---

ORIGINAL: Davoh

2 years ago, I killed my biggest buck.... interesting morning.... After hours of seeing NOTHING... I hear my dad's truck start(dual exhaust on a cold december morning, you can hear it from a half mile away), so a wait a few minuteslook around thenstand up in teh box blind to get my stuff together to leave. I finish and out of impulse look around before getting out of the blind and there he was about 90 yds away in the wide open just grazing around! I'd been standing for maybe 30 seconds. I didn't even take my backpack off just sat, sighted and squeezed, and down he went.

In that 90 seconds or less, I felt disappointment, shock, excitement, nerves, relief, exhaustion, enlightenment and joy. Didn't have time for the remorse at first but it came whiledressing him out.

As an animal lover, it's always been tough for me to kill animals. I struggled with it as a kid, shooting my first when I was 9. Nothing can compare with hunting though, and taking a life, and knowing what life, and death, is really about. So many people see hunting as barbaric... but It's closer to enlightenment. I don't know anything else on earth that gives you every possible part of the spectrum of human emotion, from perfect peace, tofrantic chaos.

---