A Milestone

My apologies if this posting is somewhat disjointed and/or truncated. I’ve been kept up a bit later than usual the past week taking care of and training my roommate, Ash.

This week’s post is not about Ash, cute as he is. Rather, this week is a story from my life. It’s one that I have heard again and again over the years, yet I never think it gets old.

In November of 2005, I shot my first deer. I remember the deer and the moments leading up to the gunshots in my own memory like it was yesterday, but the aftermath is something I remember through my Grandpa Dean’s telling and retelling of the story over the past decade.

In Minnesota, you were allowed to purchase a Youth Firearms Deer Permit from the ages of 12 to 18. I had been tagging along on my Dad’s hunting trips for many years at this point, and eventually started participating in the waterfowl and upland bird hunting when I turned 10 and purchased my first shotgun. With deer hunting, however, I had to simply observe until I turned 12.

The spring after I turned 12, I traded in a bunch of shotguns and some extra cash that I had for my first rifle. My Dad has one of the same model, and my Grandpa Dean has several in different calibers. I purchased a lightly used Ruger M77 Hawkeye in .270 Winchester. It has a beautiful wood stock, and came with a fixed 4x Leupold scope on it. I loved that rifle, but eventually sold it to my little brother in order to buy a new rifle years later. I can’t exactly remember the logic or desire behind purchasing a new rifle, but maybe someday I will coax the old one back from my youngest brother.

So I was 12, with a new (to me) rifle, years of reading outdoor magazines like Outdoor Life, Field and Stream, and American Hunter, as well as a strong desire to harvest my first deer. Two long weekends sitting in cold tree stands later, I returned from the Northern Minnesota woods empty handed. Having not even caught so much as a fleeting glimpse of a deer, I was discouraged, but determined.

A whole year passed by, and I was more than ready to try again. Again, the first weekend passed by without any luck. However, late in the morning on the second Saturday, I heard what can be best described as really large squirrel barging it’s way through the underbrush.

There’s a funny thing that happens to your senses when you are suspended sixteen feet in the air, strapped to an aluminum ladder and a tree. Everything sounds louder, and everything sounds like a deer. Every branch creaking in the wind, every snapping twig, and especially, every squirrel sounds like a deer. Everything looks like a deer too. A funny shaped branch could have been there all morning, but it’s pretty far away, and DID IT JUST MOVE I BETTER CHECK, nope same branch. So eventually, you become desensitized to the noise and learn to filter it out. Except the squirrels. The squirrels get you every time, you swear they are doing it on purpose.

So when I first heard what I thought was a squirrel, I tried really hard not to get my hopes up. As the crashing got closer and consequently louder, I began to realize that no squirrel is that large (and if it was, I better shoot it just to prove that I saw it). After what seemed like an eternity, a deer (and not a mutant squirrel) materialized out of the brush.

In the moments that followed, everything moved rather rapidly. I identified the deer, ensured nothing was behind it, took aim right behind the shoulder, thumbed the safety off, and pulled the trigger. I know the rifle recoiled and the shot was loud, but I don’t remember it. I remember the deer jerking, taking another step while I cycled the bolt and fired again before it fell.

To hear Grandpa Dean tell the story, I called him on my Motorola talkabout radio, and he counseled me on what to do next. Honestly, all that I remember is getting to the deer and discovering it was a young buck, with only two spikes for antlers. I remember field dressing the deer, and I remember the pictures we took. I attribute this span of patchy memories to the adrenaline dump that was working its way out of my blood stream.

I may not remember the events as vividly as my Grandfather does (and I hope that does not reflect poorly on my memory), but I do remember the feeling of pride. It was everywhere. I was proud. My dad was proud. Grandpa was proud. To commemorate my first deer, I was presented with its antlers mounted on a plaque, which hang proudly in my bedroom at home.

I hope that someday soon I am able to make it back up to Minnesota to hunt deer, but until then, stay safe out there.

-Spencer