Vast crop fields, rolling pastures, brushy fencelines, and thick timber blend into a bowhunter's version of heaven. Farm country is one of the ultimate places for whitetail hunters to challenge their abilities.
6.10.2023
Sitka Hunting Stories & Blogs
Mountainside Vindication
My own inadequacies lay manifest as I postholed up the snow covered ridge. Every labored breath a stark reminder of the wrong turns I had taken the year before. All of the mornings I had chosen to silence my alarm and stay in the warm, cocooning, opulence of my blankets. The extra helpings. The well intentioned declarations to start over when the next Monday came. They all hit me like a punch to the gut as I willed my diaphragm to rise and fall and begged for the breath that would offer some relief, some respite from the burn of lactic acid and the ache of muscles atrophied from too little use.
The Hills Where Lessons Lie
I was young, maybe five years old. I was sitting on the floor of my grandparents house playing with my Lincoln Logs; I had combined multiple sets of logs to create the type of cabin that only a five year old mind can construct. I waved my grandfather over to me, (I call him PawPaw,) and he climbed out of his recliner to join me on the floor. I point at one of the rooms I’ve built and tell him, “that’s where the deer go.”
