#therut

In many respects it was like any other hunt. An early wake up call. A quick cup of coffee and off to the stand. Again, hopeful to lay eyes on a whitetail deer.

But, this Saturday was unlike most Saturdays in late November. After a long week spent watching deer pass at 60 yards, the tides had turned.

It was Opening Day.

Opening Day of rifle is but a holiday for most rural towns in America and in rural Maryland it’s certainly no different. The first Saturday after Thanksgiving signals every brother’s mother’s cousin out of the woodwork to get their day in the field. For most, it’ll be their first and last day in the woods all season. The shots echo through the hills in the days leading up as the orange army readies their firearm of choice.

I grabbed my Remington 700 that morning with excitement. Following a tough week of bow hunting, I needed this.

Anything can happen on Opening Day, when the shots ring off like fireworks. Deer get pushed by gunfire and Joe hunter shimmying down the tree early for some flapjacks and a warm cup of coffee.

I, however, was in it for the long haul. I had never killed a deer with a firearm, in fact my first kill had come on a doe, months prior on Opening Day of bow in early September. Today was as good as any day to hop on the board with a pair of antlers and replenish my quickly depleted freezer.

With a get up in my step, I climbed up my tree to hear the sweet sound of a bolt action rifle lock in a round. Go time.

The first shot echoed through the woods at 6:15 a.m.… in the pitch black dark. Perhaps a hunter signaling his excitement for the glorious day to come? Maybe a poach job. Or, a dead hunter. I would never know.

Thirty minutes later and the sun rose with a thunderous roar of rifle fire. It had begun.

I anxiously sat and waited. And waited some more.

Shots continued to ring out. Every few minutes, another distant echo signaling one less deer.

My optimism peaked at about 8 a.m. A deer arrived upon the hillside, 350 yards above me. The large doe was followed by another doe… and another. In a matter of seconds, 12 deer stood atop the hill, quite a ways away, but in my view nonetheless. And just like that, it appeared, a set of antlers chasing the doe along the hillside.

I glassed the horizon with my Vortex optics, but the brush that separated the strips of hillside left me staring at partial images of scattered deer. I estimated 20 deer feeding and bedding at leisure, impervious to the warfare like scene that encompassed the surrounding area. It was as if they had chosen this place as hidden refuge.

If only they ventured down the hillside, I’d have my shot. But as the hours passed, they slowly evaporated back into the woods they had come from.

At 9:30 a.m. I concluded my morning hunt was in the books. I still had the option of an afternoon hunt, but after that, my week long hunting trip would be over. My cousin, uncle, and brother had already called it a hunt. They sat inside, warm, fixing leftovers from Thanksgiving and drinking coffee. “Just a few more minutes,” I thought.

At 10:15, I called it quits. The deer were gone. The rifle fire had ceased almost completely. Opening morning had concluded.

I unloaded my rifle and lowered it to the ground. I grabbed my belongings and began my descent. At the bottom of the tree I began to untie my gun from the draw rope when something on the hill caught my attention… A doe. 250 yards in the middle of the hillside, risen from the brush it had bedded in.

Not quite in range, I ducked behind my tree and reloaded my rifle. I’d wait to see if the lone doe would make its way into a shot.

To my surprise the doe was not alone. As I awaited behind my tree, more deer began to reappear. The 20 plus deer from earlier slowly re-emerged from out of thin air, up from bedded brush, out from hidden woods.

My heart raced. Surely I’d have a shot. The deer began to venture down the hill. I raised my rifle. 150 yards. An elevated shot through some brush I wasn’t yet willing to take.

I glassed through my rifle scope laying the cross hairs on a doe’s vitals. I needed the meat and although it wasn’t the easiest shot, I was confident in my ability. But something told me to wait.

I lowered the rifle to find a fawn grazing 20 yards in front of me, eye level. I hid back behind the tree and gasped for a breath to calm my nerves. Minutes ago the landscape was barren. Moments later and I’m playing hide and go seek with herd of deer from behind a tree.

I peaked around the base of the tree to find the fawn inching closer, 15 yards. Much further and it would surely bump into me, alarming the herd of my presence.

And then I saw them. That same set of antlers, this time behind the brush cruising through the second tier of the hill.

How long would I have? With the fawn quickly approaching and handful of doe in range, would I be punished for my antler fixation? 

He was chasing a doe. Where she went he would follow. But would she move in time before my cover was blown?

The fawn now ten feet from me. I could hear it rip grass from the ground at my feet. My hands trembled as I stared at the brush line. “Come on, Come on.” I tried to recall the words of a mentor hunter, “Check your expectations, be a good predator.” Yet all I could conjure was, “Don’t screw this up.”

By now it was nearly 10:45 a.m. The common sense approach of limited midday movement in late November was out the window as I was quite literally covered in deer seeking refuge from the brutal onslaught of Opening Day. I may never see a better chance at harvesting a deer. Chip shot upon chip shot, yet here I waited for the glimmering hope of a fleeting opportunity. There was a real chance I’d go home empty handed after being served venison on a field covered platter.

The vibration of the phone in my pocket startled me, surely my hunting buddies wondering where I was. But I couldn’t budge. I could barely breathe. I dare not prematurely raise my rifle in fear of spooking the enclosing fawn.

And there she was, the doe. Slowly peaking through the brush into the bottom tier of the hillside. Cautiously looking both ways as if to know something was up. But I hadn’t moved. The wind was in my favor. She stepped forward into the field, behind her revealed a slight image of antlers disguised by limbs from the surrounding brush. Slowly, but surely he poked his head out. “This is it” I thought. I’d have seconds to get off a shot.

As he slowly emerged from the cover, I just as slowly raised my .270. I was no longer thinking, more reacting.

He stepped out to his right, broadside, chest held high looking for his lady. I slowly squeezed the trigger with my sights on his vitals.

I watched him drop in place, attempting to get up, only to fall again and roll onto his back. Seconds later, he expired. I had killed a whitetail buck.

I remember hearing the shot or feeling the recoil of the rifle, but there lie a buck and an empty shell at my foot.

I gave no fist pump, I did not pound my chest. I stood there, looking as puzzled as the deer that continued to stand on the hillside. It didn’t feel real. The number of hunts I’d been on without laying eyes on a deer, let alone a buck. Those are the days you know for sure the big ones about to turn the corner, but he never does. Well today, he did. He finally did.

It was a moment I had visualized many times. Walking up on my buck. He was a seven point with character, a brow tine that dropped over the front of his forehead. He wasn’t the biggest buck in the woods, he wouldn’t break any records, but he meant the world to me as I would never forget this moment. For me, it was the shot heard around the woods.

And that, as they say, was when the real work began. Field dressing and butchering always remind me of the fragility of our own existence. As much as we’d like to ignore it, we are but meat attached to a bone structure. Simple yet intricately complex. My freezer would be now full. I’d know where the food came from. I’d know the animal lived an un-caged life and it died a quick, humane death.