Despite the craziness of this world, I truly believe that if we all look really close it's not really hard to find many reasons to be thankful.
I had a really cool experience in the woods on Monday. I grabbed my bow, arrows and put on my new Scentblocker snow camo suit and started to walk into the wind. I was hoping to shoot a deer, but I was really enjoying the sheer beauty as I pushed through the fresh snow. When I started to feel a little warm, like I was going to start sweating, I sat down and in less than five minutes I had come back down to temperature and I would continue on my way. At one point I saw a patch of brown, and I did a triple take before moving again. I should have done a fourth take because as I started to move, the head of the doe popped up as she saw me move. She and another scampered off to the west and out of sight. As I continued along my way, I just looked around and thought how beautiful things were on this morning! The snow was still covering a lot of the trees and branches and the temperature was very comfortable. I was thankful, but not totally satisfied-story of a lot of our lives. I thanked God for the beauty and the awesomeness, but I then asked him for even a bit more awesomeness. Ask and you shall receive. And after a few more steps, there was that color-brown! So easy to pick up against the white. I had decided before stepping into the woods that I would take either a buck or a doe, so when I saw the brown and the size of the animal at about 50 yards I knew I was going to make an attempt to harvest it! If I would have went left or right, I would have lost track of the animal, and if I lost track of it I would have more than likely got busted! So rather than taking the easy route, I took the harder route but kept my eyes on the animal the whole time. It showed its head and I saw it was a big doe. We had a lot of brush and trees between us, so when she put her head down I would scoot a few yards at a time until I got to about 30 yards. She offered me up what looked to be a clean shooting lane, but I probably should have exhaled because when I put the pin on her I could see my pins moving up and down. I put the red pin on the vitals and touched off my release. I heard a tick and a thwap and I watched her do a little dance, not knowing if I had hit her or not. I waited about 10 minutes and slowly walked to the point of where she had been standing. No hair, no blood and no arrow. I looked and listened for a while and then I saw that fresh scrape of bark out of the tree where she had been standing. I must have deflected off a branch and then glanced off the bigger tree. I was able to look at the angle in which my arrow should have deflected and sure enough there was my arrow in the brush pile. Clean as can be, a clean miss. As I looked a little closer, there were three beds all in the same vicinity. Guess I wasn't supposed to take that deer on that day. Or, maybe I should have been more specific when I asked for more awesomeness.
OK, if you haven't already fallen asleep, you can now.
Whitetaildan
