I thought I would share a personal essay that I wrote for my english class.

What do you look forward to? If you were to ask most kids, they would probably give answers like Christmas, summer break, baseball season, and several similar events. I didn’t care too much for these things. Yes I received many gifts for Christmas with my parents spending money that they didn’t have, but I did not really look forward to it. I played basketball, but never picked up baseball, but I still didn’t wait with anticipation for the basketball season to arrive. The one day that I looked forward to was the Saturday nearest November fifteenth. This is Missouri’s opening day for the rifle portion of deer season. My dad and I didn’t get along very well, and this was the one time of the year that we got along. He would let me skip a few days of school and we would go camping while pursuing fresh meat. This is a tradition that every boy should endure as a rite of passage.
My hunting deer started when I was rather young. My dad would place me in a tree with a camera and I was able to “Shoot” whatever wildlife that I wanted. Wildlife is not the only beauty of nature. I also had the ability to capture the first rays of light shattering the darkness of night and watching the sun rise through the bare and naked trees. It starts as a red glow throughout the horizon and eventually becomes the bright yellow sun that we know. During the sunrise is when the woods comes alive with birds chirping and singing their songs. The squirrels come out of their holes and scamper through the fallen leaves sounding like wind blowing through the autumn leaves during the previous month. At other times there would be a woodpecker rap-a-tap-tapping his music on the side of a tree.
While there are a few people that do not understand hunting anything, let alone deer, it is not about killing an animal, but rather a vacation away from reality and enjoying the sights and sounds of the woods. My wandering the woods as a sidekick continued until I was about nine or ten. My dad borrowed a rifle for me to try and that year I managed to harvested a young button buck on my grandpa’s cattle farm. At the end of the year I received my first deer rifle for Christmas. This rifle was a faithful companion and has helped harvest a few deer throughout the years.
When I became a teenager, our hunting trips evolved to spending hunting time camping while out in the wild. This helps elevate the hunting experience because we can imagine how our fore fathers hunted. So we traveled to northern Missouri just a few miles from the Iowa border. This is where I really got to experiment and practice multiple hunting styles. I enjoyed stalking deer for a chance for a short clean shot. It can be difficult traveling over and through dried out leaves laying on the forest floor. Hunting should be done in an ethical and humane manner and for those that consider the true sportsman a murderer has no idea about reality; between deer getting hit by semi trucks while crossing an interstate, and the practices of harvesting farm raised animals. In reality I probably scared more deer during this learning experience than the amount of deer that I saw. As stated earlier it’s a rite of passage.
Our first year camping was fun and memorable, the both of us stayed in a small two man tent with a propane heater in between us. We survived, but I have no idea how many times the both of us got burned during the night. That year we brought two deer home. One of them was made into jerky. On another trip that took place a couple of years later, my dad had an idea to make a wall tent out of cheap tarps and one inch by one inch by eight foot poles. He wanted the space, but could not afford a canvas tent. So we set up our make shift tent (with a drill no less) on Friday. That night the rain poured, and poured, and poured, pounding the top of our slight lean-to roof. The roof started to sag, so Dad took a knife and poked a hole. I now have a pot to keep track of so that it doesn’t overflow. We slept fairly well that night, but the heater did not work all that well do to the vast space of the tent and thin material that shielded us from the elements. By morning there was close to a foot of snow on the ground. Life isn’t about being perfect, but rather learning from our mistakes, because we make them all the time.
I can’t remember the number of deer that we brought home, but I bet it wasn’t as many as I’d like to think. What I do remember was the adventure and the hunt, learning from others and from myself. The time spent in nature away from the life that I endured on a regular basis is what I looked forward to. These are most of the few times that I was truly happy during my youthful years. There is nothing like seeing the woods come to life right before daybreak, then the rays of the sun being broken up by the bare trees. Life is simple and we realize how much of our life is wasted with the hustle and bustle of life. Think about it. Do we really need cable TV, internet (for us, we need it for our school work), all of the extra gadgets in our kitchen, etc. Technology is a great thing, but it makes it harder to enjoy the simple things of life. Give it a try and take a camping trip out into nature. It could be in the woods, or along the side of a stream. Perhaps you need to take a back packing trip with a ten to twenty piece kit. Whatever it is just get out of the house and take a short vacation away from everything.

Deer season, the most wonderful time of the year.

Day in day out, the laughter of my children is tops, but deer season is up there.