Jeff told his dad: Just stay where you're at. The deer had turned and run back in the direction from which it came. Jeff called on his phone and asked his dad if he got one. 'I was kind of praying that it was a successful shot.' 'When I heard the shot, I knew it was him,' Jeff Walker said.

She whirled around, and she took off,' Walker said. His gun barrel poking out a window, Walker fired the weapon. Walker is convinced that the deer sensed something out of the ordinary. Some time later, sitting in a swivel chair in his blind, Bob Walker saw movement to his left. Jeff began tracking it and eventually found the dead deer. Later in the day, Walker heard a shot from the direction of his son. The day before, Walker had been in his blind all day and seen only one deer: a little six-pointer on a trail that walked within ten yards of his blind. I let out a war whoop.' - Bob Walker, on his son Jeff's response He was as happy and excited just as much as I was. 'He grabbed a hold of me and give me a big hug.

The squirrel would come around and she'd shoot it. You walk around, the squirrel goes around,' Walker said. 'Anybody who has hunted squirrels knows that squirrels go up the opposite side of the tree from where you're at. They developed a technique to outfox them. Even before that, as a young boy, he helped flush squirrels for his Aunt Mary. His dad started him on pheasant hunting as a young teen, after buying him a 16-gauge shotgun and a full box of shells for $12. 'I really didn't want to quit without getting one.'īob Walker's earliest memories are steeped in hunting on his family farm. 'I went a couple of years without getting one,' Bob Walker said. For those two years, Walker had taken down and folded up his tent empty-handed, and 'we'd take our two deer and have them processed.' But as the day showed signs of expiring, Walker gave his son permission to shoot if an opportunity presented itself. Then he would hold back, hoping his dad would get the other. Jeff Walker, an accomplished hunter, got the first deer. They settled themselves in different parts of a 60-acre wooded area between Marion and Chatfield that the two had hunted for two decades.īoth outings had unfolded similarly and disappointingly - at least for Bob. And for the last two years, father and son had started their hunting weekend with high hopes of Walker getting his climatic last deer. He wanted his hunting career to end on a high note.

Deer hunting s