How I Learned to Gut my First Deer
I was first introduced to hunting at a very young age. I remember our very first hunting trip as a family when I was seven and in the second grade. We drove all the way to Pierce, Idaho. The first time I was fully engrossed in the hunting scene was the following year in Eastern Washington, near a little town called Lamont. By this time I was eight and in the third grade. My mother and four other sisters were in California for the funeral for my Great Grandfather so it was just my dad and I. My dad had pulled my grandparents trailer for us and a few other guys from our church to stay with us. There were other trailers and tents in the area that we were camping with other guys that we knew from church. This trip really opened my eyes to what hunting was really like because I experienced it all first hand. I felt the coldness of the early morning, I encountered tiredness of the same, and I saw blood. I was the only girl in the middle of a colossal man cave with no connection to the "outside world."
Hunting is a huge part of my life, and has been since my very first deer in 2007. That deer was involved in a highly unique experience that has affected my life forever. Most of the people that hunt normally kill their first deer at the ages of 15-17, but in my case I was ten. I had an extraordinary opportunity to go out and hunt with my family at a young age and was blessed further with a kill the second year I had carried a gun. Family tradition played a part in this special trip we take every October. My grandma's family has been hunting for as long as she can remember and when she married my grandpa her father and brothers taught him how to hunt, which he in turn taught my dad how to hunt. My dad then taught me how to hunt and we have been following the tradition of hunting ever since. We gather as a family every fall, take a week off of school and bond together making this experience one to remember for years to come even though there will be hundreds more. For this reason also, hunting is held near and dear to my heart as something that I love. Blood, guts, and skin are all things you will see when you are hunting. Quite appropriately, I'm very interested in science and want to go into medicine so when I see all these things and I can identify them it is fascinating.
Every chance a hunter gets to field dress an animal or "gut" begins with the pursuit. In the case of my first deer the pursuit was highly out of the regular. In fact, I wasn't truly out in the field at all, my family and I were on our way home with our trailer hitched up and everything packed away except for my gun, thankfully. We were barely on the road when my mom yelled "DEER!" Which made my dad slam on the brakes and everything in the car fly forward catching everyone off guard. Automatically I grabbed my gun and shoved bullets into the chamber as fast as I could. My dad had to roll down the window so I could prop my gun out side the door. It took awhile to adjust the window to where I could see out of my gun but when I could I was nervous. Hunters call this "buck fever". My dad, mom, sisters, grandparents, and friends all had to talk me into it and convince me I could do it and tell me that I was just psyching myself out and I was completely capable. It took awhile but I finally shot. Ears ringing, eyes squinting, sweat beading down my neck, the smell of gunpowder wafting through my nose, smile stretching from ear to ear, thinking, I had just shot my first deer. Oh no!, I thought. It was still moving. Everyone was cheering, "Good job Taegen!", "Taegen, Wow!", "Awesome!". There was just one problem, did they know I didn't kill it right away? My dad got out of the car with his gun to finish it off... They must have known. My little sister, when seeing that the deer didn't die right away was sad and ask my dad to kill it saying, "I don't want it to 'suffercate'." On our way BACK to deer camp to gut and skin the deer I remember vividly, like it was only yesterday, hanging outside the window yelling, " I got one, I got one!" While everyone still at deer camp was standing there looking amazed. I had shot my first deer from the window of the passenger seat in our huge 12-passenger van on the way HOME from hunting. What a surreal moment.
Now killing a deer and gutting a deer are two entirely different things. When hunters are about to shoot their animal, they get nervous, "buck fever", but when hunters are about to gut their animal, they get an upset stomach. My case is, again, extra special indeed because instead of killing my deer right away, I exploded his insides. This deer was my first so I had no idea how to do what they call, field dress, this deer, therefore my father taught me. This is how I learned to gut my first deer! My dad told me to hold my knife so it pointed away from me at the very beginning, just i were to cut myself. He then directed me to cut open the deer's flesh in order to get to his innards. When he showed me how to do this he sliced the knife on the inside of the hide between the protective stomach tissue and the skin all the way up to the sternum. He then had me pull back the skin from the center to the outsides giving me more room to maneuver my knife. Next my dad guided me through cutting open then the abdomen. Unfortunately for me, the guts were all a soupy mess when I cut into the stomach therefore making it extremely challenging and messy to take out of the corpse. I had to stick my hands all the way inside the beast and cut and pull, cut and pull, cut and pull, until the guts were out. The guts of my deer were no ordinary guts. They were almost completely green with a heart, lungs, liver, and part of the stomach. I stayed there the whole time without gagging or throwing up one time while grown men, two, three, or even four times my age were gagging and walking away because they couldn't handle the sight or smell of my deer. It was a sense of pride I held, and still hold to this day that I withheld everything that went along with that deer. It was tough, yes, I'll admit that, but it withstood it and pushed through until the end and I pride myself on that.
Hunting was, is, and always will be apart of who I am. Whether it be gutting the deer, skinning it, shooting it, or having fun with family, hunting is always the best trip of the year and what I look forward to most. Learning to gut my first deer was vital to the rest of my life. It equipped me for further down the road when I have to gut my own deer without my father by my side, or when I have to teach my own children, or even use it to survive in the wilderness. It's a life lesson I'll take with me to my grave and I will cherish it forever.
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