The Author after getting her second chance. Photo by Tyler Johnerson
Being fairly green when it comes to big game hunting, I figured my work was cut out for me when I decided to hunt the intelligent whitetail. During archery season, I managed to harvest a beautiful doe but did not have enough experience to seal the deal on a buck.
On November 3rd, luck was in my favor. My husband Tyler and I started off to find a vantage point where we could set up and patiently wait to see if a nice buck would show up. Not long into our hike, we spotted a nice buck about 600 yards away. We decided almost immediately to go after him. We hurried to close the distance between us and the deer. Just as I laid the gun over the Crew Cab backpack and clicked my safety off, the big fella fed behind some trees. I could see he was bedding down through a small opening in the timber. While the deer was chewing his cud and falling asleep, Tyler and I plotted my next move.
Ninety minutes later, I decided to take the difficult shot through the trees because I did not think he would move until well after dark. I clicked the safety off, carefully took aim at the bedded buck, and then missed completely! The deer stood up in confusion not knowing where the bullet had come from.
The sky was only getting darker and I only had about 15 minutes left of shooting time. About then I began praying for another opportunity. I think most anyone would agree with me, big whitetail bucks normally won’t give you a second chance.
Five long minutes went by and the deer suddenly showed himself. He started scraping his huge rack on a tree about 225 yards away. I heard a doe hiss and knew it would only be seconds before the buck took off. He was facing directly towards me, eagerly looking around. I settled the crosshairs on his chest and slowly pulled the trigger. He dropped like a ton of bricks! Today was my lucky day! What a beautiful animal and such a prize for my 3rd buck!
Check out more of Marci and her husband Tyler Johnerson’s Adventures at www.huntsoloventures.com
Posted February 6, 2009 at 11:24 pm | Permalink
You should have shot him with a camera instead… At least that way he would still have been alive and you would have gotten to enjoy the experience without ending a life.
Hunting is a disgusting, barbaric “sport” and you should be ashamed of yourself for murdering such a majestic animal.
You have no right to be proud of this…
You’re a monster, as are all hunters.
Posted February 15, 2009 at 11:56 am | Permalink
To: No friend of yours, ….so what you are saying is that you would rather see these “majestic animals” overpopulate and outgrow their environment and THEN suffer a slow and agonizing death of starvation?
Posted February 15, 2009 at 1:36 pm | Permalink
Re: No friend of yours–While pictures are nice, they do nothing to combat the cruel reality of overpopulation and starvation.
Hunting can be barbaric when an untrained and lazy person takes multiple shots at an animal, leaving it wounded far before dropping it. This is clearly not the case with the vast majority of hunters. There is nothing barbaric about a mindful hunter, especially when you take an animal down in one shot.
Hunting has been a staple of life since the beginning of time. Even Native Americans engage in hunting, and their rituals and practices are designed to bring them closer to mother earth and respect and embody nature. When a gray wolf or cougar stalks and kills a deer for food, people like you accept the notion of hunting, yet when a human is brought into the picture, it becomes a “disgusting, barbaric ‘sport,’” as you put it.
You may argue that animals are raised to be slaughtered in a slaughterhouse, thus eliminating the need to hunt. If this is your position, you are avoiding the whole issue of killing an animal and merely making a distinction between domestic and wild animals.
If you argue that we should not be eating animals at all, you are denying the natural state of the human being: we are omnivores by design.
Without any control, animals populate. Natural predators are not enough to keep the population down. When overpopulation occurs, large groups begin to die due to disease or starvation.
The population multiplies and there is increasingly less food for them. Without the help of hunters, these animals would be foraging for food in urban areas. This brings the problem of them looking for food near highways and interstates, where they cause sometimes fatal accidents. Even if they don’t cause accidents, they are searching for food that is not there. The animals slowly start starving to death. If you have never read about the starvation of an animal, it goes as follows: the animals search endlessly for food until they are too weak to go on. They bed down, knowing that death is imminent. In the last day or more, they are gasping for breath, as their lungs can no longer function. They lay there, not being able to breathe until life slips from their body. All I can say about this process is thank God I have never had to witness it. Putting it down in words is a little too much for me, a “barbaric” hunter.
