Doug Hampton - Not Just A Hunt For A Doe

 How could just a hunt for a doe be responsible for such an emotional moment in a lifetime of hunting whitetails?  I will admit, it didn't make the most since to me either.  I was notnecessarily prepared or expecting it by any means.  I was simply sitting in my tree-stand waiting on the first light of a late October morning.  My mission was simple...  I needed to harvest a doe with a recurve bow, as part of the challenge for the first group hunt for Dream Season 'The Journey'.  I had no clue that months later I would not be able to talk to anyone about the hunt without tears coming to my eyes.

      What is hunting to most folks?  What does it mean to the average hunter?  How can just a doe hunt be so rewarding?   After having my personal best year of killing bucks, how can a doe with a recurve be what I think of the most?  I can't explain it, but I can tell you it's the truth.

      Hunting is so much to so many of us.  It truly becomes our way of life.  The people that influence us through hunting and sharing great memories are among our closest friends and relatives.  Hunting is a bond that can be felt  quicker than explained.  Two of my most influential people in my life were my brother and my grandfather, or 'Pappaw' to anyone in my family.  My brother was my hunting & fishing buddy.   He showed me the ropes of life and even led me to the Lord.

Pappaw saw to it that we became responsible ethical hunters.  He as well as my uncles really spent a lot of their valued time fooling with us.  Pappaw took my brother to kill his first deer when I was 4 years old.  I remember hearing the shot from 'behind the field'.  I ran out of the camp to wait for them coming down the old muddy road.  It wasn't long before I could see the blue Bronco creeping slowly with a small spike laying up on the hood.   I was so excited!  It was the first deer that I can ever remember seeing.  It also was the first moment that I knew I wanted to be a hunter.  A few years later, Pappaw pulled out an old recurve bow.  I believe I was 9 or 10 at the time, but after watching that first arrow hit the paper plate that I was shooting at, I knew I wanted to be a bowhunter.  Later that evening I crawled into an old box-stand about 10 feet off the ground.  Pappaw handed me that recurve and 2 arrows with broadheads.  He instructed me to be safe and he would be back later.  After about an hour, I saw him returning to pick me up.  I quickly waived him back so that I could keep hunting.  Now I had not seen hide nor hair, but I knew I was bowhunting, and I knew I liked it!

         As life flew past me, my brother was killed when I was 13 years old.  He was a few months shy of graduating high school when he was taken from us.  Pappaw would drive from Arkansas to Texas to pick me up and take me back, just so I could hunt.  He knew it was my therapy for dealing with the loss.  He did that for the next few years until I could drive there on my own.  In the year 2000, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer.  After months of fighting, he went to be with my brother.

         As I sat waiting for the daylight to overtake the darkness, I looked at the recurve that I was going to attempt to take a doe with.  I don't consider myself to be an overly emotional guy.  Passionate maybe, but not emotional.  But something about looking down at that recurve began to take me back to that first time I bowhunted.  The memories of  Pappaw handing me the bow and the memories of waiving him back began to hit me.  I thought of my brother and how he had told me that one day he'd be watching me shoot deer on television.  It was just all too much to take in at one time.  The tears began to role down my face & their was no stopping them.  I was glad it was still dark.  T.J., one of the Drury production staff, was along to video for the hunt.  Rod was busy filming one of the contest winners from facebook.  I had only met T.J. just recently, and was hoping he didn't notice the moment that I unexpectedly having.  As soon as it was light enough to see, a doe was headed our way. She never offered me a good shot, so the opportunity to fill my tag had come, and then slipped by. The guide text me after a few hours and said he was on his way. After a minute or two, I text him back & "waived him off", the way I had Pappaw so many years before.  I was just enjoying the hunt.  Not long after, I caught movement of a huge doe coming my way feeding on acorns.  After a few minutes she was heading straight at our tree.  She would cross in front at 15 yards.  I drew the recurve and let the arrow fly.  There was blood immediately and by the way she was running, I knew she wasn't gonna last long. At about 70 yards, she went down on camera. I was once again overcome with emotion. I was so excited that I had accomplished what I had set out to do. I thought about Pappaw telling me to "enjoy your life, hunt all you can son".  Nobody ever said on their deathbed that they wish they had worked more. I can't remember a hunt of my own that meant quite as much as this one. Moments in my life that laid dormant, were suddenly brought back as if they had happened the day before.

