And Now We Shall Do Manly Things (5 page)

Understanding this, you can probably guess what an anxious afternoon that was, walking through a cornfield. Every step tightened my intestines, every footfall shrunk my sphincter. I wanted to leave and go back to the car, but I was afraid that, if I did, Uncle Mark might mistake me for a deer and blow me away. He wouldn't have, of course, but I was young and my youthful imagination often got the best of me, so I pictured my family standing around my lifeless carcass, staring curiously at my body and then silently and collectively coming to the conclusion that, “Well, it would be a shame to let this meat go to waste . . .”

My second experience hunting was around the same time, perhaps even on the same trip. Dad and Uncle Mark colluded and decided it was time for me to go deer hunting. I don't remember being excited, but I wasn't opposed to the idea. Not at first, anyway. Mark and I got bundled up into thirty-five layers of clothes and drove to a nearby wood abutting a cement plant, where we ensconced ourselves atop a ridge looking down through trees to a shallow ravine.

“Great,” I said. “What's next?”

“Next,” Mark said, after giving me instructions on where and when to shoot a deer, “we wait.”

And so we did. For what felt like hours. We waited as the sun began to go down in the winter sky and the woods took on a cool, gray look. We waited, sitting on the hard ground in zero-degree temperatures. We waited and waited, then waited some more until it got dark, too dark to hunt, and time to go home. When we got back to my grandmother's house, my dad asked how I liked deer hunting and, though my opinion on the sport had been murky prior to going out with Mark, it had begun to crystallize after. “It sucks,” I said. “I don't ever want to do that again.”

And so it was. I was never again invited and never asked to be.

My third experience hunting was significantly more recent. I was in my late twenties and already a father. I was visiting my folks in Cleveland for a weekend. Dad told me he had been asked by a client to go pheasant hunting at a private club twenty minutes away. He took me and my little brother, Kosta, with him. I don't want to take away from the experience—especially because I did actually get three or four birds—but this club was the perfect combination of country club and petting zoo. There was a clubhouse, complete with requisite mounted animals and card tables, a bar, and photos of victorious men bearing arms.

The pheasant were kept in a pen, a low-ceiling chicken-wire circus tent. You tell the man at the front desk how many birds you'd like to shoot, a transaction is made, and you are given a field assignment. While you, the hunter, are sorting out your gear and, perhaps, enjoying a drink from the bar, workers from the club place your prepurchased birds in the field. I can't be sure, but I suspect this involves dosing the pheasant with adult-sized portions of NyQuil, then laying them among the scrub grass of the football-field-sized hunting lanes. Then, mighty hunter, you go out and wake the birds enough for them to jump in the air and, following a deft maneuver with your shotgun, die. It was not perhaps the most sporting of efforts, but I did manage to get a few birds, all of which were defeathered and prepared by the same club staff that placed them in the field while I toasted with a posthunt beer.

Those were my experiences with hunting to this point—a paranoid walk, a frigidly long sit in the woods, and a few birds that may as well have been tied to a tree.

It's possible that my hunting aversion has something to do with never needing to do it—for sport, entertainment, or provision. When I was looking for fun on a Saturday, I went to the movies, to a museum, to a coffee shop.

My conception of hunting has always been a bit, well, simplistic.

Step 1:
Outfit yourself with a device designed to accelerate a projectile at an alarming rate.

Step 2:
Position yourself in a place where animals like to hang out—either to eat, sleep, or breed.

Step 3:
Identify creature with a beating heart and instinct to flee.

Step 4:
Remove heartbeat.

Step 5:
Serve with potatoes.

The subtleties, strategies, complexities, and, even, potential enjoyment of hunting have, for most of my life, been lost on me. I never got it. I never understood why my dad got so excited to go deer hunting with his brothers. I didn't get it in the same way I didn't get weight lifting. It all seemed so caveman to me, so midwestern and simple. Me make boom-boom. Me lift heavy rock. Me beat on me chest. I thought myself to be more sophisticated than that, more urbane.

A big part of that has to do with my youthful longing to be more sophisticated than that, to be more urbane, to be more Eastern. I thought being from the Midwest was akin to being an athlete born with legs of two different lengths. I thought being successful would be harder for me because I was from the Midwest. I wanted the ocean. I wanted New York and Maine. I wanted to feel like I was from somewhere instead of the nowhere that actually was home. And if not New England, what about the Pacific Northwest? Portland: land of hippies and homemade everything. The Cascades, a place so beautiful it takes your breath away. California even. Talk to someone from California and they will tell about their youthful proximity to really interesting places like Los Angeles or San Francisco.

Then, in college, it was the South. Walker Percy and Faulkner. I was fascinated by the strange dignity of the place, despite having never really been there. I managed a minor in college in the history of the American South, but I have never been to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, or Arkansas (unless you count a brief layover at the Little Rock airport on my way home from my bachelor party in Las Vegas). I've managed brief visits to both Carolinas and Georgia. I've driven through Tennessee on a couple of occasions and, now that I live in Cincinnati, I often find myself having lunch in Kentucky. After college, I took a job writing for a newspaper in Winchester, Virginia, a tiny but historic hamlet in the northern thumb of the Old Dominion. I have to say I adored living there. I fell madly in love with the Shenandoah Valley, with biscuits and gravy, and the patois of the people, all friendly as an afternoon rain. I loved driving through the Blue Ridge and, after a couple of months living there, I vowed to never again live above the Mason-Dixon.

