Until this season my development as a White-Tailed deer hunter has been grossly neglected. My career has solely consisted of long sits over corn piles on a 40-acre family property. I was to sit still, and hope someone else’s work paid off.
After graduating college and moving to New Jersey my hunting status was reset to level one. Without so much as a nod in the right direction, it was time to sink or swim and learn a new location and style from scratch. Oddly enough, I found myself more excited to start the 2022 season all on my own, than any of years past.
As you may expect, my season got off to a slow start. It consisted of a few uneventful sits in my father’s old climbing stand without seeing a single deer. Each sit came accompanied by a nagging feeling that I wasn’t in quite the spot I should be. I had listened to hours of podcasts on still hunting deer deep in the center of public land, and the proposition spoke to my affection for difficulty. With seemingly nothing to lose, I ditched the climber and committed to making the change to still hunting.
The plan consisted of the following: drop a waypoint on a transition between bedding and food deep in the center of the property. From there I would work my way into the wind, making frequent stops to listen and glass ahead. The plan seemed simple enough, but not long after lacing my boots up, a voice in the back of my head was already expressing its concerns over this foreign strategy.
As I approached my first pin an hour later, my confidence had been gnawed to the bone. I had convinced myself I had undoubtedly bumped every deer off this piece of public. My internal dialogue was in the middle of a heated debate, with one side begging to head back to the truck and the quieter voice urging me to press on.
Deliberations were brought to a quick close by a familiar crunching in the leaves. Deer were coming up from the marsh and at quite a clip. I dropped to a knee and let out a soft grunt, hoping to steer them toward me.
The deer responded by racing for my setup. Two forky bucks appeared in an instant and continued to snake their way through the briars right into my lap. Cautiously, I leaned around the big oak tree I was hiding behind, grunt stopped the closest at ten yards, and squeezed.
My racing adrenaline was quickly extinguished by a wave of dread as I watched the arrow pass through the young buck high and back. Maybe I had clipped the furthest back of one lung if I was lucky. I never am.
I sat at the base of that oak for an hour, watching clouds and replaying the recently unfolded events in my head. Truthfully I felt as though I had done everything right. I drew back from concealment, anticipated the right gap, and grunt stopped him at a rocks throw. Everything was perfect, except the shot. For the first time in my life, I had target panic. Instead of controlling my breathing and centering my pins right behind the shoulder, all I can recall thinking as the young buck closed the distance was, “ I can’t believe this happening”. It was a totally avoidable and careless mistake.
Three hours later, I went looking for my arrow. The bright red blood coating the blade told me I did indeed hit the deer. I felt a sparkle of hope. A sparkle that petered out over the next three hundred yards. After exhausting every recovery strategy available, I called off the search. I wasn’t going to recover this animal, a first for me.
From everything I have been told, I was long overdue for a lost deer. It was supposedly an occurrence that happens to every hunter. I certainly can’t think of an experienced outdoorsman it hasn’t happened to. However, the guilt still isn’t any less crushing. I owed it to that animal to place an effective and merciful killing blow and I failed him. A flagrant error I will not allow myself to make again.
Part of my problem was my persistent lack of confidence in myself. I was questioning my decision from the get go. Had I been sure of myself in the moments leading up to the interaction, maybe I would have processed the situation differently and placed an effective shot.
Although the hunt went far from how I envisioned it, the experience isn’t fully tainted. The knowledge gained during this hunt surmounts all others in my life.
Without a doubt, I have found my new preferred method for chasing White-Tails, but from now on, I’ll leave the nagging voice at the truck.