As the story goes--Dad took me up north of our house and we stood on the side of a hill, looking for any deer that might cross our land in shooting range. There were four does, female deer, on the horizon, too far to shoot of course. So we waited. Dad saw some deer walking down the fence to the south of us. They, too were out of range but we did have two options. 1) Cutting them off and shooting one, but we would have to drive to the house, binocular around there, tie up our dogs, then take a hike out to a pasture south of the house, and wait to see where they were heading. 2) Stay put and see if any more deer would come out. We took the number one option. We loaded up our things and drove to the house. There, Dad looked around while I put cats in our shop (they like to follow people and would have gotten in our way if we were going hunting) and tied up the dogs, who also would have followed. After a while, we started our hike. Before too very long, Dad stopped and looked back to our pond. There was a deer, the one we were after. I thought that if we were to sneak up, the deer would run away on to our friend's land and I would feel the same as the day before, but Dad must have thought different and we went to the pond. Thankfully there are some dirt hills and that made it easier to sneak up instead of in plain sight. As we were about to sit down, the buck ran into view. I looked up and could just picture him running away and me not getting a shot. We got seated as another one ran out. Dad told me to shoot the last one, but he didn't stop until he was in a bush. The first one did stop before jumping the fence and Dad told me to shoot him. I took aim and fired the gun. Dad said that I hit him, really I had no clue if I did or not. He told me to shoot him again because the buck wasn't down yet. I fired again and this time he ran off aways and jumped the fence. The other deer watched for a while, but then left and never returned. Instead of going right away to find the buck, Dad slowly texted Mom that we had gotten a buck. Dad left the phone with me and he walked back to the house to get the pickup and I just sat there playing with a bug, a stick and some dirt. Sounds fun doesn't it?! Anyway, my uncle called and we talked a little bit. Then a little over thirty minutes later, Dad pulled up with the pickup. He called our friend and made sure that it was alright if we went on their land to get my buck. Dad took his gun and we walked to the fence, climbed over the fence, and then looked for the buck. Some birds had come to eat on the deer, so they helped us find him. When he was in sight, Dad quickly stopped. I looked around him and there was my buck, just looking at us and lying there, for sure alive! Dad pulled up his gun and took aim and fired to end his life. We looked again. The buck looked at us and acted as though he had not been shot. Dad aimed again and fired. The deer this time was in pain, and was closer to death. He laid back as though he was resting peacefully on a nice fall day. We looked and could see that he was still breathing. After a while, Dad went over and nudged him to see if he had died. And the deer shook his head a little. Then his tail. Dad nudged him again and we could tell now that he was dead. It took 4 shots! All of my deer before only took one, but we got him and he is not in pain. We took some pictures and then we loaded him up. He was a 4x4, (he had four points on each antler). He was a pretty nice size, too. I am really happy. And now maybe I will be able to sleep in tomorrow for a change. : )
