When I took my two kids hunting for the first time two years ago, the plan was they had to shoot a doe first. I didn't want them thinking that we just go sit in the stand and 5 minutes later a huge buck walks out and you shoot it.

Well, after the three of us sat in the stand morning and afternoon without seeing anything for maybe 15 days the first season, my son finally saw a deer during extended youth season and dropped it. It just happened to be a doe, but by that time, I would have let him shoot anything. By then I felt he had put in the time and understood it wasn't appointment shooting. The next morning, he dropped the biggest 9 pointer that was taken on the lease all season.

When she was in the shooting seat, my daughter didn't see a deer she could shoot the entire first season. Her first day out in season two, we had two doe and two bucks walk out. I felt she had put in the time and I told her to drop the largest buck. Nice 9 point that would have scored as high as her brothers if it hadn't have broken off two of it's antlers.

This is the most ridiculous thread I've seen in a long while... How did kids "earn" them before food plots and feeders and "deer lease" work?

When I was young and started hunting it was by myself. That was over 50 years ago. There were not as many deer around as there are now. Back then you shot any buck you saw. Hunting was hunting back then. It was not sitting in an elevated blind next to a feeder filled with corn that went off at a certain time. I was around 14 years old before I got my first buck. And I hunted it and it was not shot from a stand.

Or "earn them" so then they never want to go back