The Day Long Ago

The first day of hunting for a lot of kids is one of the most memorable days of their lives. I remember mine as clear as anything. It was a very cold and windy morning with a great amount of snowfall that fell during the night. I got up and got dressed. My Dad made something to eat for breakfast and put on the coffee for the both of us. For some reason I liked to drink coffee when I was that young. But after we ate we got the rest of our stuff ready and headed out. As soon as you walked out the wind was so cold that it just made you cringe. We have about ninety acres of land where we hunt below our house and have a pole stand up there. We went up in it and got everything situated to our liking. It was still pitch black when we started watching for the day. Eventually as the time went on the light started to appear through the trees and the birds would start chirping and you would hear the woods start to come alive. When the turkeys came out of their roost and I saw them flying over head I thought it was awesome. During the late morning hours we saw a few doe mosey through the woods past our stand. My first priority was to shoot a buck though. At about eleven o' clock that morning I noticed something moving in the woods but I couldn't make out what it was. I showed my dad and he told me to keep and eye on it and wait for it to come out on the power line to see what it was for sure. My eyes lit up when it finally came out in the open. It was a buck. I scoped it and told my dad that it looked like a six point. He asked me where I thought I should hold the scope on it because he wanted me to learn how to judge distance. I told him right on and he said ok go ahead and shoot. I shot and the buck took off up into the woods. I don't ever remember in my life shaking that much. I couldn't control anything I was so excited. We waited for about a half an hour before we went to track it. My dad found first blood and let me follow the trail from there. About sixty yards from the original start I saw my buck laying there. At that point in my life I couldn't have been happier. To this day I still don't recall anything sticking in my memory like that first day of hunting for me.