MERCER COUNTY, W.Va. — Stay at home mom Katie Brooks loves to hunt, but with two young children it’s hard to steal away enough time to go very often. When the 2023 buck season rolled around she had an ultimatum for husband Michael.
“I’ve never killed a deer with a rifle and I told him this year, when you’re done, it’s my turn,” she laughed in an interview for West Virginia Outdoors.
Katie grew up hunting Wyoming and McDowell Counties, so she has taken several bucks with her bow, but hoped the 2023 season would prove an opportunity to shoot one with a rifle. Michael killed a buck on Tuesday of the buck season on a farm of a friend in Mercer County. He also spied a nice eight point buck while he was there and told his wife about it. Katie was ready to go and told Michael it would be a family hunt.
“In his mind, I guess he expected me to leave the kids with mom, but she was busy so I said, ‘Can’t we just take them with us?”
Michael was admittedly skeptical. It was going to be cold and they were going to walk a long way. It was unlikely Willow, age 5, and Judah, age 3, were going to last very long.
“I told him don’t go into it with high expectations. There are several big open fields and some woods. Let’s just walk these fields along the edge. If they only want to sit for 15 minutes, then that’s 15 minutes. I don’t care if I come home empty handed, I’m excited and they’re excited to go, let’s just see what we can do,” she told her husband.
So, with an adjusted frame of mind, the whole crew rolled up on the edge of a field and started to walk. Although young, the two children have been in wood before so they knew to be relatively quiet in hopes of seeing animals. Sure enough, there were a large number of does out in the fields.
“My little boy said, ‘Why don’t you shoot one Mom?’ I told him, ‘I’m hunting for a buck Buddy!.” she laughed.
The youngsters were enjoying seeing the does and were relatively well behaved until the they were about to go into the last field. The final stretch of meadow was the biggest and required several yards of walking through a wood lot to get to the edge. The mood was starting to change according to Katie.
“Something happened and my little boy started crying and my little girl was tired of walking in her boots. My husband was getting frustrated and said we needed to go home. But I told them to stay there and I was at least going to check this last field,” Katie explained.
She left her husband in the woods to look after their fussy children and try to keep them quiet. Katie crawled on her hands and knees to the edge of the woods and hoped to use her backpack as a rest for her rifle. In the far corner of the field she spied some deer and one was chasing another. She figured it was a buck. However, it was impossible to get into a comfortable shooing position without spooking the doe and it was going to be a long shot for Katie.
“I just couldn’t get comfortable and it was going to be a long shot. When I got them in the scope, the buck was actually breeding the doe. I knew she was occupied and he was occupied and it gave me a chance to calm my nerves and take my time to get ready for the shot.,” Katie explained.
When the buck came off the doe he stood perfectly still for a moment, long enough for Katie to hold, breathe, and carefully squeeze off the trigger. As the rifle cracked, both deer took off. Behind her the reaction was far different.
“My husband jumped up and my little boy yelled ‘Woo-hoo let’s go get him!'” Katie laughed.
The problem was, she wasn’t even sure if she had hit the with the very long shot. She and her husband scoured as much of the area as they could without finding even a trace of blood. After a while, the kids were getting cranky and Katie was growing increasingly disappointed.
“I picked my three year up and put him on my hip and told my little girl we’ll got back in and look the other way. We hadn’t more than gotten out of the woods and looked over to the right about 20 yards from where I had shot him, there he laid. He’d been there the whole time,” she laughed.
Everybody was excited about Mom’s eight point buck and just to make the story complete on the way back to the truck, Michael was able to use the rifle and take down a doe while Katie settled the children in the background.
“Two toddlers, two hours of hunting, and two deer and I never dreamed we’d come home with anything,” she laughed.