Every End Has A Beginning

Operation: First Bow Kill

The beginning for me started after I shot my first buck with a shotgun in 2000. My uncle took me out, we sat in a ground blind that consisted of branches and logs that we collected and we fortified ourselves in between two nice trees. I shot a small six pointer that day but I had no idea that it would be eleven years before I would shoot another deer. Sports, schooling, more schooling, and work would keep me out of the woods for the majority of eleven years. Sure, I went out occasionally, I even bought a compound bow with the thought that I would have an extended hunting period to take some deer. Still, I had no success.

That all changed in 2011. I began to take hunting much more seriously. I started practicing something called, shooting. Previously, shooting my bow was something I rarely did if ever. I bought trail cameras and built a couple feeders to see what the deer population looked like. I stopped saying, "Oh, that tree looks good, I think I'll put a stand in that one." I put the time into scouting that was required and on November 1, 2011 I was rewarded.

It was a cold morning. I had gone out hunting a few times the week before and saw a total of one or two deer. I had become very discouraged but I made myself get up early that morning and made the trip out to my stand. The wind was swirling that morning, sometime between 7-8 a deer that I could not see caught my scent and took off through the woods. After about an hour had passed, I heard some noise in a wooded bottom below me. I reached for my grunt tube, blew into it a few times, and sure enough about a minute later a buck started trotting up out of the bottom looking for a fight.

I stood up slowly and turned my back to him for a moment (that's not really a good idea fyi). But I figured I would use my body as a shield so he wouldn't see me reach for my bow. I had been busted before by moving too much, I was not about to let it happen again. I grabbed the bow without him spotting me, everything up to this point had gone smoothly, but from here on out it would get interesting. I told you it was cold that morning, my hands weren't covered very well, so when I tried to get the release attached to my bowstring I couldn't. My nerves were already shot, plus I had very little feeling in my fingers.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour but was only a few seconds, my release was secured to my Martin Jaguar. I turned back to where I had last seen the deer, but he wasn't there. My heart sank into my stomach, "I blew it," was all that was running through my mind. As I was frantically looking around for this deer, I decided to look down by my ladder.  Believe it or not, the buck had walked right under my stand. I drew back, he looked up at me, with barely anytime to look out of my peep sight, I let it fly. He went about seventy yards and crashed. He wasn't a very big buck, just a small eight pointer, but he marked the end of a drought, he signified the end of so many failures, he marked the end of one journey and paved the way for the beginning of another.

(Ecclesiastes 7:8)- "The end of a thing is better than its beginning; the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit."

Regardless of what you are hunting, it is truly a blessing when all of your hard work and labor comes to fruition. Stay humble, but enjoy the blessings that God gives us!