October 8, 2011, was the coldest opening day of any Illinois Youth Deer Season I’ve hunted. And as a then sixty-five-year-old father of four and grandfather of nine, with all kith and kin living within forty miles of me, I’ve experienced many. Throughout the four generations of family I’ve known—my grandfather, my father (who harvested his last deer at the age of 95!), myself, brother Jim, and our children and now grandchildren—we’ve been a hunting family. My son, John Jr, and his oldest child, eleven-year-old Hunter, were occupying a stand on the opposite side of my property, while I had the singular honor of accompanying my eight-year-old grandson, Forest, on his first hunt.
(Forest had acquired the nickname, “Frosty” as a five-year-old baseball player. A collision at second base between him and two opposing team members had knocked all three to the ground. The other two children lay crying, but Forest stood on the base, brushed himself off, and appeared utterly composed despite bleeding profusely from both nostrils. His coach hurried out and wiped away the gore with a towel. Returning to the dugout, he shook his head and said, “That’s one frosty kid!” Frosty had begun wrestling in a club his dad started when he was three, and even tiny wrestlers soon become accustomed to bloodshed.)
On this fateful morn, when my grandson was awakened at five AM, for reasons known only to himself, he refused to wear long underwear. His dad didn’t insist, thinking this lesson would teach itself, as indeed it did. As we’d settled into our stand thirty minutes before sunrise, Frosty was already shivering. Sitting with an arm wrapped around his shoulders for warmth, I whispered hard-earned hunting lore into his ear. For a few minutes. Until he donned headphones. (I sometimes have that effect on folks.) A few moments later, though chastened, I lifted one flap and said, “If I see any deer, I’m going to squeeze your leg. If I do that, you must hold completely still.”
“Got it, Papa,” he confidently replied.
A golden orb rose into a cloudless blue sky, but thank God, no wind accompanied that sunrise. I sat on the left side of our double stand, Frosty to the right. Eighty yards in front of us was the edge of a thick forest, and within that dense cover, deer tended to bed. Ten acres of soybeans, one of deer’s favorite foods, grew behind us. A large pond lay thirty yards to Frosty’s right, and as I admired the beauty of this beloved place (I’ve requested my ashes be scattered here), a doe and two fawns topped the dam and began walking along the pond’s border toward us.
When I gently squeezed my grandson’s knee, he erupted, swinging his arms as vigorously as if signaling by semaphore. All three deer had their heads down; the fawns feeding hungrily on lush pondside grass, and the doe lapping water, so none noticed the violent movements, which was pure beginner’s luck.
Deer have excellent vision and a keen sense of smell, but their hearing is similar to humans. So, with Frosty’s headphones now removed, we whispered as they approached. I told my grandson I would hold the gun until near time to shoot; then, with the barrel pointing out, I would slide it along the stand’s padded safety rail to him.
The three meandered ever closer, remaining along the water’s edge. Ten yards ahead of them was an open shooting lane where the deer would be thirty yards away. This spot was where I hoped Frosty would get a shot. I reminded him to wait until one stopped and stood broadside to us, then to aim just behind its front shoulder. I would click off the safety when one was in position, and he was to shoot whichever deer he was comfortable with whenever he was ready.
As the lead fawn—notably larger and probably a male– entered the killing zone, I glanced to my left and was shocked to see an enormous buck trotting along the path from timber to bean field. I was fortunate to see one this large once every five years! I alerted Frosty, but he couldn’t shoot in that direction as I was in his way. When I whispered, “Do you want me to take him for you?” he slid the gun into my hands. He had a twenty-gauge shotgun I’d never fired, but I squeezed the trigger just as the quickly moving deer passed into the edge of cover and vanished from sight.
At the sound of the gunshot, the three pondside deer broke into a gallop and disappeared over the dam as we sat in dumbfounded silence. Back in pre-cellphone days, we used walkie-talkies to communicate. John Jr. called to say they’d heard our shot, but they were freezing and heading toward us on their way back to the truck. I asked them to watch for a large buck. However, a moving shot is difficult; I’d been forced to rush and was unfamiliar with the weapon, so I had no idea if I’d hit my target. The hunters appeared five minutes later and hadn’t seen our deer. Frosty and I climbed down and went to where the deer had been when I snapped a shot. A large piece of pink lung tissue lay on the ground, and twenty yards from there, just inside the timberline, lay the dead giant.
Even with a brief glimpse of it while moving, I’d known the deer was big, but the eleven-pointer was as large as any I’ve shot before or since. It was also unique as the anthers were covered with what appeared to be torn and twisted sheets of black leather. I assumed this was comprised of the velvet deer rub off against trees well before October, but none of my hunting friends or I had ever seen anything like it. We were jubilant, and as John and Hunter went to retrieve the truck to haul the enormous carcass out, I told my grandson this was and always would be his deer.
We took our harvest to a local processing shop, and John had the butcher cut the head off for mounting. Both boys had football practice (John Jr. was their coach), and the enormous head rode in the bed of our truck, where many young athletes and their parents had an opportunity to admire it. But as I drove the twenty miles to my home, doubts set in.
My shot had been a split-second decision made at a time when circumstances—the three other deer, the abrupt appearance of this colossal buck, his massive size and antlers, all on my grandson’s first hunt–had rattled me. However, no adult tags were issued for this special three-day youth season, held annually in Illinois on Columbus Day Weekend. This was Frosty’s adventure, not mine, and I realized he should have shot at one of the deer by the pond and never passed his gun to me. If he’d missed (which was highly likely, as “buck fever,” which causes severe trembling in those afflicted, attacks inexperienced hunters especially hard), that would be his experience. But postmortem remorse couldn’t un-kill that deer.
I had no idea at the time that 2011 would be John Jr.’s last hunting season. My son and best friend was diagnosed with ALS the following spring and succumbed after four years of unbelievable anguish. Even though I deeply regretted taking what should have been Frosty’s shot, I never told John I’d done it, and he got to celebrate his son’s enormous first buck.
I take some solace in that.
During a 30-year nonfiction writing career, Dr. John A. Wilde published six books and 240 articles, most of the latter appearing in international magazines with an average circulation of approximately 145,000, all related to his professional career. Dr. Wilde has published seven stories in literary magazines since 2025 and has another accepted for later publication.
