VALDOSTA — Sitting behind a deer blind for hours, staring off into the deep woods, 13-year old Zach Justice remained silent and still as he waited for his shot.

Sitting on his couch five months later, looking at those same woods, Justice was anything but silent as he recounted that October day.

“I was excited,” Justice said. “I was bugging my mom. She kept telling me to be quiet.”

Zach Justice’s mother wanted her son to pipe down, so she could watch the Valdosta Middle School student shoot his first deer on the nationally syndicated hunting television show, “Cabela’s Memories in the Field.”

The program aired Monday at 8:30 p.m. and will re-air today at 1:30 p.m. and Sunday at 7:30 a.m.

“I think it was pretty cool,” Justice said in reference to the TV program. “It was kind of neat to see what they did.

“You don’t know how excited, and how you’re going to be until after you saw it.”

Justice, his father Greg and brother Luke took a hunting trip with friend and photographer David Neck to Okey Woods in the Fall of 2006.

Neck, who has had six segments televised on “Cabela’s Memories in the Field,” brought his camera along and set it up in the blind with Zach.

After waiting out the morning, an older doe made itself visible to the 13-year-old hunter. The older deer showed its age advantage and fled before Zach could get off a shot.

Shortly after, a younger buck came out of the denser brush.

The buck was there for five minutes, before it turned and allowed for a shot.

Although just 13, Zach is no novice hunter and knew exactly what to do — keep calm and take for the shot.

“When it turns, you get the vertical cross-hairs, and move up its leg,” Zach Justice said. “And, once you get to the top of its leg, you move a little bit over the shoulder and squeeze the trigger.”

The bullet found the precise spot on the deer, 102 yards away, and brought him down after 15 yards of running.

“It was a perfect shot right through both lungs into the top of the heart,” Greg said.

Zach learned how to hunt at an early age, shooting his first weapon, a .22-caliber rifle, at the age of 6.

Even by that age, he was familiar with hunting, first going out into the woods before he was even potty-trained.

“We like to hunt, camp and fish together,” Greg said. “I carried him on my hip when he was 19-months old with a gun in one hand and him on the hip. He’s hunted all his life.”

With his first deer and many turkeys under his belt, Zach, his father and his brother Luke will look for white-tails again next deer season. Although this time, Zach will hand off the rifle to Luke.

“My brother hasn’t shot one, so he’ll probably get the better spots and all that,” Zach said.