       Now I'm just a southern country boy that God has granted some great wishes to.  He's given me an awesome family, great friends, and  made me lucky enough to close the deal on some great bucks over the past few years.  Dream Season 'The Journey' will begin airing in the coming weeks.  Most folks will watch this hunt and never know the significance to me of this particular hunt.  The raw emotion that I felt through that entire day may never be matched again.  The bonds that have been made with my loved ones and friends through hunting areirreplaceable.  I can't wait to re-live this hunt when it airs.  I'll probably have tears in my eye's yet again.  It's my most anticipated hunt to watch, and it's not even a buck.  With my heart and soul I can honestly say, this was not just a hunt for a doe. I still can't explain it, but it sure was special.

Doug Hampton - Killin' Em With The Cameras!

What is the number one tool in your bag of tricks for hunting trophy whitetails? If you asked this question to ten different hunters, well you would probably get ten different answers. As for my teammate Rod Owen and myself, It would be hands down, "Reconyx cameras". Every now and then we'll see and even kill a buck that we do not have any pictures of. But like I said, "every now and then". For the most part, almost every single deer that we see while in the field, has already been named and documented. Of course, the rut can bring deer from miles and miles so you always stand the chance of getting that 'big surprise' buck. For the most part, by the time we lay eyes on a particular buck, we've got him rough scored and labeled as a shooter, or not a shooter.

Rod and I use these cameras as early as June, and leave them out until we start to get pictures of bucks on the food plots without their headgear. This lets us know when to begin to hunt for sheds.. We usually face the cameras where if a deer trips the camera, It will take a picture of the whole plot, giving us an idea of how many deer are using the plot at that particular time. We try to run enough cameras on my Kansas farm to give us a good indication of what these deer are doing at different times of the day. But if you only have one, your still ahead of the game.

Saving the pictures until the deer is either harvested or old enough to have been hunted by the Flintstones is also a must. I however, learned this the hard way. Rod harvested a 181" buck that we named "The Jolly Bean Giant" on my farm November the 12th. (see journal entry) We stood over that deer for 30 minutes trying to figure what deer this could possibly be. Oh, don't get me wrong, we did have pictures of the buck from this year. But we could not figure out how a deer that we presumed to be at least four years old, could just show up with such regularity, and we didn't know him from Adam. That is, until I noticed the white stockings that ran almost completely up his legs. " I know exactly what deer this is!", I told Rod after we had racked our brains. "It's the white stocking buck from three seasons ago!" A friend of mine, that was hunting with me at the time, kept telling me that he was passing on a 3 year-old buck that had white-stockings up past his knee's. He said the buck was in the mid 130's. At the time, I didn't think it was a great necessity to keep the photo's. And with absolutely no photo's of him last season, he was not even a thought in my mind, until Rod harvested the buck this November. It would have been neat to have had the photo's to go along with the story. Oh well, lesson learned!

And then there's "Curly". Curly is a five year old buck that we have thousands of pictures of. He would totally disappear during the rut. We could not see him, or even get a picture of him from the first day of October to late December. And this was par for the course for three years running. But the one thing that would always pull him back to the property was the abundance of food. He usually would show up with a broken rack and super hungry. The last place that I got a picture of the buck was in a bean field the last day of September. With the frigid temperatures in Kansas and the rut a distant memory, I stuck a ground blind on that same field that I had gotten pictures of Curly in September. My wife Brandy still had a tag, and I was just hoping for at least one mature buck to be using the field. Guess who made an appearance? (see journal entry on Dec. 7th)

The last 5 out of 6 bucks that I have personally harvested, I owe strictly to the camera's. But the best example of using the Reconyx to harvest a buck, would have to be "Big Red". Big Red was a buck that we had also chased for the last few season's. He seemed to be one step ahead of us every time. He got his name from the color that he usually turned my face every time I would have daylight pictures of him where I had just previously hunted. I've never had a deer make me so mad! But on the evening of December 9th, Big Red showed up to the food plot and was caught on camera. By checking the cameras on a daily basis and locating the buck, we would now have the upper hand and a crucial piece of the puzzle for tracking down Big Red . Referring to the pictures from the past, we noticed that when the temperatures dropped below 20 degree's, the mature bucks visited the plot during legal shooting hours almost daily. That next afternoon my son and I crawled into a ground blind overlooking Biologic Maximum. The afternoon of December tenth was the day that my face turned from red to relieved! ( see journal entry on Dec. 10)

Doug Hampton - The "Double Deuce"

The one we're after...

Oh yes we've got bigger bucks on our Kansas leases, but it's just something about this buck that fires me up. Maybe it's the double split G-2's that he's sporting on his rack. Or maybe it's because he's the first buck that I had pictures of on my newest Kansas lease. Or could it be that we actually could have harvested this buck last week during the youth season if I had not convinced myself that we had ruined the spot while cutting shooting lanes for a double set of "Big Game" tree-stands, only to have Reconyx pictures of him within two hours of all the activity. How could he be so relaxed when he walks into that Biologic food plot during shooting hours? Does he not know that we are filming for Dream Season and that he will do fine for a main character?

