It's the point when we have done all that our conscious minds will allow us to do, and the subconscious takes over. Sometimes the results are good... and sometimes they ain't. And sometimes my autopilot is more reliable than my addled conscious brain.
An autopilot of this type can't be effective unless there is something in its history for it to use. For a soldier, it's his training. For a hunter, more often than not, it's past experience.
Hunting experience is something that can't be replicated by any amount of hunter education, nor by reading every how-to article ever written. There is no substitute for actually doing it. I'll provide an example so you'll know what I mean.
Brain Freeze
I have written in these pages about my first hunting experience with a legal deer. When that chance arose, my conscious mind froze - they call it "buck fever." I had no experience to fall back on, therefore my autopilot drew a blank and induced me to stand there like an idiot - a wheezing, trembling, adrenaline-filled idiot with knees of Jell-o and one hell of a heart rate - until the deer calmly walked away. My autopilot did nothing for me during that encounter.
Years later, another chance arose. Not my first deer nor my last, but a notable experience nonetheless. I was walking softly down a trail in the woods, heading towards a small clearing. As I approached the clearing, the narrow trail was descending a hillside. I was slightly above the clearing, with a screen of brush partially obscuring it. Through that screen, I spotted a deer feeding in the tiny field, head down, facing away from me.
The rules where I was hunting meant that I could shoot a doe or a big buck. This was no big buck. But was it a doe or a small buck? That, my friends, was the question of the day.
I have seen many deer in the woods, and taken a good number of them home with me. Yet I have never gotten over the thrill of it, and adrenaline continues to reduce me to a quivering mass during each such encounter. Therefore, as I stood there scoping this deer no more than thirty-five yards away, I found it increasingly difficult to hold the rifle steady.
The Deer With Two Heads
Suddenly, through the bobbing lens of the scope, the deer sprouted a second head. An event such as that can be off-putting to someone in the best of mental conditions, and I was certainly not at my best. Fortunately, the second head morphed into a second deer, which stepped to my left and began to feed toward me. The surreal had become tolerable.
This second deer was no longer behind the screen of brush; I was totally exposed to its view. It was a yearling, and therefore I wasn't going to shoot it - but would it give me away to the other deer? Nope. It glanced my way and then fed unconcernedly.
By now I was even shakier than before. It took a conscious effort to remain standing rather than melting into a boneless, camo-clad gob on the forest floor. I returned my attention to the first deer, which was larger. Was it the yearling's mother, therefore a doe, therefore legal? I still couldn't be sure.
Then that deer also stepped to one side and turned to face me, head down. At first the lie of the thick hair on its broad forehead fooled me into thinking it could be a button buck, but further examination revealed that it was, indeed, a doe. Therefore, legal to take.
(Continued)
