Reader-Submitted Story
The Sports Bra Buck!
by Karin Hallihan of Edmonton, Alberta
Three years ago, my partner introduced me to hunting, and to say I took to it like a duck to water would be an understatement. My childhood self, raised on Disney’s Bambi, wouldn’t recognize me now.
We were very lucky this year to receive permission to join two friends hunting a private quarter.
Spring was spent setting trail cameras, and summer was dedicated to preparing tree stands and ground blinds. The cameras showed an abundance of deer through spring and summer and our excitement grew with every card we checked. But when fall arrived, the deer seemed to vanish overnight, turning almost entirely nocturnal.
Still, we kept at it—up early, settled into our stands well before first light, hoping to catch a deer during legal light.
By December I was starting to worry I might actually have to buy meat from the grocery store. I have been blessed to have harvested mule deer and geese in my previous two years hunting.
That morning, I was sitting on a power cutline when a doe stepped out heading north. She was farther than I’d hoped, about 90 yards. We were hunting in a shotgun WMU and the trail cams had me planning for a 40-yard shot. I tried to adjust, but I was too slow. She jumped the fence and disappeared. I immediately started beating myself up.
Then, suddenly, a buck appeared in the exact same spot. I didn’t think. I just shot. The buck ran along the fence, hopped it effortlessly, and disappeared into the tree line to the north. My heart sank. I worried I hadn’t adjusted enough for the distance and that I’d shot too low, wounded him badly or missed him altogether.
A moment later, a smaller buck crossed at the same point going north. Then another, larger this time, emerged from the north at about the same spot my buck disappeared. I almost wondered if he was the buck I’d shot at earlier. He stepped into the cutline and stood there for what felt like forever. He was more than 200 yards out and I was pretty sure he wasn’t the same deer but everything had happened so fast I wasn’t sure. Finally, he went south and I sat and waited. If I had hit my buck, I didn’t want to bump him.
When I finally went to the spot where my buck was standing when I shot, I didn’t see any blood. But I kept looking and eventually noticed the tiniest red freckles in the snow. I prepared myself to spend the rest of the day following that trail for as long as I could see it.
I reached the tree line where he’d disappeared and took a few steps and there he was! A deer lay facing me.
My first thought was that this can’t be my deer. Is there another hunter out here? But I would have heard the shot. This had to be my guy!
I was so happy I started to cry.
The reason there had been almost no blood was simple: I’d hit him straight through the heart and there was nothing to pump the blood out, it had just pooled inside his chest cavity.
I texted my partner to tell him I’d found my buck. Then I ran back to my stand to grab my gear. By the time he arrived, I’d already dragged the deer out of the trees and together we gutted him.
Riding an adrenaline high, I ran back for the truck, drove it to the nearest access road and hauled my buck all the way to the road.
I was starting to sweat by the time we got him to the truck so I peeled off my jacket and then my sweater.
I’ll always remember the roller coaster of emotions my first whitetail took me on. Every time I look at his rack hanging in my bedroom, I’m taken right back to that day.
But my partner says he will always remember the first time he loaded a deer into a truck in December... with someone wearing nothing but a sports bra.
For the previous Reader Story, click here.
