By Carrie Sanderson

Trail Staff Writer

I am going to tell you something that just might surprise you, something that you probably wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at me or even talking to me.
I love to hunt. I have been hunting for six years now and have filled my deer tag five of those years. Over that time, I have had antelope and elk tags as well, the opportunity to shoot one has just never presented itself.
I am the kind of hunter who likes to wait for the “big one.” No matter how nice the buck is, I always think there has got to be something better out there. Unless the buck is really special, that is. Last year, I didn’t even take a shot until the last day of the season. As a result, I ended the season empty-handed.
Last season was possibly the worst deer season I have had. We saw a semi-nice three point who stood at about 20 yards and stared at us. He seemed to be saying, “Haha, I’m invisible…you can’t see me!”
The biggest excitement of the season, which was actually probably a curse, was the gigantic five point mulie my dad and I scared out of a draw a little prematurely, and, as a result, we never got a shot at him. Even though we only saw him for a split second, I held out hope that I would see him again, and then I would be ready for him. But my second chance never came. The last day of the season, I took two long shots, both were over 300 yards, one was at a nice whitetail, the other was at a big two-point mulie. I missed them both narrowly, mainly because I had never even attempted a shot even nearly that long before.
This season, I had a little obstacle thrown into my opening day plans. Two days before the beginning of the season this year, I got my wisdom teeth removed. This meant that the bumps and turns in the hills would hurt like all heck. And, to make things worse, I couldn’t use my beloved 7mm08 because it would kick my cheek too hard if I were to take a shot. In its place was my dad’s Swift, which is a big, heavy, ugly black thing. Good thing we didn’t decide to walk, because that thing would have been uncomfortable as heck to carry around.
The season started off the same as always (minus my pain). My dad got my sister and I up before the crack of dawn and we all loaded into our white Ford F-250 and headed into the hills, owned by my grandma, behind my family’s 60 acres. We saw a bunch of does, probably somewhere between 30 to 40 of them, and a couple of small bucks. Nothing special though. Our morning hunt gave us no hope for a productive night hunt, so we didn’t figure on going out for a long time that night. After I came home from work and my family ate dinner, my dad and I decided we would go out for a short hunt, maybe 15 minutes tops.
We have a little woods area on our land about 100 yards from our house. I was the first to spot my buck. He was on the edge of a field and the woods. I told my dad that it was big and looked like a buck. My dad looked at him and said he was a really nice buck and I should get out and look at him. The first thing I said was, “It’s only the first day of the season and I don’t want to be done already…I like to go!” But I decided to get out and look at least. So I hoisted my dad’s Swift out from between us and walked about 50 yards in front of the pickup so I could see him again. I laid down with the bipods and looked through the scope, not figuring I would take a shot, since it was opening day and all. As soon as I saw the buck, though, my only thought was “Heck yeah!” I made a perfect shot on him, and was as happy as I could be when my dad and I walked up to him and saw him for the first time up close. It was an extremely heavy five by four mulie. For the first time, I had done absolutely everything myself. I saw the deer, lined up my own shot, decided to shoot or not to shoot on my own and made one, good shot on my own. My dad didn’t even have a gun to help me if I made a bad shot on him. As my dad said, it was all me this year.