“It’s finally season again!” My big brother Trey said with much excitement.

“I know we only had three hundred and sixty days of waiting to enjoy these five” I replied.

The season Trey was talking about was shotgun deer season. We live in small town Goose Lake, Iowa but hunt land all around it. This season is the time where my dad takes five days of his vacation, and we take a little vacation from school to deer hunt from sun up to sun down. This type of hunting is called party hunting where you hunt with a group. I can only hunt three days due to basketball, can’t skip that. Anyways, our group consists of me, Trey, two other kids our age and 8 of my dad’s buddies. We are heading home from Wayne’s shop. Wayne is one of my dad’s buddies with a big shop where we go every night and hang out and skin the deer.  

“Where do you think we will go first tomorrow dad?” I said.

“I’m not sure.” he said, “We will probably drive around for a little while in the morning and scout. See what’s out feeding or cruising.”

Most people probably don’t know this but we have a hunting vocabulary in a way. Scouting is when we drive around the land we hunt and see if the deer are out feeding or frolicking in the snow. Also, when I say deer are cruising, that’s when deer are moving from area to area usually finding food or were bumped by other hunters and are looking for new bedding areas. This usually give us a good look at the doe population in an area, or we may catch a buck out of the bedding area, but usually where there are does, there are bucks. That brings me to my next detail of our hunting experience. The rule in our group is mature bucks only for the adults, and usually around two years old and above for us kids. No does, no really young bucks. Most people call us trophy hunters, but we don’t think it would be any fun to shoot everything we see, what’s the challenge in that? The way we hunt is depending on the size of the land we are hunting, a group of so many people will space out strategically and walk through the timbers, fields, CRP or whatever type of land we are hunting, to push the deer too the other people strategically set up so the deer will run right to them. These are our drivers and our blockers. I’m sure you can tell who’s who.

“Alright boys time for bed.” Dad said. “We’ve got an early morning tomorrow. Set your alarms for 5 and I will come make sure you’re up.”

Me and my brother head down the steps to our room, set our alarms, and attempt to sleep with the thoughts of excitement we hope we encounter tomorrow, and I sleep with the aspirations that I will shoot my first buck this year.

***

“DING! DONG! DING! DONG!” My alarm screams making me jump out from under my covers. I check the time, its 5:00 am. Yikes, but I am excited for the day, the weather is supposed to be good hunting weather, sunny and 38 degrees. I throw on my long johns, jeans, long sleeve, sweatshirt, bibs and carry my coat along. It sounds like a lot of clothes, but trust me, when you’re a blocker sitting in the snow, you need the clothes. Trey of course is just waking up as I brush my teeth and head upstairs. He’s never been a morning person. My dad of course is already dressed and getting gloves for me and Trey. I grab the gloves and my favorite grey carhartt stocking hat and go to grab the guns. Everything is loaded into the truck except Trey. Dad and I have the truck running with food packed for the day and all the clothes and supplies needed. Trey is still making his sandwiches for the day. Again, he’s not a morning person. Finally he loads up and we head to my dad’s best friend’s house to pick him up, James. His name is James but you will never hear someone call him James, he is Butch to everyone except his wife. My dad says he had two choices for a nickname and he chose Butch. Don’t ask me why. We get to Butch’s house, already running late.

“Well Jesus Red you should have told me you were going to take this long, I could have kicked my feet up for an extra half hour!” He says to Dad.

“What are you talking about we’ve been waiting for a half hour out here!” He replied.  

You will find out there is a lot of joking and nicknames when you’re around my dad and his friends. Some names good and some bad but hey they’ve been friends for 35 years!

Finally we hit the road scouting for deer. We get a call from another guy in the group saying we are going to hunt Peggy’s place. We all meet there and strategize the hunt. The sun smiles its bright smile at us as we strategize a hunt like a military Commander plans an attack. Finally we get positioned and start the first hunt of the day…

***

After a long day of driving and blocking, the sun has finally set, the moon has risen and we are all back at Wayne’s for the night. Today was a rough day. No one killed a buck and nothing much was seen especially by me. I never saw anything. As the adults reminisce about their “good ol’ days” I sit and absorb the stories. Thinking about how times have changed from their childhoods then to how my childhood is now.

“You ready to go?” says my Dad from across the table.

“Ready when you are.” I replied.

“Then we better go, we’ve got another early morning tomorrow.”
We jumped in the truck, drove back home, and hit the hay. Five o’clock comes real quick when you stay up past midnight. The night turned to day and the day turned to night again. I still have not shot a deer. I actually missed the two biggest deer we have seen all year. We were driving some CRP land. They emerged from in front of me. I jumped like a kangaroo and took two desperation shots missing them both. Luckily others in our group got a shot at these same deer and dropped them dead in their tracks. This made me feel much better. I still am extremely upset though because I can only hunt the last day now. Those two deer might have been my only chance…

***

Another long day of hunting and I have nothing to show for it. It’s been a rainy foggy day and my mind has been foggy all day with the memory of those to bucks jumping from the CRP. We are finally on our last drive of the year. We have an hour left until legal shooting time has expired and the season officially is over. I get to be a blocker this time. It’s not fun to be a blocker when it’s wet and muddy. Then the rain starting falling making the sit even more miserable. As I sat in a ditch against an electrical pole, with just my thoughts to accompany me, I hear a person in our group yell “buck!” I look up to see five deer emerge from timber about five hundred yards away from me. Then a sixth comes out, and there’s the buck they were yelling about. He shot out of the trees like a bullet from a gun. I raised my Remington shotgun to my shoulder as the buck closed on me, four hundred yards…Three hundred yards…Two hundred fifty…Two hundred yards. I raised the scope of my gun to my eye and put the crosshairs just behind the front shoulder of the deer. Where the heart and lungs are. I put my finger on the trigger, everything slows down, and I see nothing but the buck in my crosshairs. I softly pressed the trigger as the buck stopped. “Boom!” The shot of my shotgun echoes through the air as the buck falls dead in its tracks. Literally. The excitement of this moment flooded through me! Finally the drivers become visible and close on the blockers just like a deer who has been chased from their beds. My dad then walks up onto this dead deer laying in the middle of a water way.

“Is this yours?!” He said with a big smile on his face.

“That’d be mine!” I replied anxiously walking towards him to see my trophy that has been awaiting me for a while now.

After walking for what seemed like miles I reached my destination. The deer awaited my presence. I kneeled down and picked up his head. A descant eight-pointer is what he was, a perfect first buck for me.

“It’s Flapper!” Greg yells as he approaches the group of us surrounding this deer.
“I saw him on the last drive with that big flap of skin flapping in the wind!”

We all laughed and drug the deer to the truck. It had been a long season, and a frustrating season missing the two big bucks, but in the end I had achieved the one thing I had been waiting to do the last four days, and that was to shoot my first buck. Now, three years later, That buck is a memory on the wall.