Tag: deer

July 18, 2010

Ceremony for a meal

Kneeling beside my first deer, I had no words. I just sat there stunned, my hand on his shoulder, uncertain whether I would ever hunt again.

Finally, I whispered something clumsy: half gratitude, half apology.

The next year, when my second deer dropped in his tracks, I was shaken but less shocked. I spoke my thanks and asked forgiveness simply, without grace.

It was after my third deer fell that I knelt to lean a few small sticks against each other, then cloaked them with three fern fronds, still green in mid-November.

If I had grown up in a family of hunters, or in a culture that spoke to the wild, perhaps I would have had some prayer or ceremony at the ready. As it is, the words and gestures are still part of what I hunt for. Over time, as I find them, perhaps a ritual habit will take root in the thin soil of my few years afield.

These gestures need not be confined to the hunt, of course.

Considering all the deaths we inflict, directly and indirectly, there’s as much reason to fall to my knees by a shelf full of bread or corn chips in the grocery store, or even by a display of organic produce at the local farmers’ market.

Yet, standing in front of fruits and vegetables grown by others, I have the luxury of not knowing what cost they incurred.

Maybe the harm was no worse than the initial “conversion” of forest to tillable farm land, plus a few earthworms chopped by shovel or tractor, or some caterpillars knocked off by a bacterial insecticide.

Considering the larger impacts I know my life has, I have decided not to worry about individual invertebrate deaths. I value them ecologically and gently escort many insects out of our house. But I crush the cucumber beetles that attack our squash seedlings.

On the other hand, maybe a few toads were diced in the tilling. Maybe the field was fertilized with compost made from both the manure and the carcasses of cows. Maybe the bushels of greens on display at the farmers’ market took the life of a family of woodchucks. Maybe the flats of strawberries grew to ripeness thanks to the killing of a deer or two.

A long list of maybes: things most of us don’t know or care to know.

When I garden—uprooting weeds, mashing beetles, occasionally shooting a woodchuck—the luxury of ignorance begins to fade.

When I kneel beside a dead whitetail, it disintegrates. Yanked out of forgetfulness, I find I must offer some gesture of gratitude and apology, no matter how clumsy.

June 27, 2010

Monkeys, venison, and the sentience of dinner

Was that the faint sound of steps? Of hooves crunching dry leaves under the thin blanket of snow?

Seated on the ground, I shifted to the right and half-raised my .54 caliber caplock.

Moments later, I saw deer some forty yards off, walking toward me among the pines. Two, three, four of them. I brought the rifle to my shoulder and eased back the hammer. My third year of hunting would come to a close in less than a week and I had yet to kill a whitetail.

The first in line was a doe. My tag was for a buck. The little parade had closed to less than thirty yards now, weaving through the trees. Heart pounding, I stared along the iron sights, watching for antlers.

If the chance came, I would probably shoot. Yet I couldn’t be sure. I had mixed feelings about the idea.

It would have sat more easily if I believed, with Descartes, that animals are senseless: nothing more than animated meat. But I don’t.

How different am I, after all, from my fellow primates? Some days I don’t feel like the brightest monkey in the forest. If my mind was not cluttered with abstract ideas, might I experience the world much as an ape does?

If I cannot exclude all non-humans from the realm of sentience, by what logic can I exclude some, drawing the line somewhere south of chimpanzee? A deer is not a primate, but it does have senses—perhaps different in kind, perhaps different mainly in degree. So does the hawk. So does the rabbit on which the hawk feeds. If we give credence to old teachings and recent science, even plants have kinds of awareness.

Perhaps the world is more complex and more beautiful than we have imagined. And more terrible.

My vegan diet had taken its toll not only on plants, but on animals, too—those displaced by the conversion of forest and prairie to farmland, those minced by the combines that harvested my grains, those gassed in their burrows to protect my salad greens, those shot in defense of the soybeans that became my saintly tofu.

Now my omnivorous diet was taking its toll on vertebrates more directly.

And here I was in the woods, wondering how willing I was to exact that price myself.

The lead doe was closer now. Looking past her, I could see that the second in line was a doe as well. The third, also antlerless, looked like a six-month-old. And the fourth?

Ah, another doe.

There would be no killing today, and no answers. Yet my heart still pounded.

