Hunting with Naomi

From Richard Johnson 

Naomi Brooks and I decided to hunt on Friday and Saturday, taking Friday off school and work.

We started hunting about 8 am or 9 am in the morning, went to Colleen Keeler’s land, by the yellow barn full of hay. 

We didn’t see any deer on the Keeler’s property but north, there was a small herd about a mile off the highway.

I shot a deer there last year, so I knew the man that lives there and I knew he was friendly.

We went in and asked him for permission.

Ken Law was his name.

We asked permission while talking to him in his garage, which he leaves open.

He lets the cat live in there.

He offered to let us take one of the 13 kittens. We said no.

Instead of hiking in a mile to get to the herd we noticed two does were bedded under the pivot (the irrigation system) that is closed to the highway.

I could hear Doug Keeler in my mind saying don’t shoot the pivot, but I thought we could get to the placer where even if we missed the deer, we wouldn’t be shooting holes in the pivot.

We trekked for about 200 yards to get closer to the deer. That took 20 minutes.

Then we crawled for the last 200 yards on our hands and knees, Naomi and me together, until we could just see the deer’s ears above the crown of the snow drift between us. I asked her if she wanted to take the shot.

She said, “I think I want more practise first at shooting before I am ready. Can you do it?”

I said sure. I took 2 shots and missed both of them and the deer hadn’t even stood up because it didn’t know where the sound was coming from.

I told Naomi to walk perpendicular to me and not in front of the gun. The dee seeing her allowed the deer to stand up.

I took a third shot and the deer started running away full steam.


I took 2 more shots while they were very far away and still, I didn’t hit them. Five shots total and no deer is dead.

For the rest of the day I decided we would get Mary to make us targets, drive to Lethbridge, get them, and see if the guns were shooting off or if that had been operator error.

We drove back to the barn after collecting out targets and I promptly got stuck in a snow drift above my wheel so we were stuck out on a country road in the middle of nowhere.

I worked around the tires, trying to put car mats under the wheels.

Finally I said, “You hop in Naomi and put it in reverse so I can watch the tires.”

She replied. “I don’t drive.”

So, I put her in the driver’s seat, told her to put it in reverse, and told her to put her foot on the brake.

She said, “Which one is the brake.” While she was in reverse, I said, “Just put it into gentle reverse so I can see where the traction on the wheels is.”

She said, “Which is gentle reverse? At the bottom or at the top.”

Naomi and I had many experiences that day, teaching a girl how to drive a car.

But more of our deer hunting story.

Eventually, Cough Dow came along, introduced himself, and drove all away around the snowdrift to the other side, and gave us a few tugs until he pulled us out of the snow drift.

So we made a new friend, which was nice for we may have been stuck there until springtime if he hadn’t come by.

We had 20 more minutes before the sun would go down. We ran behind the yellow barn. Naomi took a couple of shots.

I took a couple of shots. We went to look at what we had done and it was perfect, so it was operator error at the start of the day.

We were back in Lethbridge for the night and watching Netflix with Mary and Rhiannon while we got ready for the next hunting day.

We watched the Mandalorian, Season 1, Episodes 2 and 3. Mary and I were reprimanded for speaking during the TV show.

And all of that aside, Mary and I love watching shows together and are excellent narrators during the movies.

At least we think so.

Day 2 we got up and met my father-in-law at the yellow barn.

We also looked up behind Ken Law’s property.

We looked in a lot of places, but Saturday, a host of hunters had come down to Magrath and it was busy all day.

The deer had been encouraged to run inside the city limits and lay down on land where the owners would never give permission for the hunters to come on. By 2 pm Chris Turnbull had got fed up and told me he was going to go home and in a roundabout way see if he could shoot anything in our typical area near Longview, Alberta.

I finally called the fellow me meet last year named Cam Cook, and he offered to let us hunt in south east of 15-22, or northeast of 11-22.

Hunters were already out east of 15 and next door in southwest of 15, the land is owned by an optometrist in Lethbridge who is anti-hunter.

So all day we could see deer laying in southwest, happy not to be bothered by the hunters.

We drove up to the yellow barn and back which took us to 3:30 pm and by then southeast of 15 was open. As we were hopping out of the truck, I was telling Naomi we are going to walk in, be there an hour and a half, and dress warm for the wind is going to be bad. Get comfortable. We are staying there until sundown. 

She replied by pointing southeast of 15 and saying, hey, those deer are running. And in fact, they were running directly east, to cross over into an area where we could shoot. I told her to lay down beside me just behind the truck and off of the road and we waited for about 30 seconds for the deer to hop the fence and continue on past the grain bins and into the clearing. And again, I asked her if she wanted to shot. 

She said, “You do it.” 

I shot at one, missing it, but the second deer was standing broadside on top of the hill and my second shot was perfect. 

The deer fell over immediately and we had less than 300 yards to walk to the highway.

I got to teach Naommi how to drag a deer, dress a deer, and tag a deer as a licensed firearm holder. 

And then I took photos of her, dragging the deer, photos of the gun pile. 

And that is it. 

Now I have her deer in the back of the truck and am driving back to Calgary. 

I am going to try to skin the animal before I fall asleep. 

I will take all the equipment that is bloody inside to wash it, and our clothing that is dirty and put it into the hunting room for it smells. 

Naomoi says she wants the deer turned into maple sausage.

The night before, Mary and I were talking about our favourite parts of the day. 

Mine was driving into Lethbridge with no deer, and seeing Naomi nodding off and falling asleep in the passenger sleep, because I had been in that chair so often, and I know that feeling of calm and quiet as you have been full of adrenalin all day, hunting, chasing, full of energy, wearing ugly clothing and it is just lovely to close your eyes for a while and the car is rocking and you are ½ hour away from home.

I can’t remember Mary’s favourite part of the day but we had sat at the dinner table for an hour, talking and talking, quite a blessing to have so much nose to nose time with people that you love and trust. 

That experience is more than one blanket. Every minute of that hour, being around the people you love the most in the world, that you don’t have any time with and that you don’t see, and that you can text, but you can never really sounding board each other and really empathize with each other and see each other’s faces.

Quite a blessing to sit around and talk that whole time.

Naomi won’t be here in Lethbridge next year. If I could, I would do this every year with her. 

But I know there is an ending. This isn’t a subscription.

So, the deer will be maple sausage, which can be eaten with a little dish of maple syrup beside her, a little 15 year old Canadian girl with her first Canadian deer. 

 She comes with me to hunt because she is asked to, and she took the hunter’s course to get here.

I did the gutting. 

I had her drag the deer. 

I did use a knife and cut the esophagus. I poked a hole through as a handle. She put her finger through the handle to pull the guts out of the deer while I separated the diaphragm and helped pull the guts away from the tenderloin. That is what she wanted to do. Learn to gut a deer.

Every year I am reminded of how beautiful southern Alberta is. 

You never know unless your tires are spinning. 

You have to get out there to really see how magnificent this land is. That is one of the grand parts about hunting.

Richard Johnson