Blessed

I'm not sure how many are reading this forum any more but I love to post my tales anyway. Here's another to add to the list. Chris S
 
Blessed
            The two tiny green orbs shone brightly in the dim light cast by the headlights of the “52” Plymouth Coupe. The driver slowed instinctively while the passengers tried to rouse themselves from a cramped sleep. As the headlights illuminated more of the road the emeralds turned into the shape of an animal mesmerized by the light standing like a statue in the road. The statue finally realized the impending danger and moved off the road to disappear into the safety of the night.
            That encounter was my first with the almost mystical whitetail deer of the great north woods. That trip was one of many my family had made from the U.P. of Michigan to the Detroit region and back before I was even five years old. I didn’t know it then but I would be indelibly imprinted by that first sighting and continue to hunt for the whitetail in many different ways for most of the rest of my life. I would spend the majority of my life in the Upper Peninsula, God’s Country!
            I have hunted a lot of other species around this United States from Alaska to New Mexico and California and Idaho and Florida with small game everywhere I landed too but no matter what I have ever hunted nothing has compared to the wonderful whitetail in my Upper Peninsula. I am so biased towards deer hunting in the U.P. I am almost too exuberant but that doesn’t take anything away from the fact that the whitetail is the number one game animal in many people’s book.
            My first deer was a “spike buck” shot with a borrowed rifle, tagged with my very first license tag and my last deer was a four point buck shot with my Remington .375 H&H. In between I have shot deer for fifty plus years during the firearms season, bow season and during the muzzleloader season with much success and a few bummer seasons as well, but it was always a thrill just to be out there hunting. It’s the rush that starts the heart pounding and the trembling that comes with the anticipation of a possible shot when the hunter hears that first soft footstep or the crunch of a hoof on a dry leaf that can signal a deer. If a hunter doesn’t feel that then it’s not deer hunting any more.
            Deer hunting can unleash the primal hunt instinct and take a hunter back to a forgotten time when survival depended on a successful hunt. Every hunter has that instinct; it’s just hidden more in some than in others. No matter how many deer I have taken there is always the expectation of another hunt and the excitement it will bring. The eve of a hunting opener is a time for fiddling with gear and hoping for a good morning with plenty of deer romping in the woods. It is the stuff that fills dreams in a deer hunter’s world.
            The whitetail is a funny animal whether it’s in the form of a trophy buck that can be so sneaky as to elude a hunter for years or a young spike so curious that it may just walk up to a hunter as run away. A whitetail might tiptoe up behind a hunter on a stand and then dash hell bent for leather past that poor hunter with no chance for a shot or it may simply pass by out of range or in the brush negating any shot. The unpredictable nature and the curiosity of the whitetail is what make it such a challenge to hunt.
           Every whitetail hunt I have been on has been a wonderful trip through the forests and fields of my beloved Upper Michigan and that is why the whitetail has been my favorite animal and that’s why I also feel doubly blessed.
Chris