I said it last week and I’ll say it again this week but this week was one hell of a week. This week I finally got to accomplish something that I have been trying to accomplish for exactly a decade. This journey started ten years ago when I first got my hunting license and was the reason I bought my first compound bow. I practiced countless hours and hours preparing myself for this one moment. However, that moment never came.
When I first started hunting I had only one goal in mind and that was just to shoot a whitetail deer with my dad and that was it. Every weekend I pestered my dad to take me into the public land down the street from my house to go hunting. I wasn’t able to go by myself because the public land that we hunted you had to check in with the DEC station and receive a permit. Which required a car which I was too young to drive at the time. Those first weekend hunts with my dad were the best. I would be up at the crack of dawn waking my dad up so we could be the first ones to the check station. We would anxiously wait in line to pick our favorite spot, hoping no one would pick it before us.
We would get to our spot right at first light which was always frustrating trying to climb your way up this tree at the best part of the day. That’s just the circumstances you had to deal with hunting this land. My first ever hunt we didn’t see anything in the morning. We packed it up and went to go get our bagels for lunch, why we waited to go back out for the afternoon hunt. That afternoon I passed out in my tree stand which I couldn’t believe, especially since the instructor running my hunter safety course said it would happen and I did not believe him. When I woke up there was a four-pointer standing right in front of me. At twenty yards nonetheless a shot I had practiced hundreds of times. I looked over to my dad sixty yards away and gave him the thumbs up if I should shoot it. From his angle, the deer was hidden from view and in the process of trying to see the deer, my dad hit his bow on his tree stand. The deer looked right at my dad and spooked.
That hunt was one of my favorite hunts of my life. My first time seeing a buck in the treestand with my dad. It is something that we joke around about even till this day. Throughout the rest of that hunting season, we got out a couple of more times with only spooking up a few deer on the way in and out of our spot.
Throughout the next offseason, something affected my hunting carrier for the worse for the next nine years. I made some new friends when I got to high school who also enjoyed hunting. These kids were not bad kids by any means but they had different views on hunting then I did. As any kid does when he wants to fit in, I changed my views on hunting to conform to their moral and ethical code. For the next four years, I would be on the hunt for only giant bucks.
I have to give some background information about the area I grew up in. I grew up on Eastern Long Island which produces some of the biggest antlered deer arguably in the Northeast. Nowhere near the biggest bodied deer but for sure some giant racks. I can’t speak for the entire hunting population of Long Island (now from the many more people I have had the pleasure of meeting this does not stand true anymore) but for the people, that I was exposed to at the time they viewed deer as only good for two things. For their antlers and dog food. To my knowledge at the time the people I knew that harvested deer got them mounted and turned into jerky and that was it.
Now as a young ninth grader this impacted my hunting for the next four years. I had friends who did things that let’s say was not the most moral and ethical ways for getting their big bucks. Then there was me who would be running to the check station after school doing everything the right way. Which I am thankful that I always stuck to that and never strayed from doing things the right (legal) way. However, my mindset was the real issue. I would pass little bucks and not shoot does and would only wait for that monster buck. Which there is nothing wrong with, at all. For some people, that’s what they want to focus on and that’s fine. I’m talking about what I would have liked for myself. I think as a young developing hunter I wish I was exposed to the idea of why we harvest a deer is for the meat and everything else is secondary. I should have been more focused on harvesting the animal for its meat and viewed every deer as something to be proud of and to celebrate that animal. It would take me another three years for me to finally get that mindset about harvesting a deer for meat and another two to put it into practice.
Four years of deer hunting went by during highschool with only seeing does and small bucks and only one monster buck. When it was time to go to college I stopped deer hunting cold turkey and thought I would never get back into it. I would come down from college and spend my entire break in the car or in the blind hunting waterfowl. I did that for another four years. During those four years though I made two really good friends at college who exposed me to the idea of hunting for meat. Both of these guys were great hunters who were able to feed themselves year-round off of the meat they harvested from hunting. Living with one of them I got to watch every day as he had venison (sometimes bear) three meals a day. Everything he cooked smelled amazing and tasted just as good.
