Family Fun

Most family’s that are close usually have something that brings them together, like game night or camping. My family has hunting. Every year my aunt and uncle along with their two kids drive from New York Mills to my grandparent’s house in Pengilly. Deer season is the time of year that brings us together. The way it works is early in the morning my two uncles, my two cousins, and my gramps and I all head out to position ourselves in this valley so that no matter which way they come through we can at least get a shot off.
My story though begins around one or two in the afternoon after the prime hours that the deer move on their own. On this day I was riding with my gramps in his two door diesel pickup. We had decided to drive along the creek to see if we could kick a few up. We had driven about two miles along the creek in one of our fields south of the house. To stay awake and stay warm we drink coffee or hot chocolate so we had to stop quickly to take care of business.
I had my back turned to a hill where the wind was coming from when off to my left I hear a yell followed by a bunch of shots from my gramps 30-06 and I had to finish as quickly as possible as I reached for my 30-30 rifle and turn to see a large buck running across the field and leap into a neighbors field. Luckily we also own the field on the other side of it and the field is next to it is a friend’s field. As fast as I have ever seen me and my grandfather move we were in the tuck and turned around in seconds and in hot pursuit.

To get ahead of the buck my gramps had to drive around the field as fast as possible to our field on the next hill. To outrun a deer you must move very fast and my grandfather decided that seventy miles an hour across a cornfield was the way to go. Naturally corn fields are not smooth. Looking ahead we didn’t see what was coming, a deep dip in the field that created the perfect ramp. My gramps one and a half ton pickup was at least five feet off the ground and it was the craziest thing I have ever done in my life and it was with my gramps.
Later on we found a hitch that weighs around thirty pounds about eighty yards from the dip that was originally in the back of the truck. Finally we reached the hill where the buck was headed, but we were too late. My uncle and cousin had spotted it and were taking shots at it while it ran away. My gramps and I hopped back in to go around the hill to get to it before it reached the creek again. As we took off we could see the enormous buck running in a zigzag motion. The only way I could describe it is that it looked like the Matrix.
You could see my uncles and cousin’s bullets hitting the dirt left and right of it, it was amazing, but as the enormous buck reached the top of the hill my cousin got lucky and hit it in is hind quarters. That slowed it down when my gramps and I caught up to it at the edge of the creek. I was sitting on the windowsill ready with my gun. I was only about twenty feet away when I fired but as soon as I fired the tire on my side in the front dropped into a coyote hole or something and my shot missed by a mile. Almost instantly after the buck was in the woods trying to lose us crossing the creek.
My uncle and cousin seemed to show up right as it went into the woods so they took off after me as I ran through the woods after the buck. We all stopped at the edge of the steep drop into the creek to see the buck climbing up the other side and before I could raise my rifle again a loud shot echoed through the trees and a gaping hole opened on the buck’s neck, my uncle had finished it. Once we could get across to the buck we found it was a ten pointer, and the biggest I had ever seen in person. This has become a yearly thing in my family and it brings us all together and makes us a team.
Without a family that works together for one goal we would never had even ever seen that buck again. Family makes things in life fun. No matter what you do in your life your family will always be there to help you out as we did each other that day. Most families just hunt alone but we like to make it a group effort to make it more fun. Plus if you are going to go hunting the best thing is to bring someone you can trust. “Sorry it got so long it was a real life thing and I couldn’t cram it all into a paragraph and this is all I could think of “