Fish and game acts prevent hunting from being anything but productive and mindful of the species hunted. If the preceding two ideas are less barbaric ways of keeping the population controlled than hunting the animals, then there is nothing more I can say.
Posted February 15, 2009 at 8:37 pm | Permalink
Well said J. Dickey! My husband and I are hunters and we both agree that if it is done correctly and for the right reasons, there is nothing wrong with it. Way to go Marci on your amazing hunting season! We support you.
Posted February 16, 2009 at 12:37 am | Permalink
First off, Congrats Marci! I am very proud of you! To the guy who stats that hunting is barbaric, hunting is a way of life, a way to feed yourself and your family. There is nothing wrong with hunting, it if done correctly, its the circle of life. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and own ways of life. If you have nothing to say then you shouldnt say nothing at all. By sitting there and writing rude and obsurd comments you could have gone out and taken some fantastic pictures and maybe even sent them to PETA.
Posted February 16, 2009 at 5:16 pm | Permalink
First of all hunting is a sport, and just like any other sport there is always a loser. Sometimes it’s the hunter and sometimes its the animal. I do not hunt but honestly don’t think I have the right to criticize someone who does. I eat meat and I’m sure you do as well. I give Marci tons of props because there is no way I could do what she does, but knows that it needs to be done. So unless you have something good to say about someone’s accomplishment then don’t say anything at all!!
Posted February 16, 2009 at 10:47 pm | Permalink
What an impressive buck!! I hope that he was tasty on the table and a toad on the wall… and like old Hank would say…. I would like to spit some Beach Nut in that dudes eye……….. cause country folk can survive.
Posted February 18, 2009 at 9:49 am | Permalink
This is so frustrating, the uneducated, typical, black and white view of someone who has never been hunting and simply believes that all we do is kill is so predictable. I wish just once that one of these people such as “no friend of yours” had a valid point; something other than “You are a monster, all you hunters.”
What is more barbaric? The hunter who devotes time, energy, and most of all money to the animal that he hopes to harvest-
-most anti’s fail to realize that the amount of money hunters and outdoorsman put back into the resource for things such as habitat restoration, studies, and other projects is enormous, no other single entity in the entire US supports wildlife and wildlife related projects the way that the “monsters” do, look it up if you don’t believe me.-
-Or the hundreds of thousands of people that want to ‘live the country life’ and build their massive homes in Mule Deer winter range and force these animals into areas where the crucial winter forage simply isn’t available making them much more susceptable to a slow and agonizing death or a quick violent one involving those country folks BMWs. What about the wonderful people in the great state of California who decided that its not a good idea to hunt Mtn. Lions? Instead its much more humane to let them populate to unheard of numbers and then slowly but surely build houses on top of them, this inevitably leads to -
lots of lions + lots of people + no habitat = hungry lions with plenty of available food (people)
-the eating of these Californians doesn’t bother me, at all. Its the fact that since those lions are all of a sudden a threat to the dummy (no friend of yours) going for a jog in the heart of lion country, which has always been lion country, then its ok to kill that horrible cat.
If you ask me, and most educated people for that matter, the latter 2 of the 3 are much more barbaric and idiotic. Some anti’s will make the point, “well hunting wasn’t bad when people were doing it to survive but that isn’t necassary anymore,” and I will agree with that, its not necassary for OUR survival, but for those species that we hunt, it is absolutely crucial to their continued survival in this ever changing landscape.
Sorry this rambled on, having a rough morning.
Posted February 21, 2009 at 8:35 am | Permalink
I’M VERY PROUD OF MY DAUGHTER MARCI AND SON IN LAW TYLER. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH HUNTING. IT’S A WAY TO FEED YOUR FAMILY AND THEY ARE DOING SOMETHING WITH THEIR LIFE, THE PERSON THAT WROTE THAT NASTY COMMENT MUST HAVE FOOD STAMPS BUYING THE MEAT FROM STORES. DO YOU KNOW HOW THE MEAT GOT THERE? YES, IT WAS ALSO KILLED. HOW ABOUT ALL THE HAMBURGERS YOU EAT, THAT IS WORSE FOR THE BODY THEN WHAT MY KIDS ARE DOING. BACK OFF MOMMY IS HERE.