During this time they exposed me to some great hunters like Cameron Hanes and Steve Rinella. Steve Rinella opened to my eyes to all these amazing opportunities to try and cook all these different types of wild game. I think of myself as a pretty amazing cook who can actually cook. Not like the people who heat up vegetables, chicken, and put it on their Instagram story, but an actual decent cook. My friends who have tried my food can vouch for me. I have in the past been good at cooking up the fish, ducks, and geese I have harvested. Now there was a fire lit back inside me to harvest a deer.
Finally, this year when I got back up to school in August I scouted up a couple of spots and set a tree stand up in some state land about fifteen minutes away from my apartment. Opening day of archery season came which I talked about in last weeks post and all I saw was just another hunter who purposely blew out my spot that opening day. That next Friday I went back and sat the same stand. On my drive to my spot, there was a decent six or eight pointer across the street looking to cross over into the drainage that I hunt. I got off the phone with my dad and got to my tree stand as quickly and quietly as possible. I saw plenty of squirrels that afternoon and right before last light, this branch started moving. My mind was racing I thought it was going to be a decent-sized deer chewing on the branches. What walked out was a tiny little spike. I let him go knowing that I wasn’t going to barely get any meat off of him.
That next morning I was back in the car at 5:30 am on my way to the spot. That morning we got the first freeze of the year and had been the coldest day yet. I had high hopes that this was going to be a good hunt. I got to my tree stand and set up at about 6:00 am shooting light was at 7:00 am. I’m sitting there, I got my spot, nothing could go wrong, it’s going to be a great morning, I go to flick my release back and fourth…. I left my freaking release in the back of the car. Now I have to get down my tree, down the mountain, sprint back down the road, up the road, back up the mountain, and climb back up my tree. I was sweating bullets, I managed to do this pretty quietly. Now I thought my scent and sweat would have blown out any chance of a deer coming in.
I was back in my tree stand at 6:30 am and shooting light rolled around at 7:00 am. The first twenty minutes of the sit was quiet and I didn’t see anything. I thought I had ruined the hunt. As I sit their pissed off I look up the mountain and here come three does. I shoot right up, clip my release on my d-loop, and wait. It looked like two yearlings with their mother. They slowly worked their way down the mountain crisscrossing the ridge as the mother just walked in a straight line. Fifty yards, forty yards, thirty yards, twenty yards, the big doe walks behind a tree. I slowly draw my bow back shaking like a leaf. I practiced this shot so many times. I was dying for that doe to take one more step out behind that tree. She was quartering towards me and we were on a very steep hill, which meant she was even with me elevation wise. She took that final step and I let the arrow fly. SMACK! I finally got to hear that noise everyone talks about when you know your arrow hits a deer.
I could see my arrow sticking out of the doe as she ran away. It looked like pretty good shot placement a tad bit high like a lung shot. I heard the arrow break as she ran. She ran thirty yards out of sight and then I couldn’t hear her anymore. I decided to give her thirty minutes before I would get down and look. During that time I felt like that video of Luke Bryan asking if “IS HE DOWN”. My mind was racing and my heart was beating out of my chest. I knew though that I hadn’t achieved anything yet. I felt no sense of accomplishment and no weight lifted off my shoulders. I wanted to have that deer in my hands before I could feel any sense of accomplishment. I sat there my heart beating out of my chest. I saw the two yearlings staring at right where I had last seen that big doe. They kept circling that area picking their heads up and down looking at something. I figured it was the doe and she was down but I wasn’t expecting anything yet.
Not five minutes go by after shooting this doe that fifteen more does come running down the mountain and start feeding on the plethora of acorns around me. The woods littered with the noises of chewing deer. It was a sight to see, but now I was stuck. I had all these doe’s around me and I needed to go check to see if I had harvested my first deer. I was essentially trapped I did not want to alert a herd of deer to my location and blow this spot out. I waited a good hour until the does finally left. I shot my deer at about 7:30 am and now it was about 8:30 am.
