Here's the story of my first deer. I was 16 and my husband taught me to shoot and to hunt. (He wasn't my husband then, but he is now, so I'll say my husband.) We don't hunt from a treestand, my husband sort of stalks them. He spends about 20-30 times as much time scouting as he does hunting. He considers scouting to BE hunting.

So we headed down from a bluff to a marshy area by the river. Nobody, but us, goes down there because it's all muddy and mucky. But he had found that the deer were using some of the higher, dry spots, as bedding areas. We crawled down there, through the mud and the brush until we got close to where he was sure there was a deer bedded down. We got really close and you could sort of see there was a deer lying in the weeds. We were downwind of the deer and very quiet. It took us about two hours to crawl about 100 yards.

We have a set of hand signals and he motioned me to stay while he crawled over to a position about 3 o'clock to my 6 o'clock. He motioned me to sit up and come to a draw. I'm about 10 yards from the deer so I'm moving very slowly and quietly. He uses these turkey mouth calls and he clucked. The deer, a doe, raised her head. He waited a minute or so and clucked again and the doe, maybe curious or what, stood up. I triggered the release and hit the doe. She turned all the way around and then walked off about 10-12 feet and dropped.

My husband motioned me to sit still and we did for about a half hour when he motioned me to nock an arrow and we approached her. There was no question she was dead. We knelt down and thanked her spirit for allowing us to take her life and then we dragged the body up onto the bluff and gutted it. My arrow had cut through her heart and stopped. I'm really small, so I use a 30 pound pull bow we bought used. There's no way the arrow could go all the way through. (Luckily for me, there's no minimum draw weight in Michigan.)

So when I got home the really fun part started. Remember crawling through the brush? Well, my hair came loose and was full of little briars. This was a real problem because my hair has never been cut and goes below my knees. At first my mom said it would have to be cut, but when I started bawling, she said she was only kidding. Anyway, she went out and bought a couple bottles of salad oil and one of those wire brushes with the little balls on the end that you use for dogs.

Then I had to stand in the bathtub while my mom soaked my hair with the oil and brushed out the little burrs. Then it took a couple bottles of shampoo to wash the oil out of my hair. So there I was, the mighty hunter having killed her first deer getting a bath from mom like a little kid.

I now make sure my hair is tied up and covered. That was in December and we got married in April.