During the muzzle-loading season of 2004, I killed my first deer at my family’s farm in Middle Tennessee. While I’d been hunting deer for about four years, I’d never yet connected and felt like a rookie. I was hunting with my father on the last day of the week-long season. We left to go into the woods at about 5:45 that morning and made our way heading to the end of a field where a stand was hung in the small grove of trees. The stand faced a wide creek, with a cleared alley along the length of the grove, between the trees and the creek. At about 6:40, I took out a pair of antlers and began rattling, then set them down and waited. I didn’t have to wait long. Within five minutes, I heard a step on my left and looked down. A deer had crossed the open field behind my back and slipped through the grove. Now, it stood 30 yards to my left at the edge of the alley, its head down and obscured by several branches. Adrenaline started to pump, and I could hardly breathe. Then it raised its head, and the branches moved. It was a buck! I couldn’t tell exactly how many points there were but having a rack was good enough for me. I reached for the .50 flintlock longrifle my father had given me for Christmas, which was laid across my knees, and pulled back the hammer with a faint click. That noise startled the buck, and he looked up, turned away, and loped off. I’d blown my chance at a great first deer in the form of a nice buck. Thankfully he stopped after only 10 yards, turned back and looked around. He gave me a great quartering away shot, at about 40-50 yards. Adrenaline was pumping, blood was pounding in my ears, and time came to a dead stop. Here, all my practice from a lifetime of shooting took over. As I lined the sights of the longrifle just behind his right shoulder, all of the adrenaline and nervousness was gone. What was left was automatic. I took a breath, let a little out, and squeezed the trigger. I’d kept my priming dry and my flint sharp. The lock flashed, immediately followed in a tenth of a second by the main charge, and I absorbed the recoil back into my shoulder. Then I heard that deer tear through the brush, splash across the creek, and climb up the bank on the other side. I couldn’t see a thing through the thick smoke, but I was sure I’d missed. He’d still gotten away. 50 yards, nearly broadside, and I’d missed. I don’t know what I had expected to happen when I fired, and I knew that deer usually run when hit, but I still wasn’t actually prepared for it to happen. The next thought was that I needed to make sure. The adrenaline had come back with the firing of the shot, and now my inexperience showed. Moving down the ladder seemed to take forever. I ran over to where he had been standing and looked closely, and saw nothing. My heart sank. I took a deep breath and began to reload. My hands were shaking as I fumbled for the powder measure, fumbled for patch and ball, fumbled with the ramrod. I finally got the new charge loaded and primed the pan. Looking carefully, I saw where he charged through the brush and judged where he would have come up on the other side of the bank. I ran to a crossing at the creek about 50 yards from where he was standing when I fired. I didn’t bother looking in the creek or the near side because I heard him exit on the other bank. I planned to circle and start from where he would have topped out off of the bank. I crossed the creek, ran up around a trail and had to backtrack about 50 yards back through an overgrown clearing to get to where I needed to start. As I picked through the grass, I saw Dad walking my direction from where he had been stationed overlooking the other end of the field. And then I looked down. Not 10 yards past the top of the bank, laying on his side was the buck. I hadn’t missed! He had just enough energy and life to cross the creek and climb the steep bank, but that was it. There really are not words to accurately describe the feeling that passed over me as I knelt next to him - overwhelming joy that I had finally done what I set out to for the past four years; sadness that it required the death of a magnificent creature. Those who haven’t ever hunted or killed something probably won’t understand what it means to me. It was the solidifying of my beliefs that God has given this earth and its natural resources to us, not only to use, but to care for, and perhaps more importantly to be uplifted by and to remind us of His wondrous skill and love. It shows me that if I am to continue to live on the earth, I must do my part to properly use and conserve nature, and participate wisely in its cycles. Dad and I stood quietly over that deer for a moment. Then he hugged me and I saw a lot of pride in his eyes. The buck had eight points. His mount now hangs in the gun-room at the cabin to remind me of that morning. This first deer will always be of the most special, no matter how many more I kill. The hunt where I took a nice buck with the rifle my father gave me, while hunting together with him is one of my favorite memories of my life.