The lead doe stood broadside a dozen paces away, her breath pluming in the frosty air, her ears and great, dark eyes focused on me. All four deer paused, aware of my crouching form. Unsure what I was, they hesitated. They looked and listened. Then, slowly, they turned back the way they had come.

Trembling, I sat and watched them go.

May 31, 2010

An accidental trophy

Even with the leaves damp and quiet, I heard the buck coming. And even through the branches and brush, I saw enough antler to know he was no off-limits spikehorn.

When he stepped around the big hemlock twenty yards away, my rifle was up.

In the periphery of my mind, the antlers registered: maybe six points, probably a little bigger than the five-pointer I had shot some fifty yards from here, the year before.

But I wasn’t watching his head. I was watching his body, looking for a clean shot at heart and lungs. And I was simply thinking “legal deer.”

I had seen a couple of does in archery season and would have killed one if I’d had a good opportunity. Now, in rifle season, the only legal game was a buck with forked antlers. I wouldn’t get to the woods many more times. If I wanted to bring home venison this year, this buck might be my last chance.

When he came around the hemlock, he kept walking. I prefer to shoot at a still target. And there was something about the angle I didn’t like, his chest almost directly toward me—technically a fine shot with a firearm, but it didn’t feel right. Then he slowed and turned. He was nearly broadside when I squeezed the trigger.

As he staggered and went down—my bullet through his heart—the thought occurred to me: He was big.

As a vegan and staunch anti-hunter, I had seen trophy hunting as the lowest of the low. Animals shot for their antlers? Living beings reduced to measurable possessions? Kills competitively compared by size? Yuck.

Later, as I began exploring the philosophical terrain of hunting, I realized that hunters kill big animals for a variety of reasons. Some are, indeed, fixated on possession and competition, sometimes not even wanting the meat. Some seek out older, bigger, wilier animals to challenge themselves as hunters. Some, like my uncle, welcome the occasional large animal as an unexpected gift.

I realized, in short, that when I saw a pickup going down the road with a big, dead deer in back, I had no real idea who was behind the wheel or what his or her motives were.

When I reached the fallen buck, I was shocked: eight points, four on each side, spreading half again as wide as the five-pointer from the year before. Bits of bark and wood were ground into the base of the antlers, from rubbing against trees.

The buck was heavy. Even with help from a friend, he dragged hard. At the check-in station two miles down the road—a simple scale behind a convenience store—the field-dressed deer weighed in at over 190 pounds. In some parts of North America, that’s not an impressively large whitetail. Here, it is.

Now I was the guy behind the wheel of the pickup with the big, dead deer in back. Now I was the guy being congratulated by strangers, their admiration for the magnificent animal displaced to me. I shook my head and shrugged.

“I just got lucky,” I told them. I wasn’t out to bag a big buck. Just legal venison.

Yet I did keep the skull and antlers: As things of stark beauty. As a reminder of that hunt. As a reminder of the biggest deer I ever expect—or feel any need—to kill.

And, the night after the kill, as I drifted off to sleep, I did wonder: What would it feel like to catch even a fleeting glimpse of the massive buck some hunters swear they’ve seen roaming these hills, the one whose shed antlers people say they’ve found, seven or more points on a single side? Would I kill such an animal, or would I simply stare in awe?

May 25, 2010

Blueberries and venison: The gift of wild foods

Cath and I looked at the ground in surprise.

We had visited this rocky hilltop many times. It was here, some eight years earlier, that I had asked her to marry me.

We had often seen these low bushes clinging to the meager soil. We had never seen them fruiting.

The patch of green leaves at our feet was speckled with clusters of dusty blue. We picked a few ripe berries and savored their sweetness, then picked a few more, dropping them into a plastic grocery bag I happened to have in my fanny pack.

Soon we realized that the entire southern side of the hilltop was thick with blueberries. Thrilled by the unexpected bounty, we loaded the grocery bag with nearly two quarts, hardly making a dent.

But no measure of volume can gauge what we gathered that morning.

From farming done by others, we get the bulk of our calories and nutrition: fruits, vegetables, grains, chickens, and more. From our own gardening, we get a smaller portion of our food—greens, peas, beans, carrots, squash, and the like—plus an invaluable sense of involvement and connection.

From wild food, we get something else.

Whether unsought and unforeseen like that bagful of blueberries, or hunted and hoped for like the chanterelles I seek in the summer woods or the deer who steps out from behind a tree twenty yards from where I crouch in autumn, wild food is not something grown or owned, bought or sold.

