Your first deer? · TradBowhunter-Ethical Predator

Grant Richardson

🔥

Oct 19 • General discussion

Your first deer?

My first deer- I was 16 years old, taken after two years of hunting hard, misses and mistakes made.

Back then I hunted off the ground as I still do today almost exclusively.

I would find a spot to sit and stay still for hours.

Nothing fancy just find a good spot and sit with my recurve and wait.

Share your first deer! 🦌 tell us a bit about the process and experience.

Below is an excerpt from the end of Chapter 4 “Connecting to the Hunter” from my first book - The Code Of Traditional Archery talking about the end of that very evening.

It dawned on me that I should get my father to share this experience. It was close to dark when we returned together to the fallen buck. We sat for several minutes in silence. After saying a word of thanks and dressing the deer, we began the drag out of the woods. My father and I spoke few words that night on the drag out. I insisted on doing all the work while my father accompanied me through the tangled fortress of brush and trees surrounding the opening where I had killed the buck.

After a three-kilometre slog, which seemed to take hours, we finally arrived at the fence line and loaded the buck into the back of his pickup.

Catching my breath, I looked up at the shining stars. The wind had picked up a bit, and in the ambient light, I could see lines on my father's face that I hadn't noticed before. It was a moment of reflection that I will never forget. Something changed in me that day. After following him for years in the woods and waterways of my youth, something new had broken through; I was now walking beside, not behind, him. I had reached a new connection with my father to our ancestors. I now realize that in this connection of living and pursuing to hunt to live, I felt the resilience and self-reliance that has guided our species' survival over the time we have walked this earth.

29 comments