Blinded
by S. Mann

I was a little inexperienced…Okay, perhaps a bit more than a little. I hadn’t grown up in a hunting family, but I just had married into one. Although I was willing to learn how to use that bow, I don’t know that it ever really coursed through my blood the way it does through my husband’s. I was excited but didn’t have that itch, that thirst, that drive for the hunt seen in more seasoned hunters. But, like I said, I was willing to learn.

I had been hunting first bow season for a couple of years and had been successful in getting some shots but not in connecting with anything other than central Oregon manzanita brush. A couple of weeks before opening weekend we scoped out a decent spot to set up my ground blind—a new mode of hunting for me—and prepared it for what would hopefully be my perfect hunt.

I must admit I was scared that early August morning. Walking along dark forest trails by myself with only a few arrows in my quiver was not my idea of a walk in the park. Every sound I heard was a cougar or bear. I was incredibly relieved as I arrived at my blind and settled in.

It wasn’t long before I realized how ill-suited I was for sitting in a blind, waiting for deer to come to me. I was, simply, too impatient. Within fifteen minutes I was pulling out my bags of fruit snacks, making enough noise, I’m sure, to scare away anything within a hundred yards. A few minutes later, I felt the urge to relieve myself. I stood up, walked a few yards away from my blind, pulled my pants down, squatted, and completed the task. I began chuckling to myself as I thought of how ridiculous I must look. Some hunter I was! I was glad nobody was watching my antics. I made my way back to the blind and settled into a pattern:  sit quietly for five to ten minutes; move around aimlessly within my blind for two. I began to sense I wouldn’t be seeing any deer this morning after all.

Just then, however, up on the ridge to the north, I saw movement. I honed in on two deer walking perhaps a hundred yards away from me. So, did I think to prepare myself in case they came closer? No. Instead I thought to myself that at least I could say I had seen something. Within a few seconds, the deer were out of sight. I wasn’t sure where, exactly, they had gone. It was only another few seconds before I heard hoofs pounding on the trail and sat staring at a deer literally five yards away from me, directly in the spot I was meant to shoot toward from my blind. She stared right back but didn’t see me. When she put her head down for a moment, I stood ever so slowly and began to draw back. Unfortunately, I have almost no arm strength and could not even begin to pull that string back slowly. It took but an instant for her to charge back out of my sight and out of my life forever. What could have been a great harvest was now just a brief memory.

I sat down, frustrated with myself for being such a lousy hunter. My heart was still pounding and my limbs were still trembling from the adrenaline pumping through me. Even if I never became a true hunter, I had to admit that was a pretty cool feeling. I sat for another few minutes, contemplating what to do next. It was at that moment I got a rather strange feeling in me. Something prompted me to look up and over to my left, where I was greeted with the surprise of my life.

Another hunter, well-blended with his head-to-toe camouflage, was sitting in a tree stand less than forty yards away from me! And he had a clear view of me and my blind.

Yes, that’s right. The entire time I might as well have been on camera because someone was watching my every move. The food. The fidgeting. The bathroom break. The botched hunt. Everything. It was an eerie feeling. And it was my final straw. The fact that I could sit in a blind for almost two hours and not know someone was taking in my every action completely creeped me out. Blind hunting just wasn’t for me. Alas, that poor hunter probably couldn’t wait for me to high-tail it out of there. And that is precisely what I did!

The next two years I decided to rifle hunt and harvested a deer both seasons. I have many wonderful hunting memories and some fun stories to accompany them.  Now, however, almost ten years since that fateful morning, I leave it up to my husband and children to bring home the venison while I bask in the glory of knowing I gave a fellow hunter a rather humorous story he can tell for years to come.