My First Buck 

Dan Nettles 
October 3, 2003

I remember always hearing stories about buck fever, and would just think, man that’s never going to happen to me. Having already taken a cow elk and a doe, I felt like an experienced hunter and that I would be immune to buck fever. But looking through my scope with my crosshairs on that buck just proved me wrong.  

On opening day, my dad and I spent all day glassing hillsides, and not seeing a darn thing. Later that night, we were on our way back to camp and we spotted two deer half way down the road from where we had been sitting and glassing all day.   Just across a small ridge I saw two deer walking along and announced “Dad, deer!” It took a couple of minutes for me to show my dad where the deer where.  When he finally saw them through his binoculars he told me they were two big bucks. But, when I looked through the scope of my rifle, I couldn’t make out a deer from a bush, it was too dark. Bummed that we couldn’t get a shot we went back to camp.  

The next morning we decided to go back to the same spot, figuring that the two bucks wouldn’t have gone far. As we had hoped, not more than 20 minutes after we arrived at the spot, my dad spotted deer less than one hundred yards away. The sun still hadn’t risen, and they trotted off before I could even spot them. With my hands shaking, I got that rush of adrenaline as we went off after the deer. We went in their direction for a little while and didn’t see anything, so we sat down to do some glassing. Sure enough my dad spotted them again, and directed me to the buck.  I was extremely excited.  Laying down prone on my dad’s backpack, I looked through my scope at the buck. I had never taken a shot this far at an animal, and it really didn’t help that I was shaking uncontrollably.  

Finally the buck gave me a broad side, and I squeezed off a shot.   I missed, and my dad whispered the bullet had just gone right over his back. Oddly the deer didn’t even run, it just trotted a little bit further up the ridge and stopped. This is when the excitement took over; my whole body was shaking.  I took another shot and missed again, as they ran out of sight I was really disappointed, I had missed two shots!  As I sat there a bit depressed, I thought that would be my only chance for a buck the entire hunt. Although I was frustrated at missing, I didn’t give up. My dad and I walked back to the truck and started driving down the road, hoping to bump into the deer again.

A little bit down the road, my dad stopped the truck to glass a ridge. Within a minute he spotted the deer again, they were bedded down. I slowly got of the truck with my rifle and sat down on the ground, glassing the hill, trying to find the buck. My dad stepped out of the truck, and the deer stood up, that’s when we saw the buck. The nerves started returning and I started to shake again. I waited for him to give me a broad side, and shot. “He didn’t move” said my dad, I quickly chambered another round, completely amazed with myself that I missed.   I shot again, and he dropped to the ground. “You got him!” my dad whispered. “I got him,” I said with a huge smile on my face, I must have said “I got him” 100 times as I sat there still shaking. This hunt really proved that buck fever can happen to anyone and that the only thing you can do to beat it is to not give up on your hunt.

Dan Nettles and his father with Dan's first buck.  Click on the images to see a larger version.

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