Catching My Breath
By: Steve Flores
Staring up at the early morning stars I felt the cold November air dance across my forehead as I struggled to draw in another breath. With burning legs, complements of the vertical terrain behind me, I reasoned that my destination was almost in reach. My light suddenly illuminated the forest floor, reminding my body that it was time to press on. 100 yards later I gladly ascended my tree and settled into my stand for the morning hunt.
As I sat watching the yellow sun pierce it’s way through the gray fall clouds, I anxiously pondered what the day might hold for me. My hopes were that the feathery breeze might carry the pungent odor of the hot doe gel I left behind straight to a big buck just out of sight. One hour later, “Curious George” had unsuspectingly arrived. As I turned toward the direction of the innocent sound my eyes were immediately filled with antlers. Big antlers. I could only see the bucks headgear as he made his way toward my elevated position. Preoccupied with sucking in the sweet smell of love, the bruiser had no idea what was about to go down. Then it happened. The buck stopped, turned abruptly, and proceeded to exit stage left. My mind hastily began the daunting task of figuring out how to bring him back. I hit my doe bleat and the heavy horned 10 point stopped and turned in the direction of the sound, seemingly searching for his date.
But as wise bucks often do, the brute decided to rely on his nose to confirm his suspicions. He began to circle to the down wind side of my stand and I quickly realized that my entire plot was coming unraveled. Not finding the hot doe that he knew was certainly awaiting his arrival, the wise old buck came to the assumption that something just wasn’t right. My heart sank as the distance between us grew larger than a Texas cattle ranch. In a matter of moments he was merely a memory in the back of my knotted mind. I missed him already.
After replaying the events in my head a thousand times, I realized that there was still plenty of unwritten pages to this hunt. I quickly refocused my attention to the task at hand-filling those pages.
Watching the same trail that the “heart breaker” had used, I began to hear a faint noise on another trail to my right. The stirring of the dry fall leaves reminded me of potato chips rustling in a bag. I began searching for the source of the noise.
Ground Squirrels have given me more restless moments in a tree stand than any two of God’s animals combined. I did not even reach for my bow string as the crunching sounds grew closer and closer. I kept thinking, “They won’t fool me this time, I am smarter than that!” However, I began to cast doubt on my I.Q. Level as I dreadfully realized that this tiny creature was carrying a rather hefty set of antlers. Since I wasn’t in Wyoming, I concluded that this couldn’t be a distant cousin to the legendary Jackalope. It was a living, breathing whitetail deer.
Like fog rolling across a mirrored lake, suddenly he was there. Just a few more vital steps and he would be emerged in the center of my shooting lane. As I cautiously hooked my release to my bow string, the 8 pointer continued on his existing course. My heart began pulsating in my ears and I reasoned that he unquestionably would hear it. I could feel the tension building on the string as the buck covered the last few yards to my shooting lane.
Effortlessly, the string came back and the cams rolled over as the adrenaline began surging through my every vein. With a dumbfounded eye, I gazed through the peep sight toward my unsuspecting quarry. A nauseous feeling came over me when I realized I had forgotten one important item. The 2 inch sapling running horizontally across his vitals would thwart any chance my carbon arrow might have of finding it’s mark.
I quickly shut everything down and labored to slowly ease my bow string back to it’s original resting place. These are the moments that harbor lost opportunities. Moments when a trivial decision is magnified to the nth degree. You either drive it home, or you get stuffed on the 1 yard line. I wanted to drive it home. Praying that the deer God‘s were smiling on me, I recklessly hauled the bow string back to anchor. I began to slowly bend at the knee’s in an attempt to get under the uncut branch that was sandwiched between me and the feeding buck.
I could feel the heaviness building in my back again. I watched as my fiery green, fiber optic pin floated around a single brown hair on the buck’s chest. Abruptly I felt the load of the world fall off my shoulders as my finger collapsed the trigger on my release. Then everything changed. Time began to decelerate. It was like a scene from “The Matrix”. My razor tipped missile seemed to pull itself through the cool autumn atmosphere. The spiral rotation of the fletching resembled a giant, multicolored windmill as it vanished into the dark brown hide of the bucks chest.
The timber was shaken with a resounding “thud”. Suddenly time accelerated again as the beast bolted from his motionless stance. Stopping almost as quickly as he had begun, the buck now stood on troubled legs. When he finally hit the leaf choked ground some 20 yards away, the emotional dam swelling up inside of me ruptured. I was left shuddering in my own skin as the final pages of this hunt had been written.
Standing there over my trophy I came to one conclusion. This day, it seemed, had ended the same way that it had begun. With trembling hands I knelt down to grasp his brown and chocolate rack, struggling to draw in another breath.