I was able to get down from my tree stand. I quietly started to look for blood I found decent blood about five yards away from where I shot the doe. My eyes were glued to the ground I could not believe how much blood there was. It was that nice bubbly blood to that I thought of when you get a lung shot. I am only about forty yards from my tree stand when I hear two deer run. Please, please, please don’t let that be my deer. I take five more steps forwards and there was a giant pool of blood that deep-colored blood with bubbles in it. I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. It was a limping doe she was two drainages over which when I ranged it was only fifty yards. She collapsed on the side of the hill and slid into and wedged herself between the mountain and the side of a fallen tree.
In my mind I was freaking out I have this injured deer fifty yards from me with no shot and she knows I’m here. This is a worst-case situation that hunters fear because if I spoke this deer up again she could be gone and that could be it. I knew that I had to do something but was conflicted on what. First things first, I had to back out and give this deer some space. I walked down the mountain and assessed my options. Whether I was just going to let the deer sit or try and get another arrow into her. I knew that it was going to get up into the seventies that day and the last thing I wanted to happen was to lose any meat on this doe. That was the whole reason I wanted to harvest a doe was just for the meat. I knew from shooting my laser up on top of the mountain that the top of the mountain between the two drainages was only twenty yards from the doe. It basically was me on a really tall ridge, drainage, really tall ridge, drainage, then the doe. I decided to go back up there and try and get another arrow into her.
I walked up this creek drainage as quietly as I possibly could my heart pounding. The whole time I was fighting off what my body was telling me to do which was to get up there as fast as possible. I slowly worked my way up this creek bed until I reached the ridge that used to separate the doe and I. I climbed up the backside of this ridge and meticulously chose my steps as I inched closer to this deer. I found the tree that I knew marked where the doe was. My mind was racing, did the doe move? Did it expire? Will it see me? Did I spook it up? I looked over the ridge and there she was head up looking straight at me. I ranged her again at twenty yards and drew back put my sight on her again, took a deep breath, slowed down and click. I watched the arrow go straight into the deer’s chest cavity right into the breadbasket.
The doe didn’t stand up she stayed right where she was. She just looked away from me and slowly put her head down. I watched the blood run from her side and soon out of her mouth and nose. I noticed her breathing start to turn into wheezing. I had killed many ducks and geese before with my bare hands but this was so different and I don’t know why. Maybe because it was such a bigger animal? In a way, it was weird to watch this deer die. As she rolled over and kicked her legs in the air. In some strange way though I felt close to the deer. I felt like it was good that I was close to the deer when it passed. I could not put it into words how I felt. It didn’t feel good and I didn’t feel bad watching this deer pass. I did feel that it was a more enriched experience that I was almost with the first deer I ever harvested when it passed. I felt like I had a closer relationship with that animal. The only way I could put it was it was a surreal experience and that I was glad I was with my first deer when it passed.
I slowly walked up the deer and nudged it, she was dead. I reached down and touched the deer with my hands and felt the cape and just was in a state of awe. It was such a surreal experience. After a few minutes of just looking, I finally felt this sense of this weight being lifted off of my shoulders. I spent ten years trying to harvest a deer and it finally happened. I felt lucky that I was able to experience this and honestly, I would have not changed a single thing about that experience either. This deer was perfect and was special to me and no one was going to take that away from me. I called my dad, brother, cousin, and best friend to share with them the good news. It was an amazing thing to quickly share with them the crazy story that was this morning. They all had the same thing to say though which is “now the real work begins”.
If you enjoyed this story leave a like and share with your friends and if you want to hear my story on going through the process of gutting, processing, and packaging all the meat by myself leave a comment.
I hope you enjoyed this great moment from my life it is something that I am going to remember forever.
-Colin Hickey
Leaky Waders 