It was June 1^st at 7:00pm; I was packing my gear for the hunting trip I was about to go on. Hearing the zippers of my bags and the constant sound of my own voice rattling off the list that I had made. It all made me mad with stress that I would forget something.

“Son how far are you along,” my dad comes in to ask.

“Umm, honestly I have no idea,” I laugh, “I think I’m almost there.”

“Alright make sure you go back over it all and scan your room too,” he says as he walks out of my room.

I glance at the clock, and it says 8:15pm, crap I need to get a move on. He’ll be here any minute. As I got a call on my phone from my uncle. We talked about when he will be at my house and checking over my stuff before we leave. As my uncle gets to the house, I’m already walking outside and ready to load up. We quickly go over everything as the chill of the outside air hit my nerves. I loaded my gear into the Jeep, and we hit the road. The sound that the Jeep makes is like a small roar as it rides across the road. The little clanks and racket that it makes all just add to the trip. We make our way towards Atlanta to pass right on through.

I started feeling fatigued from that day, but I stayed awake the best I could to help with watching the road. As we passed through Atlanta, I saw blinding police lights. Their bright blue will always catch anyone’s attention. Me and my uncle talked about the riots and our opinions of them.

As we got towards the farm, I could tell just by the forest that was around us that we are truly down in South Georgia. The air smelt richer than the air in the city. We arrived at the start of the farm’s driveway, and we slowly crept through as it was pitch black out, we did not want the hogs to know that we had gotten there. I could only see through the night vision we had. The moon was pretty bright but with everything else it was actually harder to see than if we were at one of our normal spots. We were immediately on the lookout for hogs while driving to the cabin.

As we get into the cabin, we unload all our stuff and check over our hunting equipment to make sure we are ready to go at a moment’s notice. My uncle and I talked over everything, and he gave me a basic rundown of the farm and how large it actually was. As we got ready to go on the first hunt of the trip we got into the Jeep and set off towards the first field.

We got to the first field seeing nothing but decided to wait for the hogs to come to us. As my uncle looks through the night vision, he spots a black dot and tells me to get ready. I grab my things and check them to make sure they are ready. He passes me the night vision and points me in the direction to keep an eye on it while he gets his stuff. I pass it back to him as he is better at reading hogs than I am, we slowly make our way closer so we can get a clean shot. We started about 500 yards from the hog and got to around 160 yards from it before we were forced to drop to a prone position. I get lined up as my uncle keeps watch on the main hog and our surroundings. He lets me know that it’s mine but to make it quick and clean. I breathe in and breathe out to steady myself. I listen to my heartbeat and my breathing to synchronize them. I feel my heart beating off the ground beneath me and in the tip of my finger. I slowly squeezed the trigger to find the wall. I stay there to feel my heartbeat in my finger, and I squeeze the rest of the way between beats and an ear deafening crack fills the air. I couldn’t hear anything, but I looked back down my sights as I loaded a new round into the chamber of my rifle. There was this black mound on the ground where the hog was, I knew that I had dropped it cleanly as it was not bucking on the ground.

My uncle tells me, “Good shot.” We make our way over to the hog but keep our guards up and watch the surrounding area and the dropped hog. As we approach, I can see the damage done by my rifle. The right shoulder was ripped open as my shot went a little higher than expected. I could see this sponge-looking material coming out of where I had shot the hog and it was the inside of its lungs that came out as the supersonic round tore through the hog. We rolled it over and saw the exit wound. A clean pass through. We rolled it back over so we could get pictures of my first kill on the farm.

As we got done marking the hog and finding where I shot it from it came out to be a 160-yard shot give or take. We set off for the Jeep so we could load the hog up on the back. We rode over to the hog and loaded it onto the carry rack and hauled it back to the cabin we were staying at to let the fields die down. When we got to the cabin, we rolled the hog off the rack so we could hang it and cut out as much meat as we could before it got into rigor. I helped my uncle hang the hog and we lifted it up in the pulley and he taught me how to cut it for the main meat that we would want to eat.

After we gutted the hog, we dropped it off the pulley and put it back onto the rack of the Jeep and hauled it to the dump spot for nature to take its course. We loaded back into the Jeep and the night was still dark, so I knew we had a lot more time than it felt like to hopefully get another kill on our first night.