His name was Ernie. The sun has just gone down on the last day of the Vermont deer season when the flannel-clad old man with a white beard backed his rusty Chevy into the parking lot with the antlers of the biggest 10-pointer I’d ever seen sticking up from the tailgate. I was 17 years old, sitting in my car outside the general store and big game check-in station, eating beef jerky and begrudging my rotten luck. I hadn’t gotten a Buck and had only...