Deep in the woods of central Minnesota, I steered the pickup off the gravel road and into the parking area. I got out and relieved myself after the 75-mile drive. It was 7:30 a.m. and my breath floated in the frosty November air. I put on a blaze-orange hoody and over it strapped a broad leather belt that I called my "bat belt." On it I had a multi-tool, flashlight, cellphone, ammo pouch and a large knife. Using a sock filled with baking soda, I powder-puffed myself in an effort mask my scent, then put on my small backpack, the weight of which mostly came from two and half liters of water.
I uncased my rifle, loaded five rounds into the tubular magazine and shouldered the weapon. I shut the door of the truck which sounded like a crash in the stillness of the forest, a warning, I thought, to the local wildlife -- the top predator was here. Except it was me who was scared as I headed out on my first ever deer hunt.
The half-mile walk on the gravel road to the trail head calmed me. I hadn't seen any other vehicles since turning off the highway. I was alone. I slipped past the cattle gate that marked the trail's entrance, stopped, unshouldered my rifle and cocked the lever to chamber a round. I clicked off the trigger safety and set the hammer to half cock. That snick triggered something in my brain. The hunt was on and I moved slowly and quietly up the trail.
~
A puff of breeze rustled the boughs of scraggy oaks; a downy woodpecker knocked and fluttered about. The forest was vivid with color and texture, its sounds a never-ending symphony ripe with meaning.
The Dakota people of centuries gone by could read the forest like a book. I could not. Yet the forest they read was something quite different than what I was walking in. In 1850 central Minnesota was home to a vast, ancient forest -- thousands of square miles of huge conifers, many more than 100 feet tall. Commercial loggers called these tracts the pineries and they seemed inexhaustible. But they weren't. During the ensuing decades, they cut them all down. I mean they cut them all down.
I find the forests of Minnesota beautiful and calming; they are places of wonder. But they are only a shadow of their former selves, stunted and cluttered patches compared to the old-growth majesty that once was.
~
Predation had been on my mind and its relationship to human development, both as prey and predators, since reading Barbara Ehrenreich's "Blood Rites" which I've written about *here. In 2008 I went on a pheasant hunting excursion in Illinois with my brothers the day after Thanksgiving. I'm not sure I hit anything but the experience was eye opening and gave me a taste of what hunting could be. I wanted to go deeper so I decided the next season I would go deer hunting
Was it a mid-life crisis thing? Maybe. I was 45 at the time. There was something primal at work apart from my philosophical interest. I was lucky to be a strong and physically capable person. I think at root I wanted to use that strength while I still could, and use it in a way that it had evolved to be used.
Another question lingered. Snap-shooting at pheasants was one thing, killing a large mammal was another. I always felt keenly the suffering of animals. Could I put a deer in my sights and pull the trigger? I didn't know. It wasn't something I was going to be ashamed of if I couldn't, quite the opposite, but I did want to know.
I knew little about deer hunting but being in the grip of an obsession, I devoured everything I could on the subject -- books, magazine articles, videos and whatever lore I could extract from people I knew who had hunted. I had a rifle, purchased in 1998 on whim while I was living in Nebraska. I had fired it a few times on a buddy's country property but it had gone unused since. I took it to a nearby shooting range and started practicing. It was a cowboy-style lever action rifle chambered in .44 magnum. Known as a short-range brush buster, good for putting down deer and black bear, it wasn't a great choice for open prairie country but it was ideal for the woods of Minnesota. I worked hard to make myself at least a decent shot with it.
One aspect of deer hunting I had to think about was what to do if I succeeded. Being a novice, I was unlikely to bag a deer on my first efforts but it was possible. Once you kill a deer, you have to field dress it, i.e., gut it. I found a *video on YouTube that showed how to do it. I watched it over and over, memorizing the details and becoming accustomed to looking at a carcass, entrails and all that. I also carried with me a cheat sheet of the steps, cut from the pages of Field and Stream.
I investigated several areas within 100 miles of the Twin Cities. Minnesota is fortunate to have lots of public land where hunting is allowed. Ultimately I settled on the Mille Lacs Wildlife Management Area, 33,000 acres of woods and marsh just south of Mille Lacs, a huge lake in the middle of the state. I made several trips to scout out the WMA's trails. I saw lots of deer-sign. I knew there were plenty around.
