I went deer hunting again this year on my family’s farm in Missouri. My wife and I only need one deer, so I planned to get two, and give one to my Missouri family. The season started on Saturday the 16th but I was preaching in my church on Sunday morning so I couldn’t go opening day. I waited until after church and drove to the farm, arriving Sunday night. I got everything set out for the next morning and went to bed, alarm set for 5:30am.
I woke up at 5 on Monday, looked at the clock, and went back to sleep. Then I woke up and it was 5:15. I gave up and got out of bed, got dressed and “kitted out” (as my Scottish ancestors would say), and carried my new chair and deer blind out into the forest. Sunrise was at 7:11 so it was still pitch black when I got there.
The new blind was difficult to set up, but I got it done, and then got inside to wait for light and legal hunting hours. Unfortunately all I saw by 10am was some unidentified woodland creature the size of a skunk or groundhog that waddled away from my blind on all fours, and several turkeys about 200 feet away. And rain. It rained pretty constantly, making me google “Do deer move when it’s raining” and the answer was “only if the rain is light.” I looked at the radar at 10am and saw there was a brief time of no rain, and then it was going to dump down. Given the fact that my blind was already leaking like a sieve, I elected to just break everything down and go back to the house to wait out the rain.
I went back out at 4pm and sat in my sister’s blind (she wasn’t there) waiting for sunset in the hopes I would see something. I saw one young doe and decided I would not take her as I didn’t want to do all the “after-shot” work in the dark, I wanted to save my first tag for a buck, and she was kind of small. I went back to the house after watching her walk around the clearing for 20 minutes. I decided these blinds were a bust since they both leaked (among other issues). The neighbor has a hard-sided, elevated blind set up on the farm, and he said we could use it, so I decided to try it on Tuesday.
Tuesday I woke up at 5:45 when my alarm went off, and I walked out to the blind in the meadow, and waited. Sun came up at 7:12am, and at 7:30 a doe walked out right in front of the blind from my left. She was only 10 feet away from me but walking straight away from me, completely unconcerned. I planned to shoot her when she turned broadside (I don’t want the deer to suffer), but then I saw two young deer (adolescents) follow after her. One of them was jumping around and being “derpy” (as my sister said). Just a real goofball. And I thought, “I know I told someone that I was going to get Bambi’s mom, but I can’t shoot her right in front of her kids.” So I watched as she and her children walked through the meadow from south to north, and disappeared into the forest.
20 minutes later I glanced up to see a buck at the far end of the meadow 70 yards away. I sighted him with my scope but couldn’t see clearly enough to count the points from the way he was standing. After about 30 seconds standing there, he finally moved his head, and I could see that he had at least four tines on one side (legal requirement for Missouri), so I shot him. He fell down, and clearly hadn’t died, so I shot at him again, but probably missed. I climbed down out of the back of the blind and rounded the corner, only to see a buck standing at the end of the meadow. The buck was acting funny and I assumed it was the same deer. I dropped to a kneeling position and fired. He ran off to the right (East) into the forest. I walked the length of the meadow, and as I got close to the north end, I saw the FIRST buck lying down. Uh oh. I had shot two bucks. In Missouri your first tag is good for “any deer,” but any deer you shoot after that first one MUST be “antlerless.”
I made sure the first one was dead, and went to check on the second. He was about 20 feet inside the forest and also dead. I walked back to the house, dropped off my gun, and alerted my family so they could come with the lawn tractor and cart to save me from dragging these deer 450 yards back to the house. I field-dressed both deer and came back to the house where the deer were waiting. I took a shower, and then we discussed what to do. At first I thought about just not reporting the second deer, but then I remembered that two days earlier I had preached that I would obey the government by “using the correct gun, only shooting animals I have paid for the license… and only shooting at certain times.” I knew the only thing I could honestly do was call the Department of Conservation and report the mistake.
I was kind of hoping the person they sent would be wearing overalls. You know, a “good-ole-boy” who would wink and say, “Just don’t let it happen again.” But when the officer arrived, he was very professional, looked almost like a police officer, and looked like he meant business. He had creases in his uniform pants. He listened to my story and said, “You turned yourself in, which goes a long way with me.” He gave me a verbal warning to be more careful, and took the second deer to give to a poor family in town who needed the meat. He could have written me a ticket, or even arrested me and confiscated my gun, but he didn’t.
We hung up the other buck for processing and went inside. I ate lunch and then came outside, processed the deer until it was all in the cooler, and then I got dressed again for hunting and went back out to the blind. A half hour later I shot a button buck and by the time the sun went down, the edible parts of him were in the fridge. My hunt was officially over.
Integrity is important to me, and being able to stand by my choices as ethical ones means a lot. As a result of my hunting, a poor family gets to eat, and I still got to feed my family. Because of the grace and forgiveness of the officer, I can continue to hunt there next year. And because of my willingness to submit to consequences for my actions, I can stand in front of my church family and my God unashamed for how I handled the situation.
Words of Truth 