It is something given. Something that feeds soul as much as body. A reminder of our oldest, humblest way of eating.

Unlike the hunted animal, remarks Bob Kimber in Living Wild and Domestic, “The animal raised and slaughtered is not a gift. We have earned that food in a different way, and when we eat that animal, we are not accepting a gift as much as we are exercising our property rights.”

To blueberry bush or fallen deer, I am not master, standing over that which is rightfully mine, but supplicant, on my knees, hand outstretched.

April 16, 2010

Meditation with meat and knife

My fingers slide under the muscle, separating it from the layer below. My knife snips tendons and traces the curvature of bone.

I add the slab of venison to one of the 13×9 pans on the kitchen counter.

Hours ago, this leg was a deer. In the early morning light, the animal was moving somewhere in the cool, damp forest. Then pausing to listen and test the breeze. Then walking or trotting on again, toward the gentle slope where I sat waiting among the hemlocks.

Much of my time in the woods is quiet, contemplative. Afternoons spent scouting in late summer and early fall, looking for tracks and other sign. Hours, days, or entire seasons spent listening and watching, seeing no deer.

If I get the chance for a clean shot, the killing is over in a flash.

When I crouch beside the fallen animal and whisper thanks, I am both grateful and unsettled. There in the woods, though, there is work to be done—gutting the deer and dragging the body home.

It’s at the kitchen counter that I make my peace with the killing. There, with a leg on the cutting board, contemplation returns. Separating flesh from bone, I marvel at the power these muscles held, to launch the buck in great leaps.

There is a quiet rhythm to the task, like canning, my wife Cath suggests: a small repetitive act done by these hands, a pattern within the larger rhythmic patterns of the seasons, the patterns of all things that live and eat and die and feed one another.

Inexperienced as I am, it takes me a long while to get from skinning the animal to grinding the last pounds of burger. Someday, caught between my slowness and my schedule, I may have to pay a local butcher to do the work. But not soon, I hope.

Meditation with meat and knife

My fingers slide under the muscle, separating it from the layer below. My knife snips tendons and traces the curvature of bone.

I add the slab of venison to one of the 13×9 pans on the kitchen counter.

If I get the chance for a clean shot, the killing is over in a flash.

When I crouch beside the fallen animal and whisper my thanks, I am both grateful and unsettled. There in the woods, though, there is work to be done—gutting the deer and dragging the body from the woods.

Inexperienced as I am, it takes me a long while to get from skinning the animal to grinding the last pounds of burger. Someday, caught between my slowness and my schedule, I’ll have to pay a local butcher to do the work. But not soon, I hope.

March 12, 2010

A buck looks back: Quirk or gift?

Reaching my spot in the woods that morning, I had no illusions about my chances of seeing a legal buck.

My first three years, I had come up empty-handed. My fourth year, I had gotten lucky. This was my fifth year. Given that only one in eight Vermont hunters tags a whitetail each autumn, I had no right to expect that I’d bring home venison two years in a row.

On opening weekend of rifle season, I had hunted almost every daylight hour. And I had seen more deer than usual: one doe and one young buck who was probably a spikehorn, both illegal under current regulations.

This morning, though, and for the rest of the 16-day season, I’d only get out for the odd hour or two: almost certainly not enough time for a buck to come my way. I set my pack on the ground and sat down, my back to the half-rotten stump of a fallen maple. It was already getting light, sunrise not far off.

Four minutes later, I heard a deer coming.

The hoof steps were to my right, my view blocked by the brushy branches of a fallen hemlock.

When I saw the buck, he was already close, moving at a brisk trot, and one glance told me he was no spikehorn. He was crossing the slope behind me. There was no way to turn without being seen. I had to hope he would cross all the way behind me and offer a shot to my left.

No such luck. Just fifteen yards away, he looked in my direction, wheeled, and charged back the way he’d come. Having nothing to lose, I stood and turned to watch him go. Even at that close range, I wasn’t going to shoot at a running deer; the chances of a wounding shot were too high.

Thirty yards off, he turned to look back. I knew he’d be there just a moment.

