A toddler in Wyoming had a big smile on her face as she rested on the large carcass of a male mule deer after her father, who hunted with a bow and arrow, killed the animal while the child was still sleeping on his back.
Ryder Seely, a deputy with the Albany County Sheriff’s Office, went hunting with a bow and arrow on Tuesday, hoping to get lucky and shoot a deer early in the season.
Towards the end of the legal hunting season he saw a large deer with beautiful antlers and shot it – he was almost certain it was prey.
However, the deer ran away and it began to get dark. He called it a night and decided to track down the wounded big mule deer early the next morning.
The only problem was that his daughter’s daycare was closed the next day and he was on paternity duty.
One-year-old Lainey had the excursion of a lifetime on Wednesday when she and her dad experienced deer season in the beautiful Wyoming wilderness — and her first kill shot
But that didn’t deter the eager hunter. Seely packed Lainey into her child’s backpack, strapped her to his back, and headed back to one of his favorite hunting spots—not far from his home in Wheatland, Wyoming.
To his surprise, the deer was still alive. He walked three miles back to his truck to grab his bow and prepare to finally put an end to the wounded deer’s misery.
All that walking tired out his daughter, who was still perched on his back. By the time he moved the male and began planning a stalking route, Lainey had fallen asleep.
“I knew I had about 10-15 minutes to pull the stem off before she woke up and got cranky,” Seely said. Cowboy State Daily.
With unparalleled skill and patience, he crawled until he was 40 yards from the target and in exactly the right place to shoot, all without waking his sleeping one-year-old child.
Ryder Seely was on father duty, but that didn’t stop him from strapping his daughter onto his back and going hunting with a bow and arrow.
“There wasn’t much cover between the deer and us,” he added. “I had to position her so she wouldn’t fall out of the pack when I crawled.”
Like a true hunter’s daughter, Lainey woke up just in time for the kill, her usual post-nap tingling quickly turning to excitement.
And Lainey learned a new word.
“She was over the moon,” Seely added. “I could tell she was trying to say ‘deer.'”
Father and daughter walked over to the fallen deer and celebrated a successful hunt.
Seely has taken his 5-year-old daughter Lyla hunting before and hopes that both of his daughters will grow to love hunting as they get older — maybe even as much as he does.
“She was really happy with it. She kept touching the antlers,” he added.
Daddy’s daughter snuggled up to the deer, which still had the arrow in the side of its head. A real picture for the hunting duo.
It was a great experience for the outdoorsman to be able to take his youngest daughter hunting and show her the thrill of a kill. He had already taken Lyla, his 5-year-old daughter, hunting.
“She was really excited to go,” he added.
Seely hopes that as his daughters grow older, they will learn to appreciate and love hunting — maybe even as much as he does.
But Lainey’s reaction to her first hunting experience with her father is telling: She could be on her way to becoming the youngest hunter in Wyoming.