Passage from The Broken Leg Buck
My eyes came back open and I was scared. My mind was racing. I didn’t know where I was, how I got there or who I was with. My legs were trembling. I looked straight ahead and feared for my life. I knew something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t place it. My head felt funny. My fingers were tingling and I had a pounding headache. I sat there dumbfounded. After approximately five minutes I realized that I needed something to eat. I rummaged through my backpack and found some Snickers candy bars. I quickly shoveled them into my mouth. My blood sugar level had hit rock bottom. I was in the beginning stages of an insulin reaction. I didn’t panic. I chose to sit tight, eat my candy and wait for my blood levels to come back to an acceptable level. After about a half hour I started feeling better. I noticed a small doe feeding up the hill. She was coming out of the cedar swamp below. I sat still and she fed past me. She never saw me and continued on her way. I waited a little while to make sure nothing was following her and then I headed back to meet Dad.
Passage from The Sleeping Buck
The morning dragged at first. I sat there and stared into the sky. I was complaining to myself and asking whoever was listening why the weather always had to be crappy. As I fidgeted around I caught movement on the small, steep knob off to my right. I instantly identified the deer as the long tined buck that I had seen a few other times. Once again, I didn’t have a shot. I kept hearing Dad and Jeff over and over in my head, “You might just as well shoot. What do you have to lose?”
At that point I determined they were right. I didn’t have anything to lose and there was no way I was going to get the buck if I didn’t shoot. When he got into the saplings near the saddle I rested my gun on my knee and pulled the trigger. The deer kept walking and I fired again. The deer didn’t even flinch and continued walking. I fired once again and he stopped. He looked in my direction. He was alert and had finally figured out that something wasn’t right. I leveled the crosshairs on this front shoulder and squeezed the trigger again. After he started running I fired the last shot in the gun. Just as I had originally thought, there was no way a bullet would make it through the maze of small trees. I reloaded my gun and then turned my radio on. When I turned it on I could hear Jeff and Dad talking.