How long did it take to get your first deer.

[SyracuseBowhunter]

It took me 3 seasons to get my first deer with a gun, a 4 pointer coming through the far side of a saddle.  Had to drag it by myself about 1 mile back to the car.  I didn't care!  Had the shakes so bad I sat on a stump and looked at it for 30 minutes. 
 
I didn't have anyone to teach me but love the outdoors and so ended up teaching myself and studying deer movement. I was 24 years old.
 
After I took up bowhunting, it took me 2 seasons to get a deer with a bow.  Now I am an avid bowhunter and love it better than gun hunting (but I hunt with shotgun,rifle, and muzzleloader too).

[hunter480]

I don`t remember exactly how long it took......but it was a while.
 
I started hunting white-deer in earnest in 1982. Deer in Indiana weren`t plentiful then, but they were beginning to make their presence known, and guys were getting excited about them. I got drawn for a military installation hunt, and was excited. I went with my Winchester 1200, with a smooth bore slug barrel, and actually got a shot at a deer, but missed. My buddy, Joe Kattau, killed a small doe that morning, and it was cool as anything.
 
I hunted as hard as I knew how to after that. Places to hunt that held white-tails were hard to come by, and I had nearly zero knowledge about my prey, but I had become addicted to cheasing them.
 
I soon learned about a spot in the Hoosier National Forest that was heavily hunted, but reportedly held lots of white-tails. I began making the 2 1/2 hour drive back and forth daily on the weekends. I had become somewhat familar with the area when Joe and I used to camp there and hunt grey squirrels, and we had seen deer often.
 
I spent several seasons driving to the Hoosier every weekend day, hunting hard, but had no luck. I had no idea how to pinpoint an area in the huge tract of forest land that seemed to all look the same, that white-tails might prefer. I was becoming frustrated, and tired too, as all the driving was wearing me out.
 
On the last day of deer season, in 1995, I had planned on driving yet again to the Hoosier National Forest to log my last deer hunt of the season. I over slept that morning, and nearly didn`t go, but I jumped out of bed, stuffed my gear into the vehicle for the last time that deer season, and headed south to the Hoosier. I got to the area I parked much later than usual, and it was already beginning to show color in the sky when I parked. I hurridely grabbed all my gear, and started to head into the timber, when I realized  I hadn`t accounted for my hunting license yet, and I dejectedly headed back to the car to look for it. I assumed I had left it at home, and figured I`d be driving back home this morning. I frantically dug thru my vehicle, and incredibly, I found my deer tag.
 
I hiked back the neary 2 miles into the forest I`d decided I`d hunt that last morning. There was an old cemetery back in the forest, that had not only a ton of grey squirrels, but lots of deer activity. I`d seen deer there on occasion, so into the brightening woods I sped.
 
I didn`t know about climbing stands in those days, so I hunted exclusively from the ground. I got to the back side of the cemetery, picked a hickory tree to lean against, kicked the leaves awawy from the base, and slid down to the ground. I was disappointed, and let down, not expecting any action coming into the woods so late.
 
I`d been sitting 45 minutes, and it was nearly full daylight now, when I heard footsteps in the leaves. I sighed as I readied  myself to stand and show myself to the approaching hunter, as I`d done so many times over the past few years in the huge forest. I had laid my shotgun in the leaves and had started to push myself up when I caught a pacth of brown moving towards me.
 
Immediately, my heart was in my throat, and my breathing was  strained. A 4-point buck was walking in my direction, and I was shaking badly.
 
The noise he made was astounding, as I`d always assumed that deer always traveled quietly, but I could only think that because he thought he was alone, he wasn`t concerned with stealth. He dropped into a ravine only 40 yards in fron of me, and when his head dropped out of sight, I shouldered the 1200. He seemed to dawdle in that draw, and I could hear him rooting around, but it seemed like forever that he stayed in that bottom.
 
Finally, he emerged, and began a slow, casual walk, quartering sightly away from me, less that 30 yeards away, oblivious to my presence. I put the open sight behind his shoulder, and touched off, what would be, a life changing, round. At the report, the buck dropped where he stood, and lay still.
 
I was trembling so badly, I had to lay the shotgun down and lean against the tree for support. It wasn`t lost on me-the significance of what I`d just done.
 
I drug that buck the 2 miles back to my car-it took better than 3 hours to drag him across the rough terrain and I was absolutely spent by the time I reached my car.
 
I was so proud of that buck-I took him absolutely on my own. I picked the Hoosier National to hunt-I picked the particular spot to hunt by the cemetery. I hunted, alone 90% of the time, rain, snow, easy, hard, tired, pumped or fed up. And finally, I had my buck in the freezer.
 
It was in the top four of the most life-changing events to occur in my life.

[Sailfish]

I started deer hunting as an adult.
 
It was my third day of rifle season that I got my first. Using my uncles 30 06.
 
A herd of doe 15+ strong and fawns came out to feed.
 
I picked the largest, she was maybe 50 yards.
 
Spine shot, she flipped straight up in the air and dropped.
 
 

[jacannon63]

The first deer I killed was Oct.1st. 1976 He was a 90# cowhorn buck still in velvet. I was walking a trail up hill to a tree I had climbed before. I had my Baker climber in one hand and my Whitetail hunter in the other. The buck was standing under an oak tree eating acorns, when I saw him I dropped down to one knee,put the stand down and knocked an arrow, when I stood up I was at full draw and he was still there.The arrow stuck him in the spine in front of the shoulder. He fell and started bleating, it sounded like a baby crying. The only thing I could think about was stop that noise. I grabbed his antlers and tried to break his neck. This didn't work so I stuck him with my pocket knife at the base of the neck like you stick a hog. Now he is breathing through this big hole in his neck and still bleating. I must have cut an artery because he finally died. I had hunted for 5 years before I made my first kill and so far this was by far the most difficult one so yet.

[EatDeer]

My first season of gun hunting I shot a 5 year old 100" inch 9-point buck, being only 13 years old I was very happy with a management buck. My first year of bow season ,I arrowed a nice 4 year old 125'' inch 8-point buck. I hunted IA  when I was 18, before all the hype and the permit draw lottery, and shot a 100" inch 9-point on a group deer drive. I legaly killed 9 deer in total,and one running yote that year for my hunting group of 30 hunters in IA.                   If ther is one piece of advise I could give out to new hunters. That would be to make the most of the time you have, tomorrow might be the last day you ever hunt again.