First Buck on Opening Day

 In honor of opening day of gun season this weekend I figured I would share a story about my second opening day hunt by myself. I had just turned fifteen years old that year and got a new gun for my birthday. I could not wait to take it out but for obvious reasons I had to wait a month. The days were growing closer and closer and I was so excited to get out in the woods with that new gun when the day finally came. I had sat in the oldest spot in the woods, but my favorite spot at the time. I was only sitting a few hundred yards away from where my dad was sitting, yet felt like I was on my own adventure as I walked to the stand through the dark woods.

It was turning out to be a pretty slow morning when I had only seen a few deer by eight thirty. Then everything stated to come together. I was only sitting about fifty yards into the woods off a fields when I saw a bunch of deer running across the field just to the right of me. I got excited not knowing what it could be, then i saw him. He was with eight different does and was the stud of the woods. My heart began to race due to the fact it was the biggest deer I had ever seen while hunting. He came through the woods to my right and was not presenting the shot I needed to take. I began to hit my call trying to take him off the does he was with, I was working my deer hunting magic! Like usual it did not work and he began to disappear into the the brush in front of me. He was heading right towards another guy in our woods and I was not gonna take the chance of not getting this deer. I set my gun on the rest, put the red dot right behind his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The shot went off and he took off running back where he came from, I thought for sure I had missed so I racked another shell into my twenty gauge and let another piece led fly while he was on the run. The bullet hit him like a ton of bricks and put him in a pile. My heart began to race and I heard my dad over the radio. "Was that you that shot?" He could hear the excitement in my voice as I told him I just smoked the biggest deer of my life. I never saw my dad move quicker as he go out of his stand and came over to congratulate me on my trophy. This day will stay locked in my heart and race through my mind every time I go out hunting.

Whiffle Ball

It was another summer day in Cass City Michigan. I was in my last couple of years of elementary school when I found a new game that I loved. It resembled one of my favorite sports but was less intense. You played with a plastic ball and bat, but it didn’t require a ball. If you don’t know what this game is yet you defiantly missed out. My friends and I played whiffle ball almost every day that we could that summer, and the only thing that could stop us was our parents and the weather. The game came about after we watched my neighbors play the game for a family reunion then I took the ideas to my friends. We all were excited about this new game and pooled our money together to get a new whiffle ball bat and some ball.

We bought the best whiffle ball bat we could find. It was black and the plastic had a wood print on it that made it look real. The whiffle balls were white and had holes on one side of the ball that allowed you to through crazy curve balls that people could rarely hit. We made our first whiffle ball field at my friend Lucas’s house. He had a white picket fence that we could use for a homerun boundary and a big oak tree that acted as our catcher. As the word spread of the first game more and more friends showed up. Bikes laid in the yard and we picked the teams. The first game of whiffle ball was a major success and all of our friends decided to play again.

The next day we played our first game the next day at the same spots. We all gave ourselves names of major league baseball players. Our friend Lucas was not a little kid and went by the name “Big Papi,” and I was pretended I was “Pudge.” Once again we had most of our friends there and played multiple games. We all enjoyed the fact we could hit homeruns and trot around the bases. Then we came up with an idea. We decided that we should all have fields and play a game at each field every day. We all traveled from house to house making up new fields. Some with farther fences and others that had shorter, but taller fences.  The fields all had there advantages when it came to whose house you were at. Like my house we always got lemonade, while at Lucas’s his mom made us food. Looking back at it we were living the American kids dream. Playing a game close to baseball and pretending we were the pros. Nothing will top those summer days of whiffle ball.

Flush it Down the Toilet

As this week went on I found myself in mess of homework assignments due. Which reminded me of my first failing grade I received when I was in school. I was only in the second grade when I received my first failing grade. I didn’t understand the assignment in its full and did what I did best and just winged it. Yet, this time it didn’t work so well for me.

I began working on the assignment, I can’t quite remember what it was today. We had a substitute teacher that day and the assignment was due at the end of the class period. It was an old crotchety sub that all of us students were scared of. No talking was aloud and heaven forbid if you asked to use the restroom. So I was deathly afraid of asking for help on the assignment. I began to chip away at the assignment and turned it in just in time for the class to end. I went my marry way onto the next class and forgot about the assignment.

The next day came and our original teacher was back in the classroom. She had already graded yesterday’s assignment and was passing them out. Then she handed me mine. The paper floated in the air for what seemed like an eternity, and all I could see was the big red E circled. I watched if float until it hit the desk as if the paper had turned into a cinder block. I was scared my stomach hurt and my eyes watered up. Now there was only one question in my mind. What was mom going to do? I walked home on my usual path brainstorming what I was going to do and how I was going tell mom. No idea come to mind.

I walked in the door as I always did beating mom home from work by a half hour, the longest half hour of my life. I paced around the house setting the paper in not so obvious places so I could say I left it out, but hoping she would never find it. Then she pulled in the drive way and my level of fear raised to the top. I quickly grabbed the paper and flushed it down the toilet where she would never find it. We had a casual conversation about my school day, then she went into the bathroom. I thought I had no worries until we were both standing over the toilet with my mom asking my paper was in the toilet. I began to cry about my first failing grade. My mom felt bad that I thought she would hate me for not doing well, and explained to me that I wasn’t perfect and she didn’t expect me to be. Ever sense then I wasn’t afraid to admit that I failed, and to ask questions even if it is the scary old crotchety sub.