Firearms and Finis

How is it you just look and you know what decision to make? You've thought of the concept for weeks, months perhaps, the vision of what you seek little more than a passionate sense for and belief in what is right and true for you. You are going to buy your first hunting gun and your taste is whetted for its use.

And there it is in the case at the store, an old Belgium Browning 20 gauge. Your first own deer gun of your very own. You've had your "youth" guns, that the parents provided for training and beginning hunts, but now you are more grown up, ready for something with more weight, with more depth, something that is yours. It was older than you were, perhaps older than your parents, lovingly cared for and then up for sale, sitting forlorn in a locked case. Why? A death in the family, a household strapped and the only source of food the giving up of things carefully tended? The gun had a long history of care, you could see it in the fine veneered finish the carefully tended and lubricated workings. Somebody deeply cared for this piece for more than one generation. But the gun could not answer from its prison of glass, the ghost of its soul simply asking "why".

When I got to that point in my life, the first thing I thought of when I saw it was that a gun like this needs to be cared for, not propped up in a closet, gathering dust, seldom used. It was more than I really could afford at that age, but I bought it anyway. I'll buy used books for next semester, I really like peanut butter. I wanted it. I couldn't wait to bring home my first Whitetail with it. Big, small, I wanted to take a deer with it, do my part to provide food for a family that worked harder than most folks I knew.

Some dollars, some paperwork, and a few days later, it was mine.

The next day that dawned clear, I rose before anyone in the house, eager to let that gun taste its new found freedom, making sure it was clean and oiled, ammo in my pockets, hands scrubbed and ready. In the mirror, a reflection looked back. Was that me? The chubbiness of childhood was gone from my face, somewhere in the last months, I'd changed, grown. The visage looking back was not a delicate little thing of toys and tea parties but a young woman of the outdoors, a face composed and yet with a hint of wildness, not a face of someone helpless before some natural inclemency like cold or blood. The face of the wilderness, armed and ready.

That first morning I could not wait to shoot that old Browning, but there were chores to do, heaven always waiting for our servitude here on earth. Animals to be tended, horses whinnying and stomping over white washed doorways, cows waiting at an empty trough. Animals who have had the wild bred out of them, and not for our care, would likely starve. Long muzzles, eager shadows waiting for their breakfast. On my fingers I could smell gun oil, and it mixed with the smell of the paddock, rich warm, ammoniac and clean. I tended to the animals, with short meaningless prattle, "hey Rosy" or "that's a good girl", but my mind was already in the woods.. Those woods were quiet, the fall air crisp with promise, grass rimmed with frost and the roof of the barn looking like silver as the sun slowly peeked out from under the cover of the land. My cousins were hunting as well, noting which stand I was using and what time I would return, safety not forgotten in the rush to taste the wild. Then, let loose, like the horses from their stalls, I was off to the trees, heading towards a clump of dark timber, moving quickly, straight in a surveyors line to the woods. Even with the weight of the Browning, I covered the ground fast, soft rush of feet in the pine needles, leaning forward like a tableau of flight, bolting towards the denseness of the trees.

I moved with the intent purposeless of a child, but the focus of an adult, snatching my feet from the clutch of the earth before putting full weight down, random acts of purposeful intent. I stopped, listening into the silence, only to hear the faint scrabbling through the leaves, the dying whisper of tiny feet moving away. Sounds of mice and men, the large and the small, both eventually just falling to silence. Wait, did I hear something else? I slowed, trying not to breathe, sensing that I was not alone, but I soon would be. I felt him move, there in the silence

There, at the entrance to the land not tended or fenced, his soft warning grunt, that of a large buck right behind the house. A sound mimicked in my deep grunting breath in the cold. He was watching me enter his world. He would watch me leave. I'd passed by his scrapes deep in the woods before. He was a monster, and not likely to be outwitted by a redhead with her first very own hunting gun. But he too, would have cousins, and they would not be so cautious, overcome by rut lust and hunger for things they dream of but can not articulate.

He didn't get his size and scars by setting up camp right behind the house waiting for me to introduce him to myself and Mr. Browning. No. He was a seasoned military officer, sizing up the enemy's camp, moving away in stealth and silence when he had evaluated our positions. I felt him move away, without a sound, as if the covert decampment of his post blew gentle and cold upon me there in the darkness, true loves breath against my damp skin. Without sight or sound, I sensed in my heart he was gone, and we would never meet, at least until I was older, and ready.

But there would be others, younger, emboldened, risking all before they knew fully what they were losing.

The gun was heavier than I had thought and when I got to my blind I was ready to sit. There it was, my tree stand, on the crest of a ridge, opposite a gap in the trees through which the deep rich pie segment of grain field could be viewed. Deer are drawn to lines, tree lines, ditch lines, and I could see where one might pass through that triangle of opportunity at first light, or last.

Climbing up the blind with the weight of the gun was not an easy task. Some suggested attaching a rope to it and pulling it up, unloaded, behind me, but I didn't want to risk hitting it against the unforgiving metal of the steps, damaging its finish. So I held with one hand, and climbed with the other, pulling my body as close to the steps as I could, keeping my center of gravity into the safety of the tree.

