It was just after 5 p.m. on Halloween when I slipped into the tall grass on the edge of a 30-acre cut corn field. A strong wind gusted from the north and gave me a clean entry from the southeastern edge of the field. The noise of my steps was covered, and my scent blew away from where the deer usually came through. I tucked into the cover of a shrubby cedar tree with my recurve and waited to assess the situation in front of me.

October had been a stressful month, and the times I could get away for more than an hour to hunt had been few. Only four weeks earlier, I had learned of my brother being badly injured at work on the same day my grandma died. To say it was an emotionally draining month would not nearly cover the weight of what the last few weeks had felt like. I had a couple extra little kids (on top of my own five, ages 3-10) as I helped with my niece and nephew while their daddy recovered from nearly losing both legs. We also had traveling for a funeral and the grief and processing of losing someone so dear as my grandma to deal with in the midst of everything else. I had just returned the previous afternoon from delivering my niece and nephew back home to their mom and dad after a long separation while he recovered. Now it was time to unwind and let the stillness of nature work its wonders. I maintain that nothing clears a troubled mind like the natural world and hunting with a stick and string.

Pre-rut activity had been strong before I left for that trip. My last sit before I left had been a short 20 minutes in a stand before the sun set and the woods became dark. As I prepared to leave my stand that sat on a little finger of woods separating a cornfield and a soybean field, I heard the unmistakable sound of antlers hitting something hard. I waited, and when I didn’t hear another noise for five or so minutes, I decided to climb down. As I did, a rush of brown flew past me, and I pressed myself backwards against the tree. It was a huge buck; one I had named “Bruce” after seeing him on a camera I had set up before the season started. I refuse to use cameras where I am actively hunting, but I do like seeing what is out there when I won’t be around for weeks.

Bruce was a 10-point with a split tine on the right side and a huge, bulky body. He was fighting with a buck I didn’t recognize and the crash of them hitting each other was unlike any noise I had ever heard. They were so amped up on testosterone they didn’t even know I was there. I stayed well away and hidden behind my tree as I feared their fighting craze could make them dangerous to me. Eventually, they separated and the smaller buck turned to run as Bruce chased him. I took that as a chance to get out and hustled toward my truck a few hundred yards off.

I walked as quickly as I could but soon heard a pounding noise behind me and to the left. I rushed ahead and tucked into a cedar tree. Two more bucks were running and fighting, and I could still see Bruce stamping and breathing hard in the field to my right. They ran back and forth, chasing each other (with Bruce clearly the leader) and I stared in awe of the battle and wished it had happened 30 minutes earlier when I would have been able to shoot. Once, I was within five yards of the giant Bruce as he postured himself against a younger buck just to the left of the cedar I was huddled in. It was a chilly evening, and I could see the steam coming from his nose. Hair raised, he grunted with every step. When he tried to initiate a fight with a wide, tall 8-point I had named “Steve,” I decided I really had to get out of there, as amazing is it was to watch. They crashed into trees and ran so unaware of their surroundings that I could see myself being trampled if they didn’t stop when they got close to where I was hiding. I shouted “Hey!” and tried to get their attention, which at first was to no avail. I finally decided to take out my phone and start playing music as loud as it would go. Every buck suddenly froze in place, then after a brief pause, they scattered in every direction.

I had crashed their party but now it was over. Had anyone tried to convince me of the fierce power of two bucks fighting so close to me, I’m not sure I would have believed it. I think what I witnessed that night will be a once in a lifetime experience, and I was thankful to be there for it. I was still breathless when I walked in the door and recounted the events to my husband and five kids. “The noise was unlike anything I have ever heard, it felt like it hit me in the face, like a shockwave!” I explained.

“You really saw two bucks fighting?” my husband asked incredulously.

“No!” I exclaimed, “I saw five!”

