As deer season approaches each year, memories of hunts gone by flood my mind each night when I lay head to pillow. I can hardly remember what I did last week but every year at this time I can conjure up, with great detail, just about every hunting experience I’ve ever had.

And it’s not just the kills that I recall. No, I think some of my best memories revolve around time in the woods when we weren’t gutting deer or dragging them across the snow.

I still remember my first season in the woods like it was yesterday. In particular, I remember I didn’t get to bring a gun even though I had been through firearms safety training and proudly held the patch to prove it. Instead, my season consisted of me sitting on the ground under a stand while my dad and the other guys in the crew hunted.

The best part of that season were the deer drives. Obviously, I was always one of the drivers and for a young man with energy to burn it was a blast.

Looking back, I can see why no one ever shot a deer on one of those drives.  I spent most of the time seeking out dead trees and shoving them to the ground as hard as possible, creating such a ruckus any deer within three miles probably fled for higher ground at a break neck pace.

My second season of deer hunting was the year I fell in love with the sport. By 8:20 a.m. on opening day my dad and I had two deer, a buck and doe, stacked up a few miles behind our house. The only thing left to do was drag them home and spend the rest of the season bragging.

While bagging those two deer the way we did is a favorite memory of mine, it wasn’t the event that hooked me on the deer hunting for life.

The moment of truth occurred earlier that day. Gun in hand, my dad had set me up in a makeshift ground blind made of old dead trees we just happened to stumble upon where we were hunting.  After he took off to sit in a stand he had built a few hundred yards away I was left alone in the dark on my first “official” hunt.

At that moment I was filled with anticipation and dread.

That early my career, every creak of a tree, every shuffle of a chipmunk and every flap of a dry leaf accelerated my heart beat. I didn’t know what to expect, I couldn’t see two feet in front of me and every scratch on the forest floor caused my head to turn rapidly and my thumb to reach for the hammer.

I struggled and strained to see through the blackness and imagined that as soon as the first light hit the sky I would be surrounded by deer or a bear or a wolf or any number of the wild beasts that call the woods home. By the time the sun started to rise to the point where I could make out the brush in front of me, my eyes were as wide as saucers.

And then it happened.

The silence of the woods was interrupted by a loud crash. To a young man on his first hunt it sounded like someone had knocked over a giant oak tree, its branches splintering in all directions as it hit the ground.

I stared into the brush in front of me, half expecting a herd of deer to come pouring out of the woods at full speed, charging toward me like the Confederate Army at Gettysburg.

And then there was silence.

Some time went by — it could have been a few seconds but it felt like an eternity — before I heard two more distinctive sounds.

A Thump and a snap.

Now my heart raced faster as I lurched forward trying in vain to see something in the thick brush. Just about the time I thought my heart was going to pound it’s way right through my chest I heard a sound that sent a chill down my spine.

It was a sound I’ve heard dozens of times since but never has it had the same effect on me it did that morning. The source of the noise in front of me, just out of my sight, let out a thunderous snort.

I jumped up and raised my rifle in the air, scanning the horizon, ready to blast away.

And then I heard another sound I’ve heard numerous times since — the sound a branches breaking and the thumping rhythm of a deer running away. It took about 15 minutes for my heart to stop racing and my mind to accept the fact that the deer was gone, my chance lost.

But the high of that moment — that adrenaline rush and the feelings it produced — is something that has stayed with me to this day.

Every deer hunter knows what I’m talking about.

It’s the feeling that motivates them to rise from their warm beds in the wee hours of the morning every November, dress in blaze orange and spend 16 days, 10 hours a day, sitting on a piece of cold wood waiting for a chance to feel it again.