As I sat in my stand this past deer season, it dawned on me what I had been missing over the last several years.
Having just bid on a new shift at work, I find myself with fifty-two more days off a year and a lot more time on my hands. I took the first weekend of December off which gave me six days in a row to myself. Awesome.
I spent four of those days in the timber, with my seventeen year old daughter alongside for a few hours as her busy schedule permitted. On one of the colder mornings, I left the stand a little early to walk and warm up. As I walked along the lower bottom ground where the wind wasn't chipping away at my face, I was drawn to a spot where a drainage ditch crossed the middle of the field, from one patch of timber to another. I felt compelled to sit in this spot as if someone was telling me to do so. By this time I was warming up more than I wanted to anyway and my stomach was growling for a snack.
I sat down and opened my pack and started nibbling away on some crackers. As I looked out across the field, now wide open and harvested, I visualized the landscape as it stood nearly twenty years ago when I first started hunting this ground.
I could see the big brush piles in the middle of the field which were pushed up after clearing some of the trees away to plant more crops. I could see the group of my family and friends huddled together organizing a plan to drive the deer out of the timber towards the brush piles where someone would be anxiously waiting.
I remembered how we all wanted to be the guy sitting on the brush pile. As I looked closer, I could see my late father-in-law clambering up onto the top of the pile and situating himself as comfortably as possible. I remembered how his nose and cheeks were rosy red from the wind and how he had bundled himself in a big pair of olive green coveralls with a zip up orange vest. I could see the old smooth barrel shotgun in his hands, a shotgun handed down to him by his late father who carried the same name.
I saw myself walking through the strip of timber towards my father-in-law, nearing the edge of the field without seeing a thing when all of a sudden a shot rang out followed shortly thereafter by an excited yell coming from the brush pile. My adrenaline surged and I hurriedly stepped out of the timber into the field, where my father-in-law was standing over one of the biggest bodied does I had ever seen. The excitement in his voice and on his face contagiously drew us all to him and we listened to his story leading up to the shot.
I could see this.
I found it hard to look away from that spot but I was then drawn to my right to see my late father sitting in a camouflage hunting chair near the gate entrance to the field. I remembered how he was bundled in a big pair of jet black nylon coveralls with an orange vest I had given him because he hadn't deer hunted in years.
I remember lending him the gun he carried, an old Remington 870 Wingmaster which he won in a raffle at work and gave to me when I was thirteen. A million dollars couldn't take that gun away from me. I remembered jumping a big buck and doe and watching them walk behind him just out of range. And I remember how we excitedly talked about the day even though we didn't harvest a deer.
At this point I was finding it hard to get back on my feet. As I sat there, looking at this spot, my eyes became entranced in a motionless stare. My chest rose and I felt my lungs fill with cold air followed shortly thereafter by a deep sigh. It was a sigh of both sadness and happiness. It was a sigh that said, "I want those days back."
I had sat there long enough that I should have been colder than before but in a divine way I'm sure, I was as warm as I could be. I felt a sense of peace and tranquility surrounding me and I came to realize even more how much deer hunting actually means to me.
Having been invited to hunt in other areas over the last several years, I continue to find myself drawn to this spot. This spot is so much more than just a piece of land to hunt on. This is sacred ground.