Toying with the idea of writing a short-story book or shorter book about a deer season

Hey guys. So short version, about 9 years ago I killed three nice bucks from the same stand. All of them have interesting stories (with my father, Christmas Eve, national championship game night).

I put together a general idea of what the first hunt was like and figured I would share. Read if you’d like to, it is largely unedited.

“3 bucks in 1 chair - 2016-2017”

2016 started a little different for me - my wife became pregnant around March and our first baby was due right at the end of the year. My deer season also started off to a little different start, killing my first deer with more points than 8. A medium sized 9 point, however he has a cool story.
Late in October, just a week after the primitive weapon season started, I left work a little early and made my way out to the woods. I got there and my father was already there waiting on me. We decided in a spur of the moment decision to hunt together. It was kind of hot and a typically slower time of the year, so it seemed fun to share a stand with my father. We climbed out to a familiar stand dubbed “The South Wind Stand”, a 5x5 wooden box stand on a 12 foot elevated frame. It has three common kill areas, “front left”, “front right”, and “the pasture”. We climbed up, settled in, and prepared for a dull hot hunt with little movement, and the evening obliged. By 6pm, we had not seen a deer and had about an hour left of shooting light. Putting two adult men in a 5x5 wooden box can get… uncomfortable. It can also lead to poor visibility out of the box for one person or the other. In this case, my father could only see two of three shooting lanes and I covered the third. Wouldn’t you guess what lane a deer stepped into? The “front right” or “third lane”. I looked up and all I saw standing at 60 yards away was horns towering over a deer body. I said “big buck, big buck” as I was reaching for and cocking the action on the gun. Before I could say another word, the nerves could set in, or my dad could ever even locate what I was talking about, I squeezed the trigger, firing a devastating Hornady .444 marlin round directly into the center most point of the massive animal’s body. As the recoil impact from the gun began to make my shoulder sore and the ringing in my ears subsided, I immediately looked to where the deer was standing when I shot, and I saw nothing. The deer had run off, not a bad thing, but not a guaranteed hit or kill. My dad begins asking frantically: “what was it?! What was it?!”. “I don’t know exactly, but it was big!” Was the best the best response I could gather in that moment. To this day he tells everybody about how he never even saw the deer before I shot. We quickly decided to go look for blood while we still had some sunlight, and if it looked promising, we would follow the blood trail. By this point, the nerves HAD set in, and I was shaking like a dead leaf on a tree in a winter breeze. Teeth chattering, hands trembling, voice cracking nervousness as I nearly tumbled my way down the ladder. I hustle over to the shot site as quietly as I can and do not see anything. No blood, no hair, nothing, until my father eased over to me, looked down, and saw bright red blood in an area I hadn’t looked, a good sign the buck was dead somewhere nearby. We stumble down the track, giddy as children and within 50 yards find the buck deceased. I begin counting points, not believing what had just transpired in the 10 minutes prior, and found 9 points! The biggest I had killed to that point was an 8 point! I held my hand up for a high-fives from my father, much more like a young boy than the young man and soon to be father that I was.

I am forever grateful for this hunt and this memory. Having hunted white-tail deer for almost 25 years I have learned that one-offs usually don’t end in such great success. It typically requires weeks and weeks of consistently sitting in the stand to achieve the success that my father and I did in less than 3 hours.
My father and I had not sat in a deer stand together since I was 17 years old. We chose to do it that day for no good reason what-so-ever, but I am so fortunate we did because memories were created that I will carry with my for a life-time.

As I found out over the next 75 days, I had more opportunities to harvest a nice buck in that stand than I thought.. as I managed to harvest two more nice bucks from the exact same seat that year.

This was arguably the greatest deer season of my life, and I am not sure how I could “top” it.”