We didn't necessarily have bad luck last week, we simply fell to the natural instincts of big early season whitetails. My son and I had the big 9 x 5 buck walk by us at ten yards. The problem was that it was so dark and I could barely make it out through my Nikon's that it was him. Looking through the view finder 9 minutes later, I was only getting marginal footage at best. We needed just a few more minutes when the 4 year-old decided to exit the beans and bed down for the day. That evening brought an unexpected party on the neighboring property. Lets just say it was quite the fiesta! The microphone hooked up to the loud speakers made for a hard-rock concert's decibel output. The deer probably stopped running when they reached the Missouri line! Maybe they'll be back in time for the rut! .... Coltin had a few opportunities at some 3 year-old 130's type bucks later, but the 9 x 5 along with the Reconyx photo's of some true studs were definitely clouding the 13 year-olds judgment. I guess it's never to early to start trophy hunting.

We'll my wife is up to bat next! She's holding a Kansas muzzle-loader tag and has not so much as even seen a buck in the wild, much less shot or killed one. She has saw a few while driving, if that counts? I guess if the "Double Deuce" buck steps into the food plot while we're there, I'll have to use the ol' " he's not very big, but you can shoot him if you want" speech to keep her from getting too excited. You never know how a person will react to their first buck encounter in the wild, but I'm sure excited to see what happens! Stay tuned to the journal to see if she connects on "D.D.", or maybe even one of the other good bucks that are hanging out on our Kansas farms. Good luck and kill em' big! -Doug Hampton

Doug Hampton - Daniel Boone Returns!

A busy week, and Daniel Boone Returns!

Well last week team Hart should have lost a bunch of weight because we stayed hooked up and moving. Rod worked during the day and scouted during the evenings.. J.W. was busy with the P.B.R. event in Brazil while I was getting my hunting spots in Arkansas ready. After a logging crew devastated my best stand location, I wanted to scream! The giant white-oak acorn trees that had provided our deer with food for decades were reduced to just stumps. But then it hit me like ton of bricks,"food plot"! After nine hours of bulldozing, I was ready to disk. I guess sometimes you got to make the best out of the things you can't control anyway, so I did just that. Two acres of Biologic will feed the deer deep into our winter months.

With the food plots complete and the weekend coming fast, it was time for our Catch-A-Dream fundraiser. J.W. and Rod both drove down to my hometown of Monticello, Arkansas to hold a benefit for the Catch-A-Dream Foundation. We knew that it was going to be tough holding the benefit on Labor Day weekend with the Arkansas Razorbacks playing just two hours away in Little Rock. Not to mention that squirrel and dove season opened the same day..... But man were we surprised when my hometown folks began to pour into the doors of that church by the dozens! We were even more surprised when we saw how much money we raised under the circumstances. It was great to see how a small town could get behind us and help us to raise money for such a great cause. We had a lot of people and businesses that donated and helped out with the benefit. Thanks Monticello!



Well Sunday morning Rod and J.W. let the rooster keep sleeping as they headed back home. I went to church to give thanks for the great weekend that we were blessed with before heading to the woods. Rod decided to stop by our Kansas farm on the way home and that's when he spoke the words I been waiting to hear." We got pictures of Daniel Boone", Rod said with an excited voice. " The bad news is that he's only an 8 point....The good news is that he's close to Boone!". Daniel Boone was a ten point last year that we had pictures of as late as February. We had moved one of our Reconyx camera's to a suspected travel route from bedding to a bean field just a few weeks ago, just in time to catch the giant in velvet and then in hard horn. What a way to finish up an already great week! And to top it off, my son will be there in a few days to kick off our Dream Season with our father/son annual trip for the Kansas youth season. Stay tuned !!! -Doug Hampton

Doug Hampton - It's Almost Here

Our food plots are in and the days are getting shorter. In three short weeks Rod and I will be taking my son Coltin on our annual Kansas youth season hunt and man are we excited! We have Reconyx pictures from most of our big deer that were using our food plots in late January. It's always nice to know your big bucks made it through the winter months and appear to be healthy. We only have pictures of three of our four-year old bucks so far, but that's fairly common during the late summer on our Kansas farm. Last year it was the middle of September before our older aged bucks started to make their appearance.

This year Rod and I will be hunting with J.W. Hart, the "Iron Man" of the P.B.R. on Dream Season Celebrity. We should be hunting non-stop for the better part of four months. We are scheduled to hunt in Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. So to sum it up, we're gonna be pretty busy this fall. Good luck to everyone and we hope God blesses you with a great "Dream Season". -Doug Hampton