It is 2 a.m. All the gear had been packed the night before, yet the knowledge that I had been close—within ten to twenty yards—of a whitetail the previous morning still moved through me in a slow, powerful drip of adrenaline.
I had been scouting every weekend leading up to the fall and had only had the bow for about three weeks. That morning I started at the trailhead walking slow and steady. I heard the shift of rocks tumbling, then caught the deer in my peripheral vision. They were close as hell, right there near the parking area on a piece of public land tucked behind residential. I was surprised to find them that close and was already preparing to nock an arrow when a hiker appeared—an older guy with a dog. He looked nervous but still walked up.
“Oh hey, so are you hunting?”
“Yeah, I’m in pursuit right now.”
“Oh well, what season is it? What are you hunting?”
“Deer. Just seen some right off the parking lot. I’m on them right now.”
“Oh yeah, they don’t usually hang out over here. You usually find them in people’s yards and stuff.”
I was half in the conversation and half trying to get out of it so I could get back on them. The exchange pulled me off the stalk. I got some version of the same questions from other hikers the rest of the day.
I stayed on the mountain all day. The elevation was steep and the whole slope was covered in rocks and shale. I kept running into more groups of hikers, which surprised me given how rough the terrain was. The spot was closer to residential than I had realized, and the constant interruptions made it clear the human traffic was going to keep limiting my chances even though I had already seen deer there. By the end of the day I decided I needed to check the new area I had been scouting.
Seeing whitetail on my first real hunt with the bow in hand still left me filled with hope and ambition that carried straight into this morning. I put on one of my favorite hunting podcasts for company and left the quiet streets of Brooklyn hours before they would come alive with commuters. The Jackie Robinson Parkway at that hour felt almost safe—nothing like the hundreds of thousands of cars that would choke it later. About two and a half miles in, on the Queens side where the road banks hard right, I hit a deep pothole I never saw in the dark. The front end of my Jeep Grand Cherokee slammed down hard onto the asphalt. Metal cracked. Power left the vehicle.
I eased the SUV as far onto the shoulder as it would go. The engine was still turning, belts spinning, but it would not take any gear.
I was a full-time college student, a single father, living on a fixed income from the Veterans Administration. I did not know yet how extensive the repairs would be, only that I could not write a check for them. The louder thought circling in my head was simpler: I was not getting into the woods today, and I might not get into the woods for the rest of the season.
It was the third week of October—prime archery season in New York, right in the heart of the pre-rut. I had been studying whitetail movement and patterns as carefully as I had been studying for my accounting course. I worked ahead every week so the weekends would stay open. I had been dreaming of this since the first time I saw a bachelor group of elk in Sedona as a teenager. Lack of knowledge and the usual life interruptions had slowed everything down; finally, at thirty-three, I was acting on it. And the vehicle that had always been reliable—the same Jeep that carried my daughter on her first camping trip, the one she slept in the back seat of while I reclined in the driver’s seat, the one that took us to waterfalls in the Poconos and let her see her first big buck—now sat dead on the side of the road, the only key I had to the woods out of commission.
I didn't know how I was going to get it fixed, or if I could.
Insurance covered a rental for a short window. It gave me just enough time to keep hunting before rifle season opened and the woods filled up. I was still excited. Losing the Jeep had not ended the season yet. I took the rental to a new spot not far from where I had first seen the two does. The terrain was less steep, but still off the main paths.
I parked, put on my gear, grabbed the bow, and threw on some orange just in case. I turned on the tracking app and headed for the roughest trail I could find, figuring fewer hikers would be on it. I planned to get off the trail and into the thick stuff as soon as I could.
The path was barely maintained—stones, sudden dips, wet leaves that looked like a blanket of fire in auburn and orange. Pines creaked overhead in the breeze. I moved slow, watching my footing on the slick rocks and stopping every few yards to glass, looking for any horizontal line that broke the vertical pattern of the oaks, pines, and birch.
If I were a deer, this is the kind of ground I would want: low human traffic, close to water, oaks everywhere, drainages, cover, and enough elevation changes for good daytime beds with a view. It felt more interesting than the straight-up mountain I had been on before.
Only about a mile in, the slow pace made it feel longer. At one of the pauses to glass I saw something on the hill that did not match the burgundy, orange, and yellow of the leaves—light brown, fuzzy, a flash of white. Adrenaline hit hard. I ranged it at forty yards, quartering away, tail up. I nocked an arrow, came to full draw, and settled the pin on the vitals of the forky.
I held.
The questions came fast. I had only been shooting the bow for about three weeks. The angle was uphill and I had never taken a shot like that. Would the arrow clear the branches? Would he jump the string? Would the quartering-away presentation turn into a gut shot if he moved at the last second? And if I hit him, could I even recover him and get him back to Brooklyn in a rental car?
I was still at full draw when he crested the hill and disappeared. I let down. Heart still pounding. I did not know if I had overthought the shot or made the right call by not taking it.
The next day I went back. Still riding the high from being that close again. I decided to work deeper into the area the buck had run toward. I got off the maintained trail and into the briars. Only a few yards in I stepped into a bedding area. Being new at this, I stood right in the middle of it, looking at the droppings and tracks, taking pictures and marking the spots on my phone so I could return later. The ground here held sign clearer than the rocky slope where I had first seen the does.
A deer path led deeper. I continued slowly, staying parallel to it, careful to keep the trail in sight and my boots off it. More droppings appeared, some larger and clumped together. This could be that same buck using the path, or possibly more.
The breeze carried the sweet scent of the leaves into my nostrils. I stopped and took it in—that familiar feeling of being out in the open, surrounded by creation, becoming one with it, deepening the bond with the land and waking up something primal. I thought this was worth the trip and the work I had put in at school to make it happen.
I kept following the path until I reached roughly the spot where the buck had disappeared over the crest the day before. I sat slightly behind a tree and started glassing slow. Something else didn’t match the color and pattern of the woods. This time it was black, pieces of it running all the way up the trunk. Somebody had left their ladder stand tied to the tree.
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