Hunter’s childhood curiosity set in motion the wheels of fate that had brought his team to the digsite. Hunter’s family noticed these congenital traits in him early on.

Once, as the extended Price family gathered for the annual summer retreat at their Douglas Lake Ranch in Montana, Hunter’s father Terrance Moore Price II or “Terry” took Hunter and his younger brother Chris on a hunting expedition. They loaded up with snacks and supplies and rode 4x4 All-Terrain Vehicles out into the country in search of a Mule Deer feeder. As they found one and settled into position to wait for their prey’s arrival, Hunter immediately stirred.

“Dad!” he loudly exclaimed. “That creek down there runs into the other one! That means arrowheads might have washed up down there! We have to go check it out!” With that, Hunter carelessly flung himself by leaps and bounds down to the site.

His brother Chris, always the voice of reason, called out with increasing volume, “John, John, John you’ll fall!”

Though Hunter cleared the rocks and brush with grace and agility rare for a sixth grader, as he drew near the creek bed, the sole of his hiking shoe struck a patch of moss on a rock and completely lost traction sending him careening face first into the ground. He immediately sprung up, blood streaming down his face from a gash where his forehead met a rock. As he surveyed the creek bed, his father’s voice echoed in a remote part of his consciousness.

“John Terrance Price, use your head, show some restraint, and stop making such a ruckus. You’re likely to scare the animals away.”

Hunter’s mind, however, could only focus on one thing at a time, and right now, it pictured ancient Native Americans making a campfire here, field dressing a kill, and hopefully taking time for a little flintknapping. He realized that if they had stopped to whittle arrow shafts, flintknap arrowheads, or fletch arrows that they would have done so where they could sit comfortably on some part of the natural landscape. Nearby he saw a large flattish boulder and quickly set to digging around it. By this time, his father and brother had joined him.

“C’mon guys! There are arrowheads here. I know it!” exclaimed Hunter.

“Alright, we’ve got all day and the deer will keep. Let’s have a look.” said their father, Terry.

They spent the better part of an hour turning rocks up, digging, and surveying the area when their father, Terry, heard a rustling.

Terry said to his boys, “Shush…listen…look.”

Downstream from them, on a small hill, which sloped downward falling into the creek, a doe and two young deer emerged from the foliage. They made their way timidly to the feeder.

Terry, Chris, and Hunter slowly made their way up the embankment back to the blind where they had set out their rifles and supplies.

Terry whispered, “Alright Hunter, you had one yesterday, should we let Chris take one?”

“Yeah, that’s okay.” Hunter whispered back.

“Chris, we practiced this, are you ready?” Before Chris had a chance to reply, his father continued. “Because if you don’t feel up for it, no one is making you do anything.”

“I’m ready Dad.” Chris said as he adjusted the scope on his 30-30 Winchester. “I have a good profile of the smaller one.”

“Remember, aim below the shoulder. Don’t worry about hitting too high; it doesn’t matter if we lose a couple pounds of shoulder meat. Think about keeping your shot well up above the leg.”

Chris took his time, held his breath, pressed the cold metal barrel to his cheek and squeezed the trigger as slowly as possible while calming his thoughts and allowing the explosion in the chamber to surprise himself. Unfortunately, though he did everything he meant to, his inexperience overrode his determination and his shot went slightly wild, striking the young deer squarely in the jaw.

“He’s hit, they’re moving, c’mon boys leave everything, let’s not lose them now.” Terry said as he strapped his tungsten field knife to his belt.

With that, the three of them went off after the deer. They immediately found its trail.

“It looked like you hit him in the jaw, Chris. You probably hit an artery; he’s losing a lot of blood, so the sooner we find him the better.” Terry said to the boys.

After a few hours of searching, sometimes losing the trail, sometimes finding it again, Terry saw Chris sitting on a rock, exhausted, and decided to call it quits.

“C’mon Chris, it’s well past noon, we need to have lunch and we can get the rest of the family to help us canvas the area tomorrow. We’ll find where this deer group beds and yours won’t be far from that spot. We’ll find him.” Terry said this in the most enthusiastic tone that he could muster, but he had his doubts.

“Where is your brother?”

“I don’t know, he said he saw something. I haven’t seen him in a while.” Chris said.

“He can’t be far. John! John! Joooooohn!” Terry called out with increasing volume.

Terry and Chris spent an hour looking for John, at which point Terry decided they ought to grab the quads and ride back to the main hall where they could put together a search party. Chris, knowing his brother, and being too young to have a well-developed sense of danger hoped his brother was okay. Terry, on the other hand, fought a frenzied battle within his head. His heart rate surged. Adrenaline pumped through his body. He felt lightheaded. He had to do something. He desperately needed some kind of a catharsis to the pent up pure unalloyed panic that he felt.He wanted to scream and thrash about with abandon. He could not do that though. He had to stay calm, focused. He had decisions to make. He would not lose his son. He would find him.

The more Terry reaffirmed himself that he would find his son, the more his subconscious forced the exact thoughts into his head that he wanted to block out.

“What if a wolf or a bear found him? What if he fell out of a tree or off of a cliff?” His mind said. It continued, “If he is okay now, then what if they find him before you do? What if you do find him, but it is too late?”

Terry and Chris made it back to the main hall a few hours before sundown. Terry got his three brothers together, as well as four cousins, a couple of aunts and uncles, some of their wives, and all of their older children. All in all, they had close to thirty people formed into a search party. They combed the woods all night, but to no avail. After the sun went down, they could not see much with just their vehicle and flash lights, but one look in Terry’s eyes and no one would consider turning back. With the group spreading out wider and wider, however, some people began returning home after midnight. Many were still searching when the sun came up.

Terry, who had not slept a minute of the past thirty four hours, returned to the hall late into the afternoon of the following day only to find Hunter sitting in the atrium, surrounded by family members both young and old, regaling them with the story of his night in the woods.

Terry’s mouth dropped and he felt a sense of relief wash through him. He felt so much exhaustion from the long night and the roller coaster of emotion that he dropped to his knees and wept. As the tears streamed down his face, Hunter approached.

“Dad. Dad. Hey Dad. It’s alright, I found the deer. I want you to have this.” Hunter said.

His weary father looked up wanting to embrace his son and hold him tight, but found a sharp, blood-stained obstacle in his path. Hunter held out an obsidian blade caked with dried blood. Terry thought he saw pieces of fur and skin clinging to it as well.

Hunter began talking quickly, “I couldn’t carry it back, so I tried to field dress it with this knife that I found near the creek. It didn’t really work. We have to go back out there. Dad, I found it! Axe heads, Antler billets, and so many arrowheads; I couldn’t carry them all. I found this knife there and it wasn’t all that sharp, so I couldn’t really dress the deer. If we go back to the stream, I marked the deer with a trail of arrowheads, kind of like Hanzel and Gretel…”

“John!” Terry interrupted Hunter’s rapid stream of speech. Terry grasped for the right words but came up empty. He could not think of anything to say that encapsulated the incredibly poignant mix of emotions that he felt.

He finally simply said “I’m going to call you Hunter from now on.”

And he did. Hunter’s new nickname stuck and in a few years the name on his birth certificate fell completely out of use.

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