By Katie Bell, Staff Reporter.
At 24 years old, Breck Eimers, a nursing student at Davenport University, can still remember every detail of the first time she went out deer hunting with her father, Paul. It was early morning and very dark when they headed into the 20 acres of woods her parents own. They arrived at one of many ground blinds placed throughout the land. This particular blind is a small,yellow metal box covered in camouflage and fake grass,with a small window cut out in the front. It was made for one, but they sat two. Here they waited patiently for the sun to rise and the deer to appear.
“My dad said I could shoot whatever I wanted, so the first doe that walked in I was like ‘Do you want me to shoot it? It’s a girl deer!’ ” recalls Eimers, “He told me ‘that’s alright, you can shoot a girl deer.’ ”
Right as Eimers was about to shoot, she hesitated. She mentioned how cute the deer was and that she was unsure of her ability to kill it. Her father immediately reassured her, reminding her that this was something she had been wanting to do.
“ ‘Just shoot it,’ he told me,” says Eimers.
There at age 12, Eimers shot her first deer with a gun.
“Once I shot the deer, I got buck fever,” recalls Eimers, “Every hunter can tell you about it. Basically,you shoot a deer and you can’t stop shaking and the adrenaline rush gets yah. I was so excited; I think I even started crying. It was just a rush, and I still get that feeling whenever I shoot something.”
It’s easy to become a hunter in the state of Michigan.In order to receive a hunting license, you have to take a hunter education or hunter safety course unless you were born before Jan. 1, 1960.
Eimer’s took her training at Field and Stream,in Saginaw, which offers a full day of courses that is required by Michigan law. The courses cover law and ethics with hunting and proper gun handling;once completed would-be hunters must then pass the traditional education exam.
“I believe I only got one wrong on the whole test,so I was pretty proud of myself with that,” says Eimers.
Before a hunter can head into the woods to shoot a deer, they are required to purchase a hunter license and tags.
“To shoot a buck you can either get an individual buck tag or you can get a combo, which I usually get,”explains Eimers, “the combo includes a restricted tag,which is for bucks with four horns on one side or more,the general which is any size buck, and a doe tag.”
You can acquire multiple doe tags, but Eimers typically just sticks to the one. Her family normally doesn’t need the extra meat. Plus, from late October to mid-November, deer are in their rut – so bucks are chasing does. The Eimers family like to ease off hunting doe during this time, hoping to have the does bring the bucks in.
With more seasoned hunters, like Eimers’ dad and brother, Brady, they also tend to get pickier with which deer they actually kill. Both tend to shoot nothing smaller than an eight-point — referring to the number of points on the deer’s antlers. Eimers is becoming a seasoned hunter herself; she has shot a lot of spikes (a deer with unbranched antlers), four points and smaller deer.
The Eimers family is also big on deer management;they believe it’s important to let the small bucks grow bigger for seasons to come, instead of killing them right away. Eimers says that young bucks tend to have more tender and better tasting meat, but her family still prefers to let the younger ones mature.
At age 16, Eimers decided to take up bow hunting.At the time, she was just starting to develop confidence with her gun and wanted to experience something new. Though, she was worried about not being strong enough to pull the bow back and not having enough weight behind it to kill the deer.
Eimers didn’t kill her first deer with a bow until she was 21. The journey to that point was extremely frustrating and it made her question her hunting career.
“I wounded a few deer and after every one I said I was done hunting,” Eimers states. “I just felt terrible because there was now a deer running around that has an injury because of me and I felt guilty.”
Eimers has only lost one deer in her gun-hunting career, it was injured and she couldn’t find it.
She’s also had two clean misses where the deer had no injury. With bowhunting, she has lost several.
“I don’t want to make an animal suffer; that’s the last thing I want to do,” says Eimers. “Some people think hunters are animal haters and I am far from that. I have respect for what I’m killing, I have respect for the animal.”
Eimers takes great pride in her training. She tries to make it a point to get out once a month and shoot her bow. Eimers has incorporated different workouts in her gym routine to strengthen her chest and back.This will help her pull the bow back quietly without strain.
“I take a lot more pride with shooting a deer with a bow — not that I don’t take pride with shooting a deer with a gun,” states Eimers, “It’s just a lot more exciting when I shoot deer with a bow. I haven’t had nearly the luck or outcome with a bow and there is just more technique with shooting a bow. A gun is a lot more deadly than a bow is and it has a lot more power behind it, so to shoot a deer with a bow requires more focus and practice.”
Eimers’ biggest hunting accomplishment took place during the 2010 hunting season. She shot a four-point buck with her muzzleloader (single-shot rifle) and about a hour and a half later, she shot another eight-point buck.
“I shot [the four-point] and it dropped. I decided to wait till dark, in case I maybe would get lucky and see another. Plus, I also didn’t want to scare the deer for the other hunters in the woods,” recalls Eimers,“So I waited and then the eight-point showed up. I shot him.”
She couldn’t believe she’d ever be so lucky to get two deer in one night, but she was. It was also the first time she reloaded her muzzleloader. Up to that point,her father did it for her — but after a quick phone call,she figured it out. Eimers waited till her father and older brother finished their hunt and the three of them brought the bucks back to deer camp, the Eimers’ family home.
During opening weekend for gun season, 10-15people arrive at deer camp to hunt, eat and socialize.She finds great support in her family, especially her brother, who is always pushing her to practice more and become the best hunter she can be.
“I take a lot of pride in [hunting] because you do have to practice. It’s like any sport – you have to practice to get better. So when you do well, like today when I got my deer and everyone’s like ‘good shot, good shot’ I know that practice paid off.”