For years, I asked anyone who would listen to take me hunting. I wanted to know where my meat came from—to stock my freezer with something clean and honest and to feed it to my little boy. I was a single mom, and it felt like the least I could do for him. Everyone had a reason not to, until last year, when my friend Conner finally said yes.
Conner had just come out the other side of a long fight with Hodgkin lymphoma. It was a battle that tested him more than most people ever have to be tested. When he offered to take me, I think we both understood it as more than a hunting trip.
We met near Seeley Lake to look for whitetail, our sights set on finding a mature buck. All day Conner taught me things I didn’t know I needed to understand: how a buck moves, where he waits, how he behaves around does.
“You have to become one with the way they act,” he told me. I showed up in yoga pants with camo shoved in my bag, and I never mentioned that the biggest gun I’d ever fired was a .22. When he handed me the rifle, I just stood there, trying to look like I knew what I was doing.
We saw does all day, some spikes, but no bucks. As the light started to wane, we decided to try one last spot near his family cabin. We hadn’t gone 20 yards when Conner stopped and whispered, “There’s a buck right there.”
I froze; the deer shot off into the trees.
We rattled antlers together in the hopes of drawing him near. We waited. We rattled some more.
The light kept dropping. Then, 200 yards out, the buck stepped between two pine trees and stood broadside, still as a photograph.
I raised the rifle, shaking from cold and adrenaline. Conner whispered several times, “Do you see him?” and it was all I could do to whisper back, “Yes, I do.”
Finally, he quietly probed, “You know you have to pull the trigger, right? Nice and slow.”
So I did.
Then we were both quiet, holding space for the emotions we felt. I thought about how life can change in an instant, and how easy it is to take things for granted until something reminds you not to. Conner knew that better than anyone.
After the harvest, Conner walked me through the different meat cuts: steaks, roasts, grinding meat for breakfast sausage and burger. All of it I stacked in the freezer.
My son is 7 now. Every time I thaw a package from that deer, I feel the same thing: joy, mostly, and reverence in knowing exactly what’s on his plate and what it cost to put it there.
