I shimmied up into my stand at 6:20 a.m. and I was ready to go. Legal shooting hours didn’t start for another half an hour or so. I sat in my stand and waited impatiently. My fingers felt the frosty touch of the November air as I combed through my Facebook newsfeed. I listened to the wind howl and the trees creaking. My stand rocked back and forth like a ship on an uneasy sea.

It couldn’t have been a minute after shooting hours had begun that I noticed two does making their way down the trail. They weren’t in any hurry or anything like that. Just looking for things to nibble on. I wasn’t going to pop a doe on opening morning, so I just watched them and waited for them to move on through.

Not even five minutes after the two does had left, I heard something come booking it down the trail. I pulled up my scope as fast as I could to try and get a good look at it.

Now, this buck didn’t have a massive rack or anything like that, but it was a buck! Since I have been able to hunt on my own, I have never seen a buck before while in my stand. Sure, I saw a ton of them lying dead on the side of the road while driving, but this was something completely different. My heart pounded like the back-beat in an electronic dance song. Adrenaline was flowing through my body. I was hoping that the buck would slow down so I could get a decent shot at it. It kept a steady trot and didn’t stop at all. I figured it was now or never for me to take the shot. I could picture the rack hanging above the fireplace. A few twigs and branches were in the line of my shot. I tried to calm myself down as much as I could so I wouldn’t shake while trying to put it into my scope. Bam!

The buck stopped. It didn’t drop. It just looked around. I figured that I must have missed it. Bam! I shot a second time and this time I knew I hit it because it jumped a little bit in the air. Now, it started to dance around. I didn’t think I hit it good enough. Bam! It was still dancing around! I only had two bullets left. Bam! The deer was hauling ass back and forth, but it had a limp to it. I had taken out its front right leg and it’s back left leg. It stopped and I was finally able to put a kill shot on it. Bam! And it finally dropped to the ground.

I was breathing heavily at this point and couldn’t believe that I had gotten my first buck! I didn’t care how many shots it took, it was still going to put a lot of venison in the freezer! (Well, maybe.) I immediately received a text from my Uncle Jim.

It read, “Is that you firing all of those shots over there? Are you under attack?”

“Yep, and I am all out of bullets! I need back up!” I replied. I then sent him a picture of the nice basket eight that I had shot.

When I went up to gut the deer, I had found out where some of my bullets had gone. I shot it once in the front right leg, once in the back left leg, once in the lung and gut area, and once in the ear (which I believe was the ultimate thing that killed it). I had definitely missed on that first shot.

Gutting the deer wasn’t a walk in the park either. When you shoot a deer in the guts, it gives off one terrible smell. It didn’t matter if I tried to plug my nose. There was no amount of Febreeze that I could’ve spray that would have covered up the stench.

Once I arrived back at deer camp with my “trophy buck”, I had to tell the story of how it happened to my uncles, my dad, my brother, my mother, my sister, her boyfriend at the time, my basketball coach...basically the whole city of Hayward. They couldn’t believe that it took me five shots to shoot one deer. In all honesty, I almost brought six bullets with me out to my stand that morning, but I didn’t figure that I would have to use that many.

I didn’t think that one animal would give me so much of a rush. By taking one animal’s life, I was then able to provide for my family and that made me feel like a contributing member of my family for once. All of my uncles and my dad have shot bucks before, so I felt like I finally made it into the “man club”. Nobody else shot a deer that year in my hunting party. I may now be known as “5-Shot Hessel”, but a nickname doesn’t mean much as long as you end up getting the kill.