My first whitetail experience consisted of watching two does slowly cross a rural road in the late afternoon of a golden autumn day in 1974.  As I watched the does daintily tiptoe across the road, I didn't know it yet, but I was falling in love.
 I'd grown up in Florida and recently arrived in Pennsylvania.  After a tour of Vietnam beginning in 1969, and a couple years of stateside duty I was ready for a change of scenery. Those two does made me a permanent resident, though it would be a few years yet before I stepped into the woods.
 Working in a small local steel mill the first person I met was Rege Duffy, a tall, stringy, Irish kid that loved to hunt.  Little did we know, but our futures would be forever intertwined.
 I taught Rege how to fish for bass with lures, and in the fall of 1976 he showed up at my back door with a high tined eight point laying on the folded down seats of the family station wagon  Admiring the buck I lamented that hunting deer was something I had fantasized about as a kid.  As he often done before, he offered me his gun and a seat on his stand, but a tour of Vietnam had ruined my hunting fantasy. I'd taken a personal vow that I would never again pick up a firearm. After having breakfast with our family he left for home and the butcher shop. An hour later I answered a knock at the back door. As Rege pushed his way inside he said "Here, start practicing. Next year you hunt."  "What are you talking about?" I asked.  "You can hunt deer with bow and arrow in Pennsylvania," he responded. Before that moment I'd never heard about archery hunting except by Native Americans.  Looking at the 45 lb Shakespeare bow and a dozen new arrows I was speechless. I started practicing that afternoon. The dream had taken on a new form.
 During the next year I went through a few dozen arrows,  shattering some stump shooting, while others snaked under the grass never to be seen again. As fall approached I felt confident about my shooting ability, and I knew quite a bit about deer as I'd read every article in every periodical I could purchase. Today that youthful confidence is a cause for laughter.
 That first day archery hunting would cause many people to never step in the woods again. Imagine three young men crashing through the woods in the pre-dawn light on their way to their stands. Branches swished as we shoved our way through the underbrush, and sticks crackled like an endless supply of corn popping. As we crawled through the darkened hell of a crabapple thicket I got a thorn stuck in my eye. That day I sat in a deadfall, sweaty from the heat, and humidity, as mosquitoes practiced take offs and landings on my ears and nose. Determined to be the first to kill a deer my head swiveling from left to right, and at times I probably did a good Linda Blair imitation as I tried to see if any deer were sneaking up behind me. Although my eye was burning, I was determined to stay until dark.
 When I got home I had my wife look at the eye.  After washing her hands and sterilizing a pair of tweezers, she extracted a crabapple thorn a half inch long from between the eye and the lower lid. I was lucky.
 Needless to say I didn't see a deer for the entire four week period, not even a flag. Hundreds of deer saw me, while thousands probably heard me. I was a blood plasma donor for mosquitoes, scraped my arms bloody climbing trees, sat shivering in deadfalls, and turned blue sitting over snowy benches loaded with deer sign.
 That one year of tempering and humility probably did more to shape my hunting future than any article, gizmo, or advice anyone could offer. It made me more determined, and it kept the dream alive. Hunting was much harder than I thought.
 My season was far from wasted. I became elated when discovering a rub, hypothesized on the various sizes and uses of scrapes, noticed the differences between buck and doe feces, the various types of bedding areas deer use depending upon weather conditions. And trail, I literally walked hundreds of different types of trails. The woods became a classroom where each day I learned new lessons.
 When I arrived home after dark on the final day of my first archery season, my loving wife looked at me with her, "You poor baby, you tried so hard," look. That look meant a lot to me, it meant I had her support. I responded to her expression with words of my own, "Just think Honey, only 335 days till archery season.
 The first day of the second year started off a little better than the first. I didn't poke my eye out, but I didn't see a deer either. My wife had given me a Bear Whitetail compound bow for my birthday. I'd added sights, a stabilizer, and with lots of practice my three arrow groups had tightened up dramatically. My reading had also intensified. Any moment I expected to see the buck of my  dreams walk right up and beg me to shoot him. I still had volumes to learn.
 Three weeks later I saw my first whitetail in the woods. It had been a frigid morning, hoarfrost coated the leaves like iron filings on a magnet, but the leaves were still as crunchy as a potato chip bag. I had learned to clear 360 degrees around the base of the tree so if I wanted to use the tree for cover, I could maneuver around the tree soundlessly. Sitting against the tree with the compound on my lap, my body involuntarily vibrated trying to fend off the cold.  My feet felt… my feet felt nothing,  they were frozen, and my fingers were more like claws. Nothing on my body was warm. When the sunlight covered my whole body, I understood how a snake feels on the first warm day of spring. As my body began to warm I drifted to that in-between place where one is neither sleeping nor awake. A place of simultaneous restfulness and awareness. Eyes closed I could sense movements of the birds, squirrels and chipmunks. I felt invisible, and for the very first time, part of the woods. As I sat there I heard and felt for the first time, the tusch, tusch, tusch, of approaching deer as their hooves crushed the leaves and vibrated the ground.  I never reached for my bow, instead I opened my eyes and watched them watching me from less than three feet away. Nostrils flaring in and out, the lead doe gracefully arched her neck downward and sniffed my knee. Rather than the black nose photos suggest, her nose was multi hued with pinks, browns, and white. Her liquid eyes and curly lashes held me mesmerized, and I got a close up view of those sound enhancing radars that we call ears. She never took alarm or snorted, instead she stood there watching me. Not to be outdone, the other two deer leaned in for a look and a sniff of their own. I have no idea of how much time passed, but this experience sealed my fate. The decision to leave was an ear flicker from the lead doe. They wheeled in unison and in single file they left on the trail I had been sitting beside and I watched them walk away. I was a hunter now. I had the trophy deer I had been seeking since childhood.