Pennsylvania Game News - July 2019 - 16

fencerow. In a strategic favorite spot amid
a tangle of Osage orange and hawthorns
were barbed wire and brothers.
Moments after Dad began his push,
I heard his distinct, distant holler from
across the vast, snow-laden pasture. Just
behind the speed of sound was a sprinting
whitetail. It plowed through the frozen
fields and into Grandpa's Woods, a woodlot along the farm's eastern fringe.
As the deer reached our funnel, I
immediately saw antlers bobbing wildly
up and down, their bleach-white rivaling
the snow. The buck sprinted out of the
whitened woodlot, charging toward us
like an enraged bull. All speed and muscle,
I gulped to the degree any honest matador
would admit. There was little doubt the
buck had practiced these escape skills.
He was a veteran.
Ryan, meanwhile, was an unfortunate
victim of inexperience. To compare his
practice shooting water-filled gallon jugs
to this full-throttle challenge would be
the basketball-coaching equivalent to
subbing in the water boy to hit a gamewinning shot.
Quickly weighing his unlikely success,
I shared, "You're not ready for this yet,
brother!"
Eyes wider than his rifle scope, he
nodded in agreement.
With that, I put myself into the game.
Just as I readied my .270 rifle, the buck
spotted us and detoured abruptly with a
45-degree cut into the field. Finding the
bounding buck in my optics proved difficult. But once there and steady, I fired.
Adrenaline tossed the bolt open. Instincts
worked the action closed. Respect for the
buck tugged the trigger again.
And for the first instance since I'd seen
him, perhaps the entire season, the buck
had stopped - this time for good. As three
brothers approached the downed deer, I
16

had never been more honored to be in
the middle.
To say I was a happy medium would
have been an understatement.
An understanding Ryan trembled with
excitement on one side of me, looking
up to his big brother, as Nathan marched
across the snowy plain dividing us.
Big brother smiled and extended his
hand. But I, the middle sibling, was not the
center of attention. Our focus lay solely on
the whitetail. It was as if all three brothers
had harvested the buck.
I cannot fathom the joy of our proud
father as he approached his trio of sons,
trying their best to carry on a tradition.
Mirroring the white and red of my
basketball team's home uniform, fonts
of blood wrote across a snowy landscape.
Just as my No. 32 jersey sported a 3 on the
left and a 2 on the right, so did the antlers
of this 5-point buck.
At practice that same evening, I eagerly
boasted about the buck to my basketball
buddies and my coach. The moment the
words left my mouth, I realized sharing
the hunt that had unfolded only hours
before, on that perfect snowy morning,
paled in comparison to the bond it solidified between brothers and a father.
The hunt then, as now, seemed prophetic. Hunting possesses an indescribable quality where a hunt of yesterday can
prepare us for today and excite us about
tomorrow.
Many years from now, as the shooting
light of my hunting career grows dim, I
likely will reflect upon my many hunts
and memories. God willing, I still will
be able now and again to check a trapline
with Nate, wet a line with Ryan, or go deer
hunting with both - perhaps with me in
the middle once again.
Given the chance, I will delight in
being stuck there.

Pennsylvania Game News - July 2019

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