MY BUCK STORY

I don't blow the dust off this story too often, but watching my teenage daughter head out early this morning for her first Opening Morning deer hunt flashed me back 29 (!!) years. It goes like this:

The year was 1976 and I was a junior in high school. I had been out of town the two days before Opening Day with fellow thespians at the State Drama Competition. I don't remember the name of 3-act play, but I do remember I played a very pregnant, ditzy woman named Maizy and we won second place. We arrived home around midnight and my dad shagged me out of bed around 5 AM.

Dad had taken me down in the valley below our little farmstead earlier that week and had me shoot his .308 Remington Mohawk at the Ace of Spades he'd tacked to a tree about 30 yards away. He only gave me four rounds and I placed all four on the card with two rounds actually in the spade. "Good enough," he said.

It was COLD Opening Morning with about ten inches of snow on the ground. This was before the days of Blaze Orange so one wore something somewhat red. My get-up happened be a quilted, nylon jacket and pants that made an annoying whish when you moved. Dad hammered into my head what good ears deer have and that I had to be absolutely quiet. We headed out in our old Ford Falcon station wagon to what is known as the Haymeadow Creek area about five miles from our home. We drove in on an old logging road, left the car and walked in about a half mile where he left me sitting under a huge old spruce with branches that hung down to the ground forming a sort of tent. I sat on the hump the roots made and leaned against the trunk, completely screened from view. There was a deer trail passing right by this tree and I could see quite a ways in either direction on it. Dad told me I was not to leave my stand for any reason and he headed off into the woods.

It was crackling cold in the last moments of dark and early dawn. I was freezing within a half an hour. As the woods began to lighten with the coming day the squirrels started stomping around in the dry leaves under other trees. It's unbelievable how loud those little critters are. They kept me on edge as I was sure it was a deer heading my way. The chickadees were almost as bad. They would flit in among the branches of my spruce, perch and check me out with loud dee dee dees.

By 7AM my hands were buried deep in my pockets and I was feeling like a frozen turd. As I was wiggling my toes in my Sorels, trying to get some circulation going, I saw snow falling from some tag alders up alongside the trail. More squirrels or chickadees, I supposed. Suddenly, the alder branches were moving vigorously and then what appeared to be heavier branches pushed through the alders and, without a sound, an 8-point buck stepped out onto the trail. He looked left, right, left for traffic, just as his mama taught him, and then proceeded down the trail toward me and my tree. At this point my hands were in my pockets, the .308 across my knees, and all I could think of was the whish my jacket was going to make if I moved. So I didn't. I watched as the buck walked until he was alongside the spruce I was under and there he stopped. He seemed to sense something was there and he peered through the snow-ladened bows. Then, much to huge dismay, he pushed his antlers, head, and all but his hindquarters through the branches and into my space under the tree! I could have reached out and scratched him between the ears, he was that close. His head was lowered and he just looked me in the eye. I don't think I blinked and I don't know if I was even breathing. He was 'cuz his breath was curling from his nose.

INTERMISSION

(Ya'll can take a potty break 'cuz this saga's not done yet.)

I don't know how long we were like that, me looking at him looking at me with my hands in my pockets, rifle across my lap, and my mind a blank. Then he calmly backed out from under the spruce, flicked his tail once, and walked on down the trail. He did not run and did not seemed at all disturbed by our encounter. Only my eyes moved as I watched him disappear 40 or 50 yards down the trail until he hung a right around some small balsams. Then I suddenly unthawed, both body and mind. I can't believe that just happened...good thing there's tracks in the snow, 'cuz Dad would never believe this...I can't believe I didn't shoot...I just let him walk away! I turned around and knelt on the side of the root hump and looked in the direction the deer had disappeared. All of a sudden I saw him in an opening between the balsams. I quickly shouldered the rifle, put the crosshairs of the scope right behind his shoulder, took a breath, let it half out as I took up the slack on the trigger, held my breath and squeezed off the shot. Not being solidly positioned on that hump, the recoil knocked me off balance and I tipped back on my rump. I ejected the empty casing, put on the safety, dusted myself off, and sat back down on the hump to wait for my dad. Well, at least I can say I shot at the darn thing.

I didn't go look to see if I'd actually hit the deer because I really didn't think I had and, besides, Dad told me not to leave my stand for any reason.

About 20 minutes later, I could hear him whistling, "The infantry, the infantry, with the dirt behind their ears! The infantry, the infantry, could drink their weight in beers! The artillery and the calvary and all of them engineers could never lick the infantry in a hundred million years!" He'd heard my shot and asked what I'd seen. I told him what has happened and showed him the tracks. He told me to sit tight and he followed the trail of the deer. I was busy wondering if we were gonna get to go home for lunch when I heard him call, "Lo, you better get over here!" I trudged through the snow figuring I might have winged this deer and we were going to have to track him. I came around the balsams and there was Dad standing over the buck who had taken one leap and piled up in the snow. My shot had entered right where I'd aimed and come out the opposite shoulder passing right through the heart and lungs. He was dead before he ever hit the ground.

I was stunned. Dad was just grinning and shaking his head. I started to run around squealing and he told me to pipe down or I'd have ever hunter in Vilas County showing up. As he proceeded to show me how to gut it, the awful truth hit me like a ton of bricks. He trusted me and I shot him! To Dad's dismay, I began to cry.

"What the hell's that matter with you?"

"He trusted me and I SHOT him!"

Dad just looked at me like I'd gone loco. He had never shot a nice buck in all his years of hunting; though he'd always put meat on the table, if you get my drift.

I pulled myself together and we dragged that buck out to the Falcon, loaded him up and it wasn't until we ran into the first group of local hunters that I started to feel a little better. They were quite impressed with my kill. When we stopped at my grandparents' on the way home, I thought my grandpa was going to burst with pride. Mom was very proud and my younger sisters were amazed. During the course of that winter I felt a growing sense of pride in my accomplishment overshadowing my remorse for my betrayal of the deer as his meat fed our family.

So there you have it. My buck story. I hunted for another nine seasons and never got a shot at another deer. I was nearly shot by another hunter one year and another year I was run over by a herd of deer. The last year I went out I was four months pregnant with my first child and decided the blood that should have been in my extremities was collected in my womb nourishing that baby and it was too dang cold to pee in the woods every half hour.

AFTERWORD: When we butchered that deer my dad cut off the rack and put in the loft of the horse barn where it stayed most of the winter. In the spring I noticed it was gone and Dad said it had maggots on it and he got rid of it. I was bummed because I'd wanted to mount it somehow. The following October I turned 17 and we had my birthday dinner at my grandparents'. The best gift I received was from my proud grandfather: he had soaked the deer skull in a lye solution and mounted the rack on a piece of oak he'd cut from an old pew from the Catholic Church that was torn down a few years before. He used to be a tool-and-die man and with his tools he'd stamped these words onto a brass plate he affixed to the oak:

TAKEN BY

LORA CORSER -16 -

WITH ONE

SHOT

NOV -21-1976