This work was executed in 1856 just after Tait had made the decision to become a professional artist and to devote all of his time to painting. His decision to become a professional is indicated by his move to larger quarters in the heart of the New York art world, and by the beginning of an artist's journal in which he kept track of all the works he completed after 1856.

Just two years earlier, in 1854, Tait had been honored by election as an Associate Member of the National Academy of Design and he was beginning to exhibit at the Academy on a more frequent basis. In 1856, Tait was striving to become a full member of the Academy, and hoping to fill the important void as premier sporting painter in the United States (William Tylee Ranney had just been taken ill with consumption which would eventually cause his death in 1857).

The paintings executed in these years of the middle 1850s are Tait's most successful canvases. The excitement and energy of his first oils is apparent, but his artistic abilities and his facility with reporting the most delicate details of the scene are approaching maturity.

A great deal of attention and acclaim was being paid to these early paintings from 1856. A Tight Fix (The Manoogian Collection), which was to become one of Tait's most widely recognized and celebrated oils, was painted in 1856 just prior to Bringing Home Game: Winter Shanty at Ragged Lake). This painting was one of a pair of paintings that John Osborn purchased from Tait in April of 1856. The location of the companion painting, Deer Hunting on the Lakes (Cadbury, no. 56.4), is unknown