The Deer Hunter
After you’ve been away from a place for a while, you start
to confuse what life is really like there with the streotypes and your adamant
defense against their inaccuracies. Texas
is like that for me. I wish I could make people feel what its like there
without relying on the preconceived imagination. It’s the kind of place where
you can drive for eight hours without passing through a city that warrants a
dot on a national map, where an insurance man from Dallas can lease 650 acres of
dirt and limestone just to shoot dear twice a year, where you work out of your
virtual office in NYC through an internet satellite feed in your aluminum trailer
that serves as your campsite, where you communicate between deer stands with
your Blackberry. I said “it’s the kind of place”, as if there were others like
it that fit into a similar genus and species, but there’s not. It’s just Texas.
I saw this because I went hunting there over thanksgiving
break for the first time. Well, technically, I went last year as well, but
spent the entire time in the local ER after cutting my eye open on the scope’s
recoil during target practice. This was the first time I went when I actually
got to shoot at anything besides an aluminum can. The man who was hosting us on
his deer lease had seen a really large dark buck that he wanted my dad to
shoot. He had prayed to God for the strength to not shoot it so that his
pastor, my dad, would have the opportunity. God had answered. That’s a lot of
pressure if you’re my dad.
On the first afternoon, my dad went into the stand where our
host had promised the buck would be. Sure enough, as my dad crawled through the
hatch, he saw the buck foraging on the edge of the brush. By the time he was
set up to take a shot, it had disappeared. Our host’s description did not exaggerate
the size or color of this buck.
Quickly my dad sent a message to our host with his
blackberry.
“I saw him, but was unable to get a shot off” *send*
Within the minute he got a response, but from an unknown
number.
“Who is this?”
“Who is this?”
*send*
“I’m serious, I need to know who this is.”
“Jim Hennesy, why?” *send*
“Who are you going to kill? I’m freaking out here.”
My dad had mistakenly sent his message to some poor teenage
girl’s cell phone, and I imagine the five minutes that it took to clear things
up must have been the most adrenaline filled five minutes of her life.
The next morning, we rose half an hour before sunrise to
make sure we were in place when the deer started feeding. Our host’s alarm
echoed through the aluminum walls, but he didn’t show. He has diabetes, so my
dad, slightly panicked banged on his door. “Jimmy! You ok?”. Unintelligible
grumbling ensued. “Wha- Who…” He stumbled out of the door.
“I had a rough night last night, ya’ll.” And he looked it.
“My blood sugar started dropping in the middle of the night
so I stumbled out to the fridge to grab a Dr. Pepper. I drank the whole thing
down, but it had this funny gritty taste. Stumbling back to my bed I slept the
rest of the night through. When I woke up there was this here bottle of steak
marinade sitting in the sink, completely empty.”
I did shoot a deer that afternoon. It was a clean shot right
through the heart. It died instantly and painlessly. It took me three shots
though as the first two missed clean. I figure a deer that let’s you shoot at
it three times has it coming.
My dad offered to smear the blood of my first deer on my
face and shoulders, the way his grandfather did to him. I declined, feeling
rites of passage like that have probably lost their meaning at 26, and it would
be harder to explain to my urban yankee vegetarian friends. One of them asked
me how it felt, shooting a deer. The best I could come up with was that it felt
like losing your virginity, where it feels good mostly because you know that
you’ll never have to worry about what the first one will feel like again.
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