The Greatest Gift

By Scott Bestul

  “The boy understood little of his current world and nothing of the life ahead of him, but he knew this much; he would be a deer hunter for the rest of his days.” He was a skinny child, his bucked front teeth not yet straightened by the braces he wore. The boy was tall yet uncoordinated enough to “ride the pine” when his teams took the field or the court. He was too shy to flirt with girls yet too nervous to chat much with adults. When he took the time to think about things, his mind seemed to hover on the theme, “Where exactly do I fit in?”
He found the answer on a cold, snowy November day. The boy had wanted to be a deer hunter as long as he could remember. He’d listened to his father, uncles and cousins tell tales of bucks seen, shot at and tagged in the timber homesteaded by his great-grandfather many years ago. The boy had dreamed lots of dreams that had never come true, and all he could do was hope that somehow this would be different. So, he followed his dad into the pre-dawn woods after a sleepless night. The boy had no idea what it took to be a deer hunter, and the imagining of it had kept him awake. He couldn’t recall ever feeling so excited about something he knew almost nothing about. The sting of the cold on his cheeks and the squeak of snow under his boots seemed amplified, and though he knew dawn was not far away, the woods seemed black and forbidding. He was trailing his father so closely that when his dad stopped by a granite boulder, the boy nearly crashed into his back. “Sit here,” his father whispered, scraping snow off the flat-topped stone. “Face that direction and be as still as you can. I’ll come get you before too long. If you need to find me, follow my tracks in the snow.” The boy nodded. By the time he had placed a padded seat on the stone the forest had swallowed all sight and sound of his father. He was completely alone but somehow not scared. An owl hooted softly from some nearby pines, and a distant, too-early shot echoed through the woods — the only sounds he heard. He closed his eyes and soaked up the silence until the woods started to brighten. The small grove of pines in front of the rock butted against a block of hardwoods. Remembering his father’s words, he focused his gaze on that edge. The snow was disturbed there, and he thought it looked like deer tracks but was too afraid to walk over and look. The only things clear to him were that he had to sit as still as he could, and that if he shot at a deer, he was supposed to aim for the shoulder. So he sat. By the time the sun hit the treetops, he’d heard shooting all around him. The boy had not seen a deer and was convinced he was in the wrong spot. The coldness of the rock had soaked through his insulated seat, and his toes seemed numb. He could no longer resist the urge to crane his neck, swivel his shoulders and trace little circles on his gun stock with a finger. He saw his father’s tracks in the snow clearly, and they beckoned him to hop off the stone and follow. The only thing that stopped him was guilt. He was only 12 but already hated the shame of quitting, so he stared at his shotgun to distract himself. When he looked up, a doe was staring at him. Her body was obscured by a pine and she had appeared so suddenly and silently that she could have come from the sky. The doe bobbed her head and stomped her foot, and the boy’s heart sank. He was sure she was about to run, and it was his fault for fidgeting so much. But suddenly, she snapped her head to stare behind her, and when the boy followed her gaze, he saw a white rack weaving through the pines toward them. He didn’t remember shouldering the gun, but when the deer emerged from cover, the bead on his barrel was making jerky circles on the buck’s shoulder. There might have been a time when his heart beat faster and harder, but he couldn’t remember it. When he pulled the trigger nothing happened. Then he remembered the safety and clicked it off. By then, the buck was staring at him, but it was too late. When the boy shot, the buck’s knees buckled, and then he tried to walk, but his legs collapsed, and he collapsed on his side in the snow. Remembering his training, the boy clicked the safety back on and walked on numb feet to stand over the buck. Its rack was so perfect and white against the dark fur of the buck that the boy felt he must be dreaming. Then, his father appeared from behind him to bring him to a new reality. The boy understood little of his current world and nothing of the life ahead of him, but he knew this much; he would be a deer hunter the rest of his days. When his father shook his hand, it seemed like the first time he had felt part of something big, important and mysterious; a kind of fraternity that elected only a special few. 

The Magical Moments

The boy in that story is, of course, me. I have enough gray on my noggin that I’ve forgotten many days in my life, but that will never be one of them. It happened 45 seasons ago, and I remember details of that morning with stunning clarity. I recognize that shooting your first deer isn’t a seminal moment in everyone’s life, but it was in mine, shaping who I was, how I thought about things and, ultimately, where I lived and how I made my living. Like many deer hunters, I’ve tried to introduce other people to the activity that has meant so much to me. Interestingly, as I prepared to take others hunting for the first time, I realized that my opening-day story was not going to hook many of the youngsters and first-timers of today. Think about it: I was a clueless youngster sitting on a cold rock on a freezing morning, with no direct supervision beyond the warning to sit tight and be still. Try that with a child today, and he’d be calling his mom on his cell phone within minutes, saying his mentor had abandoned him to freeze to death. I might be exaggerating, but not by much. Back in the dark ages of my youth, you could give me or any of my buddies a sharp stick and a chunk of woods, and we’d entertain ourselves for hours. Today’s youngsters have more competition for their time, attention and souls. Whether this sea-change is good, bad or something different is moot. It is, as the old and irritating saying goes, what it is. We simply have to accept that the more we make hunting fun, exciting and rewarding, the better the chance we have of hooking a child for life. Here are a few thoughts on making that happen. 