When the time came, I felt I was as ready as I'd ever be. I got up at 4:30 a.m., loaded my step-dad's pickup and headed for the woods.
~
On the trail a blue jay squawked. I stopped, put my thumb on the gun's hammer, ready to cock it in case a deer flushed. Nothing. The blue jay flew away. I walked on.
The plan was to hike about a mile and half into the forest where the trail meets an old railroad grade built more than a century ago when the marshes were harvested for reeds that were used to make matting for dirt floors. A ways along the grade was a rise and a fallen tree near a grassy area, the kind of edge terrain deer liked. I was going to perch myself on the log and wait in ambush.
I didn't get there.
Shortly after the jay had squawked and I had resumed walking -- I couldn't have been in the forest more than 10 minutes -- a deer flushed in the brush a short distance ahead of me. It jumped into the woods, white tail raised high. Startled, I raised my rifle.
I wasn't going to shoot at a deer bounding away from me through the trees. It was a bad shot to take and I'd likely miss anyway. At least I saw one, I thought. I watched it angle off around my position and followed it with the rifle. Then it stopped. I had read that it wasn't unusual for a deer to stop running if it didn't feel like it was being pursued.
It was doe and it was about 35 yards away. Trees blocked the standard shot to the forward chest area but its neck was exposed. That was an acceptable shot and preferred by many hunters. I put the bead on it and aligned the sights. This was it, I thought, my chance. I pulled the hammer back and put my finger on the trigger.
The blast shattered the silence and the gun bucked up. I cocked it and lowered it back into position but the deer was gone. Shit, I'd missed. Then I saw a leg poke up from the undergrowth and a white tail. The doe was down and struggling. I had to will myself not to rush toward it. If I did, it might get up again and flee, never to be found. Be patient, let it die. I started counting. The doe stopped struggling after a few seconds but I kept counting. My heart pounded, blood pressure probably off the charts. Only after I'd reached 100 did I approach.
The doe was still. I poked it with the rifle. It was dead.
~
I'm not good enough with metaphors to adequately convey the swirl of triumph, sorrow and guilt that I felt. I clicked on the safety and unloaded the gun. I knelt down to pick up the ejected cartridges, breathing heavily, eyes watering. There was a quarter-sized hole in the deer's neck and blood-stained leaves around it. The doe was smallish, probably less than 100 pounds. The !Kung people of Southern Africa, and other cultures, apologize to the animals they kill. Maybe it was a lame bit of faux ritual but I put my hand on the doe's silky brown fur and said I was sorry.
The killing was the easy part, physically. I hung a spare blaze-orange vest on a branch above me to let any passing hunters know I was there, then I flipped the deer on its back and spread its hind legs apart, using stakes and paracord to hold them in position. I'll skip the details of the gutting but I used a very sharp Scandinavian knife called a puukko to do the job. I was a bloody mess afterward. I flipped the doe again to let the blood in the chest cavity drain out then proceeded to clean myself up as best I could with the water I'd brought.
I had a harness that was supposed to make the job of dragging the deer out easier. There was nothing easy about it. It took me nearly an hour to drag it the quarter mile to the trail head and my thighs and calves burned. I could have hoisted it on my shoulders and carried it, and that would have been much less exhausting, but that would be dangerous -- you don't want a jittery hunter confusing you for a deer.
~
I arrived at Anoka Meat & Sausage tired and stiff. The counter clerk took no notice of my bloodstained clothes. Another man came out and helped me unload the carcass. "Ya, that's a good eatin' deer, there," he said.
My buddies at the coffee shop could hardly believe I'd done it. I basked in the glow of success and perhaps strutted a bit with alpha-male swagger. The doe was good eating. I invited a friend over and cooked the tenderloins with butter, pepper, garlic, cubed potatoes and asparagus all in one skillet. It was the best meal I'd ever made.
The Spanish philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset, wrote in his book on hunting: "To sum up, one does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to hunt.".
That's a bit pat, I think, but does point in the right direction. Hunting, I believe, can open the mind and senses in a way like no other activity. The killing, or the attempt, is an essential ingredient.
Was it an unnecessary indulgence? Is it justifiable in our modern age? I'm not sure. But ... anyone who eats meat is kills by proxy. Anybody who eats farmed plants also kills by proxy via habitat deprivation and pest control. It's hard to escape being a killer.
In any case, I had caught the hunting bug and would try again the following year. That experience would turn out to be harder and darker.
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