You guys are all sooo lucky! Hunting was not part of growing up in urban Germany. I did my Hunter Training after leaving the army, but did not get a chance to really hunt (shot a roe deer from a high stand, not very exiting), until I moved to New Zealand. My first hunt was on Coppermine Creek, just north of Haast, on the West Coast of the South Island, and I was 40 years old! I was going in with Hans, a dutch immigrant and ultra keen hunter, his 12 year old son, and the son's best friend. West Coast gets 3000mm (120") of rain a year, and I swear we got most of it on the way in. It normally is a 90 minute walk in the riverbed to the Coppermine Creek hut from the last place you can drive to. Well, that day there was no way we could have walked the riverbed. We took a dim trail along the banks, crossing a lot of creeks that went to mid thigh for Hans and me, and to chest height for the boys, just handing the kids across. Well, in the hut much later that day, I thought: "No way are we going to get anything in this downpour!"
Now, West Coast weather is as unpredictable as they come. The next morning was one of the most beautiful days I have ever seen, a brilliantly blue sky, a freshly washed forest, it was like the Dawn of Time itself. Hans took the boys along the river flats, and told me to hunt up the creek. Coppermine, like most West Coast creeks, is full of boulders from the size of a football to the size of a small car, with cold weather rain forest right to the banks. I had started at first light, and by 0900 was maybe 1.5km upstream from the hut, when a red deer hind stepped out about 90m upstream from me, followed by a female yearling. I was carrying Hans' oldest son's rifle, a 6.5x55mm Swedish Mauser restocked. The scene is engraved in my memory, playing as if in slow motion: The brilliant morning light, the birdsong in the forest, the two deer picking their way across the stream. I put the crosshairs onto the yearling's neck and fire. She goes down, the mother starts running, disappears from sight behind a boulder for a moment. I have a long internal debate, do I shoot her as well or not (it must have taken all of a second but feels like years). She comes out the other side, I decide to let her go, carrying one out is going to be tough enough. She disappears into the forest. Suddenly the yearling gets up and runs the other way, towards the treeline. Another eternal one second thought: "If she gets in there I will never find her again, it's too dense!" I shoot, know I've hit her again, she keeps going. I shoot again, am sure I was too high this time. She keeps going. 2m from the trees she falls down in a heap, stone dead. My ears are ringing, all the birds have shut up, only the river makes it's usual racket.
I have sat for a long time with that deer. When I gutted her, I found that the first shot hat missed the spine but severed the windpipe and one carotid. The second hit her going away, just behind the right ribs, traversing stomach, heart and lungs and exiting through the left shoulder. There was no trace of the third shot. After gutting her, I dragged her into the creek and thoroughly washed her insides, as the stomach had leaked. The meat afterwards was excellent, I must have gotten all the muck out. Carrying her out, though, was a big job. I had learned to make a backpack by threading the back legs through the front legs, but she must have weighed well in excess of 50kg even gutted and beheaded.
When I finally arrived back at the hut, I was amazed to realize that it was not even noon yet, and that Hans and the boys were still out. I felt like I had lived a lifetime.
I have hunted NZ and Australia since, and will keep hunting as long as I can, hopefully for many decades. I may have started late, but the bug has bitten deep. Oh, and BTW: I bought that rifle off Hans' son, later, and it is still my favorite hunting firearm - but that's a story for another day.