camping tent, hiking gear


    My memories of deer hunting in the Siskiyou mountains in Northern California as a kid, still bring a smile to my face after forty-five years. I shot my first deer in those mountains when I was eleven. I was scanning the hillside with my fathers hunting binoculars when I saw him. A beautiful eight-point buck chasing some does around and fighting off his rivalries, he was beautiful. My father was up ahead of me a ways and I could not yell at him to check the deer out, so I laid down on my belly and put the cross hairs of my rifle scope on his heart. I remembered to slow my breathing and squeeze the trigger, not pull it. My fathers voice was in my head the whole time, guiding me as he did through those hours and hours of practice, gun safety and tracking.


     By the time we had reached camp, I was exhausted. The only thing I wanted to do was crawl inside my camping tent, take off my hiking gear and sleep for a week. After I shot the buck he went down into a ravine. We had to hike across the little valley, locate the deer, dress it and clean it, then hike all of the meat back to camp, aaaggghhh! That was the hardest and most rewarding thing I had done so far in the short little time I was alive, and I will never forget my fathers face when he came running up after the shot, priceless.