FAYETTE — Bridget Vestal anxiously text messaged her mother on Nov. 16, as Deborah White waited to hear a gun shot.

Vestal was trying to find out whether her 5-year-old son Aaron had killed his first deer in the woods behind his grandparents’ house.

When White finally messaged that she had heard a shot, Bridget texted to her, “Oh, goody, goody!”

“Then she said, ‘Here they come on the four-wheeler, and Aaron’s jumping up and down,’” the proud mother recounted.

Bridget and husband Tim hopped in their car to make the five-minute drive to her parents’ home, and when they arrived they could see the excitement in their son’s face.

“When we got there Aaron was jumping up and down and shaking the deer, like, ‘Look what I did!’” Bridget said.

Her father, James Walker, had taken his grandson out that morning to hunt, and he told his daughter that watching Aaron make his first kill make him emotional.

“He said when he saw the excitement in Aaron’s face he just couldn’t hold back a tear,” Bridget said. “And my dad is not the type of person that would cry.”

Walker, who skins his own deer, estimated that the 7-point buck would weigh about 135 pounds, but when they got it up on the scale, it was actually 160 pounds.

Aaron was so excited he tried to help his grandfather skin the deer as well.

“We bloodied him up, and he was all excited about that — so excited, he started putting the blood on his face himself,” Bridget said.

The most unique part of the kill, however, was the skills Aaron recalled as he shot the buck.

He used a .44 Magnum rifle that he was not afraid of, Bridget said, because his grandfather had taught him to be used to the kickback of a .22.

“My dad said when he put the gun on the deer, he was looking through the crosshairs and he was talking while he did it,” Bridget said. “He was saying, ‘Right in the heart, right there.’

“Then, boom!”

Aaron plays a buck-hunting computer game all the time, his mother said, and the practice on the PC came in very handy out in the woods.

She said her son wants to play that game every day.

“He knew to get a heart shot right behind the (front) leg,” she said. “He knew where to shoot it looking at the scope just by playing that game.”

Now Aaron, who had been hunting a few times before with his older sister and Pawpaw, gets to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

The Vestals took the buck to a meat processing center, giving them a freezer full of deer meat.

“He big time loves eating deer,” Aaron’s mom said. “If he eats a hamburger, it’s a deer burger.

“When he first got to eat his own deer, he was grinning from ear to ear.”