All my life I’ve been kind of a loner, someone who would rather be in the woods over being anywhere else. That is probably because I have the best dad a kid like me could ask for, he taught me almost everything about hunting and the outdoors. My father would take me out in the hunting blind when I was still in the crib. Now, I am a very serious hunter and have the trophy mounts to show for it.

My first hunt, wondering out to our two man tree stand, my dad and I. I already had begun to feel the rush of buck fever. Making the climb up the tree stand in the pitch black and splashing down on the seat. As the sun began to climb up the sky activity started to begin. The woods sounded like hundreds of Apache Indians screaming through the forest, then out of nowhere, an eleven point non typical buck ran out of the swamp 20 yards in front of me. I started to draw back my bow, all of a sudden he looked at me, I paused with my dad murmuring in my ear.
“Don't move.”

The buck looked back down and I aimed directly for the heart, let it go and BOOM, got him. About an hour later we tracked this beast and when we found him I was so excited, my first buck and knew there was many more to come in my future, and sure I was. My dad’s famous quote that I hear every year is, “You better not shoot anything smaller than what you have on the wall.” This quote has made me a better hunter because I more than likely would have shot much smaller bucks, I probably wouldn’t have any trophy bucks on the wall to brag about. If you shoot the smaller bucks their will not be a reproduction process resulting in less deer and less big, old bucks.

I know that the first day of bow season is always October 1st, so I’ve been getting ready for over four months. I walk the swamps, basically turn into a deer trying to figure out their ways and patterns of everyday life. Hunting has had one of the biggest effects on me, it keeps me out of trouble and I am able to have all my desired alone time, also a huge part of my life.

Hunting is the most important thing in my life because when I am sitting out in the tree stand, listening to all the creatures that don’t have a care in the world I feel at home, like I belong in the woods isolated from the outermost world. I need my time away from everyone to recuperate, re-energize my mind. I am obviously not a people person and never plan on that changing, hunting is my get away and it makes me want to focus on how much value I have to my life.