With time running out, teen takes home a trophy

John Bowman wasn't too happy about the way his deer-hunting season was turning out.

On the very last day, he had yet to kill a deer.

But the First Colonial High School senior didn't panic. Besides, the hunt for him is about much more than the kill.

Still, it would be nice to harvest at least one animal.

He never dreamed that his lone deer of the season would turn out to be his deer of a lifetime.

That's how it turned out Jan. 2, while hunting with his father on a private farm on the Eastern Shore.

Bowman was in a group of hunters who were doing a "man drive" through a patch of woods adjacent to open farmland.

In a "drive," a group of hunters walk through a section of woods or thicket, shouting and stomping noisily, in an attempt to jump bedding deer. The group jumped a couple of good ones that day, and Bowman was the lucky hunter.

"I was standing on the edge of some marsh while they pushed the strip of woods," Bowman, 17, said. "The deer came out at first about 70 yards after they passed, and I could tell it was a pretty good deer. It had another one with it."

Shooting a shotgun loaded with buckshot, Bowman - who plays baseball and volleyball for the Patriots - thought the shot was too long.

But luck was with him.

"They ran right towards me," he said. "I took the shot from about 30 yards out and dropped the biggest one with one shell.

"It was obvious which one to shoot at."

That deer was a trophy-sized 10-pointer estimated at 190 pounds - the biggest in Bowman's 14 years of hunting with his dad, Imrie.

Bowman plans to have the deer mounted.

With college and perhaps collegiate athletics around the corner, Bowman said his trophy is significant because hunting might soon have to take a backseat.

" I'd like to go somewhere and play baseball," Bowman said. "I only hunt a few times a year now as it is, so I probably won't get to go that much."

But hunting is in his blood, and Bowman knows that no matter where the future takes him, the sport will be part of his life.

"Me and my dad hunt in North Carolina and on the Eastern Shore," he said. "Deer mostly. Done some dove, goose, duck and squirrel hunting. Never any turkey.

"It will be tough to go while I'm in college. But I know I'll go a few times a year after that."

And each time he'll probably be thinking about the last day of the season.

Lee Tolliver, (757) 222-5844, lee.tolliver@pilotonline.com