My Deer Hunting Adventure
Written by Ryan Patnoe (April, 2008)

       I was nervous, cold, and scared. I hadn't done well at this so far. I didn’t know what was going to happen.

My uncle Steve picked me up from my grandma’s house on Saturday, December 8. We drove up to Elm Lake to his cabin. We threw sparkly red and blue darts. At eleven o’ clock we dozed off to sleep.

On December 9 we woke up and the sky was black as death on the first morning of our hunt. My uncle and I dressed head to toe in camouflage except for our hats, they were bright orange.  We took off with our rifles in a white mud-splattered pick-up to a great hunting area. We were hunting on a peninsula through the center of Elm Lake. When we got there, all was quiet. There was about two feet of snow on the ground. Evergreen trees surrounded us. The trees had a hint of light snow on them. We didn’t want to scare the deer away so we parked two miles from our stand. We trudged all the way to our stand. I was sweating by the time we got there. My uncle’s mustache was icy from his warm breath. The deer must have been trying to stay warm in the cover of the evergreen trees because the temperature was about 20 degrees below zero (wind chill). They weren’t moving around very much. We decided to leave because we were getting cold and we were getting bored out of our minds.

My uncle and I trudged back to his truck and went back to his cabin. He made sunny-side up eggs, crisp bacon, and golden-brown toast. My uncle Steve and I drove off again to our great location. While we were eating we planned to go about ½ a mile north and set up a hay-bail blind. The hay-bail blind was in a picked cornfield. As we were waiting for the deer, about six pheasants strutted up to our stand. They were about six feet away! We could see the shiny red, green, and orange colors of the pheasants. After a while the deer started moving. There were about six of them about 200 yards away. Then a buck started toward us, but I couldn’t shoot it because I only had a doe tag. Then, two does pranced to about 50 yards away from us. We could see their icy breath. My uncle thought it wasn’t very big so he made me wait. Then after a while about ten deer walked out from the trees to about 200 yards away from me. Daylight was running out so I decided to shoot at one of the two that were about 50 yards away I rested my gun on the weak fabric of the blind. I took one long last breath, held it, and took my aim. I squeezed the trigger really slowly. I didn’t know when the gun would go off. All of a sudden, BANG! The gun went off and the deer fell over with a flop. We thought it was small, but when we went up to it the deer was huge. Its hide was very thick and a brownish-gray. We dumped the doe into the truck and drove home. That’s what happened during my deer hunting adventure.