Some of you may remember that last December marked a milestone in my life on St. Peter’s Church Road: my first successful deer hunt.

And while it may have come thirty-five years late, by some reckoning, it was nevertheless as exciting — and troubling — an experience for me as it must be for the average twelve-year-old in Perry County.

Even as I raced to the edge of the woods to inspect the big doe I’d dropped, I resolved to make use of as much of the deer as I could, a resolution that eventually delivered me to Johnson’s Furs, just over Blue Mountain in Enola.

Although I’d managed to field dress the deer myself, I had significant help with the next steps from Chad Shuman and his son Josh, who, with great patience and good humor, showed me a thing or two about skinning and butchering.

I’d left the Shumans with an enormous cardboard box packed with venison and a black garbage bag with a surprisingly heavy, carefully folded deer hide. On my way out of town the next day, I left the hide with Mr. Johnson, who inspected it; pronounced it “just fine;” asked whether I wanted it with hair or without (I chose without); and told me it would cost $30 to have it tanned. He showed me a sample of what I’d be getting back: a fragrant piece of the softest, most supple leather imaginable. I was excited! I asked him when I could pick it up.

“Next August,” he said. “Maybe early September.”

I thought he was joking, but he took me to the shed behind his store and showed me a mountain of salted hides — thousands of them — that were waiting to be delivered to the tannery. He explained that there are only a couple of operations left in the United States that tan hides on an industrial scale, on account of the stringent effluent requirements set by the EPA. Modern tanning involves the use of chemicals that are so expensive to treat that small and medium sized tanneries are no longer competitive.

The bottom line was that businesses like Johnson’s Furs that dealt in small batches of hides — small, meaning fewer than a hundred thousand or so — were the last to get their hides back for their customers.

The idea of waiting nine months — nine months! — for a product was strange; then again, everything about Johnson’s Furs was a little strange, from the racks of bright galvanized steel traps, to the bloody skins strewn about the floor like wet bathing suits, to the overpowering odor of ten thousand salted deer hides.

I briefly considered tanning the hide myself the old-fashioned way, a process that would make use of the deer’s brain as well as its hide. But everything I’d read about it sounded messy and difficult, with a good chance that I’d screw something up and the hide would be wasted. So I left the hide with Mr. Johnson and, when I got home, made a note in my calendar to give him a call in August, 2014.

As the months ticked by and August rolled around, I made a nuisance of myself down in Enola, calling every few weeks and even dropping by once or twice. Like a country doctor deeply familiar with expectant fathers, Mr. Johnson fielded my calls and impromptu visits with an air of sympathetic amusement, reminding me each time that he had my phone number, and would certainly give me a call when my hide was ready.

And then, late last week, the call came. My hide was ready! Mr. Johnson kindly agreed to open his shop on a Sunday so I wouldn’t have to wait an extra week to pick it up.

I was a little disappointed when he handed me the hide that had been branded with my initials.

“It’s smaller than I remembered,” I said.

He double-checked the ticket and the size of the hide — eight and half square feet — then asked, “A doe?”

I nodded. It wasn’t a huge piece of leather, but it was soft, fragrant, and supple.

I fingered the hole where the bullet had pierced the ribs, thinking, I did that.

Last year’s venison was all but gone, but now there was a new treasure. I took it home and draped it over the back of my decrepit writing chair, running my fingers first over the furry suede, or flesh side of the hide, and then across the pebbled “grain,” or hair side.

I sat down. My familiar old chair suddenly felt strange. Leaning back released a whiff of leather oil, a poignant reminder of the hunt of 2013.