It was a cold day, and we were up at 4am to go out to the hunting property. We met up with dad’s friend Jimmy at the Dunkin Donuts before heading there.

We all climbed out of the trucks and began walking towards our tree stands. I was only 6 or 7 at the time, and I was given a little pellet gun to hold and pretend I was hunting with my dad. He set me up underneath a stand with a bucket to sit on while we waited for day light.

At some point or another, I clicked the safety off of the pellet gun and pulled the trigger. I’m sure my dad was standing in the stand knowing full well that it went off and that he needed to pump it back up. He climbed down and re-pumped the gun, and climbed back up and had me sit on the edge of the stand while we waited for the deer. In the distance, I could hear the sounds a hot air balloon turning on and off before I finally saw it.

At one point or another a doe walked by us and didn’t really care about what we were doing.

We started to head back and saw the barn that wasn’t too far away from the trucks, before we heard a loud boom and saw another one of my father’s friends Steve walking out into the field. He decided to take out a fox with a large bore gun, and basically only the tail was left. Dad and Jimmy had a good laugh about it before my dad and I walked around to check something out for him. As we were coming back again, I looked to my right and there was a dead deer head. The rest of the body was skinned but the antlers were there.

While my dad took a saw out to get the antlers for me, Jimmy had me pose with a set of antlers that he had taken from a big buck he had shot. That photo is circulating somewhere at my mom’s house.