Take a Kid: A First Deer Plan for Youth Gun Weekend

HuntRXKitchenRX
Written By Matt Brauer

Oklahoma gives kids the woods to themselves for three days before the rest of us pick up a rifle. Youth deer gun season runs Friday, October 16, through Sunday, October 18. Last season, young hunters took 3,669 deer that weekend.

A lot of those deer were somebody's first. That's the part worth planning for.

A first deer hunt isn't a smaller version of your hunt. Yours is about a specific buck, a wind and a stand you've protected all month. Theirs is about a deer in daylight, inside a distance they can handle, with an adult who keeps it fun enough that they want to come back. Get those right and the antlers take care of themselves in a few years.

Whitetail buck at the edge of a pond with a doe feeding nearby

The rules, in plain English

Read the regulations yourself, but here's the short version for 2026:

  • Who hunts: youth 17 and younger, with a youth hunting license (residents need the Youth Annual Super Hunting License unless exempt).

  • Who goes with them: an adult 18 or older with a current hunting license. The adult can't carry a firearm for hunting. You can bowhunt that weekend if you're licensed for it, but most of us leave the bow in the truck.

  • Hunter education: a young hunter who hasn't passed the course hunts as an apprentice, and the adult has to stay within arm's length, close enough to take control of the gun right now. Inside a box blind, that's easy.

  • Bag limit: two deer, no more than one antlered. Youth-weekend deer count toward the six-deer season limit but not the four-deer regular gun limit.

  • Hunter orange: the young hunter needs a head covering and an outer garment above the waist, at least 400 square inches of orange together. If you're sitting with a bow, you need an orange hat or vest too.

  • Hours and check-in: half an hour before sunrise to half an hour after sunset. Field-tag the deer right away and check it within 24 hours on the Go Outdoors Oklahoma app.

Antlerless deer can only be taken in zones open to antlerless harvest during the firearm seasons, so check your zone before you tell a kid a doe is fair game.

Pick the spot from the camera

We all have a habit of taking a kid to the stand we'd want for ourselves. That's backward. The best stand for a first deer is the one where deer show up in daylight, close and predictably. Usually that's does and young bucks on food.

Open your cellular camera app and look at the last two weeks. You're looking for three things:

  • Daylight visits in the last two hours before dark.

  • Repeat visitors. The same doe group four evenings out of seven is a plan.

  • Distance. Deer that stand inside 100 yards of the blind, or closer if your young hunter has only practiced at 50.

The mature buck that shows up at midnight isn't part of this weekend. Leave his corner alone. You'll want it in three weeks anyway.

Deer feeder at the edge of the timber

For a first deer, pick the spot deer already use in daylight.

Put them in a box blind

A tree stand is the wrong office for an eleven-year-old. Kids fidget, they whisper, they need a snack every forty minutes, and a fall is the one thing worse than a miss.

A box blind fixes most of that. Walls hide movement and soften noise. The door keeps out the wind and the last of the mosquitoes. There's room for two chairs, a snack bag and a parent who wants to watch the kid's face more than the field. Put it on a tower and you get a better view and a downward shot angle.

Set it up for the kid, not for you:

  • Seat height. Their chair should put the window at chest height. A short kid on a tall chair is a kid leaning out the window.

  • A rest. Shooting sticks or a bag on the sill. Every first-deer shot should come off a rest.

  • Open only the window you need. One open window keeps the inside dark, and a dark blind hides movement.

  • Sit in it once before the hunt. A daytime practice sit, so they know where things are and which chair squeaks.

Box blind on a steel tower at the edge of a field

A box blind on a tower: room to wiggle, walls to hide it.

Make it a shot they can make

The kindest thing you can do is set a short limit and stick to it. Before the weekend, practice the way they'll hunt. If the shot will come off a bipod or tripod, practice off a bipod or tripod, not a shooting bench. Shoot from the same seat height at the distances you expect. The more it looks and feels like the real thing, the less nervous they'll be when it's go time. If they put three shots in a 6" circle at that distance, that's their range.

