The Deer of Lifetime

A few weeks ago, I harvested the biggest deer of my lifetime. I have been hunting for my entire life and have taken a lot of deer, but this one was different - magnificent and beautiful.

I spent the morning with my best friend of 35 years doing something we love. It was a genuinely great day. But it almost did not happen.

Here is the irony: I did not want to go on this excursion. With work on my mind and chores around the house that needed to be done, I was finding it hard to get excited about going hunting.

When you hunt, you have to get up early, hike into the woods, sit in an uncomfortable seat, and wait for a deer that may or may not come. It is much easier to sleep late, cut the grass, answer a few emails, and sit down later with a sense of accomplishment.

All this considered, I really did not want to go hunting with my friend. But my friend knew work had been busy lately and that I needed to get out. He set up a great place to hunt and guilted me into getting up at 5:30 on a Saturday morning.

Once I got to the stand, it was great. The morning was crisp and cool after a long, hot summer and early fall. The leaves were falling, the squirrels were playing…it was just a nice place to be. Then, about an hour after I sat down, the biggest deer of my life came into sight.

I watched him in the scope for a while trying to make sure he was the right deer to take and that I had a clean shot. The result was a deer that exceeded my expectations. A great deer by anyone’s standards, his antlers were large and symmetrical.

My friend helped me get him out of the woods and I took him to the processor. The other hunters and the game wardens gave me the obligatory congrats and back slaps. After a tough week at work, it was great to have everything fall into place. It was a day I will not forget.

If I would have slept late, cut the grass, and answered emails, I probably would have forgotten that day.

The moral of this story is to show up and participate. There are a thousand reasons for not doing something. It is easy to make excuses for not living your best life, but it is not that much harder to just show up, get out there, and live it. You never can tell which day will be that day you remember forever.

Until next time…we are Advoco, make every minute count.

About Craig: Craig Page is a self-proclaimed “data geek” with nearly 20 years of EAM/maintenance consulting experience. His favorite work is data migrations. He enjoys solving the puzzle to make the data fit and keep the integrity of the information. When Craig isn’t in front of a computer, he is probably running a chainsaw or a tractor. Have a question for Craig? Send him an email!