Zoë Jackson: A hunting novice joins Minnesota's deer opener

MINNEAPOLIS — In the darkness before sunrise on Saturday morning peering out of my hunting perch, it was hard to believe I’d be able to spot a deer in my path.

I had never hunted before. Up until a couple months ago, I’d never even held a shotgun, much less fired one. But when I was asked to join the orange-clad ranks this past weekend for Minnesota’s firearm deer hunting season, a local tradition for many residents, my instinct was to say yes.

Truthfully, the idea of hunting for anything has never crossed my mind. Abstractly, I’ve long thought that if I’m OK with eating meat (though I limit the amount), I should be willing to hunt for it. As I learned through an online firearm safety course, responsible hunting is a form of conservation. With that out of the way, how could I say no?

I am willing to try most things once or twice. However, as I learned, being willing to go out there and being able to take the shot are two different things.

The prep

I enrolled in the online firearm safety hunter education course, which is required under Minnesota law for someone to receive a state hunter education certificate. While it never became less surreal that I could take, finish and pass the course without ever holding a firearm, I appreciated the in-depth situational awareness videos that walked me through all of the things that could go wrong.

By the end of it, I was honestly more nervous than I’d been before. The idea of going out during the season opener without ever firing a gun seemed stupid, even if technically legal. So I consulted Minnesota Star Tribune editor Dave Orrick, who is affectionately known around the newsroom as the guy for city folk to talk to when they want to get outside. He agreed to take me out shooting, and soon, I was ordering a blaze orange vest off Amazon and heading out to a wildlife management field.

I showed up in Dr. Martens, a beanie and cropped jeans and of course, my vest for safety, but Orrick didn’t judge. He’d brought a couple different firearms, as well as practice rounds, blanks and live rounds for me to get a feel for.

Orrick showed me how to properly hold and sight a shotgun, where it should hit on my body as not to bruise from the kickback. I was nervous, but he never made me feel stupid. It wasn’t like he grew up hunting, he told me on our walk back. Like I was, he’d taken up hunting later in life and learned to embrace the outdoors from a different vantage point.

As I would discover, everyone I encountered for this story was more than willing to share what they knew. Strib outdoors columnist Dennis Anderson hooked me up with longtime friend John Weyrauch, a passionate lover of the outdoors who was friendly, patient, and willing to show a total newcomer the ropes.

Two weeks before the opener, I went to meet John where we’d be hunting near Stillwater. We started off purchasing our hunting permits at Fleet Farm before walking around the area. Out there it was quiet enough to hear each individual leaf fall. I climbed in and out of the deer blind to get a feel for where we’d be on Nov. 8. When I successfully climbed down, John let me know that I passed. He’d even brought some venison hamburger for me to take home.

The opener

I could hardly sleep Friday night, overcome by nerves that I’d either freeze up or freeze my butt off in the frigid morning temperatures. I woke up at 3:45 a.m. Saturday and made it out to our hunting by about 5:20 a.m. On the way there, I parked behind John, and together we walked through the pitch darkness toward the deer stand in the woods.

“Walk slow to help your eyes adjust,” he said. Leaves crunched under our feet in the dark. At first, it was hard to imagine that I’d be able to see much of anything beyond the trees. Eventually, more of the landscape revealed itself. John signaled for me to look toward the left, near a pond to see a deer that had appeared.

It was spooky and surreal, enough to up the excitement as we got to the stand. We climbed in and sat down to wait. There were about 90 minutes until legal shooting, so we settled in with cups of black coffee and wild game meat sticks that John had me guess what they contained (it was goose).

Just 10 minutes before legal shooting began, a buck walked out in front of the stand. It could be one of those years, John said, where you see deer just before sunrise. There was no guarantee we’d see one again, especially with the full moon, he said. I had no idea that the moon could impact the hunt. According to John, full moons mean that deer remain active all night and might be less likely to continue moving around in the morning.

It was stunning to watch the night turn to daylight. On a typical morning, I’d never say it was sunny. In fact, it was pretty overcast. But after being out in the dark for so long, it was like it had never been brighter. John said it reminded him of stage lights coming on, which I thought was beautiful.

While in the dark every sound could be a deer, daylight meant that any flash of motion from birds or squirrels in the corner of our vision could be deer too. Who knew a squirrel could be so loud?

John told me about how he came to love the quiet beauty and the peacefulness of being out there. I admired how he found everything in nature interesting, from flowers to morels.

We spotted a good-sized doe that I should have had a clear shot at. I saw her, lined up my shot and turned the safety off. But I struggled with getting close enough to the scope on the gun to have a clear image of the deer in my crosshairs. By the time I managed to figure it out, she spooked and ran off in the other direction, leaping like a dancer to get away from us.

It was possible that she would come back, as deer don’t remember for too long. John used a tool to make a buck sound to try to draw back the buck from earlier, to no avail. We waited around in the stand for awhile longer, with me practicing with my scope, so I would get it right this time. But another opportunity didn’t come.

We broke for the day around lunchtime.

Even though my first attempt at hunting was not a success, I genuinely enjoyed myself. In the anxiety-ridden days ahead of Saturday, I wasn’t sure I would. But I plan to try again in the future. Through this experience, I realized that I think of myself as not only someone who isn’t outdoorsy but sometimes as someone who is almost afraid of being outside.

But that simply wasn’t true. For this story, I found out that up in that deer blind in the early-morning hours as I wished for a whitetail, I got the same sparkly rush or sense of joy that I get from a concert, good conversation ... or any experience that reminds me that I am alive.

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