Just in the Nick of Time Cont.

 The sight of the buck in my crosshairs made my heart rate sky rocket; this was it, my grand opportunity.  I flipped the safety off and steady the crosshairs just behind the buck’s front shoulder.  By now my palms were starting to sweat, and with a gentle squeeze of the trigger the gun fired.  I’m not quite sure what happened immediately following the shot but I knew something wasn’t quite right.  I saw the buck take off into the woods, and wondered if I had hit him or not.  I jumped on my ATV and drove down to where the buck had been standing, but much to my disappointment there were no signs of a clean hit.  “How did I miss? Was it me or was the gun not sighted in?”  A million thoughts were running through my head, but nothing was going to change the fact that I had missed a chance at a very nice buck. 

            As I drove the ATV back to my original position I couldn’t stop thinking about that buck.  In all my years of hunting I had never missed a shot that easy.  I finally reached the intersection of the fences and loaded a new shell into my gun; hopefully I would get a second chance.  Ten minutes came and went with no signs of anymore deer.  Then, all of a sudden, two does came scrambling out of the west end of the timber, so I pulled my gun up to shoulder to get a better look at them.  While I was watching the two does scamper off into the distance the sound of breaking leaves grew louder and louder behind me.  I turned around, just in the nick of time, to see two more does and another nice buck jumping the fence.  I swung my trusty rifle around and found the buck in the scope.  I squeezed the ice cold trigger and the sound of the discharge deafened my ears.  The ringing lasted a good two minutes, but it didn’t matter because lying on the hill thirty yards away was the buck.  Like a little kid at Christmas I hurried up the buck and found that he was indeed a nice one.  Although he wasn’t as nice as the one I had attempted to shoot earlier, he was still a nice nine pointer.

            I’ll never forget that hunt.  The odds were stacked against me, but somehow I still managed to get a nice buck on the ground.  That hunt was more than just another opening day hunt; it was something more, something special.  It was the fact that I got to spend a great day with old friends and enjoy what the country life had to offer.  I grew up telling myself that I needed to get out of the country and do something with my life, but after that day I realized that the country was my home.  I realized that I belong in a small town that doesn’t even have a stoplight and barely has one thousand citizens.  I realized what my family really meant to me.  I realized that that no matter where you go and how long you are gone, the people in small towns never forget about you.  I realized that I got a second chance to realize what I had been pushing away for twenty years.  For me, in that moment, time stood still, and all I could do was be thankful for what God had given me.