by Ian VanDerLinden
Wednesday October 10th, 2018 will forever be etched into my life as a milestone in my hunting career. It is on this day I harvested my first ever whitetail deer. This moment took thirteen years to make and played out in a way that if it were a movie, it was a scene of redemption and the conclusion of a chapter of my hunting journey. A few days have passed and I have replayed those moments a hundred times in my head, reflected on my reactions, and reminisced on my hunting journey thus far. I have gained so much knowledge of wildlife over my years of hunting, but the looming cloud over my head was the lack of a deer harvest, that cloud has now lifted. On episode 7 of the podcast I told the story of how I harvested my first deer, the story that was not told on the podcast is how I came to that moment, and the emotions I felt during and after the experience. I wanted to tell that story here to put the gravity of October 10th into some perspective.
From The Beginning
Growing up I admired my dad very much and the wisdom he had to share. He passed onto me his love for the outdoors along with his philosophy of ethics when it came to hunting and fishing. Fishing was my first love, it was the activity that taught me the first lessons on patience. I did not have to wait until I was a certain age to fish, unlike hunting where I had to wait until I was twelve in order to take my hunter safety course. I also didn’t have to wait until age fourteen to obtain my bow permit and finally hunt deer. When it came to hunting I have often tagged along with my dad to sit in the woods and wait for deer or turkey to come by. I remember waiting patiently for him to return to the house after he would go sit in a tree stand (where I couldn’t join him) with the hopes that he had shot a deer. Eventually I could tell when he had an encounter with a deer simply by the time at which he would come home whether early or late. On the couple deer he did kill he brought me out to witness the gutting process and assist him with getting the deer out of the woods and to a deer processor. The last time I helped him with that process from gutting to processing was twenty years ago. I did help him take his last buck to the processor but I did not witness the field dressing aspect of the hunt, and that was seven years ago.
He taught me the gravity of what we do as hunters when we kill and animal and how we must respect it. He taught me that lesson that in one of the toughest ways, he let me kill something out of the pure urge to just kill. We were hunting squirrels in mid october on a day my dad set aside for us to hunt together and hunt what I could. I had just gotten my hunting license and I had successfully harvested a grey squirrel earlier that morning, quick and clean, how I was taught to. I was using my grandfather’s Ithaca pump action 20 gauge that has been in the family for a couple generations. We sat along a rock wall that runs through not just our little two acre plot but a good portion north and south within the timber. The woods behind my parents house used to be an apple orchard decades ago and the rock wall with barbed wire fencing are the only remaining objects tying the woods back to those times. We sat against it looking out into the abyss of the forest, waiting patiently, listening, and then I heard the all too familiar sound of a red squirrel sounding off. I spotted him and quickly informed my dad of his location and if I could shoot it. He responded with “I don’t think so, you can’t really do much with those guys. They’re too small.” I reiterated that I wanted to shoot him, and my dad very reluctantly said “okay.” I took aim, pulled the trigger and lost the squirrel during the shot from the kick back. I was perplexed as to where he went off to until I saw him fall to the ground after he had jumped a good two feet off the limb he was on. We walked up on him, he was dead, but I immediately regretted my decision upon seeing the intricacies of his fur and the beauty of him. Despite red squirrels getting a rather annoying reputation, they are still quite beautiful creatures, I had taken life simply because I wanted to and I was not happy with that decision or thought process. I cried and apologized profusely to the squirrel because in my mind I had wasted his life, but my dad quickly consoled me with the reminder that the other predators in the woods just earned a free meal on my behalf. It comforted me a little bit, but I decided from that day on I would never kill for the sake of killing. Looking back I believe this experience shook me to my core in terms of whether or not I could really be a hunter. Could I take life? Would I regret it if I did? Am I okay with having to field dress a deer? All of these questions have been stuck in the back of my mind for the past twelve years as a hunter, until this past year.
The Shift
The nagging self doubt about my commitment to all aspects of the hunt may have subconsciously affected my mind set when facing the moment of truth. The act of killing has never been a concern of mine, the concern comes after the shot in terms of the gutting process. I have never doubted my ability to kill an animal, my doubt is the lethality of my shot and making sure the animal does not suffer very long. This coupled with me not having a super interest in hunting due to sports, drum corps, college, girls, and the list goes on and on, so I did not practice nearly as much as I should have. It wasn’t until the fall of 2017 that I began to really connect again with hunting and fishing from the food perspective. This shift in not only interest but a new perspective really created a drive that I have not felt towards hunting and the outdoors since I was a small boy. The desire to get outside, try different hunting methods, hunt different kinds of game, and hunt in a variety of places that I have never hunted before. What I’ve come to realize is that the generalist hunter is something that is very much worth becoming. You always have something to look forward to, and can switch pursuit species in order to avoid getting burnt out of hunting. It also offers a variety of wild meats for you to experiment and consume, which is one of the most appealing aspects of generalist hunting to me.
