COLUMN: Finding patience in blind while hunting for deer

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Nov. 15 is considered a holiday for many deer hunters in the state of Michigan.

For some, it’s an opportunity to bring home some venison meat or add another mount to their trophy case. For others, it’s a vacation away from their wives or from work.

For me, it’s meant for exercising my patience.

Ever since I was 12 years old, my dad and I would spend every other weekend leading up to the opening day of rifle season preparing our hunting areas near my grandpa’s home in Iosco County.

We would always hike deep into swampy areas with a machete and four bags of sugar beets, this was back when it was legal to set out bait.

We would build a blind, create four shooting lanes and dump all the beets into the best-positioned lane, about 30 yards from the blind.

At around 4:30 a.m. on opening day morning, my dad would always wake me up by saying “Orrin, daylight in the swamp!”

Every hunter knows bucks will always run around once they see daylight, looking to mate with doe during the rut.

Both my dad and I would quickly eat our breakfast, get into our orange jumpsuits and leave my grandparents’ home and walk quietly to our blinds.

The first time I ever fired my 9 mm Remington rifle at a deer was I was 16 years old. As soon as the sky went from black to dark blue, I looked through my scope and saw a 3-point buck starring right at me.

I fired at the buck, thinking I was shooting right above the buck’s front leg.

My dad, uncle, and I spent all morning searching for any signs of blood or hair, and all we came up with was a bullet hole through a tree, which we concluded diverted the bullet and caused the bullet to miss the buck.

We cut the tree down with an electric chain-saw the next year.

The following year, I shot down my first doe about 10 minutes after the sunrise, and my first buck the year after, proving my patience after all these years had paid off.

Nov. 15 will always be important for hunters all across the state, even to the point where schools would get canceled for it.

With my busy schedule in college making it more and more complicated these days to go out to my blind, I can now wait with my newfound patience for the best moment to get back out into the swamp.

Hopefully, I beat the daylight to it.