Hunting

I was sitting on a log in the woods
Hunting season was almost over
It had been unusually warm to start the season
I sat with my dad and my uncle a couple of times
Didn’t see nothin’
Other than hawks and squirrels

I was 12 or 13 years old
I was mostly into Pokemon cards
and was scared by the movie
The Blair Witch Project

Sitting alone in the woods with the Blair Witch is pretty scary when you’re like 12

I was glad I had a gun

I had a 30 ought six
Pretty big gun for a little dude
We were in eastern Jackson County
Where no one lives
and it was early afternoon
My uncle said he would walk a few hundred yards north and try to drive the deer toward me

A couple days earlier I was in the woods
And I felt something strange and sacred
The wind was rising and falling through the tree branches
and the leaves were breaking off and spiraling to the ground
and then there was a pause
and the wind would rise and the trees would sing again
and the earth was breathing
and i felt a connection
cutting through everything else
this was strange and sacred
and common and right

A light snow fell, briefly
for only a few minutes

I sat on a log and then from the south,
the opposite direction my uncle went,
two deer came walking
I heard one of them snap a branch underfoot
A doe and a fawn
They were close

I brought the gunsights to my eye
and I don’t have this thing
this thing i hear some deer hunters talk about
where they get overwhelmed with excitement and can’t slow their heart down
i feel a focus
and i exhale and pull the trigger twice
is it a gun that i had to recock to reload? i don’t remember

shortly thereafter my uncle came back, and asked if I had shot at a deer
“Yeah,” I said

It was dead on the ground like less than 100 feet from where I shot it. Got her right through the heart. I did a Bambi. I apologize to the fawn.

I pulled the carcass out of the woods. We went to a bar in Pray, Wisconsin. It is an unincorporated little hamlet with no churches and no desire. “We’ve gotta register this guy’s first deer,” my uncle said, “And we’ll take two beers.” The bartender lady didn’t blink and served me a beer. My uncle said he was just kidding, but I guess getting your first deer deserves a beer in such rural towns right?

The Blair Witch was pressed against the window, greenish nose smushed to the glass. I ate some venison, but the deer I shot was not a big one. It was legal, but small. I have not been hunting since. Glad to have been a part of it, I suppose. Mother earth and human history and whatnot. Funny that I remember it so clearly.