Since obtaining this drive and desire to acquire meat to eat, for the first time I have felt completely comfortable with all aspects of the hunt. I get to completely control where my meat comes from and taking pride in that I am becoming more self sufficient. For the first time I feel I have reached a sense of maturity, and purpose behind hunting for me. Hunting for me has become about obtaining meat, but it also is about the experience of being in wild places either alone or with family and friends. I have spent most of my days so far this season by myself hunting and observing deer and other wildlife, so my connection is becoming quite strong not only to just the landscape, but also with myself.
The Hunt
October 10th was a very unusually warm day here in Western New York. Temperatures during the day reached to nearly 85 degrees with the low only reaching 70 degrees. The “October lull” was beginning and the weather temperatures were a very rude indicator of that. I had just gotten home from work and had not hunted the previous two days given the temperatures and weather. I kept constantly going back and forth about whether or not I should go out and sit behind my parents house that evening until I finally decided that I could go out and sit for an hour or so until dark with no real harm being done to my day. I dressed in my lighter layers to ensure I wouldn’t over heat (aerowool long sleeve, chama hoody, merino synthetic blend boxer brief, and my dry earth obsidian merino pants). I headed out to a stand behind my parents that over looks a relatively small clearing within some bigger timber forests. I didn’t spook anything on the way out and the wind was dancing between the North West and North East, which are preferred wind directions for this stand. I got up and settled in closer to 5:20 pm with the sun setting at 6:36 pm that night. The wind was pretty light, but when it would pick up leaves and small twigs would fall causing a bit of a ruckus. Each leaf or twig caught my attention at first until I settled into a rhythm of picking out what was what. I could hear walking or frolicking in a couple different directions. I could hear a couple squirrels and chipmunks rustling under the foliage, a very distinct pattern of three jumps to a long pause that was just random enough to not be identifiable as a large hooved animal. I did not bring out my filming equipment mostly due to the fact that the amount of energy to lug it out for that amount of time didn’t seem to be worth it. The self filming venture has to this point, proven to be as hard as what everyone made it out to be so please believe the advertising. I had apprehension about trying to self film this year because I did not want it to really impact my ability to shoot a deer let alone my first deer, so it was only fitting that this moment (which took at most fifteen seconds to develop) is for me and those involved in the drag out.
I was attentive and overall just feeling good about what I was going to see that night. I have noticed time and time again this fall that the deer start moving as soon as the sun reaches the horizon, thus triggering temperatures to drop, and everything starts to darken. It’s not necessarily sunset, but usually about fifteen to twenty minutes before it. The breeze disappeared and the woods seemed to come alive. I was standing because I do know that sometimes things can develop quickly in those woods at this time of year due to the number of leaves on the trees, and I didn’t want to risk spooking anything trying to stand up. At 6:27 pm I heard the sounds of something relatively large come running from my right side towards the clearing. I started scanning to find the source of the sound, caught a little movement that was the right size and color of a deer. I immediately reached for my bow and began swinging over to the right side of the stand. As I was swinging over I heard and saw that the deer started to move through the clearing on a path that I knew would bring him to about fifteen yards. I let out a bleat sound to hopefully get him to start stopping, which he began to do as he walked out from behind a bunch of thorn bushes as I got my bow into position to draw back. I drew back and began to settle my pins just behind his shoulder, telling myself to settle and relax. I concentrated on this one spot, and I could feel my muscle memory begin to take over, triggering my shot sequence to start. When I felt my pins settled and slowly began to apply pressure to the trigger of my release until it fired and not once did my eyes or focus veer from the little spot I was fixated on. I felt my bow fire and watched the arrow burry into his shoulder, a little to the right of where I wanted it to go, but I knew it was a solid connection. I watched him run until he vanished from my sight and then I listened. I heard what sounded like a large crash and thrashing of leaves. It took a second or two for that sound to register with me that he had fell down and expired. To this day I could not tell you how he jumped or kicked, I do not recall any of that because his body was washed out from me focusing on my arrow and it’s connection point compared to the spot I was fixated on. I watched him run until I lost him in the leaves and then I listened for him falling, which wasn’t quite as distinct as I was anticipating. I heard the familiar sounds of deer bounding through the woods, but then I heard a bit of a thud and what sounded like a lot of leaves rustling or being kicked, then all went quiet. I knew once it went silent that he had gone down, and that my arrow found its mark.
