by Darcy Dean
At precisely 6 o’clock, my brother and I raced down the stairs and headed towards what was sure to be boundless joy and hours of fun. Mom and Dad had made us wait until they were downstairs so they could document the expressions on our faces as we saw what we had waited on for what seemed like ages. When we reached the first floor, we immediately tore into our gifts like a lion tears into a wounded animal that he has been stalking for days. We kept going, barely registering what was there, only soaking in the joy of ripping open wrapping paper until I suddenly found the exact thing that I was searching for. It was a brand-new deer hunting harness.
On my seventh birthday, I received a crossbow as a gift from my uncle and my parents. I was ecstatic and I didn’t even know that I needed it. I practiced and practiced in anticipation of going deer hunting for the first time. The only problem that occurred was that I didn’t have a harness for our tree stands. Harnesses secure you to the tree so that you don’t fall out and die. My parents don’t hunt, but my Uncle Guy loves to hunt. He has been hunting on our land since before I was born, and I have always wanted to go with him, but I was never able to. Fast forward to Christmas when I turned seven and I was finally able to go because of that one gift. The second that I realized what it was, I called Uncle Guy and told him the good news. He agreed to take me that afternoon at 4, mostly because I demanded it, even though there was a low probability that we would see anything. With that, the date was set, and I could not have been more excited.
No matter how fast I wanted time to go, it just would not. I waited and waited and when it finally did come, I had caught the “deer fever” which is simply nerves, but it felt like a real disease. The deer stand is at the end of a path that wraps around behind my pond and it’s a long path but it didn’t seem like it that afternoon. I was only seven and I hadn’t ever practiced being quiet in the woods so it sounded like a herd of buffalo crashing through the innumerable, brown leaves.
The first time that you ever climb up a ladder to a tree stand it feels as though it never stops and just stretches on for miles and miles. That is exactly what it felt like to climb that ladder that night. I kept looking out and thinking about how beautiful it all was. When I reached my seat, the scene in front of me utterly took my breath away. It was one of the most beautiful landscapes that I had ever seen, dotted with the most beautiful trees and leaves littering the ground. I sat there for all hours it takes to deer hunt, watching the beautiful swaying of the trees in the slight evening breeze and listening to the sounds of the woods. The squirrels, in particular, would not stop tormenting us the entire time we were out there with their sudden scurries of movement across the upturned leaves on the ground. We took all of this in stride, however, and awaited a deer to wander up to our corn pile. It was getting late and I was starting to lose hope of seeing anything. Just as I was about to ask Uncle Guy when we would have to go back, we saw them. About 20 yards behind the corn pile, two big bucks strolled across our field of view. One was an eight-point buck and one was a seven-point buck. “Points” are used to describe the number of spikes that bucks have on their antlers. They walked right past our corn and I was crestfallen because I believed that they would not come back. My uncle had a different set of thoughts entirely. He told me to be still and patient because they would be back. Sure enough, about five minutes later the seven-point buck walked right up to the corn. I could barely contain my excitement and nervousness. I began to shake violently all over my body from having such strong, conflicting emotions. The deer looked up. I used every ounce of willpower in my body to control the shivers and it was just enough. The deer looked back down and continued eating. I let out a breath of relief that I didn’t even know I had been holding and focused on the task at hand. I pinned my sights on the precise spot right behind the deer’s shoulder where the heart is and Uncle Guy flipped the safety on my crossbow off for me so I could shoot when I was ready. I took a deep breath in to calm the adrenaline that was coursing through my veins and setting my nerves on fire like miniature firecrackers and released it back into the frigid evening air in a warm puff. I prepared myself to shoot. One more breath in and one more breath out, then I squeezed the trigger. The deer took off and ran just a little way before falling to the ground and thrashing wildly around. My shot was a little bit higher than perfect but it was still fatal. Uncle Guy took the crossbow out of my hands and prepared to shoot him again to make sure that he was dead. He shot just a little bit too low, but it also would have been fatal even if he had not been shot before. He stopped moving after a little while and Uncle Guy went down to make sure that he was dead, and left me in the deer stand by myself. After a few more minutes that seemed to go on for eight eternities, Uncle Guy called to me and told me to come and see him for myself. I hurried down the ladder and saw the magnificent beast that I had brought down with my own crossbow and just started to laugh. After all of these years I’d finally done it. I killed a buck of my own! Uncle Guy brought it out of the woods for me because he was too heavy for me to drag alone, and then we cleaned it and got some deer meat. Deer meat tacos became my new favorite food and I haven’t stopped searching for the rush of adrenaline that leaps out of nowhere to attack you when a buck steps out from behind a tree to this day.
Above: Darcy Dean at age 7 with her first deer in Zebulon, NC. Photo provided by the author.
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