My Second First Hunt

     Two weeks from tomorrow, I’ll be in my deer stand on a friend’s land in Appomattox, about 25 miles from here. It will mark the first time I have deer hunted in 36 years. In fact, it will be the first time I’ve hunted for anything in probably 30 years. A lot has changed since I was last in a tree, looking for a buck.

     In 1982, when I took my last buck from a tree stand in Delaware, I was 19 years old. I was using a Glenfield 778 shotgun, because rifles -other than black powder—can’t be used for hunting in Delaware. There just isn’t enough open space to shoot an HPR safely. Nobody wore camo back then. Nobody rattled or used a call. The only trick we had was doe urine. The most high-tech weapon in our arsenal was the Brenneke rifled slug.

     Back then, our hunting party consisted of me, my stepfather, Carl Ramsey and Hank Teryzcak. Carl and Hank were friends of my stepfather. To be honest, he only brought me along because if he didn’t, my mother wouldn’t let him go hunting. I was always his passport to things he wanted to do. It did nothing to endear us to each other. By the time I was about 16 I figured out that he couldn’t have cared less about me being there. I served a purpose and that was good enough.

     I didn’t let that deter my love of the outdoors and the hunt. Carl and Hank taught me about hunting. Carl taught me how to track a deer. How to tell which way he was moving by examining the direction he broke branches on his trail. He taught me how to tell how recently he’d been through, by feeling the poop. As a young boy, eager to learn how to score my first deer, I was not above picking up deer poop.

     We hunted a farm in central Delaware, the owner was the aunt of a friend of my stepfather’s. She was seldom there, staying in the house only once a month or so. She leased the farmland to a local man who grew soy beans. Over the years, I had three stands on that farm, all of which were in various positions within the tree line, looking out at the soy. Each year, one or two of us took a deer. We weren’t scientific hunters then…we just sat in the stand and waited. Then after lunch we’d walk the woods for a bit, and then back to the stands in the afternoon, until dark.

     Looking back, we probably did it all wrong. Or at least half wrong. We drove them way to early. This land was not very pressured, the deer weren’t spooky. It’s just that we were antsy to harvest and thought we’d stumble on them if we walked the woods.

     But taking deer was really only half the reason we came here each year. The other half was being together. It was for me, anyway. I treasured deer season, for the hope it held in the possibility that “this would be my year” but also for the camaraderie that I experienced at our campsite. The relationship with my stepfather was tentative on the good days, and vacuous on the rest. But with Hank and Carl, I found the brotherhood I needed at that age. They laughed at my jokes, appreciated my youthful zeal, and gently nudged me toward adulthood by imparting their wisdom on me for two or three days each November.

     We walked through the freshly-cut soy in the dark of early morning, and one by one disappeared into the woods as we came upon our stands. They’d wish me luck and slap my shoulder. Lunch was our own call. Sometimes I’d stay in my stand, other times I’d walk back to the camp, and one or two of them would be there. But the best moments were in the late afternoons. Whoever got back first, got things started. He broke out the Coleman stove and got the coffee water going. We’d heat up the food and begin the recounting of our day. One by one, my hunting friends would appear from the lengthening shadows, and we’d talk of rut signs, and rubs, and the annoyance of squirrels and how beautiful the sunset was. Sometimes there’d be a deer hanging in a tree near camp, cooling, the reward for patience and a well-placed stand. Other times, there was nothing but the lament that “they must be moving through here at night.”

     But the one constant was the excitement of the hunt, and the satisfying feeling that, regardless of whether we harvested a deer…we were here, together again, doing this thing we loved. This thing that tore us from our mundane, suburban lives and made us feel like old-school men again.

     I took my first buck on the last day I deer hunted before my 36-year hiatus. He was a beautiful 8-point gent. About 3 and a half years old. He was making for his rut, walking across the recently cut soy fields with not a care in the world, randy, as bucks-in-the-rut will be. He stepped on one lone stalk of uncut soy and I turned to see him. He walked carefully but not too carefully. He stopped to nibble now and then. I waited for him to turn to the side, so I could get a shot at his shoulder and be sure to drop him. (It was getting late and I didn’t want him running off and to have to try tracking him in the dark.) He never turned to offer his shoulder, and when he was about 50 yards out, I decided that he’d spot me eventually, so I raised my shotgun slowly, and squeezed off a shot at the white blaze in the middle of his chest.

     A shotgun impacts hard, and the buck reared up, straight up on his hind legs. He flipped over backward and laid there. One deep breath, and his legs kicked out…then he was still. I had pumped the fore stock so quickly that I doubt a semi-auto could have chambered the second round any faster…but it wasn’t necessary. I remember whispering; “Don’t get up, big boy…just stay there.” After a few long minutes of watching him, I climbed down from my stand and called to Hank.

