Deer hunting for some is about killing deer and getting the biggest buck they possibly can. For other people they don’t care what they get. As long as they have meat in the freezer, they are happy. For me, I am a bit of both: I try to wait for the big one but if it’s late in the season and it’s a yearling, I’ll shoot it.

To me hunting isn’t about getting a deer. It’s about getting away from the real world for a certain amount of time and hanging out with family members I hardly see, and if someone gets a deer, that’s just the cherry on top.

Where I hunt we have certain rules, and because the old people set the rules they are a bit old fashion. The house rules I have to follow are, eat what you are served, you have to help around in order to come, you can’t just come down to hunt without doing and helping out, no loaded guns inside the cabin, and no drinking in the deer stand.

I have been hunting since I was 10 years old. I have heard many stories from the older guys, some I can’t say and some I can, and some are about when deer do something very rare, and some are about the common things deer do. My second cousin shot a deer and when he and my dad were tracking it they had tons and tons of blood and when they got behind a tree it stopped, so what they did was look at each other, look down, then look up to see if it was in the tree. It obviously was not, but that is very common when hunting, a deer might bleed a lot then it suddenly just stop.

I hunt in a 20-foot deer stand. Being up 20-feet up, you would think deer wouldn’t spot you. However, I have been hunting in that stand for two years now and this past year a deer did indeed spot me.

Hunting from a high stand does have its positives. You can see more the higher you go compared to when you’re hunting on the ground because you can’t really see far, especially if there are trees down.

However, it does have its negatives. If you have branches in the way, it would be very hard to get something since I am so high up. Another negative thing that I notice is that the gun rests are different when you reach 18-foot. Instead of flat the whole way around the stand, the gun rests angle up a bit.

My dad and I are not big fans of that change, especially since we have a bunch of valleys and deer like to get close. All in all, though, the hunting trip creates family memories, whether or not it includes a deer at the end of the trip.