In the late 80’s I met a guy who was to became a true friend as well as a terrific bowhunting buddy. I was in Dallas at the time and owned a mail order camouflage company named Sticks N’ Limbs. Robbie Cramer was a top executive at the mail service company that I used for my companies mailings.
One afternoon we were working on business stuff when he switched the subject to deer hunting. He told me that his Grandfather took him deer hunting when he was a kid and they went for the first time when Robbie was 8 years old.
His Grand dad loved deer hunting and made sure Robbie got a good introduction to hunting. And that year Robbie shot a nice 8-pointer with his dad’s rifle. They continued to deerhunt together and they also hunted dove, quail and ducks.
Then Robbie switched the subject again, saying he was interested in trying bowhunting but he didn’t know what he needed to do to get started. I told him that I was “the man for the job.” My bowhunting buddy “The Duck” had a PSE bow for sale and I called him up and he came over with the bow and some arrows.
The mail service company had a bunch of employees and mailed millions of bulk mail materials out of their 10,000 square foot building. So Robbie cleared out a shooting area and tried out the bow. Actually, he shot it more accurately than most newbees do.
When the Archery deer season opened up a month later I asked Robbie if he wanted to go along, explaining that it was a Does Only situation as the landowner only allowed paid lease members to shoot Bucks. Robbie was good for that and a few days later we drove down to my deer-lease, an hour a half away.
Robbie hunted with me several times that year and he got a few shots, but he missed. When he still wanted to go the next year I set up a treestand and got a styrofoam target for him to shoot at. Coming with me to deerhunt was his first exposure to treestand hunting and I thought I knew what the problem was.
I asked him to shoot a few arrows from the treestand. That did not go well and I made some suggestions. I told him to lean forward at the waist instead of holding his torso straight up and bending his arms to shoot downward. He shot his first Doe the next day and he continued to bowhunt with me.
A few years later we both had the opportunity to get on the adjacent deer- lease. He quickly scouted up some prospective buck areas and immediately began adding Bucks to his list of the game he could shoot.
ONWARD! Let’s jump ahead 25 years and bring things up to our 2022 whitetail bowhunt.
This year’s deerhunt began when Robbie texted me a blurry picture he got this September from his cellular Bushnell game camera. I call him ‘Big 10’, Robbie said.
And that’s the Buck in the picture on the top of this page. Behind him, notice that elevated blind, it’s Robbie’s stand site. And obviously, ‘Big 10’ knows where that is.