Missouri Outdoors: A Young Man's Story of What Deer Hunting Means to Him

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

A Young Man's Story of What Deer Hunting Means to Him

By David Mann

Peck Ranch Conservation Area-Stegall Mountain...the scene
of this story.

It all started almost exactly a decade ago, when my father decided that Daniel, my older brother, (who was then eleven or twelve years old) was ready to go on his first deer hunt. We had moved to Missouri from Northwestern Colorado just a few years before, and I know my father yearned in his heart to find a place here in Missouri that would remind him of the comparatively boundless beauty and wildness of that country. My brother and I probably felt the same way, although we may have been too young to know it then. After researching the matter for quite awhile, my father ended up taking Daniel to a tract of public land in the very heart of the Ozark Highlands for that year’s youth deer season.

When they came back late Sunday afternoon, they were without a deer, but as excited as any two unsuccessful hunters ever were. My brother had seen a deer the first morning, and nearly gotten a shot, but that wasn’t what they were excited about. They talked endlessly about how beautiful the area was, the vast forest of shortleaf pine, the mountainous, broken country. “It’s just like Colorado”, my brother said. Naturally I was quite envious, and begged to be taken along next year. My father said, “We’ll see”, which I knew in this case meant yes. Still, I don’t think any of us had any clear idea what this would lead to. This part of the Ozarks would in the years to come turn into our home away from home, the wild and peaceful corner of our state that we would constantly look forward to visiting.

The next fall, I got my first look at this wonderful place on a scouting trip, the weekend before youth season. When we rose up into the Ozark Mountains I felt supremely comfortable. This was just like Colorado. Sure, the mountains were much smaller, but there was the familiar smell of the pine trees, the winding, twisting mountain roads, the clear, fast water in the rivers. It was love at first sight, put simply.

That fall I tagged my first, and to this point only deer. Deer densities are not high in this part of southern Missouri. The food base is not prolific, and local hunters take deer using every method imaginable, legal or not. But with the help of my father and a stroke of blind luck, I got an opportunity on the afternoon of the first day, and managed to bring down a small doe. I’d never been so excited in my life, and I’m afraid the emotions were not mixed. There was none of the sadness and regret that should come with killing another animal for food. The idea of mortality just hadn’t sunk in yet.

I’m not much of a hunter anymore, but I still go to this conservation area every year with my father, and sometimes when my brother when his busy schedule as a college athlete permits. I carry a rifle, and I guess if a deer walked right in front of me I would probably take it. I’m not totally sure though, and I don’t think there is any shame in that. I am out there to spend valuable time with my family, to absorb the stillness of the Ozark woodlands, to feel the frosty chill of a cold November morning. It is all so blessedly uncomfortable, the early morning scramble in the dark to get to the area we are going to hunt, the rocky ground where I’m sitting, the icy morning breeze. I may think of home or some other place that is warm, comfortable, where I could get a hot meal. But really I don’t want to be anywhere but here, in the middle of nowhere, watching brown leaves fall from the trees and the thin current of the little brook at the bottom of the hollow sliding over the slick rocks. It is total, healing peace. The only sounds are those of the birds, and the clucking of the squirrels. Every one in awhile a plane will fly overhead, or I’ll hear a car in the distance, but it’s infrequent enough to not be a distraction from the wildness and beauty all around me. In a part of the country where so much has been paved, clear-cut, and tilled, this infertile, rocky, hilly place is still so untouched, so much like what all of Missouri must have been before the first white men made their way to this continent. It still has the poetry that so many places have lost, the purity that only is found in that which remains natural and unbroken. After a couple of days out here, absorbing the rhythms of the deep woods, I understand fully that this is the real world.

David Mann is a journalism major at the University of Missouri-Columbia. His outdoor writing can also be found at http://fishingintheozarks.blogspot.com/ and throughout Family-Outdoors. He aspires to make a living with his writing in the future. In the next few days, read David's dad's perspective on these early days of outdoor excursions.