First-Time Hunter Says She Cried After Her First Deer, and Plenty of Hunters Knew Exactly Why

For people who didn’t grow up hunting, there’s often this assumption that the moment you get your first deer is supposed to feel simple. You take the shot, feel proud, fill the freezer, and that’s that. But real life usually isn’t that clean, especially when someone cares deeply about animals and still chooses to hunt.

That’s part of why one Reddit post struck such a nerve. In a thread on r/Hunting, a woman said she went hunting for the first time with her husband, got a shot opportunity fast, took it without hesitating, and then immediately started crying. She said the buck only ran about 40 yards after what she described as a clean shot through both lungs, and that the family got a lot of meat from the deer. Even so, she couldn’t shake how bad she felt afterward.

What made the post land is how honest it was. She didn’t write like someone trying to make a point about hunting. She wrote like someone who had just lived through a moment bigger than she expected. Before the hunt, she had already told her husband she wasn’t even sure she’d be able to pull the trigger if the chance came. Then the chance came, and she did. That gap between what you think you’ll feel and what you actually feel is where the whole story sits.

A lot of the reaction centered on one idea: guilt and respect are not the same thing as regret over hunting itself. In another r/Hunting discussion, a hunter wrestling with first-kill guilt said the emotional weight came not only from taking a life but from feeling unprepared for the ethics of the moment. The responses pushed back on the idea that feeling bad meant the kill was wrong. Instead, several commenters framed that heaviness as part of taking the responsibility seriously.

That was a big part of the reaction here, too. Many commenters told her that crying after a first deer was not unusual at all. Some said they cried themselves. Others said they still feel something every season, even after years of hunting. One of the more common themes was that hunters who feel nothing at all tend to bother people more than hunters who admit the experience hit them hard. The basic message was that empathy does not cancel out hunting. If anything, a lot of people argued it should come with it.

There’s also a reason posts like this travel beyond hunting communities. They get at something a lot of people understand, even if they have never stepped into a deer stand. Most people are used to meat showing up in a package, far removed from the reality of what had to happen first. Hunting closes that distance in a way some people find meaningful and others find overwhelming. Reddit was full of people saying the first animal can hit harder because it forces a person to face that reality all at once.

That emotional conflict showed up in other first-deer posts too. In one thread, a new hunter said guilt dominated after realizing the deer was younger than expected, describing the feeling as cruel even though family members reassured them it was still a valid harvest. In another, a hunter said getting a first deer initially felt exciting, then turned into a strange, heavy feeling once the adrenaline wore off. The details vary, but the pattern is pretty consistent: for a lot of first-time hunters, the emotional part doesn’t wait until later in life. It shows up right away.

That’s probably why this post resonated. It wasn’t really about whether hunting is right or wrong. It was about the fact that doing something you believe in can still hurt. A person can believe in harvesting their own meat, make a clean shot, use the animal, and still cry afterward. For a lot of readers, that felt more honest than pretending the experience is always either triumphant or traumatic with no room in between.

The comments didn’t offer a magic answer, and that may have been the point. Most of them weren’t telling her to “get over it.” They were telling her that the weight of it is part of the deal. Respect for the animal, gratitude for the meat, and sadness about the loss can all exist at the same time. Judging by the reaction, plenty of hunters think that’s not weakness. They think it’s exactly how it’s supposed to feel.