     I walked out to my deer and circled him cautiously. His tongue was out, and he was gone. I stood in silence, admiring this magnificent animal, and thinking to myself, “I did it! I finally took a deer, and he’s a beauty!” Hank joined me in a moment or two, placed an arm across my shoulder and said, “He’s a beautiful buck, Craigy.” (He always called me that) and we fell to work dressing him.

     Back at camp, we hung him in the tree to cool overnight and started our dinner. Carl couldn’t make it that year and my stepfather was coming down that evening. He pulled in our camp to see my buck hanging in the tree. He asked if Hank had gotten it and he was shocked to find out that I had bagged him. I sensed a little jealousy in his demeanor and I thought, later that night, that he really wasn’t very happy that I’d gotten a deer before he did.

     The following year I was away in college, and the year after that, Mrs. Mills sold her farm and we didn’t have our place to hunt anymore. I moved out, then life took me down some paths I didn’t see on the map, and before I knew it…36 years had passed since I was out in the woods.

     I lost track of Carl 30 years ago, stopped talking to my stepfather 13 years ago, and found Hank on Facebook 15 years ago. Life is different. I’m 55 now. I’m a single dad with a daughter who loves music. Any sentimental notion of taking my son hunting is going to have to wait until -and if—she marries and has a son.

     I live in a place now that I dreamed of when I was a boy. A place where the deer are abundant, where the fishing is beyond my dreams, and where the scenery reminds me, daily, that Someone bigger than me spent a few extra moments when He created this part of the world.

     I have tried convincing my best friend to come down for deer season. Oddly enough, as much as we hunted together when we were boys, we never deer hunted. He had friends downstate who had land where the really big bucks lived, and he went with them. But Mark and I traipsed through every patch of woods and every field and every swamp, pursuing every possible variety of game we could hunt. What we were actually pursuing was the moments we had out there. We were too young to realize it, of course, but looking back, it’s the moments that make up a hunt, that we remember forever.

     Yeah, I remember the points on the rack, and the weight. I remember how many rabbits we took at Phillip’s Nursery, or the Canada Geese we got that one winter we had a pit in Middletown. But it’s more than that. It was the conversations in the truck on the drive to the fields. It was the laughter, and bragging, the moments when we realized that we had talked our way through some serious matters for such young men. Or the moments we realized we hadn’t spoken a word for miles, but we wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

     Two weeks from tomorrow, I’ll be out in my stand for the first time in more than half my life. Out there alone. I haven’t lived here long enough to know anyone well enough to hunt with them. To be honest, I enjoy my time alone. My job demands that I spend most of my day, in service to other people, and when it’s time to go home, I am spent like an old shotshell. I am gregarious and outgoing. I am also introspective and often, reclusive. I really, deeply love having time alone, particularly when I hunt or fish.

     So, I’ll make my way to my new campsite on the afternoon before the hunt begins. I’ll set up by myself and eat my dinner and sleep in my trusty old Yukon. I’ll awaken at 4am and walk to my stand in the dark. But if I listen closely, I’ll hear Carl and Hank wishing me “Good luck, Craigy.” (They always called me that) If I stand real still for a moment, I’ll feel Hank slap my shoulder as I head down the trail. I’ll be sitting in my blind as the sun rises and I’ll smile and think of Mark and wish he was here in these woods with me…still competing with each other, if only mildly, to see who would score first and who would score biggest. If I score a big buck, I know I’ll be texting a photo to my dear friend of 40 years, Dave Lewis. And he’ll be thrilled for me.

     I’ll maybe blink back a tear, thinking of Poppa John, my dear friend, and father-figure who loved the outdoors like few others, and who was a Virginian himself for the first half of his life and who always hoped we’d hunt together at least once before he passed. I’ll think of my “adopted dad” Bob, the greatest hunter I know or will ever meet, who loves these moments and would love this one especially, because he knows what it means to me to finally be back out here.

     If any tears remain, they’ll be from the memories flashing through my soul. The years I spent in the woods as a boy. The dreams of hunting a place like this, and finally having the chance. The jokes we told, the funny things we did. The slow, careful, old-fashioned way I grew into manhood out in tree stands, and honeysuckle, and briars.

     I don’t have my old Glenfield anymore, although I’d give anything to find it. I’m hunting with a Remington 783 in .308. I have camo, a rattle, a grunt call, and trail cameras. It’s a long way from an old Carhart jacket, a pair of Levi’s, an orange vest and a shotgun, and a bunch of wonderful guys who didn’t approach things nearly so scientifically.

…or is it?