Rough Start

This week’s blog post is written by Katie M., a monthly blog correspondent.  She brings us a tale of the hunting season – and how not every trip out is the perfect day.  Sometimes you have a less grand adventure to talk about…but you can still use the time to put things in perspective!

When talking about deer hunting, you normally hear the success stories of how someone shot an impressive buck, or how they saw eight deer walk right by their tree stand. These stories are interesting and engaging, which is awesome, but nobody talks about the unsuccessful and unappealing hunting stories. Unfortunately, I personally had a rough start during one of my resent hunting adventures. I will warn you, my experience does not have a picture perfect ending, but I did learn a lot from my hunting “failure”.

It was a perfect night, or at least it seemed to be a perfect night. I was receiving texts all day from my dad, who had been hunting throughout the day, about how the deer are everywhere. The weather was warm and there was no sign of wind or rain. I decided when I got home from school I would go into the woods behind my house. After getting off the bus and changing into my hunting gear, I quickly headed into the woods knowing that I would only have an hour or two to hunt before dark. I found my tree stand and proceeded to climb up the ladder. The ladder was a little too wobbly for my comfort zone, so I called my dad to let him know. He told me that he had been in the stand earlier in the week and it had been unsteady for him too. He said that the ground was soft and that the ladder was sinking into the ground, but that I had nothing to worry about. The tree stand was better once I got to the top. After strapping myself into the stand, I started to pull my bow up with my string. Well, the bow became five feet off the ground and got stuck in my ladder. I tried to wiggle the bow away from the ladder, but I was only making a lot of noise. I feared that I would damage my bow if I continued. I finally decided that I would call my mom. I told her my situation, and she was willing to come help me. A few minutes later, she came and freed my bow from the ladder. I thanked her and she headed back to the house. I finally thought that my rough start was over, but I was wrong. I reached up to adjust my harness strap when I stabbed myself in the eye with my bow release. After a few grumbles and complaints, I was ready to just see some action. Almost immediately after that, I noticed my quiver that was normally attached to my bow was hanging by a thread. Ugh, I took it fully off and placed the quiver into my bag the best I could. Then after a few quiet moments, the wind came. Now I am not talking about a light breeze, this wind was quite strong. My tree was shaking like crazy. I thought I could handle it, but when the branches of a nearby tree started to fall, that is when I decided to call it quits. I climbed down the ladder and walked back to my house to tell my mom all about my experience.

Now this hunting story is not how my hunting experiences normally play out, but I did learn a lot from it. I learned that it is okay to not have a super cool hunting story with details on how I almost shot the biggest buck. It shows that these “failures” make the interesting hunting experiences better. Next time when I am sitting in my tree stand, I will remember this adventure and be grateful for the exciting hunt to come in the future.