I guess there's a point in a hunter's career when things just start to work. You've seen scores of deer from stand, and don't get the uncontrollable shakes from adrenaline overload when you draw on a deer anymore. You have a few years, lots of mistakes, and the awe of being a few feet from a creature that is 100 times more sensorially aware than you in the past. You still practice in the back yard with a foam deer but the real growth is in how and when you move and how do you go from being a visitor to being a part of the woods.

2005 started for me with a proof that something had changed. I had told Barney that I thought this would be my year because I was not nervous and my only hope was to fully enjoy being 20' up a tree, in the dark, watching my breath rise to Orion. The proof came on opening day when a wren landed on my foot and then hopped up to the arrow that protruded from the Mathews bow I held in my hands. The bird sat staring at my face and cocked its head, confused, I suppose, by my identity. I blinked and it flew away to a nearby walnut tree.

I only surveyed one lonesome doe wandering the predawn hardwoods that morning. But I felt as if I had crossed over into calm and stillness, engagement and purpose. My time in the woods had become a lethal meditation on paradox.

I took a doe a couple of weeks later from a ladder stand we had moved from a clover field to a series of ridges 40 or 50 yards back from the food plot. We extended the ladder stand to 20' and found a funnel area and our dealiest stand site - a hardwood tree growing along side a pine tree. The cover was supurb and when I waited until the group of three does were distracted, I had the perfect opportunity. This time I aimed low, for the heart, since in most of my poor shots I had shot over the top or hit high. She went twenty yards and dropped over just out of sight.

Two hunts later, and I was back in stand not 100 yards from where I had taken the doe. Barney and I had taken three vacation days the week before the Indiana gun season. We were primed for heavy rut action as this had usually been the time of year when we saw the most buck activity. And sure enough, on the first morning of our four day "super hunt" I saw absolutely nothing. Oh sure, I was at one, but I ended up being bored off my zen-cheeks.

It was time to shake things up. Since the time was only 9:00 AM I figured there was still plenty of time left for bucks to be hunting for lovin'. After deliberately decending the ladder stand, I began using the Mongo deer walk to move down an ATV trail to another stand that was deeper in the woods and on a ridge that the deer would use during the rut. The trick to the deer walk is to break up the pattern of human locomotion. By taking shorter steps and pausing at random intervals for a random length of time you can fool most deer into misidentifying you.

I made my way up the ATV trail, not covering more than 150 yards in ten minutes when I spotted a buck sauntering along a doe trail with his nose to the ground. He was heading my way, just off to my right at 70-80 yards. I froze and surveyed my surroundings for a viable option. The thought briefly blasted through my mind - "You can't get a deer from the ground!" Can't was last year. So I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled to a clump of bushes a few yards ahead where I nocked an arrow and fastened my release to the bow string.

Thirty seconds or a year, the clock had stopped and the moment took over. The buck came along and looked like a shooter. Three more steps and he walked behind a double tree trunk that was my draw point. I pulled back and rose up on my knees to deliver the culmination to this ambush when the buck came around the tree and stopped not more than eight yards from me and looked right at me. He failed to take the two additional steps that were going to put him broadside in a clear shooting lane.

No fantasy, no visualization. Just a buck standing at alert looking at me with his body angled towards me and a sticker bush in between us. Like the wren, he hesitated. Did he know the taught crouching form was destiny? Should I - Angle - Will he - Deflection - Decide - Heart - Floating heart dances on my pin - Exhaling. And then the arrow was on him as if it were a willing hound that gulped its master's every wish.

Its impact shocked us both. The Tekan weaponized arrow drove deep at the point where the buck's right leg attached to his chest. Barney and I later discovered, when we recovered the twelve pointer 60 yards away, the arrow protruding from the buck's left haunch. He sprung into the air while kicking his rear legs high, did a complete circle and charged towards me. His confusion cleared instantly, for he spun around and galloped off into the woods from which he had appeared. I stayed on my knees, felt the weight of my bow pulling on my left arm, and wondered at the silent world. No wind, no crunching leaves, no birds chittering, no hum of distant cars and it all was erased by the other half of a breath.