Take away the scenery you're surrounded by when you hunt. I mean subtract the whole motion picture which includes the sounds, sights, and (sometimes, for good or bad) smells, then what are you left with?
Of course, part of the reason we hunt is to see these things people don't see everyday. Things as hidden away as a breast-feeding mother. Little things like a baby otter sneaking by, or a herd of turkeys warily marching by you like Jurassic drumsticks. Or the coolest things like Bald Eagles, fighting bucks, and hawks dropping in right in front of you to snatch the life out of some slow rodent...or not. (that's hunting).
The most poetic thing I have ever seen was a flock of red-winged blackbirds flowing like black water, like an ebony-speckled amoeba rolling, not flying separately, but roiling along freshly cut silage slurping up kernels like a dark fog of locusts. Then, of course, by some unknown provocation, they'd take to the trees around the cornfield; the tree that I was in, waiting.
There were enough black and chirping bodies that I could feel the tree I had climbed bend under their weight, and then I was surrounded by the pitter-patter of, not rain, but something else that fell as constant as a summer shower until the tree sprang back straight as they all left to plunder some more.
What's left without the sounds of the world, the world, I mean, that isn't the park, or the backyard--while all good indeed, they are not the woods where you can't hear a TV, or a mower, or other sounds of work and responsibility. You hear crashes and crunches near you, and you strain to see what you know is a monster buck or a sasquatch headed your way. But you're relieved to see a squirrel or two, possibly, fighting for territory, acorns, or love.
Once, behind me, I heard a slouching creeping crunch so subtle and so soft that it sounded like a giant serpent side-winding its way to the base of my tree. I twisted around as much as I could to face aft, but could see no movement, no snake. As the noise got closer and closer I thought I could see leaves on the ground flicked over by some invisible touch and I squinted to peer ever closer, trying to see. Closer and closer it scrunched, right to the base of the tree, and still no sight of this softly gaited ghost that was twenty feet wide and out to take me...away.
At the tree's base, the woods stopped and a field began, and the ethereal reptile stepped into view, and I saw, a single bobwhite. He was followed by another, and another until, below me, there was an entire covey of quail--the way they would have roamed this state thirty, fifty, sixty years ago before, well, us. There were twenty-five or so little checkerboards of fluff and feather poking around in the grass--until they saw me.
The most frightened I have ever been was when I heard what I now know was a pair of grey foxes screaming at each other at dusk, the very end of dusk, when, if you shot a deer or duck, and the man heard you, you could have a problem. At the time I heard the pair, they were, in my mind, cougars, the last in Rockingham county, and they smelled the doe I had just shot, and then, after they had hollered, they could smell me breaking out in a cold sweat!
Forgotten also are the smells that coat you with their own colour while you hunt. I can close my eyes and smell the pond mud that soaks my pants as I follow my friends on hands and knees awkwardly, fully bundled from the cold, holding a shotgun strategically so as not to endanger others, all the while hiding from the mallards and geese just out of sight on the other side of the dam.
Sneakier are the smells of weather to come, or weather that has just past. Snow, you know, smells like it sounds, and you can smell it, and feel it coming with each passing hour. And leaves that smelled one way dry the day before, take on a whole new hue after an overnight soaking. And the freshly fallen smell more alive than the darker, crunchier ones decaying beneath. You notice these when you sit on the ground, eyes up for squirrels' silhouettes, and the moistened leaves stick to your hands, painting your hands with their smell.
But my point was (I do have one) that, if you take away all of that, what are you left with? And it's the "kill." It is the part of the hunt that takes the least amount of time. It's only a singular point and click moment, but it seems to get us out of bed early, and out into the woods.
The first deer I shot this year in Vance County, and killed, was a cripple. My buddy had shot it once, and after a morning of hunting, climbed down to me from his tree stand and pointed me off towards the direction of his deer. He was sure it was dead, no question, but when I came close to the "body", he sprang up and ran away on three legs. And since there had been no question the deer was dead, I hadn't bothered to carry my muzzleloader with me.
I watched it run up the bank of Kerr Lake and out of sight. Brian came up to me, passed by me, and went after it. I ran back to grab my gun, then ran to get ahead of the deer, as Brian pushed it forward. I caught up to, and passed by Brian, and since I didn't see the deer anymore, I assumed he had shaken us and we were going to have to track his blood trail...for a long long time.
Brian and I looked at each other and started towards one another when the deer, surprisingly small, lept up from between us and took off running, again, on his three good legs. It's a terrible feeling watching a young, beautiful animal suffer like that, so we had to finish it.
Well, Brian didn't have a shot--I was between him and his deer, so it was on me. It was on me to finish what he had done. It was up to me to shoulder the rifle, the oft-mentioned Remington muzzleloader and find this tired, battered and running little deer in my cross hairs. Well, I did so, which is not hard to do with a 2x-7x scope turned down to the lowest setting.
It was easy to find his loping body, then his shoulder, all the while tracking him, swinging the gun, adjusting a minuscule lead, then pulling the trigger, all in less than a second. Of course, a muzzleloader belches a cloud of smoke so I wasn't sure I'd hit him, until the weeds he'd fallen into thrashed repeatedly, then stopped moving at all.
And at that moment, I realized, I had no joy in that. I had no moment of heart-pounding excitement, or that inexplicable thrill. All I had was the regret, the sorrow, that is usually tempered by the feeling of....having done it. I mean, it was a difficult shot to take. I have never taken a shot a running deer before, it's too risky, and to have done so should have been a "That a boy" moment, but it wasn't.
The lack of that feeling stayed in my mind for couple of weeks. Was it time to stop hunting? I stayed at home on days when I could have hunted. I didn't want to know.
So today, I dragged myself out, surrounded myself with all the sights and sounds and smells, to see if it were indeed over. And this afternoon, nestled in a clump of trees, beside a little pond, I found out. I sat and waited, and enjoyed the rest of the day, and watched a lone duck paddle loudly around the pond. I listened to a murder of crows tell the whole world where I was hiding. And I smelled my home-made burlap poncho I use for camouflage. Its own smells are poetically worthy....one day.
But I watched, and waited, and played on my phone, and wondered if I could still feel that moment, if I could still be a hunter....
And then putting the crosshairs on the doe that stepped out of the woods, knowing I was back, I took my first deer this season.
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