Hunting and Bright White Belly

It was a chilly, brisk four a.m. morning. We could see our breath in our dim flashlights as we hopped out of that green Chevy pickup. Grandpa and I were all camouflaged out, with our orange vests and hat of course. Hand warmers and “toasty-toes” ready, we headed to our deer stand, “The Penthouse”. Walking to The Penthouse is always pretty nerve racking for me. Its pitch black, no flash lights. Just me, Grandpa, and nature. The crunching of leaves under our feet and the occasional hole I would step in because I wasn’t as familiar with the land like Grandpa was. Sometimes you could hear animals stirring since it was so calm. There were a few times where I thought there was an animal literally walking right along with us. Finally, I can see The Penthouse, it always seems like the longest walk ever. It’s a little lighter out now so Grandpa scopes out the field in front of us before we walk into the clearing. We crawled up the ladder into the box made of ply wood and spray painted different shades of green, which sits on four creaky wood posts. A few hours pass and all we have seen is some squirrels and I think we saw a coyote too. By this time my imagination gets carried away and every sound I hear I pretend it’s a creature never before discovered. Something like a zebra crossed with a goat that’s bright yellow. Sooner or later I start drifting off to sleep and then all the action starts. A deer, not just any deer though, it was a buck, the size of my grandpa’s truck! 20 points on the antlers at least, definitely was a non-typical. It was kind of a weird shade of tan, I had never seen anything like it before. I reached for my rifle. While doing this, the butt of my gun bumped into my chair and startled the buck a little. It just looked up in our direction for a few seconds, which seemed like 30 minutes to me and Grandpa. When this beast looked back down to the corn on the ground, I propped my rifle out the window of the box on stilts. Making as little