I have taken many lives in my life time so far. The first life I will remember forever, it was stolen when I was fourteen. It was a beautiful victim and a beautiful killing. The Victim was tall, tan, and had a nice rack…..of antlers. My dad and I were sitting in a tree stand when he passed by.

“Quick! There’s a nice one. Nicki grab the gun.” My dad quickly whispered. As silently as I could I grabbed the rifle and pointed the barrel down towards the buck. I looked into the sight and aimed at his heart. Taking a deep breath I pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced his heart and he went down in an instant.

“Great job Nicki.” My dad yelled with excitement.

“Thanks dad.” I replied with my body in a nonstop shaking fiasco.

“Don’t worry Hun. The shaking is normal. I call it buck shock. It happens to a lot of people when they shoot their first deer.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just shuck my head in agreement. We climbed down to the ground and walked up to the deer. I bent down and put my hand on the deer’s new gushy red hole in his chest. The deer was very cold. I couldn’t believe that I took this young things life.

So many questions started pouring into my head all at once. What have I done? What happens to this deer’s kids if he has any? What if he was a single father raising two little boys? Why did I do this? All though those questions were kind of ridiculous I still thought them, but they never stopped me from loving the felling of stealing the last breath out of a living creature.

The feeling it gave me was over powering, and over whelming at the same time. In a way I was getting high off of the experience. I wanted more, I wanted to kill.

“Good shoot girl.” My dad said interrupting my thoughts.

“Thanks dad.” I replied back, “Now what do we do?”

“We clean him.”

“We give him a bath?”

“No, we cut him up and rip off his skin.”

The thought of doing so make my feelings even more thrilling for me. My dad made me pull the corpus to an open field to “clean” it. We walked and I pulled for about fifteen minutes.

“Ok, here’s a good spot.” My dad said looking around. I dropped the deer and started breathing deeply to try to catch my breath. “Are you ok? Maybe I should do it.”

“NO! No, dad I got it. I can do it.” I almost yelled at him. He handed me a knife and told me how to do it. I wasn’t really paying much attention, I was too excited. While he was talking I did the normal “yes”, “ok”, “sure”, “I understand.” And nodding in at all the right places to make it seem as though I was paying attention, my mom taught me that.

When He finished talking he made a gesture toward the deer telling me to do the deed. I bent down on one knee and put the knife to his pelvic area and jabbed it in. Blood started to leak out and drip down my hand. I thought it was going to be cold, but surprisingly the blood was very worm.

I ripped the knife up and sawed at his rib bones when I got to it. Gas’s started to steam out and blood pouring onto the green grass. The smell was so over powering that I almost lost my lunch.

When I was done cutting a hole from pelvic area to his throat I put the knife down. I reached inside of him and started pulling and tugging at his intestines trying to loosen them. Once they were loose I pulled them out. My dad was in the back saying encouraging things.

The best part came next. I put my arm, fingers to elbows, inside the deer, and ripped out his heart. It was shattered form the impact of the bullet. I laughed a little when I found the bulled in his lounge. When I was all done “cleaning” his insides, I started skinning him. My dad said I did better than he did when he skinned his first deer.

Later that week we grilled the meat and ate it all at home. Every bite I took reminded me of the dirty deed I had done, and how much I loved it. It felt amazing and I was so happy I killed the defenseless deer. The next animals I killed were a piece of cake and they could never compare to my first killing.