The Lucky Nick

It was many years ago that this story began, with a young hunter who was not as good of a shot as he wanted to be. Alex was his name and my younger brother. Me and him have been close for as long as I can remember and we have many interests that work with one another. However, hunting was something that was not shared as evenly as the rest. My brother was not the most avid hunter and would have preferred to just sit at home and read a book of otherworldly fantasy. Unfortunately for him, he lived with a family that hunts for the meat we eat, so he had to come along with us on our yearly hunting trips.

This year, he ended up getting a tag for the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho. I was ecstatic. The Sawtooth Mountains were one of my favorite places to go and hunt and in the past, I had harvested many deer from the region. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to accompany him on this trip as I had a college algebra test I needed to take. While I was busy cramming for my test, my brother and father made the trip up to the Sawtooth Mountains and made their way up to a familiar hunting area that we had been climbed up many times before. This place had been named Iron Mine. It got its name from an old iron mine that once flourished back many years ago, but got shut down for reasons unknown, but that didn't stop our family from hunting up there.

They got up there very early in the morning, roughly around 6:30 in the morning. The hike was long and arduous, right up one of the hillsides in order to reach the ridge line where they could look over the different draws for potential deer to shoot. In the first few hours of the day, all that they saw were does that couldn't care less if they had a human visitor interrupting their meal. Around lunchtime though, my brother finally spotted the first buck of the day. It was a lone 2-point buck. Just a little guy, probably only about 2 years old. He stood broadside at about 200 yards to the east on another hillside and just stared at my brother and father as they set up for a shot. After calming himself down and readying his rifle, my brother took a shot at the lone buck. The resounding boom of the rifle made everything seem to ring. The buck, upon the shot being fired, left 8 feet straight up into the air before coming back down and running off around the side of the mountain. My brother was positive that he had hit the buck, and with my father in tow, made their way to where the buck once stood.

Upon reaching the spot were the buck once was, they did manage to find a few drops of blood. With growing confidence, the two made their way around the hillside. After reaching the other side of the hill, they started to find more than just a blood trail. First it started with only blood. Then, they found a small piece of intestine. Then another even longer piece. What they found after that was the entire stomach just laying in a pile of sagebrush. The two looked around to see just where the buck had gone, but they could not see it. Exhausted, the two sat down for lunch and calmed themselves down. Once they had filled their bellies with jerky, granola bars, and plenty of water, they continued their search. Lo and behold, the buck had fallen just 50 yards beneath then under a tall patch of sagebrush. Upon reaching the buck, my brother found out that he had indeed hit the buck, just barely. Its belly had been nicked, and with each bound that deer took, its belly just opened wider and wider until nearly everything just fell out. It was his first buck ever, and one that he for sure will remember. I may not have been able to experience this hunt myself, but with how my brother told it, it certainly was one for the record books.