I’m Robin Doke, a proud native of a small town in Porum, Oklahoma. I'm a mother to two incredible sons and a loving Lollie to my precious granddaughter. I spent my youth and high school days playing every sport my little school had to offer and was fortunate enough to travel around all of Oklahoma and surrounding states playing basketball/softball with others who loved the game as much as me. It wasn’t until I was a grown adult that I found my love for the outdoors and all that hunting and fishing entailed. My passion and desire to be in the woods or wetting a line has only grown immensely each passing day.
I’ve been blessed to be able to hunt and harvest many beautiful animals, but last year, I experienced my favorite hunt of all! For months, I had been watching this beautiful buck on camera, and I knew other hunters around me had their eye on him as well. I had several trail cam pictures of him leading up to opening day and the excitement for the season to start was almost unbearable. He was pretty simple to pattern all the way up to the season opening and then all of the sudden the pictures of him stopped. My worst fear was that a close by neighbor had harvested him already after giving how small of an area he was covering with multiple hunters around.
There was no sign of him on camera for the first couple weeks once the season finally started and of course I was starting to feel heartache thinking he was long gone, but it didn’t change my determination to hunt every chance I could get in hopes of him slipping up. I was determined to sit for every possible hunt when the wind was favorable and found it extremely challenging to resist hunting on the days when the wind wasn’t right for my small setup. On this particular day, everything fell perfectly into place. It happened to be a Sunday so I was able to sit the entire day in my ladder stand, from before dawn up until the evening hunt. There was about 30 minutes left of shooting light when I bowed my head in prayer, expressing gratitude to the good Lord above for my blessings and the chance to hunt these beautiful creatures and with my head still bowed in prayer I suddenly heard leaves crunching beneath my stand.
Not only did he appear that evening, but he walked right underneath me, offering a broadside shot at around 25 yards. I knew I had taken a good clean shot on him and I watched as he darted off through the thickest brush on the property and it wasn’t just a few moments later I heard him crash. The moments in the stand following that shot seemed to take forever waiting until I could get down to track him, but lucky for me he didn’t go far. For those wondering, buck fever is a “REAL” thing!
I’ve got big dreams about my future and all the adventures I have planned that involve hunting and fishing. A few of those include an elk hunt in the snowy mountains, a bear hunt in Alaska and bass fishing every lake I can in between. There’s so much more I want to do with both hunting and fishing and I look forward to what the future holds. But most importantly I look forward to the time when my granddaughter is old enough and asks to go hunting and fishing with her Lollie.
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