Talk through the shot before you're in the blind:

  • Broadside or quartering away only. Tight behind the front leg, a third of the way up.

  • Wait for the deer to stop. A walking deer isn't a shot.

  • Ear and eye protection for both of you. A shot inside a blind is loud.

  • They decide. If they're shaking too hard, it's okay to say "not this one." Tell them that before the deer shows up, not while it's standing there.

A mature doe is a great first deer. Plenty of meat, fewer nerves than antlers bring, and it saves their antlered tag for later. If a young buck steps out, that isn't a missed chance. It's the best lesson of the weekend. Whisper through it together: the thin neck, the legs that look too long for the body, the tucked waist, the belly that hasn't dropped yet. On our ground the goal is bucks 5.5 years and older, so a young buck walks. But sometimes those rules get relaxed for a youth hunter's first deer. The goal is to have fun, and hopefully they fall in love with it the way we have and become lifelong hunters. Either way, learning to age a deer on the hoof is a lesson they'll use every season after.

Keep it short

Plan an evening sit and settle in about two hours before dark, not four. Deer move in the last hour of light anyway, and two hours is about how long most kids last before the snacks run out.

Give them jobs. Let them check the wind with a puff bottle, run the rangefinder, or call out every squirrel. A kid with a job stays in the hunt. A kid with nothing to do starts asking when you're leaving.

If nothing shows, you didn't fail. Watch the sunset, pack up quietly and get a burger on the way home. That still counts as a good hunt.

After the shot

Most first deer don't drop where they stood. Mark the spot, note which way the deer ran, and give a good hit at least 30 minutes before you go look. Use the time to talk about the shot.

Then let the kid lead the track. Hand them the flashlight and let them find the blood. A first track is half the story they'll tell later.

When you reach the deer, slow down. Let them fill out the check-in on the Go Outdoors Oklahoma app. It's their deer and their paperwork.

October in Oklahoma is still warm. Get the deer field dressed, then either quarter it and get it on ice or get it to your processor quickly. If it's a long drive, have a bag of ice ready for the body cavity to keep the meat chilled, or know where the nearest gas station is to pick some up on the way. Let the kid help as much as they want. Some want to do it all, some want to hold the light. Both are fine.

Hunter sitting on a truck tailgate with a mature whitetail buck

The tailgate is where the story starts.

KitchenRX: The first meal from their deer

The best way to finish a first deer is to eat some of it together that week. Before it all goes to burger and sausage, save the tenderloins for a meal the kid helps cook.

Tenderloin bites (feeds 2 to 3):

  1. Trim both tenderloins of any silver skin and cut them into 1-inch medallions.

  2. Season with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Let it sit 20 minutes while a cast-iron skillet heats.

  3. Sear in a little oil, 2 to 3 minutes a side, in batches so the pan stays hot.

  4. Add a tablespoon of butter at the end, spoon it over the meat, and rest it 5 minutes.

Pull it at medium-rare to medium. Lean venison cooked gray is where "it tastes like liver" comes from. Kids who've been told venison is gamey usually change their minds by the third bite.

Then let them tell the story at the table. You'll hear it differently than you remember it.

Your turn

  • Who took you on your first deer hunt, and what do you remember most?

  • Taking a kid this weekend? Tell us their age and county, and send us the photo after.

Gear in this story

WRX365 Pro members get 5% off everything in the RX Store.

Before you go

If your young hunter tags one this weekend, log it in the WRX365 Harvest Registry at whitetailrxtools.com. Score & age your deer free, and it goes into their season summary on January 20 (scores and ages are estimates, not official Boone & Crockett or Cy Curtis scores). And join the free Hunt Club to get next Tuesday's story on scrapes, rubs and the muzzleloader opener.

Sources

Matt Brauer
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