Two days later, I was on a plane heading away from the Minnesota farmland with my niece and nephew in tow. I was excited to see them reunited with their parents after such a long, hard few weeks, and also very grateful to see my brother in one piece after all that he had endured. His accident has given me a new perspective: we’ve all read the headlines about injured people and are happy to see they survived, and that’s usually the end of it. The thought of what recovery may be like rarely passes through our minds unless we have witnessed firsthand someone recovering from a life-altering injury.

All those thoughts had been heavy on my mind since I returned home the evening before. I told my husband I needed to be in the woods to clear my mind. He willingly agreed and off I went. I sat in the cover of the same shrubby cedar tree I had tucked myself into to avoid the dueling bucks only five days before. I took a brief video of the landscape and my plan of attack to send to my brother as I had left him the day before saying, “I’ll get a deer with the new bow.” He jokingly replied, “Don’t fail.” He and his wife had gifted me a used 42# Black Widow PCH recurve as a way of saying thanks for watching their kids. I had never held another bow that equaled the one in my hand at that moment. I was determined to take my first deer with it from the ground, although I knew it was an unlikely feat on a Midwestern whitetail.

The strong north wind was in my favor as I started my walk just on the outside of the cornfield. I stayed to the south and east as I knew the deer typically came from the deep woods to the west to browse the field at dusk. Based on the patterns I had noted before, I reasoned that if I could get to the stand of oaks on the far edge of the field before they were on their way out to feed, I may have a chance of getting close enough for a shot. I stayed low as I crested the first rise of the field and noticed that there was already a herd of does foraging through the cut corn. I dropped behind another cedar and watched, counting four does, one much larger than the others. The matriarch, I assumed. I guessed she was 80 yards from my current position, a considerable distance to get through as cover stopped only five yards ahead of me. I made a quick game plan to run behind the stand of cedars to the lowest point of the field, directly south of where the deer were currently feeding on top of a hill.

I hoped that the tall grass and cedar background would break up my outline more so than if I approached them from the high ground where I might silhouette myself. I arrived at the beginning of my stalking point and bent low as I crept into the field. Every time their heads were down, I stepped forward. Heads up, freeze. Heads down, advance, freeze, advance. It went on like this for over 30 yards as I closed the gap between myself and the doe. I heard a stamp to my left and turned to see another group of does that had slipped in just southwest of my position. The wind had alerted them that something wasn’t right, and after a few moments, they bounded back into the woods.

I slowly turned and looked back at the doe I had been focusing on in my stalk and she too looked in my direction but wasn’t quite able to pick me out among the grass and corn. I froze, not moving an inch, and waited for her to approve of her surroundings. She flicked her tail a few times, then lowered her head, and continued picking through the corn. I run-hopped the last six or seven yards to put myself within range of her as she turned away. She looked over her shoulder, then turned to study me fully. I was at full draw as she stomped her foot and blew. Then she wheeled broadside and briefly looked back at me again as she prepared to run off into the field. I let the arrow fly in that brief moment and saw it hit exactly where I wanted as she gathered herself to run.

Melody’s children were just as excited as she was at the end of a successful tracking job.

I dropped to the ground immediately, hoping that if she hadn’t fully decided what I was, she wouldn’t run too far. I sat there, in the middle of the cornfield, 40 yards from the last cover and 27 yards from the spot where she had last stood. The reality of completing a stalk on a mature whitetail was just sinking in, and I said a brief prayer of thanks. I called my husband and whispered into the phone, “I shot a doe, in the middle of a field, haven’t checked for blood yet.” He loaded up the kids in the truck with some flashlights and they all joined me for the track that turned out to be a 90-yard walking blood trail. Field dressing revealed a double lung hit that had caused her to expire mid-run.

As I admire that special Black Widow bow hanging on my wall, I am reminded of the importance of family and for the gift of taking a Minnesota whitetail from the ground.

Equipment Notes: Melody used a 42# Black Widow PCH and Gold Tip traditional arrows, tipped with single-bevel Grizzly broadheads carried in a Selway quiver. She used a Nikon D610 with a 50mm fixed lens to document her hunt.