WRITTEN SEPTEMBER 2010

The Perfect Shot
Shaking knees, sweaty palms, back stiff from sitting perfectly still. I feel none of this. Somewhere, deep in my subconscious mind, these sensations register, but all I can focus on is the target. I raise my 300 Winchester Short Magnum rifle up to shoot, the weight of it familiar in my experienced hands. Broadside, staring me dead in the eye, stands the biggest deer I have ever taken aim at. Everything comes down to this one moment, the chance to prove myself. And I am terrified.
My Dad and I have been frozen in the hunting stand all afternoon, watching for any sign of decent game. Our morale seems inversely related to the clock as minutes trickle by. I had hoped that today would be the day that I have been practicing so hard for, the day that I would finally get to kill my first buck, putting my name on the chart with the real hunters. I glare at the peeling, green paint on the walls, tugging on the ear flaps of my annoyingly itchy camouflage hat as I marinate in disappointment. All of a sudden, a large, brown-gloved hand grasps my elbow and begins making sharp, enthusiastic gestures towards the window behind me. My Dad, using our special father-daughter sign language, signals for me to turn around slowly so as not to awaken the rickety old stool I am perched on. Excitement floods my veins on taking in the sight beyond the small window. My chance has arrived! Standing next to a patch of prickly pear cacti off to the side of the dirt road, grazing on dead grass, is the most tremendous buck I have ever seen in person. Defying gravitational laws, he raises his gargantuan brown head from the ground to reveal antlers of thickest bone, spread out wide like a pair of arms beckoning me in. Fourteen spikes of pure glory, pointing up to the heavens. As we watch him eat, he makes a teasing pattern through the weeds. Closer, farther, a bit closer, a bit farther; he taunts me.
The sky turns orange while my nerves begin to set with the sun. Finger poised on the trigger, I await the perfect, opportune moment to squeeze. My hands grow numb in the icy air and my left foot sleeps, encased in its knee-high rubber boot. My bodacious new best friend stands picking at his corn, and taking his sweet time about it, still over two hundred yards away. All visibility in the ever-purpling night sky will soon be lost, taking this wondrous opportunity along with it. It’s now or never. I pull hearing protection muffs down over the ear-flaps of my hat and secure the butt of the rifle against my right shoulder, the barrel protruding out of the pane-less window. I spy my quarry through the black spotting scope mounted atop the gun. Oh, he knows what a prize he is. My Dad crouches over and whispers, “D’you think ya could make that shot?”
BAM!
To this day, I still swear that I heard him say, “You better make that shot.” Regardless of whether it was the stifling power of the earmuffs combined with the flaps of my wonderful hat, or simply my selectively permeable ears, I am glad that I misunderstood him. Twelve years old, shooting from two hundred and thirty yards away, at dusk, straight through the heart, I finally made my perfect shot.