I lined up the sights right behind the front shoulder, and when I heard “take em”, I pulled the trigger that let the two and three quarter inch ballistic tip slug fly down the barrel and hit the buck right in the lungs. Once the slug entered the deer it broke up and as it went deeper it fanned out to do more damage, it’s a pretty nice design to make a quicker kill.

I woke up that morning with only about six hours of sleep in me because I was too excited to go hunting. Well, when I could finally get out of bed to go hunting I got dressed and ran to my dad’s room to get him up and going, wow do I feel like the adult here!!! Once I got his lazy butt out of bed I flew down stairs to make coffee for him. Once I had all my extra hunting clothes on and Dad was ready, I grabbed my gun and went to the truck that was waiting for us and that was nice and warm for such a crisp morning! I still got in the truck that morning not knowing if I was going to get a deer or not, but I went anyway!!! Once we were in the nice, warm truck and were on the road headed for the hunting land Dad had told me that we could only sit until about nineish because he had to go into work. ?

Once we pulled into the driveway we drove down a little lane past a bigger shed and then a smaller older shed, and then came “the walk”. The walk is about a half mile long and it if from those buildings and the house all the way out to our deer stand. It was also very tiring, but it was all part of the experience! So, we set off with my gun ready!!!

Once we got to the stand my dad carried my gun up the latter for me because he didn’t want me to drop it or damage it. After we were all settled in we now had to wait for the deer, if you ask me this is the most boring part of hunting but you also get to think of a lot of things. Before we came out my dad had told me that since this was my first hunt that I could shoot anything, buck or doe, and that if it was a buck that came in first that I didn’t matter how big or small it was because it was my first hunt. He also said that the next buck that I shoot that I had to be a big one!!!

Well, actually I wasn’t all bored out of my mind because I was watching a bunch of birds that were in front of use and they were playing in the bushes. I was also keeping an eye on two squirrels that were playing in a patch of oak trees just to the right and a little bit behind us. It was kind of nice to watch them because I wasn’t all bored!

When they would come down out of the trees and were running around in the dead leaves around the oaks it sounded like a deer coming through so I would turn around start to grab for my gun and hope for the best. I swear that I did that a million times and each time it was those darn squirrels! Eventually I just stopped turning around because I knew that it was them.

I figured that I had to be around seven or eight because of where the sun was in the sky. I really started to get antsy because I knew that the deer would hopefully be moving soon! I was sitting there scanning the marsh for any deer when I jumped to the sound of my dad’s phone. It was his partner from work seeing how everything was going, sadly my dad told him the truth, that we didn’t even see anything yet and that we were probably going to call it quits soon.

Wouldn’t you know it if I didn’t hear something in those dead leaves about five minutes later! Of course I thought that it was just those squirrels again but I just decided to look any way, and right there about maybe 20 or 30 yards away was a buck. I started shaking and I reached for the gun. I couldn’t tell how big it was even though I was looking at him and he was looking at me. I think that I was all the adrenaline rushing though my veins! But all I could see was the horns!!!

After I finally had control of the gun I rested it on the side of the tree stand and lined up the sights right behind the front shoulder. That’s what my dad had taught me!! At that moment I felt so small I don’t really know how to explain it but I did, it was probably all that adrenaline again! Somehow I managed to get the gun lined up with the sights right where I wanted them to be on the deer and I waited for him to stop moving so I could get a good, clean shot. Since he was so close I thought that I was going to lose sight of him because he was going to walk under the stand or something. My dad was saying that if he wanted to that he could have rubbed his horns on our ladder! Finally, once my future buck stopped moving I got the gun all set up to take him down. I took a couple of deep, deeeeeeeeep breaths to clear my mind and focused my thoughts on what was at hand. When I heard my dad say “take em” I pulled the trigger and let the slug fly down the barrel and hit the deer right smack in the lungs, or behind the front shoulder. I watched it run about 40 yards into some thicker brush and when I was getting ready for the second shot to put him down my dad told me to hold off and right when I picked up the gun and the buck was there looking at me he fell over, dead!!!!

After celebrating for what seemed like forever we got down out of the stand walked over to where we saw the buck fall. Sure enough, that’s where he was laying!! The first thing I did was kick it to make sure that he was dead, then Dad said that I should get by him and get a picture so that he can send it to all his buddies and my aunts and uncles!!! Then came the messy part, gutting him, my dad said that he would do it this time since it was my first deer and he would teach me how to do it but from then one I would have to do it. We actually couldn’t get to it right away because all the people were replying to the picture and that calls. But, once that was all done we dragged it to the edge of the field and we loaded it into the back of the truck to take it to my grandma’s house, it’s just a little thing that we do when we shoot a big deer. We take it there and she takes our picture with it and it was really fun because my aunt and future uncle were there to congratulate me also!!!

My uncle, my dad’s brother, not my future uncle, took me to get it registered because my dad had to go into work. ? But, my uncle did take me out to lunch and then we went back to a “hunting shake”, a place where guys hang out during hunting season and just at place to get together, and we got to cut up the deer together along with some other guys that we know!! Shooting that deer was the best thing that I ever did and I had so much fun with the whole experience!! I really encourage everybody to go out and hunt, and having everyone congratulating you on your big kill make you feel like you’re the most important person in the world!!! By the way, did I mention that a week before this I had got my hunting license. I am really looking forward to go hunting this year!!!