My family has had a deer lease in San Marcos, Texas since I was about seven years old. I loved going deer hunting every winter with my step dad. I had been hunting for five years with my mom and my step dad, and I got to see many animals during this time. However I was too young to carry a gun into the stand, so I could not wait until I turned twelve, because then I could carry a rifle myself. The weekend after Thanksgiving the year I turned twelve was my first time to get to carry a rifle into the stand. I was still hunting with my step dad, but this time if we saw any deer it was my turn to take the shot. I will remember this day for the rest of my life.
We woke up before sunrise and I put on my camouflage coveralls, my hiking boots, and my thermal underwear, because it was a very cold morning. We went to the deer stand that we called the “sky stand”, because it was about fifty feet up in the air in an old oak tree. We sat very quietly and waited patiently all morning, but we did not see any deer. Then around noon we got out of the stand and went back to camp. Like most days in Texas, the afternoon was much warmer than the morning, so I took off most of my clothes and walked around in the woods for the rest of the afternoon.
Then around four we decided to go out hunting again, but this time we chose the stand we called the “green stand”. This stand was not known for producing a lot of deer, but we hunted it that day anyway. We waited all afternoon and did not see anything until about thirty minutes until dusk. Then we saw a doe and two yearlings come out of the woods to the feeder. Not too long after that we saw a buck come out of the woods to chase the doe. The buck finally settled down and he gave me a good shot. I took the shot and he quickly dropped to the ground. We waited in the stand for a little while to give the deer a chance to die completely, and then went down to gather my trophy. It was not a monster buck, but it was a solid eight pointer. He sits proudly on my wall to this day, and I will never forget the journey I took to kill my first deer.
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