Free Narrative Essays: The Hunt For Pickett

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The Hunt for Pickett
Nothing beats the feeling—your heart full of hope and anticipation, your senses already working overtime—of sneaking into the whitetail woods in the dark-dark. Electricity and flashlights have made us such strangers to darkness that it takes an act of will not to push that button and destroy the night. But the less light you use, the less you disturb the woods. The best is when there's just enough light from the moon and stars to follow a path. There are other advantages to operating in the dark. One is that reduced vision makes your ears work that much harder. The biggest, however, is that darkness forces you to do something that animals do constantly and that humans almost never do in daily life, which is to move as though you have all the time in the world.
As the Lone Biped of the Forest, your normal cadence—even if you're walking in slow motion and pausing every few steps—is the woods' equivalent of a fire truck's …show more content…

I sat in the basswoods again the next morning, but I knew he wouldn't show. Deer seem to shun those hardwoods in bad weather. I sat a field edge in the evening, in a maybe-I'll-get-lucky stand that produced a lonely button buck. Tomorrow would be my last shot, and the weather forecast was little improved.The morning barely dawned, the sky only shifting from black to gray. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but as I settled into the basswoods again, I knew I was just marking time. Then I remembered my second encounter with him, the morning he ignored my grunt call and beelined to the ridge top bedding area. I gathered my gear and scrambled down the tree.The hike was steep and tangled but wet; the ground and even the brambles that tore at my clothes made no sound. Topping the ridge, I dumped my pack and shed every piece of nonessential clothing, as well as my boots. Down to a ball cap, shirt, camo pants, and wool socks, I grabbed my compound bow and started

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