I attended George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill. The culture then (and now) encouraged deer hunting in November. All high school boys loved to hunt, or talked about it. Myself included.

I read publications like Outdoor Life and Field & Stream and daydreamed about shooting a deer. Usually a big buck with 10 or 12 points on the antlers. Two hundred pounds. Hang him by the back hoofs from a tree for all to see. In my family we did it for part of a day, then butchered the carcass so it’d be nice and fresh and gamey. Half would go in the deep freezer in the dirt cellar, half in the frying pan. Oh, it tasted good!

Impatient boys, and a few girls, would get up at dawn and hunt. Sometimes if I caught a ride with one of my sister’s friends, we’d see a deer in a field. The month of November was special then.

I remember my first deer.

The school bus dropped me off after school. I changed clothes and with the single-shot shotgun headed for the woods behind my house. I crossed a number of hayfields, then passed through another stretch of woods to a last abandoned field. I sat under a huge pine tree to wait. The sun slowly edged toward the horizon and it became dusky. The air was a bit chilly with no wind. Silence seemed palpable.

Hoping, at first

Two deer walked out in front of me. They sniffed the ground and ambled along totally oblivious to my presence. I have this gift of quietness and the ability of being motionless. It comes in handy and it did then.

I cocked the hammer back, the tick loud but perhaps sounding like part of the darkening scenery. I aimed the bead at the end of the barrel just behind the front quarter of one and BOOM! A body dropped heavily to the ground. Yeah!

I jumped to my feet and ran down a slight incline to the deer. It was a doe, and it panted in quick gasps. One shot of buckshot was all it took to bring it down. I stood there and watched it, broke the gun and lifted out the spent shell. If it died, I could brag to my friends it took just one shot. My first deer.

The panting slowed, and I waited, hoping. It died.

But when it did, it expired with a prolonged sigh. Like a grandmother who, having cooked over a hot wood stove, finally sits down in a rocking chair to rest. Ohhhh. Like my own great-grandmother. I remembered hearing it while visiting her. The smile on my face faded.

The early evening grew quiet as a tomb as I stood there.

Last deer I ever killed. Last animal I ever killed. Who’s proud now?

Edward M. Turner is a freelance writer living in Biddeford who has published stories, essays and poems. His novel, “Rogues Together,” won the 2002 Eppies Award for best in action/adventure.