Show Up Anyway

A Basecamp Dispatch from the edge of climbing down

Welcome to Basecamp Dispatch — my weekly check-in from the woods, the homestead, or somewhere else with spotty cell service.

The morning I shot my first ten-pointer, everything went wrong.

I overslept. By the time I slipped into the woods, gray light was already leaking through the trees. I bumped a doe on the way to my stand. She blew so hard it felt like every deer in the county heard it.

Then I hauled my rifle up the ladder and it clinked against the metal. Just a tiny sound. In that quiet pre-dawn air, it might as well have been a dropped wrench.

I remember thinking I should’ve stayed in bed.

About ten minutes after sunrise, I saw him.

The buck I’d been watching on trail cameras since summer. He slipped through the timber like he owned it. After everything that had gone sideways, I wondered if I was seeing things. I whispered, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He turned broadside at fifty yards.

One lead soft point from my Winchester ’94 through the boiler room.

He dropped where he stood.

I’ve been thinking about that morning a lot this week.

It’s been one of those stretches where small things stack up. Where respect feels like fog. Conversations land wrong. Work that felt steady suddenly doesn’t. The kind of week where you start asking whether the effort is worth it.

It’s easy to decide the sit is blown before it’s even daylight.

That morning, I had every reason to climb down and head back to the truck. I’d started late. I’d bumped deer. I’d made noise. By solid logic, it was over.

It wasn’t.

Sometimes the only thing separating a ruined day from a story you’ll tell for years is whether you stay in the stand.

Not every hard week ends with a ten-pointer. I’d be lying if I said it did.

But you don’t know which week holds the buck.

The only time you’ve truly botched it is when you climb down early.

Showing up doesn’t guarantee success.

It guarantees possibility.

So here I am.

Showing up.

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Where Else I Showed Up This Week…

“Canadian Man Fights Bull Moose With Shovel, Then Drops It with .22” (Hook & Barrel) — A Saskatchewan man fought a bull moose in brutal winter attack, punching the animal and using a shovel and .22 rifle to end the threat.

“Colorado’s Pine Beetles Are Back: What Hunters Need to Know” (Hook & Barrel) Pine beetles are back in Colorado. Dead timber, bigger fires, and changing habitat could reshape how and where hunters chase elk and deer.