Kevin Voisine of Fort Kent had two reasons to be a proud father on the same day.
Both of his sons, Ellison, 11, and Jacoby, 9, killed their first deer within a couple hours of each other.
Voisine told his boys the night before that they would get to the hunting blind before it was light the next morning. They, and the children’s grandfather Richard Voisine, all made it to the blind at 6 a.m., where they set up the shooting stick and got their guns out. Legal shooting time was 6:32 a.m.
A friend of Voisine texted him shortly after they were settled in the blind that he had seen two doe deer. Then at about 7:30 a.m., four does went across the field, he said. He gave the youth model of a Savage .243-caliber rifle to Jacoby to be ready to shoot one of the deer.
Voisine made bleating noises to stop the does when they began to walk away, and Jacoby shot the second one in the lineup.
“I’m shaking Dad. I’m shaking,” Jacoby told his father after he shot the doe.
When he and Jacoby got to the tree line, there was no blood trail to follow. They also didn’t find any blood in the woods.
Then Voisine glanced at a 20-year-old bear bait site and spotted the deer dead next to it. It was about 25 yards into the woods. Jacoby had shot it from 200 yards away, his dad said. It was a diagonal shot into the ribcage and the lung. They found the bullet.
They were not far from home, so pulled the deer out and gutted it at their house, tagged it at Lake Road Grocery and hung it up. Voisine did not want to gut it where they likely were going to hunt with Ellison.
They kept the feet to make some sort of remembrance for Jacoby, who also killed his first ruffed grouse this year.
Now it was Ellison’s turn. He wanted to ride the fields to look for deer.
The hunters saw three more does when they took a farm road. Ellison had forgotten the shooting stick, so he shot at one of the does and missed. The deer looked up and went back to eating, he said.
Soon after those deer walked off, a buck showed up. Ellison shot it in the back leg. The buck took off for the woods. The hunters waited a few minutes, then poked their heads into the woods and saw the animal lying on the ground. It took off again. When they found it the next time, it stood and Ellison shot it. He had to shoot it again to kill it.
The buck weighed 160.2 pounds and had a four-point rack. Ellison plans to have a head and shoulder mount to hang in his bedroom.
“We had two deer on the ground by 11 a.m.,” Voisine said, with pride in his voice.
Being in the field with their father during hunting season is not new for the two boys.
Voisine said his sons have been with him while he was hunting since they were babies in their car seats.
