Both youth hunters killed bucks weeks apart
Six-year-old Easton Carter and his 11-year-old brother Landon Carter, both of Snow Camp, N.C. killed whitetail bucks two weeks apart during the 2021 season.
Easton killed his buck during a Chatham County hunt from a ground blind on Sept. 11. He was sitting with his dad and brother on opening day when he released a bolt from a Carbon Express crossbow. He nailed a 4×4 buck.
Landon’s turn came on Sept. 25, Youth Day, while sitting in a ground blind with his dad during an Alamance County hunt. He shot his buck with a 300 AAC Blackout rifle, dropping the 165-pound 8-pointer.
The boys’ father, Jason Carter, is understandably proud.
“Easton is a first-grader, and it was the first time he’d hunted in the woods,” the father said. “He started practicing with a crossbow in July because his brother had got excited about deer hunting. Easton could hit (the target’s bullseye) five of five times.”
The boys had accompanied their dad, who works for Southern Release and is on the Afflictor Broadheads pro staff, to a Rhino ground blind in Chatham County before deer season. They’d scattered Wright Whitetail Minerals mixed with corn near the stand.
When Easton drilled his buck, it stood 15 yards from the blind. Landon’s deer was even closer, 13 yards, when he drilled it with his .30 caliber bolt action rifle.
“We saw (Easton’s deer) last year on a trail camera,” the elder Carter said.
Their cousin, Robert Cerdena, had set the blind at an oak ridge that sloped to a creek bottom. He also raked a path so the Carters could walk to the stand silently.
One rack scored 120 inches, the other 131
The Carters’ trail cameras had captured images of a pretty, in-velvet 8-pointer that Jason hoped his youngest son would shoot.
“He came that morning. But we let him go,” the father said. “Easton had his heart set on the tall-tine buck.”
They returned that afternoon, and the high-rack whitetail visited the corn pile.
“I film all their hunts. So when the buck walked up, I was tore up,” the dad said. “I said to Easton ‘Do you know where to shoot?’ He looked at me and said ‘I know where to aim daddy,’ and pointed at his heart. He was calmer than I was.”
After the boy sent a bolt through the buck, the animal ran for 160 yards after it bedded down three times, they discovered later.
Once Jason replayed Easton’s shot, he knew it had hit the deer’s side a litter farther back than he’d wished.
“I knew he had gotten a lung and probably the liver,” he said.
So they waited 4 hours until Cerdena arrived to help track and find the deer, which weighed 165 pounds. The rack scored 120 inches.
After seeing trail camera images, Easton’s brother Landon, a 6th-grader, had nicknamed one of the deer he admired “Buster.”
At 4:45 p.m. on Youth Day, Buster and three smaller bucks walked within 13 yards of the Carter blind. Landon pulled the rifle’s trigger at 6:50.
“Buster jumped straight up, ran down an old roadbed, stopped, then ran 10 more yards before he crashed in the woods,” the father said.
That deer, with a 131-inch rack, ran 50 yards total before it fell.
“Now their classmates always ask when they will take them deer hunting,” said the proud poppa.
Bag-A-Buck
Congratulations to the Carter brothers, who are now entered in our Bag-A-Buck contest. Click here to enter your buck in the Carolina Sportsman Bag-A-Buck contest. We’re giving away some great monthly prizes, as well as a Grand Prize that includes a Millennium M25 hang-on deer stand and a 2-man, 2-day hunt for deer and hogs at Cherokee Run Hunting Lodge in Chesterfield, S.C.
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