Even though hunting season only started today, I've been hunting in my mind for two weeks.  After a serious bout of target practice at the beginning of the month, the gun has sat in front of the living room window.  At intervals, I would turn off the deer deterrents and let the deer into the yard, but every time I cracked a window, the deer were gone.

I learned that we have two sets of deer that visit our garden --- a doe with a relatively young fawn and a pair of adults.  I learned their paths, too, and the time of day they like to come to call.  Half a dozen times, I thought I might get a shot at them.  Three times, I took the safety off the gun and pumped a shell into the chamber.  But I wasn't going to shoot until I was sure I would kill the deer, not just wound it.

I turned off the deer deterrents last night, then woke at 5:51, dreaming of deer hunting.  At dawn, I opened the door --- and two deer fled up the hillside out of the yard.  Was that my one chance, gone?

Still, it was the perfect dusky morning, just the time when deer like to travel.  I leashed Lucy, made sure the safety was on the gun, and headed off for our morning walk.  In the powerline cut, I startled our other set of deer, but these two only ran a few feet and stopped.  I crept forward and the deer watched me but stayed put.  My second chance!

I silently ordered Lucy to sit, then crouched down myself and took the safety off the gun.  Lucy is a good dog, but she's not used to hunting --- she tried to crawl into my lap with the gun, and the ensuing scuffle sent the deer running again.  But again they stopped and waited.  Again I crept forward.  This time, Lucy sat, I crouched, the deer watched. 

I'd been practicing to hit the heart, just behind the front leg.  But the deer in my sights was only visible from the neck up.  I could try for a head shot and risk missing entirely,  or guess where its heart might be and fire blindly into the weeds.  I chose the latter, checked one last time to make sure my aim was accurate, then pulled the trigger.

I can't even remember the gun going off.  Suddenly, the second deer was fleeing in huge bounds, her white tail a brilliant flag against the brown woods.  The deer I'd shot at was invisible.  Did I hit it?  Wound it?  Kill it?

I beat a path through the brambles to the spot where the deer had stood.  Nothing.  But I faintly smelled a hint of gunpowder and blood so I let Lucy off the leash, hoping she'd track down the wounded deer.  She set off like a shot and I raced behind her until she crossed the creek to the neighbor's hay field.  Was my deer really gone?

I circled back around toward home and nearly stumbled upon my deer.  It had fled about twenty feet, then died just outside the powerline cut.  Upon further inspection, I saw that my shot had been about five inches off, hitting the lungs instead of the heart --- still a pretty good hit.

I have to admit that at this point, my adrenaline was pumping so hard that I couldn't think what to do next.  So I made sure the safety was on the gun and ran home to my husband, waking him out of a sound sleep to come help me gut the deer, tie it to a board, and carry it home.

My very first deer!  I guess I shouldn't feel so special since the newspaper is always full of photos of six year olds and their first kill at this time of year.  But I'm oddly exhilarated, floating on air.  A deerslayer wannabe no longer, Mark has taken to calling me "Killer."

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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