There was no time to think through the shot, let alone brace against a tree for the kind of steadied aim I prefer—I’m a slow, deliberate hunter, not a quick, offhand shooter. There was just that one second to bring the rifle to my shoulder, see that his shoulder and front ribs looked like a barn door (something I could hit), decide that the bullet’s path was clear of branches, and fire.

The buck dropped in his tracks and lay still.

I stood there, stunned: by how fast it had all happened and how unlikely it all seemed.

Naturally, it could be explained. As I hiked in—tromping through crunchy, frozen leaves, making more noise than a moose—the buck must have been too far away to hear me, or making too much noise himself. The timing was pure coincidence. And his almost immediate pause and backward glance—a common behavior among mule deer, I gather, but less usual among whitetails—must mean that he’d scented but not seen me, and was curious to know where I was.

But that isn’t the only way to see it. Many indigenous hunting cultures say that animals “offer” themselves as a “gift” to the hunter. From a Euro-American perspective, this sounds like mere metaphor, perhaps aimed at making humans feel better about killing. Of course animals don’t “give” themselves to hunters. How ridiculous.

Or is it?

In his article “The gift in the animal” (American Ethnologist, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2007), anthropologist Paul Nadasdy argues that aboriginal accounts of hunting might be literally true. Among other evidence corroborating the views of the Kluane of the Southwest Yukon, he recounts how a rabbit escaped from one of his snares, then tried to get into his cabin five days later, with the snare wire still around its neck. It made no effort to flee as he picked it up and killed it.

What if Nadasdy is right? What if the Kluane view of nature and animals is as valid as the one I grew up with? What if there was more than chance at work in my encounter with that buck, more than a quirk of curiosity in his fatal pause? How would that change my hunting and the meaning of it?

There are dangers, of course, in lifting concepts like “animal” and “gift” off the surface of another culture. It can be rather parasitic. And we’re unlikely to understand what the concepts mean in the depth of their original context.

So let’s bring it down to earth and closer to home.

In essence, northern hunting peoples such as the Kluane understand animals to be “sentient and communicative persons,” as Nadasdy puts it. They see animals as beings who deserve respect, who are capable of feeling, suffering, and consciously interacting with each other and with humans.

In our own culture, how might we—hunters and non-hunters alike—tackle the challenge implicit in that view? How might we hold both the concept of animals as conscious fellow creatures and the concept of animals as food?

Humans, after all, are like that, too: conscious (more or less), yet ultimately consumable. Recyclable.

March 5, 2010

‘Gone killing’

Hunters and anglers, writes Marc Bekoff in Animals Matter, “often like to hang signs that say ‘Gone Fishin’’ or ‘Gone Huntin’.’ But what these slogans really mean is ‘Gone killing.’”

When I opposed hunting, I would—like Bekoff—have objected to the euphemisms. Even catch-and-release fishing, with its professed intent not to kill, often does.

Now that I hunt, though, what strikes me is simply that “gone killing” is a terribly inaccurate description of my experiences in the woods.

When I hunt deer, the creatures I see most often are small woodland birds, usually chickadees. If I’m lucky, a pileated woodpecker might land on a nearby tree trunk with a thwack, or a pair of ruffed grouse might scurry by in the brush. Typically, the biggest mammal I see is a red squirrel, hopping past or pausing to scold me.

Hunters do hope to kill now and then. Yet many of us go years without doing so. I recall talking with a man who was out in the woods, hunting with his son. He said he hadn’t shot a deer in over twenty years. He seemed perfectly content just being out there.

Even when animals do show up, often there isn’t any opportunity for a legal, ethical shot. And even when there is, hunters don’t always kill. Sometimes we let the moment pass.

On the rare occasions when I do shoot a deer, the killing itself takes mere seconds.

In short, killing isn’t what hunters do with most of their time in the field.

But, just for a moment, let’s imagine that Bekoff’s words were literally true—that all hunting entailed killing. If we were all subsistence hunters, dependent on the meat to keep our families alive through the winter, perhaps we’d be glad to know that we’d return from every outing with dinner in tow.

Even then, though, how would the certainty and the constant killing feel? What kind of experience would it be?

I’m not even sure what we’d call it. As one local hunter—a particularly experienced and skilled outdoorsman—once put it after a long, unsuccessful deer season, “That’s why they call it ‘hunting,’ not ‘finding.’”

Maybe next time I head to the woods, I’ll hang a sign: “Gone looking, listening, and birdwatching—and, just possibly, killing.”