before she headed back up the other side. We set up Kaden’s shooting sticks and waited about 15 minutes before we could see the doe coming down the hill. Kaden was almost ready to take the shot so I clicked off the safety and the gun miss fired, kinda flustering the both of us. I watched the doe trot and slow down while heading into a thick red pine growth with trees only about 8 foot tall or so. A small popple slashing surrounded the pine plantation and from ridge to ridge I was able to tell that she never came out of the pines. After waiting for almost a half an hour we decided to move up the hill and see if we could get our eyes on her for a shot. After watching the area for almost an hour and moving a couple times to get a better view I spotted the doe bedded down with her head behind a couple trees. Kaden and I got set back up and just couldn’t find a shot that he was comfortable taking. We slowly moved back up the ridge to get a better vantage point and found a good spot for Kaden to take the shot. He was shaking so bad I had to sit down behind him and help stabilize him. I clicked off the safety hoping the gun would not miss fire again and luckily it did not. Kaden took the shot when he was comfortable and made a great shot from about seventy yards ridge to ridge. Pretty cool my boy shot his first deer on a spot and stalk. Im sure the man up stairs was looking out for us!!!