The Hardest Hour
I took a couple minutes in the stand, pumped my fists, called my dad, and let the other 585 Outdoors crew know what just happened. I had a little bit of adrenaline coursing through my veins but not enough to really count as buck fever. The whole encounter from the time I spotted him, to the shot took no more than fifteen seconds to develop. It happened so quick that I couldn’t get pumped full of adrenalin, unlike if I had been watching him for a while in a field feeding and after two hours of watching he started heading straight for a shooting lane. After about five minutes I climbed down out of the stand and continued to try and catch my breath, forcing myself to give him some time before beginning the tracking process. The only thing tracking wise I did do at this time was try to find my arrow. I walked over to where he stood at the time I shot him looking for any sign of blood to no avail. Finally I spot it, covered in blood, which made me feel immediately better about my shot because my arrow had not only connected with the deer but completely passed through. The blood was bright with a few bubbles on the vanes, which immediately confirmed that the sound I heard was indeed him going down. I went back to the base of the stand to wait the last 10 minutes to ensure that he expired and would not jump up during my tracking. As I stood there looking around trying to find anything to help pass the time I feel my phone go off as if someone was calling me, it was Cory. Cory called to check to make sure I didn’t need help and as to where I shot the deer. He and I have a pre-established agreement that he is my primary contact for help when hunting on public land near Honeoye. Basically, the phone call was really him more or less asking permission to come up and see the deer and help with the process.
After I got off the phone with Cory, I decided to begin the tracking process. I remembered seeing how he exited the clearing and began to retrace his steps keeping an eye out for blood. I started to find some blood on the ground, only droplets at first until he ran through some bushes which were covered a bit more. The interesting part of this track is that due to it being so dry, the blood actually reflected in my head lamp on the ground. Eventually I knew I was getting close to where he should be, I caught a glimpse of some white close to the ground in a very thick patch of brush which turned out to be a portion of a birch tree that had fallen down. I found some more of the tree to the right and I kept following it until my head lamp shined right on him. There he was, on the ground, completely expired, my first deer, my first buck, and my first successful archery kill. I was excited, overwhelmed, tired, speechless, happy, relieved, and thankful. I took a couple minutes to just say a few words to him, to pay my respects to the deer and let the moment just sink in because you only get one chance to experience a first big game kill.
The Takeaway
Looking back on that evening a couple things stick out to me that I wanted to attempt to put into words. I have always been the kind of person who understands responsibility and the gravity of what we do as hunters. Killing is not for everyone, and killing should not be something taken lightly. I made a great shot and the animal did not suffer for more than ten minutes, which is what every hunter aims to do every time they shoot an animal. Quick, clean kills are the reason why we practice so much with our bows and firearms, so that when we reach the moment of truth we can do our job as hunters and kill the animal quickly. I have been shooting a bow since february, often going out to shoot every single day for at least an hour, putting myself into various scenarios and truly getting to know my bow’s capabilities so that I have the utmost confidence for the moment of truth. The moment of truth for me was not completely a heart thumper, but a testimate to my hard work and development of a shooting process that kept me focused. What I did not expect was my reaction to hearing him fall down after the shot. I never saw myself as the guy who would wave my hands in the air with a couple fist pumps as if to finally release some tension and relief that I finally made a shot that I had only dreamed of. Not once did I feel a sense of regret or remorse similar to that when I was younger after shooting the red squirrel, which also was something I had not anticipated. I believe that this is a product of me finally harvesting meat that I have been dreaming about being able to eat and enjoy for over a year. I finally harvested food to feed not only myself but my family and friends, I finally became a provider. Success to me had nothing to do with the size of the antlers, but more so the acquiring of lean organic meat that I took responsibility of taking from the woods. I was present for how the animal died and the subsequent steps after it died. I didn’t even really get a chance to relax that night until the deer was in a walk in cooler at a deer processor at 10:45 that night. Shameless plug: Flatlander Farms in Kent, New York does a fantastic job butchering deer at a very reasonable price (look them up on the internet, I highly recommend them!).
This will be a memory that I will always cherish and use as an example for a number of reasons for the years to come. The best part of this memory is being able to share it with my dad and Cory. I’ve now made the right of passage, this will hopefully be the first of many more harvests to come. For the record, gives me an excuse to cook a lot more now which has been an absolute treat to do so far since getting the meat back! Good luck to all of you hunters out there, keep your freezers full.
585 Outdoors 