That experience also led me to make changes in my life that were truly transformative. What follows was very emotional for me, and it shook me to my core when these events transpired.

In 1990, I was at deer camp with some college buddies in Upper Michigan. We were staying at a family cabin, situated deep in the Pere Marquette Forest system. The evening we arrived (just prior to the gun deer opener on November 15th), we passed the time making preparations for the morning hunt. Firearms were inspected and given a final once-over and clothing was laid out so that we could get an early start. We all had pre-assigned blinds and were in them well before first light. We all hunted hard that morning, but nobody had any luck.

We all arrived back at the cabin around 11am, and after some discussion, we decided that since the deer seemed to not be moving, we would attempt a “deer drive” in the afternoon. For those not familiar with that term, it basically works like this: You position one or two “shooters” a few hundred yards away and try to utilize local land features or “flankers” to “funnel” the deer toward your shooters, as the other people in your hunting party “push” them. In this instance, we had a road on one side of us and a river on the other. The distance between the two land features was about 200 yards. Three of us were positioned about 50 yards apart, and we began to push the woods toward the bottleneck where the river and road met. So, I drove all of us out to the location in my truck at about 3:00pm.