After years of peaceful weekends alone while the family was gone north hoping to slay the big one, more and more I thought this was something I wanted to try.  Opportunity never presented itself, talk yes but no takers to let me tag along. Afraid maybe I might out shoot them, not sure. Well as the gun season approached this year I finally had my opportunity.  We talked, made plans and as it got closer I started to question whether this was something I really wanted to do. I didn't doubt that I could do it, just hadn't had much experience with a gun, how the heck do you even load it. 

About Wednesday I decided I really didn't want to go, I would go with but didn't want to carry a gun. So that was the plan. Well we headed to the station to get Wally's deer license and he looks at my son Cory who was working and said ma wants one too.  NO I DIDN'T but ok I gave in, got my license, if anything we would have more tags to fill. Of course I had a little teaching and practice the night before, I loaded and unloaded my gun like I had been doing it awhile, ok maybe a few hours : )  So we're all set, alarm set getting up early. 

About 7:15 a.m. we were up, dressed, with guns loaded we were off to take our 10 minute walk out back behind the house.  Through the cow pasture, under a couple barbed wire fences, over the railroad tracks, across the creek and to the edge of the cornfield with our buckets to sit on.  Its a little hazy out and we're sitting in the first row a nice trail in front off us, the tracks we crossed straight south in front of us about 100 yards. Wally on my right I look down the path to the east thru the haze I could see something, but I didn't know or couldn't tell what it was. 

I look at Wally and asked him if it was a buck or a doe, he couldn't see what I was talking about, trying to point out what I was looking at, the animal was walking closer and closer down the path right at us.  Finally he sees it, it isn't a buck or a doe, its a coyote, coming right at us, stopping and sniffing the air, ugly thing it was, Wally tells me to lean back, he raises his gun and shoots at it, we wait a little and he gets up to see if he hit it, no coyote, but all of a sudden he looks to the south, he's about 75 or more yards to the east of me and I'm standing there watching and he looks at me and raises his hands in the motion that there is a buck in the woods, but it was heading east away from me, he walks up the path further and into the woods and turns it around.

I waited what seemed like forever, my gun ready to go, my safety off, and all of a sudden I see it through the brush about 100 yards away from me, I keep saying to myself, stop stop stop quit running, please please please please, and it slows down, and through the brush I thought this isn't very big and I held my gun up (12-gauge) and followed it still thinking this doesn't even have a rack, I couldn't hardly see it through the brush, but as it walked I knew I had to do it now or I would lose sight of it as it passed 75-100 yards in front of me I shot, it dropped, and I was so excited!

I put the safety on, didn't even eject the shell, in an excited walk I moved towards it and then thought I needed to inform Wally that I got it, as I waited for him, it started kicking and kicking and it had dropped up by the tracks and at the top of a steep embankment. As it kicked it was sliding, kicking and sliding and then I couldn't see it, where did it go?  As we walked towards the area it was in we couldn't see it and all of a sudden I saw it! The rack was sticking out of the water, the body submerged, it had dropped and then slid into the creek, about a 10 foot embankment from where we had to bring it back up. 

As we grabbed the rack, it was one, two three, pull, one two three pull, and after about 10 times of that repetition it finally we had it up to a flat spot. I had my knife out but Wally wouldn't let me gut it, but I was more than ready. Before we drug it back over the tracks, under the fences, to a spot where I would sit with it while Wally went to get the 4-wheeler, I had to take a picture with my camera phone and send it to everyone I could : )  My boys were so excited.

So at 8:00 a.m. opening morning 2009, I bagged my first buck on my first hunt ever, a 10 pt. with a 15-1/4" spread.  The biggest deer of the gun season for my family : )  We hung it, I skinned it and I cut it up, wrapped it and put it in the freezer a couple days later.  Thanks for reading my story and sharing my excitement. Bet you wish I was a guy, with a shorter story, that was straight to the point : )