Take Baby Steps 

Sometimes, getting a newbie into deer hunting is as simple as asking, “Hey, wanna go deer hunting?” That works with children that have some inkling of interest and experience in the outdoors. But if your charge is a child raised on concrete and skyrises, a gentler, more gradual introduction is probably in order. Remember, much of modern deer hunting involves a lot of sitting and waiting — something many children (and heck, most adults) don’t often practice. That makes stepping gradually into the outdoor world a logical choice. If a youngster barely knows the natural world, take him fishing first — or hunting mushrooms, picking berries, target shooting or even just a few nice hikes in the timber. Despite their seeming obsession with technology and everything uber-paced, most children still have an innate curiosity about and fascination for the natural world. This might seem like a lengthening of the process, but actually, most of us — me included — started “hunting” things a lot smaller than deer, and our obsession with all things outdoors started pretty simply. I was bare-handing frogs and toads with my boyhood buddies years before I ever thought about pulling the trigger on a deer. Family camping trips taught me the slower pace of the natural world. Fishing for bluegills with a worm and bobber was a high-action sport with lots of success, and hunting birds and small game served as a stepping stone to bigger stuff. In our haste to make a child a deer hunter, it’s easy to forget the ladder we all climbed to the world of whitetails. 

Set Up for Success 

When it is finally time to get a child on a deer, it’s wise to think about that first hunt pretty carefully. Most states now have special youth hunts; seasons set aside for the youngsters. In northern states, they usually occur before the general firearms season, when the weather is a little milder, and that’s a great thing. Children of my generation seemed to take numb hands and feet as par for the course, but given our choice, we’d still rather be comfy than cold. Why hold this generation to a different standard? It’s also wise to make a youngster’s first hunts as action-packed as possible. I’m willing to grind out hours in a stand where I might only see one special buck in a half-dozen sits, but I wouldn’t subject a newcomer to those hours of boredom. Instead, I’d opt for a comfortable blind on the edge of a food plot being visited by multiple deer. And although it’s hip to whine about our children and their fascination (OK, obsession) with phones, video games and electronic media I’m blissfully unaware of, I have zero problem with a youngster entertaining himself until deer show up. Just be sure to point out the little awesome sights that occur in even the slowest hunts. Finally (and most important in my book), be sensitive to the mood and interest level of your trainee. When they show signs of extreme boredom or come right out and say it’s time to quit, well, it’s time to quit. I remember taking my son, Bailey, on his first deer hunt. We played the waiting game at a couple of deerless spots that morning. When I sensed he was getting fidgety and restless, I asked if he’d like to take a little walk. Bailey’s eyes lit up a bit, so I led a little nature walk down a scenic logging road. We laughed at chattering squirrels, whacked puffballs with a walking stick, and I pointed out the rubs and scrapes made by the bucks we weren’t seeing. Months later, I read an essay Bailey wrote for a school assignment about an adventurous walk he took with his dad one day. His description of that simple walk brought tears to my eyes, and I remain grateful that I didn’t force him to sit to the point of boredom, waiting for the appearance of some dumb deer. 

Think Outside the Box 

Most of the attention given to hunter recruitment focuses on youngsters, but there’s a demographic out there ripe for our picking: adults who have never hunted before. Survey after survey proves that most non-hunting Americans approve of hunting if meat (not antlers) is the main focus. And with the growing foodie movement, more adults recognize that hunting is an excellent way of procuring pure, healthy meat. What source of protein, I wonder, is more free-range than a whitetail deer? Some states have recognized this untapped potential and are committed to recruiting adult newcomers. Wisconsin, for example, offers steep discounts (even to nonresidents) for first-time deer license buyers, as well as Learn to Hunt programs that pair experienced mentors with rookie adults interested in experiencing their first whitetail season. Although several other states have recognized the importance of harvesting this low-hanging fruit, more need to join the program. Individually, we should be on the alert for any adult friends or family members who show even the slightest interest in hunting. Years ago, I painted houses for a living and my boss — several years my senior — always listened intently when I or another painter told a hunting tale. Noting his interest, I asked George why he’d never taken up our sport. “Well I just wasn’t raised in a hunting family, and none of the guys I knew that hunted ever asked me to go.” And what did I do? Following the performance of every other hunter George had known, I never took the time to teach him something he was clearly interested in. Shame on me. Whenever I doubt the potential of this often-untapped crop of new hunters, I simply think of my sister. Jo, raised in an obviously hunting household, was a borderline anti-hunter for much of her life. I vividly remember her scorning me for “catching pretty animals, grinding them up, and eating them” throughout my teenage years. Jo mellowed a bit as she grew up, but then an outright miracle happened: She married a guy who not only hunted deer, ducks and turkeys but happily ate them. Now Jo is one of us, hunting at every season and asking me for new venison recipes now and then. Every time I think of her dropping a hammer on a buck or gobbler, I think, “How many more like her are out there, and we just haven’t reached them yet?” 

Conclusion 

As the old saying reminds us, “You can only kill your first deer once.” But it’s easy, in these days of relative whitetail abundance, to forget the truth of that saying, to diminish its importance. The shooting of that first whitetail — whether it’s an antlered buck or the smallest fawn on a property — cannot only change an individual life but also keep our time-honored traditions alive. We should go out of our way, individually and as a brotherhood, to make it happen as often as we can and celebrate heartily whenever it occurs.