A HUNTER'S APOLOGIA

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

I've spent a month of weekends prowling these hills and woods, and the moment finally is at hand. I concentrate on a spot low and just behind the front shoulder. When I relax the three fingers holding the string, the bow snaps to.

The arrow sizzles audibly as it flashes away. The elk whirls and runs, as I knew he would. He'll feel little pain and won't go far if not pushed. I try to calm myself for the hard job of waiting, at least half an hour, an hour would be better, to allow the animal time to lie down and die in peace.

"There is blood on the ground where the elk has stood, blood on the nearby juniper .... As always at times like this, I shake my head and wonder: What have I done?"

Then I'll take up the blood trail.

Blood.

There's blood on the ground where the elk had stood, blood on the nearby juniper, blood staining the sere autumn grass with bright crimson splotches. As always at times like this, I shake my head and wonder: What have I done? Of course, I know perfectly well what I've done.

Even so, I always feel a certain sadness after making a kill, a moment of predator prey compassion, though not quite regret. While waiting for the long minutes to pass, I lie back on the cool earth and strain to recall a passage from an essay called "Heart of the Game," by Thomas McGuane. Having just killed and eviscerated a pronghorn, McGuane reflects: "I was blood from the elbows down and the antelope's eyes had skinned over. I thought, this is goddamned serious and you had better always remember that." I always have. I always will. McGuane continues: "Nobody who loves to hunt feels absolutely hunky-dory when the quarry goes down. The remorse spins out almost before anything, and the balancing act ends on one declination or another.

I decided that unless I became a vegetarian, I'd get my meat by hunting for it. I feel absolutely unabashed by the arguments of other carnivores who get their meat in plastic with blue numbers on it. I've seen slaughterhouses, and anyway, as Sitting Bull said, when the buffalo are gone, we will hunt mice, for we are hunters and we want our freedom.

" That is why I'm here today, and that is why I will return: I am a hunter and I want my freedom. Freedom, that is, from the plastic wrapped euphemisms of civilized life. Freedom from crowds of hurried, harried humans. Freedom, at least for the nonce, from angular, manmade landscapes. Freedom, even, from the albatross of technological gadgetry. Had I come a field today armed with my scope-sighted Remington, the hunt would have ended within seconds of spotting the bull across the draw. A hundred yards? Piece of cake for the old 'aught-six. During archery season, however, I would never risk a shot at even half that distance. So I had to try to make the bull come to me. In that I have succeeded. And now I'm in for what could be a long, arduous job of tracking and trailing through a jungle of pirion and juniper. Then there's the hard and sober work of field dressing, quartering and packing out the good, clean, healthful meat (the flesh of deer and elk contains a third less fat than even the lean white meat of turkey). Either that, or the end of the blood trail and the shattering realization of the ethical hunter's nightmare—an animal wounded but not recovered. I'm anxious to get going, to confirm my belief that the shot was good, but I've learned down through the years that impatience is the hunter's first enemy.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print