Something to Value

Always eager to explore why I hunt, I read, and sometimes (yes, even I) listen to others' explanations and thoughts on their reasons for the "stalk". Naturally, as I've been obsessively reading Robert Ruark's works because he has written about hunting so well and so often, I've taken a minute to chat about it too.


In the book, Horn of the Hunter, he remembers a safari he took in the '50's with Harry Selby. And in fact, Ruark quotes Selby's take on a part of hunting I have only dabbled in because, frankly, when you hunt Lions or Greater Kudus or Elephants or Grants Gazelles in North Carolina, the Asheboro Zoo calls the cops. Well, that part of hunting is called trophy hunting.


"'You are not shooting an elephant,' Selby told me. 'You are shooting the symbol of his tusks. You are not shooting to kill. You are shooting to make immortal the thing you shoot. To kill just about anything is a sin. To kill something that will be dead soon, but is so fine as to give you pleasure for years, is wonderful. Everything dies. You only hasten the process. When you shoot a lion you are actually shooting its mane, something that will make you proud. You are shooting for yourself, not just shooting to kill.'"


And I suppose, to him that makes sense. But, as we like to say around here, "You can't eat antlers," as the only big game animals in these parts are deer. And so I've mentioned that the idea of a "stuffed" deer head on the wall is to me, somewhat distasteful and disrespectful. As if to say, "Look how purty you were before I shot you in the face."


But to look back on the day you collected a deer with a large rack of antler, or your first deer ever, and have something real to hold in your hand rather than a dimming memory is indeed nice. Sometimes, like in the case of Jaime, my son, it's both.


So a part of me broke my promise to respect my game by eating it and never making a trophy out of body parts and did just that. But like every other broken promise I've ever made, I can rationalize it away with a single breath or just a few keystrokes.
The difference is that it was a day I want my son to remember with me...his first deer. I too don't ever want to forget the feeling we had when this big(ish) eight pointer stepped out of the brush.


One hundred yards away, and I could see he had a bad eye and eight, nice bony-white points from where we sat. Deer sauntered in front of us, and I told the boy to raise his gun and find him through the scope. Easily done as it wasn't even 4:30 that afternoon but Deer wouldn't turn broadside for Jaime. As He turned away from us and started to walk deeper into the brush, I reached for my rifle, knowing I could make a back of the neck shot and forgetting about the boy for a moment.


But before I could even get my rifle ready, Deer suddenly turned broadside and stopped walking! I said something that very few people get to say to a first time hunter: "Take Him!" I whispered! I watched slack-jawed and nervous as I heard the click of the safety followed by the report. Deer jumped straight up and ran in a circle as deer do when their forelegs are shattered and the blood is supposed to be gushing from their chests. Deer fell in high enough brush that we couldn't see him anymore...he was down!


And so I want to remember the smiles we had! I want to remember the high five and the whispered, "Yes! Yes!" we shared and the fist bump and the clap on the back and the "that makes up for the possum you missed three years ago!" Always we'll want to remember the good...but also the bad...


I'll never forget looking out with the binoculars and finding the rack of a fallen Deer amid the low scrub, and then seeing it move. Deer wasn't quite dead. I told Jaime that Deer was just bleeding out, that He'd be dead by sundown, that we'd wait for me to shoot a deer then get them both on a four wheeler, but the antlers kept moving, atop a head that kept trying to see, maybe even will a way out of the scrub He was in and push His way out of sight on His two good rear legs.


Of course, there was a tree, and a limb blocking a finishing shot from the stand we were in no matter how I tried to play it. There just wasn't a clean shot as He only exposed the top of his head. So, a half hour before sunset, I unloaded the chamber by stuffing the cartridge deep into the internal magazine, closed the bolt on an empty chamber, and climbed down from the stand to do what I had to do. At the bottom of the stand I heard a voice, "Don't leave me," but of course we had no choice.


I pulled the bolt back again and racked it forward, stripping the cartridge off the top of the internal magazine and re-loaded the chamber with it. It is a custom rifle on a Mauser 98 action which means it was designed and not often modified since 1898, and used by our German enemies in two world wars! Even though I have loaded and fired rifles hundreds of times, I have never flipped a bolt shut on a loaded rifle with as much purpose and apprehension as I did that moment, that day.


I stalked to where I had last seen Deer laying in the brush, and He was gone, but I could hear Him ahead of me trying to avoid me in His own struggle. I nearly ran to Him, and knowing He was only ten to fifteen yards away, still could not see Him through the tangle of briars ahead. Out of the boy's sight I nervously followed narrow Deer trails through the brush. I was in no danger of course, but my heart was pounding, my mouth was dry.


So was Jaime's. "Dad?" he called. I had to ignore him. I pushed ahead and suddenly I saw Deer's silhouette a mere seven yards in front of me. I had traveled three hundred yards through the thick brush and was loosing the light. I threw the rifle up and centered the cross hairs on the shadow of Deer! So good is his camouflage that He, a mere 21 feet ahead, was nothing but a dark blur in front of me. Incredible to see, or not see at such a range, and figuring I couldn't miss, I shot. And then He was gone out of sight.


I heard splashing and grunting, muffled grunting, and walked up to Him and finally saw Him, head down, antlers twisted and caught in tall grass, and did, again, what we had come to do, but close enough this time to hear the life leave Him in a shuffled cough, a final cough. We were done. Jaime called again from the stand and I yelled back, "It's okay. He's down." Everyone heard us, and I walked back towards the stand.


A four wheeler trip later--an ordeal for me for the rest of my life since my other adventure on one--I grabbed a picture of Deer where he stopped being Deer and became Jaime's first deer.



I had pulled the antlers free and waited for help and the four wheeler. I was soaking wet from the waist down and growing colder. Jaime's first deer had made it to the back of the Dan River's flood plain and was soaking wet too. After a struggle to load Him single handedly in the dark onto the ATV, we got Him back to the truck for more pictures, though none show the bad eye really well.







And so we took Jaime's first deer and butchered it to hang and age. Jaime's bullet had grazed the brisket right to left and broke a foreleg. My shot at the silhouette had missed but the finisher had done just that, finished the chase. Jaime could see his mistake there, skinless and easy to see, and promised a touch higher in the future. Another lesson to remember as well.


Reading the whole story, maybe it's easier to see why it's important, at least to us, to me, to remember the day forever. And since we had the pictures, we wanted more options. We chose a skull mount for that is the reality of what happened to Deer. Also, the mount doesn't make a mockery of Deer's passing with a phony, lifelike Styrofoam-filled head with Deer's skin stretched taunt over it finished off with big glass eyes. A skull is what Deer is now, what we did to Him. We don't want to forget how beautiful He was, but we don't want to make a caricature of Him either.





Of course, I can admire others' trophies, and often do, but even better are the stories that go with them. I can see how one would want to keep something that fine around the house, and be able to see it as it was when it was taken, killed, without having lost a bit of that image to age and time. But that is not the only reason we hunt. Years from now though, me and the boy, Jaime, as I'll have to start calling him now that he's on the cusp of teenagedom, will have something to see, something of value only to us, and have a memory of his first deer, my son's first deer.