I picked up a new hobby a couple months ago, and that's deer hunting.
As some of you may know, I've spent most of my life in Georgia and grew up in a very rural area with a strong hunting culture.
I went through all of grade school being regaled with tales of my teenage friends hunting deer, bear, turkey, squirrel, and it was something I'd been wanting to do someday, but the opportunity never came up.
At least not until a couple months ago. A friend of mine asked me to go hunt with him on land owned by a friend of his family that he'd gotten permission to hunt on.
The invitation was offered to me mostly because I have a car and he doesn't, so I was the transportation, basically.
Well, we get there at around 5:30am and get into position in the woods. We each sit on the ground with our backs to a tree, and we are spaced out maybe 100 yards apart, facing the same direction so that we won't accidentally shoot one another. It was almost pitch dark, so obviously we couldn't shoot at anything yet. The plan was to get in position plenty early so that by the time the sun has risen far enough to see what we were shooting at, any animals we had spooked during our entry would have long forgotten about us. Sunrise was around 7:30am, so this meant just chillin' in one spot for a couple hours with the rifle across my lap.
It was nice to just sit there in the dark and listen to the sounds of the leaves and the animals at night. My friend calls it "redneck therapy." I mostly heard owls. At one point I swear there had to have been a whole pack of deer that walked by me no more than 50 feet to my right. After awhile you start to wonder whether you're going to be ambushed by wolves or a bobcat in the dark. We'd agreed that if we saw any coyotes (which are an extreme nuisance in my region) that we would shoot it, no questions. I was armed with a .270 Winchester bolt action rifle, plus a Fairbairn-Sykes combat knife on my belt... juuusst in case.
Finally the glow of the sun starts to rise. My orange jacket changes from gray to orange before my eyes as the woods light up bright enough to where I think I can see well enough to shoot something. I can see my buddy sitting off to the right, a tiny orange speck. At least I know where he is so I don't shoot him.
I was scanning my vision all about, peering off into the distance without trying to turn my head or create any other unnecessary movement. I've been told that you will almost never hear a deer before you see it. Well that was true today.
Many times I heard a sound, it turns out to be squirrels. Fucking squirrels. When you have a pair of squirrels chasing each other, it creates the sounds of many footsteps that you might expect to hear from a large 4-legged animal. It was during the course of looking around that I saw the form of a deer, just standing still in the woods maybe 200 yards off to my left. There were way too many trees in the way to get a decent shot at it, and I couldn't even see whether or not it had antlers (this was a buck-only day.)
I kept my eye on the deer hoping it would wander into a better position where I could shoot at it. Surely enough it walked toward the right, crossing into the clearing in the woods directly in front of me. By now I could tell it definitely had antlers. I couldn't count how many points, but there were a lot of them! It hopped over a fence and landed behind a large tree, where I could no longer see it. The adrenaline was rushing as I took the opportunity to raise my rifle without it seeing me. After another 15 seconds or so, the deer stepped out from behind the tree and into the line of sight of my scope. I clicked my safety off with my thumb. The deer obviously heard the metallic *click* because it all of a sudden froze in place and started looking around for what had made the noise. This was when I lined the cross-hair on top and slightly back of the deer's front leg. I didn't hesitate to pull the trigger as I knew that deer could take off any second and I'd never see it again.
My gun fires, the muzzle flare is so bright that I lose sight of the deer. I stand up and see the deer running away the way it came and after about 3 seconds it collapses into the fence that it had previously hopped over and then lies still.
To cut a long story short, I bagged a 7-point buck on my first deer hunting trip. Took that thing and got it processed into venison meat, which I've been grilling every several days on my charcoal grill out behind my apartment. In fact, I'm going to grill up some tenderloin later this evening. I've gone hunting with my buddy a few more times since then, but we haven't seen any more deer. I honestly could care less, because the pressure is now off to shoot one. It's all about enjoying the outdoors, the excitement of looking for the animal, and if I see one I shoot one. Simple as that.
There are two more weekends of deer season left. My buddy and I are thinking we're going to hunt wild hogs next month, and then *maybe* turkey after that, but that would require me to buy a shotgun, which is something I've been meaning to get one of anyway. Pictures below. The one on the left is me with the deer, and the second one is of my buddy.
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Originally Posted by Majora
