This article was first published in the March 2025 issue of North American Whitetail magazine.
I wanted to be clean shaven, I really did, but my hand was shaking so bad that I decided I’d better quit before I cut myself and went back to working on my hair. No amount of gel could tame my cowlick, though, so I gave that up, too, and slipped into my best starched shirt. My hands were still shaking like I’d just shot a Boone and Crockett buck, but I eventually got my shirt buttoned and tucked in. I took a deep breath and cinched my belt tight.
I had never been so nervous in all my life, but I had good reason to be. I’d been dating the same girl for the last six months and recently decided that it was time I asked what might well be the most important question of my life. Ever since I had made the decision to ask it, that question and how it might be answered were literally all I could think about. My future happiness, heck, my ability to go on with life, hung in the balance.
I had waited until I knew my girlfriend had an all day shopping trip scheduled with her momma, then I had called her daddy, a farmer and rancher who talked more to his cattle than he did to his family, and asked if I could visit with him.
“Of course you can, son, but you’d better come out to the house. Conversations like the one I suspect you have in mind should take place face to face. I’ll see you Saturday.”
The week flew by and before I knew it, I was crawling into the cab of my freshly washed and waxed pickup where I stole one last glance in the rear view mirror. My cowlick still stood out like a daffodil in early spring, so I grabbed a ballcap off the dash and pulled it down to my ears, thinking that maybe my hair would lay down by the time I got to where I was going.
Thankfully, I had a bit of a drive ahead of me. My girlfriend’s parents lived on a quarter section a few miles south of town. I managed to calm down some during the drive, but the minute I pulled off the pavement and onto the dirt road that ran in front of their house my heart started racing again. Beads of sweat broke out on my brow, and the butterflies in my stomach acted like they might soon be migrating south.
“Get it together, man. You can do this.”
In no time at all, I was putting the truck in park and unbuckling my seatbelt. I muttered one last prayer under my breath and then slid out and stepped up onto the front porch. Shifting from one foot to the other, my hat in my hand and my heart in my throat, I summoned every last ounce of my courage and knocked on the door. An eternity passed before I heard footsteps in the entryway. The doorknob twitched and then turned. The screen door screeched open, and there he stood. The moment, at last, was at hand.
“Come in the house, boy. What can I do for you? You said you wanted to talk to me about something?”
I took another deep breath, steeled my nerve, and then asked the question that would determine my fate.
“Yes, sir, I do. Do you think there’s any chance I could hunt your place?”
Wright Outdoors 