“Good things will always come to those who wait,” my Uncle Ron once told me. It’s the last day of youth deer hunting in Ohio. The very cold, rainy, and early morning would be a long one. This did not stop my two uncles and my cousin Riley from going out with me. We left at six in the morning on the ice-covered road. My Uncle Ron said, “The road is an ice rink.” Once we arrived to the hunting shack, I sat forever waiting.  Then I whispered to my uncle, and all of the sudden he grabbed me and whispered, “Shut up,” so I did for just about a minute. Then I slowly peered out, and there was a yearling right in front of me. After watching this small brown creature for a little bit, it became spooked and ran off, so I poked my head out of the small shack again. I look around, and then I saw her. There was a doe about 75 yards out, so I brought the camo 50.cal muzzleloader and looked through the scope, and I had the huge light brown doe in my crosshairs. Unfortunately just before I squeezed the trigger, I heard a shot in the distance, and she was startled and darted off. I was devastated. I thought I had her. After waiting several more hours, we called it for the morning.
Around 4 P.M. we set out to my uncle’s second house. Once we arrived there, we went to the back of the property to a trail leading us to a new spot. Part way up the trail, my uncle told me to get ready there might be one on the trial, so I became on high alert from this point out. Then we walked another 100 yards up the trail. We found a “game trail” which is an animal path, and we walked it. I knew that this trail had belonged to something small because everything above three foot was a jungle of branches. After walking 100 yards through the jungle of branches, we arrived to a point overlooking a steep hill and sat at the trunk of a massive oak tree. I was not thrilled with sitting on the snow-covered ground because it soaked me.  I knew I would get very cold very fast.
We sat for two hours, and my bibs were drenched and freezing. Then I heard something quiet. It sounded like branches hitting each other.  A couple of minutes of hearing this, my uncle explained it was most likely two bucks sparing. I have never heard this before. The excitement filled me, and I hoped they would come down our way. As we sat there looking down in the valley, we were startled by a  “BANG … BANG BANG.” I knew exactly what that sound came from. It my cousin Riley who was about a half-mile away hunting, so my Uncle Ron called my other Uncle Randy, his father, to see if he had shot a deer.
He said, “I’m pretty sure he missed, but we are looking for any signs that he hit it.”  In my head I laughed because my cousin has missed three deer in a row now.  Then I noticed something: The noise is gone. I told my uncle just as I heard a crunching sound. I looked down in the valley, and I could see a deer. The darkness had started to set in, and I could not tell how big this creature was. I looked through the scope and saw it, a nice 8-point buck! My Uncle Ron said I couldn’t shoot it unless it came up the trail close by us. To my disappointment, it, of course, had to go the opposite direction as us, so I waited to see if the other buck would come down my way.  As I looked for the second buck, I heard quiet a bit of snow of crunching by me, so I looked to my right and couldn’t believe my eyes. There were three turkeys within ten yards of me. The turkeys saw my orange vest, which was like a danger sign to them, so they scrabbled down to the valley. As they went down the valley, more and more turkeys followed behind them, so I counted them. I counted thirty-seven turkeys. My Uncle Ron and I were amazed. Then all thirty-seven of them went and roosted right down in the valley. As they where roosting, I saw the other buck.
This buck walked through the valley in the direction I needed him to. When he came close to the trail, one of the turkeys scared him, and he jumped. I prayed that he wouldn’t run, and my prayers were answered; he didn’t. He stopped at the trail, as if he were deciding if he would take it or not.  He didn’t take it and just kept walking. It had grown pretty dark, so my Uncle Ron and I were going to call it a day and started to walk back toward the house.
  Once we were back to his house, I looked down the hill in to the field, and there stood at least 50-60 deer. It was still legal light, so I could shoot one if I moved far enough from the house. I begged him to let me but he said, “No.” Ticked off, I gritted my teeth with outrage. We packed up everything in his truck. As we drove down the driveway, we were within 20 feet of a doe, and she just starred at me carelessly chomping chow, laughing at me. I begged him again to let me shoot one, and he gave me the same answer. This really ticked me off because this was the third year I have been skunked and not shot a deer. Once again my uncle said, “Good things come to those who wait.”  He told me it took him eleven years to get his first buck. “There is always next year,” he told me.