What I'd hoped for
By Nick Simonson
I can still hear the whisper from my left and sense Gene leaning in as the deer emerged in the first tree line below our position on the top of the hillside along the Sheyenne River valley one temperate November evening in 2008. It’s a moment I relive each time I’m in the field this time of year and a bobbing set of antlers appears above a pair of dark, wary eyes on a deer. “Nick…there’s a buck…” It was a moment that changed my life and my mentor helped ignite a fire in me for deer hunting, specifically the style of still hunting that I have enjoyed through the both literal and figurative hills and valleys of the past dozen seasons. In all things I do outdoors - upland hunting, shooting sports, fishing and deer hunting - I try to place myself in the same situation, where a tip here, a comment there or some time in the field with another hunter will set off that same spark and keep the fire spreading, and the warmth of the memories they’ll be able to make can sustain them in the cold off season and make them want to pass the torch on to others. My neighbor Ryan had been out of deer hunting for a while, and after telling him the story of my buck taken on PLOTS land last fall and all the excitement of the ups and downs I experienced that firearms season, I encouraged him to put in for a gun tag in that unit and join me in the hills. Having both drawn whitetail buck permits in the June lottery, we discussed trategy and plans as our days allowed, chatting through the fence or from a distance on the front lawn as we paused our mowers in the heat of an August evening.
