The year was 1978 and I was 16 years old. I had been deer hunting since I was 12 but had never fired a shot at a deer. It was Nov 19th, a Sunday morning before church, and I went with my Winchester Model 94, 30-30 and open sights. I was hunting on the ground near some rubs I had found. I was hunting in some big sparsely planted pines with a ground covering of sage grass.

About 20 yards away, the land dropped off into some hardwoods. I was sitting with my gun in my lap facing in the direction of the hardwoods. I heard a deer walking/trotting and couldn't believe it when a head and neck popped up over the rise. I could instantly tell it was a buck. I had pulled the hammer back when I heard it walking, but left the gun in my lap with both hands on it.

Within an instant, I had my gun shouldered and pulled the trigger. At the blast of the gun, the deer dropped in its tracks from a 20 yard shot to the neck.

It was a beautiful 7 point buck with a 15 inch spread and good mass. I don't know how much the deer weighed but I was dragging it at a jogging pace for most of the way back to the truck.

I had parked at the edge of what used to be a watermelon patch. I decided to move the truck closer to the deer. I had the hardest time trying to get that deer into the back of the truck since I had worn myself out running with a buck in tow.

After I finally got it loaded, I realized that the truck was stuck in the middle of a muddy field. After many, many, back and forth runs, I finally made it out of the field. My father later told me I burnt the clutch out of his truck.

When I returned home and pulled in the driveway, my mom looked out of an upstairs window and could see into the back of my truck and she began screaming with joy. She was so happy for me. My dad thought something terrible had happened to me with all of the screaming.

I had put in so much time and effort into deer hunting that I began to wonder if it would ever happen. My father took me when I was younger, but after I began to drive, I was on my own. To say that day is etched into my memory is an understatement.

As a follow on to this story, my son killed his first deer with that same gun.