If was just after dawns first light that I saw him. Even with gloves, I could feel the coldness of the barrel against my hands. Trying to remain still, flexing my feet in their boots for warmth, my breath huffs in and out as if attempting to resuscitate a dead cigarette. I was cold enough I considered shooting the first thing I saw, deer, squirrel, woodchuck, so as to get back to the warmth of the fire. But patience was rewarded in the small form of a small buck. A tender "button buck", probably his first hunting season, instincts of the woods not have fully formed. We were both virgins, I to man, he to death. Still, he was food for the table and I pulled the Browning from its resting place.
He moved slowly, without the inborn caution yet tested by a fading gout of black powder smoke. I watched the Browning elongate, rising to become a round spot against the light brown spot of a hearts location, a period on a page soon to be red.

As my finger bent towards firing, he looked up for just a moment. It was a moment that passed with the semblance of a sparrow and a hawk in divine immobility in mid air, an apparition of death's hesitation. It is a moment between heartbeats. Hesitation can not live there, nor fear or any other question of the spirit. It's a time for sure and certain knowing, somewhere deep within you, outside of rational thought, that by your hand, the deer will drop to a forested plain, the bird will fall from the sky. My finger stopped. Then he was gone, like a small lightning bolt on earth muddled hoof, striking through the underbrush with a crash.

He was just a yearling, and though for that moment I was tempted to fire, he had not lived long enough to fight, and I was not ready to take him. For another time, there would be that road. In the years since this hunt I have learned that there is an unspoken conversation with death between the hunter and their prey. Mors ultima linea rerum est, death is every thing's final limit. Just as it is with the wolf and the rabbit, the outcome of my hunt is settled there, in that first moment of eye contact between two adversaries. In that micro spasm of moment, there is a exchange of information regarding the propriety of the chase, of the worthiness of the kill. A conversation of mortality.

That conversation falters as badly as a blind date when wolves encounter domestic stock who have had the language of survival bred out of them. When faced with a pack of coyotes or the wolf, the domesticated horse will bolt in panic. Its death at this point is the only outcome, for it has no instinct of fight, only disorganized flight. The sheep of these hills are not the only ones domesticated until they simply scamper and run in circles til they feel the sharp teeth of their naivety. Man too, has been too long domesticated. We may have opposable thumbs and Wi Fi but we too survive as the animals do, and if not careful, die just as violently. As Horace said - Omnes una manet nox. The same night awaits us all. When faced with a threat, like sheep faced with a wolf, too many of us run in great aimless circles, waiting for some great shepherd to come and rescue us, rather than stand and fight. The night may greet us anyway, but I will go down with tooth and arms, not helplessly baring my throat as I look up for someone to save me.

The small deer only an echo in the underbrush, I sat back and waited. The sun rose unfettered, yet its face was cold that day and as I clenched and unclenched my hands for warmth, I heard no other shots. That my more experienced cousins had not gotten a shot in as yet, spoke to the quietness of the woods and the stillness of the game. The deer perhaps hunkered down due to the inordinate cold, or their innate sense of knowing we were with them, and stalking them. Noon had passed with a piece of bread and peanut butter, a sip of water from my canteen and no sign of any more deer. The sun a haze in the high sky, the smell of the forest, pine and earth and secretive dark coming to my nose in waves, triggering a rumble in my stomach, for I was still hungry. Not only for food, but for the sound of the shotgun breaking the fasting of silence, sustenance from the forests table.

Could the deer see me here? Up in my blind, in camouflage clothing, from a distance appearing to wear the garments of the forest, crouching shapeless, not much larger than a child. Or could they smell my scent, washed clean with soaps that had no odor, careful not to use any cosmetic that would waft a banner of warning through the air. Perhaps they were just lying low this day, except for that one youngster who knew no better. But does now.

The day soon gave way to afternoon, the sun bright against high, chill cold. In the vast encroaching late afternoon, the woods and the field lay silent. Clutching my weapon, I shivered slowly, and steadily as darkness approached. It was time to leave the woods. Today there would be no food for the freezer, I had my one chance and chose to let it go.

In those moments between the aim and firing, there is a ritual and a choice. The animal will die, but in doing so, after a full life, it will bring sustenance to our family. Adequate food for the table, nourishment in the dark winter of the plains. There is a nobility in such a death. Just as the wolf stays robust consuming the flesh of an animal that knows hows to breathe strong and fight with its whole heart, we grow strong on the nourishment of land and stock we keep strong, carefully tended, selectively culled.

Ritual and choice that make us grow stronger. That day, with venison already in the freezer, I chose not to take the life of a tiny little deer, simply for the sake of firing my gun. I know I would be needled over it later, and many would tell me that any game is game. But for me, that day, I chose to wait for something more worthy of the taking of life.

That day, I returned to the house, my new gun unfired. Yet it was tested, just the same. As was I.