Gavin Dingman is only 11 years old, and recently harvested an extremely rare 12-point albino buck with a crossbow in Michigan. It’s estimated that albino deer are born as infrequently as once every 100,000 births.
“He kind of feels like a rock star right now. Everyone is calling, all of the hunting shows and hunting magazines.” Mick Dingman said. They had spotted the deer several times over the years, and several others in the neighborhood were familiar with it.
On the night of the hunt, Gavin and his brother were actually arguing over who got to hunt with their dad that night. When they saw the albino deer that evening, Gavin said he was “very nervous” as he prepared to setup for his shot with the crossbow. “My dad was just like, ‘Take a deep breath. Are you sure you can take the shot? If you’re not 100 percent, we don’t want to injure it.’ ”
Gavin didn’t miss, and dropped the deer from 30 years. This was a reason to celebrate for the family, and Dingman’s dad posted the photo on Facebook. Soon after the posting the photo they received everything from “polite opinions all the way to death threats and everything in between” according to patch.com through a family spokesman, Jordan Browne. He said the threats are unacceptable. “I was surprised by the personal attacks on an 11-year old kid they have no association with. When you look at his picture, he looks like the sweetest kid.”
Browne summed it up best, much like Eva Shockey did in defending her black bear hunt recently, “Without hunting the population would explode, and eventually implode because of inbreeding,” Browne said. “The local ecosystem can only support so many deer, and farmers would throw a fit if nothing was done to manage the population.”
