Fifteen feet up in a tree stand, sitting on a narrow perch and tucked among fragrant hemlock branches, I witness nighttime become morning. I’m too deep in the canopy to see the sun lift above the horizon, but as the sky lightens, shapes appear around me: the sandy, rutted path that descends from the hill to my right and crosses a gully where a stream trickles along; the meadow to my left and the dune rising above it; the yellow oak leaves and orange and red maples.
I have two small windows: the one to my right along the path, the other to my left that opens to the meadow. I’ve driven out to Michigan to deer hunt at the invitation of my brother-in-law, Pat, who has also gifted me his old crossbow, a lethal weapon that can fire an arrow accurately, even in my hands—I’m not known for being a good shot, especially with my standard compound bow that I have to pull and hold back while lining up a shot. A loaded crossbow is already cocked; you aim and pull the trigger.
I grew up a city boy in Buffalo, but in college I made friends with guys from smaller upstate towns who introduced me to deer hunting. I love the outdoors as the forests as much as anyone, but I primarily use them for hiking and exploring and contemplation of beauty and nature. Deer hunting is an outlier for me.
To be a successful bowhunter, everything has to go right and a hundred things can go wrong. Something has always gone wrong for me. I’d be up in a tree stand or tucked into a ground blind, waiting patiently, sometimes for hours, and would see no deer. Or I’d see deer and they’d be too far away and wouldn’t come close enough for a shot—twenty yards or less with a bow. Or the deer, alone or with others, would come close enough but wouldn’t stand still enough for me to aim. Or they would see me or smell me and run off. Or something clicked when I pulled my bow back for a shot and that tiny noise or movement scared them away. Or once every couple of years I’d get a shot but would miss, my arrow flying too high or too low or nicking a branch I hadn’t noticed on its flight path.
Year after year, no deer. No meat on my table. No wearing the mantle of Great White Hunter. If I’d been a Stone Age hunter, I would have died a thousand deaths by now. But I wasn’t ready to give up because an annual weekend hunting party was a tradition with my buddies. Granted, a weekend per year is not a lot of time to spend hunting, and maybe I didn’t put in enough time each season, although I put in many years. And during these years, my friends all shot deer and filled their freezer with venison, multiple times. I figured Lady Luck wasn’t on my side, or I gave off some kind of vibe that made deer wary, or I just wasn’t very good at hunting. It’s both astonishing and pathetic that I’ve had such bad luck.
So, I had no expectations.

On this perfect morning in Michigan, as the sun began to climb and a light breeze swayed the leaves, I appreciated the moment, the solitude, the beauty. It wasn’t cold and I wasn’t shivering the way I did on some mornings. My back didn’t ache from being confined to a single narrow spot fifteen feet above the ground. It wasn’t raining or snowing.
People are often surprised when they learn I bow hunt. I don’t fit what many consider the typical profile—the rugged, rural, macho guy. I’m bookish, a writer. My working and creative hours are spent at my desk. I made my living with my mind and not my hands, with ideas not objects.
Some people equate hunting with bloodlust. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s about being one within the natural world and seeking and accepting nature’s bounty. I brush off judgments from others about the killing of an animal, especially if my judge eats meat. Most of us have a sense of how animals are raised and processed in commercial meat and poultry industries. It seems like an unpleasant, cruel life for cows, chickens, pigs, and other factory-farmed animals. But it’s easy to compartmentalize when you’re picking out a steak at the meat counter or buying that Thanksgiving turkey. We have to eat!
This morning is my second stint in this tree stand. When I arrived in Michigan yesterday, Pat showed me the lay of the land and I climbed up here for a couple of hours until the sun set, saw no deer, and returned this morning for another vigil.
I’ve been here now for a couple of hours. Pat texted me earlier and said he saw several deer from his tree stand, which is about a mile away from me. I knew he’d be climbing down and getting in his truck soon, and I was about to call it quits for the morning too. I took one more look to my left and then right, and that’s when I saw a deer at the top of the path about fifty yards away through the branches. Oh, that’s interesting! I stay put. Maybe the deer would head my way, although probably not.
But then everything happens quickly. The deer starts coming down the path in my direction and I see there are two deer, not one. Two does strolling along. I have my crossbow in my hands at this point. My adrenaline and pulse rate are spiking. I remind myself to breathe, calm myself. I watch the deer approach the break in my cover where I can get a clear shot, but both does walk right through without stopping. Can’t shoot at a moving deer with a bow.
Now the two doe are passing behind the hemlock branches just below me. They’re not ten yards away but I can barely see them. They have not yet sensed my presence above them, but I’m still not expecting anything, because something always goes wrong. I have to calm myself again. Take steady breaths.
Then the first deer, a beautiful, long-legged doe, walks into the opening to my left. She keeps moving and in another few seconds she’ll be out of range. Then she stops exactly where I need her to be, as if offering herself. I put my eye on my scope to find her and the first thing I see is her head, her wide brown eyes and flickering ears. I move the crossbow slightly down to target the area just behind the shoulder blade where the vital organs are located. With a gun you can shoot a deer in almost any part of their body and the trauma and damage induced by the bullet or the slug will take the deer down, but an arrow kills by slicing and causing bleeding, and you need to hit vital organs like the heart, lungs, and liver.
As soon as I lock onto my target I pull the trigger and the arrow flies. Chaos immediately ensues. There’s a loud TWANG! and THWAP! as the arrow releases and flies. I’m not sure what happens next. Both deer leap into the air and bound away, down the gully, across the stream, and I catch glimpses of them through the trees running up the other side.
I text Pat: “Just took a shot at a doe. It ran off. Not sure if I hit it.”
Pat was already in his truck when I texted him and he shows up within two minutes, parking in the clearing near where I took my shot. I’m still in the tree stand. He sees my arrow in the ground and calls up to me, “There’s blood on your arrow. You shot right through it.”
But was it a good shot? If I’d struck a leg, the doe might be crippled and run off so far that I would never see her again, but she wouldn’t survive the winter. Or if I’d gut-shot her, she could run and run, eventually tiring and likely dying, but leaving little blood trail to track. In either of those cases, you don’t recover the deer. It would be a horrible feeling, but it’s happened at one time or another to every hunter I know.
We follow protocol and decide to wait half an hour to give the deer a chance to lie down and die. Then we’ll search for a blood trail. We don’t have to worry about impending darkness or rain washing away the evidence.
When we go back out, the blood trail is obvious. A few drops, and then a few more, and then a lot more. The trail goes down the gully, across the stream, and up the other side. The deer is waiting for me there, lying next to a downed birch, a peaceful look in her eyes. She gave her life for me. I’d made a perfect shot: right through the heart, a fast bleeder.
I feel subdued more than celebratory.



Pat helps me with field dress the deer. I cut out the heart and cook it for lunch. The rest we take to his meat processor. The next day I drive home from Michigan with a cooler full of venison. I’m going to look up some new recipes. Who wants to come over for dinner?