Leadership in a Deer Stand

     If you are reading this then I would like to thank you for joining me on my hunting journey.   I hope you find my recent evening in the deer stand insightful and entertaining.  I arrived about mid afternoon to the pasture to help set up our campsite.  Once the tent was set up and the supplies set out, we settled into our lawn chairs to talk about how we could solve the world’s problems.  That discussion lasted about ten minutes and then we were on to important matters, like who was going to sit in what deer stand.  The area we hunt has several deer stands on the property.  Either side of the property in all directions you can take your pick and sit in a stand on a different day of a week.  Why so many?  In bow hunting the wind can make or break a hunt if the deer move in the direction of your stand.   With a north wind then you better sit on a stand that has the deer coming in from the north.   If the deer's movement on the trail is predominately from the south they will avoid your stinky human scent or worse let all of the deer in the area know that something is up.

     How do they warn their fellow deer friends?  It's quite the sight to see a deer stand up on their back hind legs and hold up their front hooves in front of their mouth to shout out, “Live, Bambi, Live!”  That's deer code for "Run!"  Okay that only happens when watching a Bambi movie.  What the deer will really do is, with their head held up high and ears perked straight up, stomp the ground with their front hooves and snort so loud that every deer within ear shot hears.  And believe me in an empty wooden area that sound seems to travel for miles.  If this happens to you as a hunter, you have two choices. You can either get down and go to town or wait for everything to clear out and hope that some other deer wasn't close enough to hear the hunter alert.

     As a leader I can learn a lot from this process.  Be well prepared, but don't be discouraged when everything goes wrong.  Be patient and wait it out because the circumstances could change for the better.  Like any successful program, plans have to be made, steps have to be taken to insure success.  As Stephen Covey would say, "Begin with the end in mind."  The end for me, in this situation, is successfully bagging a nice deer.  Trophy deer would be great for my ego, but I would be just fine with improving from the last deer I shot.  Either way it's still a win-win, because my family and I can still enjoy the meat harvested from the hunt.  Even though the hunt may not go exactly how I like it, hunting can be just like leadership.  The experience is always the best part of the process. 

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