Mount Pleasant Magazine Sept-Oct 2018

54 www.VoteBestOfMP.com | www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.ClemsonCarolinaTickets.com feature Photo courtesy of Pearsall Smith. F inally catching my breath, I steadied myself and took one last look through my binoculars. Satisfied, I unloaded my rifle and climbed down the rickety ladder to solid ground. I walked slowly up the rice field to the deer that lay motionless on the edge of the field. I knelt beside her and sat quietly for several minutes. There was no cheering section – no one to slap me on the back or give me a hardy “attaboy.” This was my first deer. All of the hard work and planning had paid off. The seal had now been broken, and white-tailed deer hunting was in my blood at the age of 41. What drives us to spend countless hours in the heat and mosquito-infested swamps of the Lowcountry preparing for the upcoming season? What pulls us out of warm, comfortable beds in the dead of winter to climb a tree in the pitch-black darkness to sit for hours on end in BY MICHAEL COCHRAN Drawn to the Woods Who Is the Deer Hunter?