The night before the opening day of gun season, we all met up at the deer camp.  Everyone talked about where they would be hunting and who had laid claim to which areas.  I already had a stand hung up on the side of one of the knob ranges.  It was rough land, but the kind of land that the better bucks seemed to like.  I didn't mind the uphill hike to get to the stand, because I had been seeing good deer in the area throughout the bow season.  None of them had been close enough for me to take a comfortable shot though.

I told the guys that I would be bow hunting on the back of the property, and they were shocked to hear that I would pick up my bow instead of a rifle.  I didn't own a rifle, so it was an easy choice.  I had a couple of guys offer me their extra rifles, and I declined.

With my bow in hand, I sat through the morning hunt, and saw several deer.  I passed on several shots on smaller bucks.  I even passed on a shot on one of the biggest bodied does I had ever seen on that land.  I heard several shots that I knew came from our lease.  I was pretty sure that my partners were scoring.  After sitting in the stand for longer than planned, I got down and went back to the camp.  They had four bucks hanging when I pulled into camp on the Arctic Cat.  None of them bigger than a 6 pointer.

After a rest and some lunch, everyone got ready to head back out to get on stand until dark.  Again, I was hit with the pressure to take a rifle.  "You're gonna see that buck of a lifetime, but it is going to be just out of range of that bow.  How will you feel then?" The  pressure got to me, and Charlie gave me a quick once over on his extra Remington model 700.  It was a .270 and a flat shooter.  A good gun for whitetails in Kentucky.

I saw little action until about an hour before dark.  Several does moved through and I saw a couple of small 6 pointers.  I let them walk in hopes of seeing a larger buck.  Soon after, I looked over my left shoulder and saw a decent buck.  He was an 8 pointer whose rack was outside its ears.  A pretty decent buck that I'd be happy to shoot.  He was coming straight towards me and was at about 40 yards when I decided to take the shot.  I raised the gun up layed the crosshairs on him, and he turned about 30 yards out.  I pulled the trigger and the buck covered about 40 yards before he crashed.

Now this is where I will probably offend some people, but that isn't my intention.  I felt kind of let down after that shot, even disappointed.  It was too easy.  I had only been bow hunting up to that point, and I just didn't feel the rush killing that deer with a rifle like I would from killing a deer with a bow.  It was at this point that I knew I was a bow hunter at heart.

Do you remember your first shooting opportunity?  I remember mine like it was yesterday.  I missed.  I had practiced a lot before I ever headed into the woods my with first bow, a cheap Bear Black Panther.  I picked it up on a closeout sale at a local Walmart.  Yes, I know it is a junky bow, but I was driving nails with it inside of 25 yards.  Out past that I started getting a little erratic.  Maybe because of the heavy arrows I was shooting and the large degree of drop I was experiencing out past that range.
I remember a friend named John had taken me to Hardin county Kentucky to hunt his mother's farm.  It was a several hundred acre piece of property that was more or less all hardwoods, except for a few fields.  I had only been in the woods a couple of times before this, and had seen deer, but never had a shooting opportunity.  It was still my first hunting season, and it was late in the season, early January as I recall.  There was just a week or so of bowhunting left before the season ended.  One of the things I remember most about this trip was how cold it was.  The temperature started off below zero that morning, and it never made it above the single digits.  I doubt it made it over 5 degrees that entire day.  I definitely learned the importance of owning good cold weather gear that day, none of which I owned at the time.  Due to my lack of gear, it was too cold to get in a stand that day.  I wasn't dressed for it, so I hunted on the ground.  I found a tree that had blown down, and made a makeshift blind on the edge of a clearing, sitting in a cold metal foldable chair.  This only added to my struggle to stay warm.
After about a couple of hours, I thought I was going to die.  I thought it was crazy to be out in this weather, and was ready to take the short walk to the cabin.  John had started a fire in the wood stove before we headed into the woods.  I was looking forward to spending some time next to it.  As I contemplated the though of that warm fire, I caught some movement in the brush across the clearing.  I clamped my cheap release to my bowstring, and got ready to draw.  As it moved closer, I could see that it was a young deer, too small to shoot in my opinion.  As I let my bow down, I caught movement again behind it.  This was a larger doe, most likely the fawn's mother.  She offered me a broadside shot at 25 yards, but I hesitated.  The scenario of taking a doe with its fawn right there never crossed my mind.  That pause cost me my first opportunity to take a doe.  As she stepped up, I lost that clear shot and was left with a simi-obstructed shot.  I had made the decision to take the shot, a shot that I missed.
I honestly don't know why I ended up missing that shot.  Maybe I clipped the brush that was in between me and her.  Maybe it was from being so cold, or from having so many poorly insulated layers of clothing on in an effort to stay warm.  Maybe I just wasn't as good of a shot as I thought I was.  I remember how much more difficult it was to pull my bow back to full draw that day, something that was normally easy.  The effects of the cold weather can take its toll on your muscles, and how rigid your bow it.
Either way, it was my first missed shot.  I remember seeing those white tails pointing straight up as they disappeared into a patch of cedars.  Defeated, I walked back to the cabin to find John and his cousin sitting next to the wood stove, and I told the story of my 'first miss'.  Luckily, this was the last miss that I would experience for many years.  There were others, but the first was the most memorable.