David Michael Kaplan was born in New York City in 1946. His literary reputation rests on two acclaimed short story collections, Comfort (1987) and Skating in the Dark (1991), and his writing guides Revision: A Creative Approach to Writing and Rewriting Fiction (1997). His work has been recognized with the Nelson Algren Award for short fiction. He lives in Chicago and teaches writing at Loyola University.

Given the story’s power—its cold woods, its crying doe, its fleeing girl—it is worth the effort. David Michael Kaplan captured something rare: the precise second a child realizes that growing up does not mean finding yourself, but rather losing the person you were. And that is a lesson no summary can replace.

Central to the story is the internal conflict of its protagonist, Andy. She is a dynamic character navigating two opposing worlds. On one hand, she is "Andy," a girl who rejects traditional femininity, preferring the company of her father and enjoying "male" activities. On the other, she is "Andrea," a girl on the cusp of womanhood, haunted by memories of the ocean and her mother's body. The story brilliantly captures her psychological turmoil through symbols and interactions.

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The full text is not available online, but you can find it in literary anthologies and digital libraries.

David Michael Kaplan once said in an interview that he wanted to write about “the moment when a child realizes the world doesn’t have a place for her the way she is.” In “Doe Season,” that moment arrives not with a bang, but with a doe’s cry and the sound of waves drowning out the forest.

David Michael Kaplan's "Doe Season" is a profound coming-of-age story that follows nine-year-old Andy's, a young tomboy, traumatic initiation into adulthood during a hunting trip in the Pennsylvania woods. The narrative explores themes of gender roles and the loss of innocence as Andy struggles with the harsh realities of nature and societal expectations.

The story's most famous and debated moment is Andy's mystical encounter with the dying doe. It is the story's climax and the key to understanding its message. After shooting the doe and watching it run away, Andy is haunted. That night, she finds the doe still alive. The descriptions become dreamlike and surreal. As she pushes her hand into the animal's wound, the text says: "the doe’s heart, warm and beating. She cupped it gently in her hand. Alive, she marveled at me. Alive" .

Throughout the trip, Andy struggles with her own identity and her place within her family. Her relationships with her father and his friends are complex, and she grapples with the expectations placed upon her as a young woman. As the story unfolds, Andy experiences a series of epiphanies that challenge her perceptions of herself and those around her.