Failure, Patience, and a Young Buck: Fifty Yards from Success

I just spent four days hunting mule deer in the Tahoe National Forest. That’s four days of waking before dawn, four days of hiking through the dark woods before the first light hit the ridges, four days of glassing slopes and drainages until my eyes burned. I’ve said this before, and I’ll probably keep saying it until I stop hunting, but this pursuit is strange. There’s nothing else in my life I’ve poured so much effort and time into while experiencing so much failure.

This trip was no exception, but something was different this time. For the first time all season, I actually saw a deer. That might sound like a small thing, but after a dozen days of empty glass and quiet woods, it felt like a breakthrough. He was a small buck legal, young, probably his first or second year.

I spotted him in the gray light of morning, tucked just inside the timber line. The forest floor damp with pine needles. I watched him feed, then lift his head, ears twitching, eyes locking right on me. For about thirty seconds,.  We both stood there, me with my rifleand  him frozen in that perfect mix of curiosity and caution.

He gave me a shot. Fifty yards. Clean. And I let him walk.

It’s strange to describe the feeling. There was no disappointment. No regret. Just this quiet sense of knowing I made the right call. Because for me, hunting is not about killing. The reward isn’t just in the meat or the mount. It’s in the effort, the patience, the moments when your heart beats so loud you think the whole forest can hear it.

Taking that young buck wouldn’t have made me proud. Watching him walk away did. It reminded me that the hunt itself is the thing. The failure, the fatigue, the endless hours of nothing, they’re all part of the same story. And sometimes, the best success comes from choosing not to pull the trigger.

Here’s the picture of him, just a young muley, still figuring out the world. Maybe I’ll see him again next year. Maybe I won’t. But either way, I’ll be back out there, trying again, failing again, and loving every bit of it.