Brian Haines

It’s World Series season, and I love baseball – the sights, the sounds, and the culture that come with it. My son shares that same passion and plays on two teams, both of which I head coach.
Managing 30 kids across two squads takes a serious physical toll. A coach ends up throwing an incredible number of baseballs over the course of a Minnesota summer, enough to give a guy severe tendonitis, commonly known as pitcher’s elbow. It’s a frustrating ailment that takes months to heal. What’s worse, however, is when a summer sports injury follows you straight into deer season.

It was a perfect day in late September. The summer heat had passed, and in its place came the soft sunshine of early autumn. That perfect day was my first ever in a deer blind – a patch of tall grass along a fenceline overlooking a half-chopped field of green corn stalks, their leaves lightly brushed yellow by the changing season.
I was 12 years old, impatient, and determined to harvest a deer on my very first hunt. After the sun rose, I decided I’d sat long enough. I walked out into the field, found a set of tracks, and decided to test my stalking abilities.

There’s something special about sitting in a deer stand. It’s a front-row seat to nature’s wonders. At dawn, the wild world comes alive – songbirds sing, mallards hail, and pheasants crow.
Dusk, too, is a special experience as the sun sinks beneath a pink horizon, and the moon shines in a dark-purple sky. If you’re lucky, you’ll even catch a whitetail sneaking from a bedding area for an evening meal. One experience that’s never desirable, however, is sharing your hunt area with a skunk.