Shoot what makes you happy.

In today’s age of social media and keyboard warriors, it’s very likely that you will get shamed for shooting a deer that doesn’t meet someone else’s standards if you share it on social media. Most of us would agree that shooting a 200” buck would have us so excited we wouldn’t sleep for days, but the reality is that deer of that caliber aren’t wandering around in every hunting spot in the world. Where I hunt, we see big bucks from time to time and we do our best to let the small ones grow, but there comes a point in time when something inside you just tells you to shoot that deer in front of you, you remind yourself that you have bigger bucks on camera, but something inside tells you to shoot. When I get that feeling, I can’t help but to pull the trigger and I always have a sense of satisfaction after recovering that deer that is similar to shooting a big buck. We eat a lot of venison at our house, in fact it’s our primary source of protein and I am very fortunate to live in an area with an abundance of deer that allows me to harvest enough deer to feed the family year-round while still maintaining a healthy animal population. There is satisfaction in being able to provide food for your family while doing something you love, and sometimes that means shooting that little doe or small buck that someone else will look down on you for. Shoot what makes you happy and don’t worry about what others will think!