Buck Tales

I shot my first deer this fall. It's not that I was suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to go deer hunting; quite the opposite in fact. I've wanted to for enough years that I can count them in decades: two and a half of them. It's just that up until a year and a half ago, I didn't have any friends that hunted. I knew people that did, but either I didn't know them well enough to tag along, or they seemed like the kind of people I wouldn't want to be around firearms with. Until 6 or 7 years ago I didn't hunt at all, then finally started going after upland game when I got my German Short-haired Pointer, Kaiser. Pheasants and squirrels were the only critters that made it to my game bag. But I still longed after deer; to my mind, I couldn't really call myself a hunter until I went.

In the late summer of 2008 I started coaching basketball with a guy who is now a very good friend of mine. Steve is a lifelong hunter, and after hearing some of his tales of last season, I asked him if he wouldn't mind if I tagged along. I confessed my rudimentary bird hunting skills, told him I'd never really gone after deer (other than tagging along with my father and brother once, and once with my brother and uncles, both when I was rather young). Fortunately for me, Steve wasn't put off, and told me he would take me. The rigors and trials of life in general pushed the thought from my mind over the ensuing months, until the day Steve called me late this summer and told me it would soon be time to apply for our tags. We did, and were drawn for tags in Illinois, and bought tags for Indiana (which are way too expensive, for which Illinois is to blame). The purchasing of gear followed, along with the dusting off of the .50 caliber muzzle-loader which I had bought the previous year, mainly because I thought it would be cool to have one, and had yet to fire. Outfitted and ready to roll, the day approached: November 15th, 2009, the Sunday of the opening weekend of Indiana muzzle-loader season.

The first thing I noticed about deer hunting: it takes place too damned early in the morning. I was up at 4am, to be at Steve's house by 4:30am. Tired as I was, I was excited for sure. The drive (in the dark, the sun wouldn't start to rise until almost 6:00) took roughly an hour, heading for some private farmland. We were dressed and in the ground blind at 5:45, all ready to...wait. Which, I've come to learn, is mostly what deer hunting is: waiting for something brown and furry to wander within range.

I can recall that morning with almost perfect clarity. It was chilly but not cold, very quiet and still, and the amount of stars you can see when you're outside of the light pollution from a city as large as Chicago is always amazing, like a crystal has exploded across the sky. Orion stood out vividly in the eastern sky in the pre-dawn. The mesh screening over the windows of the blind added a slight blur to the slowly greying sky. At 6:00 I noticed a dark shadow about 125 yards away to our left, moving slowly across the field. It was still much too dark to shoot, but the sign was encouraging: at least there were deer in the area. The shape moved in a very shallow arc across to our front, then disappeared into the tree line and the shadows on the opposite side of the field, becoming obscured by the tall patch of prairie grass we had forgotten to bend down. But as the grass only obscured a small section of our field of vision, we thought it best to stay put and leave it. That almost worked against us.

I checked my watch at 7:15. The sun was up but still low, giving us plenty of light to shoot by. I adjusted myself in my seat, and was looking down when I heard Steve whisper "Look!" My head snapped up, and there in front of us, 100 yards away, was a tall buck, being followed by a slightly smaller one 30 yards behind. My heart started to pound, and I heard "Get your gun up!" Slowly and carefully I pushed the muzzle through the slit in the screen, resting it on the bottom half of the mesh, sighting along the iron sights. By that time the bigger buck had moved behind some brush directly to my left and obscured my shot. But the smaller one had stopped in the field to feed on some corn left behind by the harvest, and was still there. He moseyed to about a hundred yards, and I drew a bead on him. But never having fired the gun before, and through iron sights, I was hesitant. "He's too far away," I hissed, barely wanting to breath. Steve told me to wait and let him close up, as he seemed to be moving toward us to follow the path the first buck had taken into the trees behind us. Close he did, getting another 10 yards closer, but I was still hesitant. Steve handed me his gun, same caliber, heavier, and more importantly, scoped: "Try that".

I looked through, and the buck jumped into my field of vision. My heart-rate shot up again. "I can take him with this."

"Okay. Next time he stops, shoot."

The buck was in my sights the entire time, sights that were bouncing all over because of the attack of "buck fever" I was having: adrenaline was flowing freely. I forced a couple of deep breaths as the buck closed to 80 yards. Every single part of me was focused through that scope; nothing else existed. The buck stopped and bent down to forage again. "Okay. I'm going to take the shot." Through the cloud of focus and adrenaline I heard "Send it." What happened next likely only took a second or two, although it seemed like at least a minute to me: the scope was still dancing, but I remembered what Steve had told me: wait for the natural pause in your breath as you're aiming, then squeeze. I waited, the scope settled, and I squeezed.

The next thing I saw was nothing but the cloud of white smoke from the muzzle, because that's what black powder does, makes puffy white clouds. I had no idea if I hit the buck or not. He was gone. I looked over at Steve, who was standing and craning his neck around the cloud. "Did I get him?" I was still whispering, partly because we had been whispering all morning, and partly because my mouth was so dry my tongue was sticking to the roof of it.

Steve cracked a grin. "You got him. His flag (his tail) was down and he was on a dead run. Unless they're hurt, deer hop. You got him." I could feel myself grinning so hard my face was starting to hurt.

"Wow. Cool. Yeah." That was the extent of my vocabulary at that point. I sat back and blew out a big breath, and started to shiver as the adrenaline started to work it's way out of my system. What an awesome feeling. We waited a bit to see if any more deer would follow, and when none did after 15 minutes, we left the blind to find the buck. We went to the point of impact first, and found a splash of blood in the dirt. As we turned toward the tree line, Steve was scanning through his scope, and found the buck 40 yards away on top of a small hill. We hustled over, and there he was, a beautiful, small-racked 10-pointer, stone dead. We found later as we were dressing him that the shot had hit low (thanks to Steve's messed up scope; we knew it was off, but not by how much), ricocheted off a rib and up, went through both lungs and out. Quick and clean; the buck was running dead.

It was a truly life-changing experience for me. There was no remorse, not one bit. I knew I was going to eat what I killed, and never kill what I couldn't eat. It's in my blood now, here to stay, and soon enough, hopefully will be in my son's blood as well. I relish that day, will always remember it, and thank God for the opportunity.

The rest of the season...well, that's another story. Stay tuned for Chapter Two of Buck Tales.