Awaking well before sunrise, I slid out
of bed, ate a light breakfast, and slipped quietly from the house. The cool
moonless sky greeted me; stars were twinkling over the faint city glow. After
three days of stormy weather, this clear morning was an unexpected surprise.
Getting into my truck, I noticed Orion twinkled brightly overhead and smiled to
myself, thinking of our shared purpose. A few bullets, my grandfather’s .270,
an orange vest, hunting license, a knife… I went over the things I needed for
my food harvesting mission. I was ready.
Driving east out of town, the road was
empty underneath the orange vapor of the street lights. I couldn’t help but
remember the years I used to wake up in the dark and run under the same lights to
the YMCA to workout with my Dad before school. I crested Alabama Hill and
headed around Lake Whatcom, past the house I grew up in with the now neglected
hedge I used to have to trim, past the homes of several successive best
friends, and past the wind hewn sandstone caves overlooking Agate Bay that I
used to ride my bike out to and imagine camping in.
I turned and drove up into the hills
above Lake Whatcom and parked my truck beside a gated logging road. It was
still completely dark, but having walked the road a couple days earlier in the
light, I didn’t feel the need to use a flashlight. I walked ½ a mile along the
logging road, climbed up through a recent clear-cut, and found a spot to stand
at the edge of the forest in an area where I had seen fresh deer tracks and
browse a few days earlier. Silently, I watched as the sky lightened, the stars
faded, and the ground around me begin to take shape. A Barred Owl hooted in the
distance and a slight breeze loosened yesterday’s rain drops from high in the
trees behind me, causing them to patter sporadically in the darkness.
A delicate fog drifted across the clearing and slowly melted into the ground as twilight
faded into morning.
High above, a Raven cawed, as if
proclaiming my presence to the world. Coarse wing beats carried the black form across
the soft gray sky, and then it circled and called rapidly above the middle of
the clearing. Was this a sign? Berndt Heinrich writes about Ravens helping
Wolves find deer, and Sam has noticed unusual behavior among the birds before kills. No deer were in sight, but perhaps around the corner…. 5 minutes
later, I heard a long flat call that didn’t sound like any bird I knew and then
in another 5 minutes, movement! I slowly raised my binoculars. Three Black
Tailed Deer were working their way along the edge of the forest. The lead, a 2
point buck was just entering the forest. The other 2 trailed by 20-30 yards,
and I couldn’t immediately tell if they had antlers or not. I slowly lowered my
binoculars and the lead buck flapped his ears and turned to face me. I paused
and the buck resumed its slow progress through the forest. I slowly reached for
my gun, and raised it to follow the buck, but it was too far into the shadow of
trees to risk a shot. I was going to have to move.
I lowered my gun, pulled off my shoes, and
started stalking the deer. 10 slow steps later, I caught a glimpse of the deer’s
tail as it flashed and trotted deeper into the forest and over a small hill.
The forest floor was soft with fresh rain and I quietly crept amongst the Sword Ferns towards the top of the hill. My plan was to crawl to the crest of the hill,
and hope to get a shot at the deer on the other side, but the way ahead was
strewn with dead branches and I realized that I wasn’t going to find a silent
path through. I crouched down and decided to take another look at the two
trailing deer. They were nervously following in the footsteps of the lead deer
and I was now in their path. As they approached, I noticed short antlers, which
meant that I could legally hunt them in this area. I quietly chambered a round
and waited to see what would happen. The first of the two crossed my path not
more than 30 feet away, sniffed at the ground, paused, studied me briefly, and
then continued on. I raised my gun and
studied the other deer through my scope. If it followed the same path, I would
get a broadside shot. I took a few breathes to calm myself as it walked
straight towards me, but finally it turned to the side, walked behind a tree
and paused as it emerged on the other side.
I knew this was my moment. I found the deer’s
shoulder, shifted my aim slightly back, and squeezed the trigger.
Having never shot a deer before, I had
only the stories of a few friends to guide my expectations. They spoke of some deer
running several hundred yards before lying down, and so I had practiced
tracking deer to give me more assurance that I would not waste the precious
life that I hoped take. However, this deer moved little and died calmly as I
whispered my thanksgiving. I will eat its flesh and wear its skin with newfound
reverence for the world that sustains me and the soul that trusted me, to take life
and carry on living, respectfully.
I removed the guts thinking of the morning’s
message from the Raven and hoping it would enjoy the bits that I don’t care to
use. Then I hauled the deer the half mile to my truck and drove out to Dad’s
house. He showed me how to hang the deer up, and using his father’s old
skinning knife, we pulled the hide off. It has been 55 years since he last dressed a deer with his father, but his stories of how my grandfather
butchered game were both instructional, and grounding.
Generally, people that hunt grow up in
families that hunt and learn through emersion and mentored experience.
Certainly, that is how I learned to fish. Dad taught me how to tie flies, how
to cast, and how to land a fish. I didn’t have to discover where the fishing
was good, we just went to places that he knew were good. For the last decade, I
have wanted to hunt my own meat, but Dad didn’t hunt when I was growing up and
so I didn’t absorb it like I did fishing. I slowly had to develop my own tracking
skills, scout out my own places, and develop my own sense of confidence that I
needed to hunt. Despite all this, having shot my first deer, I am still struck
by the power of place and resilience of knowledge. It is no accident that my
first deer came from hills that I explored when I was young, or that my long deceased
grandfather contributed the tools and know-how to kill and butcher my first deer.
Knowledge is rooted in place and the deeper I connect myself to my natal
bioregion, the more its natural and cultural heritage speaks to me. A sense of
place can be cultivated individually over the course of a lifetime, but only really
flourishes when developed communally, over the course of many generations. Landscape
becomes an ancestral journey and stories become rich with context and meaning.