That lasted less than a year when marriage and a job (along with its relative proximity to family) brought me back to Ohio. Once again, I felt like a man stranded, a man who wanted no place else but someplace else. I had neither mountain nor city, neither ocean nor charm. I come from Wisconsin. I come from Ohio. I come from cornfields and the Rust Belt. How could I ever be interesting coming from places like that? How could I ever be happy?

Something happened in my late twenties, though. I began to appreciate where I come from, to love the Midwest. It used to be, when I was a child, boring and arduous to drive to Iowa to visit my grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins. There's nothing but cornfields, there's nothing but nothing. And when you get there, it's boring. There's no mall or distraction. There's only outside, and outside isn't that interesting. But when I had kids, I came to appreciate the nothing as being something. I found myself wanting to go there, wanting to drive among the cornfields for hours on end, to smell the earth and eat the food and be among the people who mattered most to me. I wanted that connection to the people and places that I come from, and I began to see the Midwest as something else entirely. I began to see it as home.

And yet, it is not home. Not really anyway. I come from the suburbs, the manicured outskirts of once-great cities. While I tend to tell people I am a Wisconsinite—having been born in the north-central region of the state and living there almost entirely through my first-grade year—I am really an Ohioan through and through. I claim cheese and birch forests, but I bleed the west side of Cleveland. I complain about the suburbs, with their matching minimalls, sidewalks, and above-average schools, yet the suburbs are the only place I feel at home. So even when I am among family in Iowa, I feel separated, from the place, from the legacy, from the two-dozen cousins. They all seem to fit in there, while I feel like a tourist.

I'm not fully midwestern. Instead, like the Starbucks/mattress store/Target/Claire's boutique combinations that seem to exist in the twenty-mile concentric circles that surround American cities, I am somewhere in between. I am the suburb personified. I am bland and predictable. I don't require a lot of work to understand, and I don't offer too much by way of insight or fascination.

So, if I am to reconcile with where I am from, if I am to become a real Midwestern Man, I have to up the ante. I have to learn the essential traits and inhabit the role; I must do something bold, brave, something I would never have considered when I was young and dreaming of elsewhere.

I have to hunt. It's the only way. There was, of course, more to it than that. I wanted to stand above a still-steaming carcass and think,
I did that.
It wasn't bloodlust or a need for wanton destruction; it was a desire to feel fully formed as a man, to go off into the woods and kill an animal, provide sustenance for my young family, accomplish something I had always been too afraid to try.

5

Coming Out of the Hunting Closet

T
ry telling someone these days that you're going to learn how to hunt and see what kind of reaction you receive. You may as well tell someone that you're thinking about taking up self-mutilation or dabbling in the study of classic New England witchcraft. Up to this point, my mission had remained secret. I trolled websites late at night after Rebecca had fallen asleep on the couch watching recorded soap operas. I was giving myself private lessons in what it would take, what I would need, what it would mean to be a hunter.

In the world in which I lived, the comfortable world of suburbia, hunters were rare. At parties, Little League games, and family events, the men were much more likely to talk about the market and how the president's latest tax proposal/health care initiative/foreign policy initiative was playing havoc with their portfolio. Being a journalist, I could follow the headlines, but when it came to relating to their personal economic upheaval, I was blessedly unable to relate. My portfolio consisted mainly of savings bonds my grandmother had sent me every year on my birthday and the retirement account the HR director at work set up for me on my first day on the job. There were, of course, other topics of conversation—sports, other businessy stuff, and the dilemma of choosing between golfing at their country club or a friend's country club the following weekend. It's the curse of living in the toniest, newest suburb in town and spending time almost exclusively with people ten years your senior. It's not that I don't like these people. Quite the opposite in fact. I like them very much. It's just that I don't often have a lot in common with them. And in this world of twenty-four-hour grocery stores and health clubs, the idea of sharing my plans to take up arms and stalk animals didn't seem like the right thing to do.

Except for John.

John is the husband of the best friend Rebecca has ever had. We'd met five years earlier, after our wives had met and become instant friends. After a few months of getting together with the kids or going out for coffee, wine, or dinner, the girls decided it was time for John and me to get to know each other.

“I want you to meet Anne's husband, John,” Rebecca told me one day.

“Why?”

“Because,” she said, “he's nice and I think you two would get along.”

“Really? What's he do?”

“He's some kind of engineer.”

“Well, that's a lot like being a writer.”

“But you guys have so much in common.”

“Like what?”

“He likes sports and you like sports. You'll have a lot to talk about.”

She didn't point out that John is a football fan and I'm a tennis fan, but in the strictest sense of the word, I guess she was right. It was a man date and there was no getting around it. It was lucky John and I did get along. Sure, he's an engineer who grew up in a small town—or near it—in western Indiana. He's an athlete and he drinks beer where I prefer gin, but we had things in common beyond the usual hobbies and interests; namely, we were married to very similar women. I decided I would first tell John about my idea to learn to hunt, but I realized there would be some obvious questions I would need to answer. For what would I be hunting? Where? When?

I went to a used bookstore in a strip mall in our town and asked the woman behind the counter where they kept the books about hunting. She looked at me for a long moment. Was it disdain? Or was she searching her mental inventory? She pointed me in the direction of the sports books, a small shelf tucked away in a dusty corner. I got the sense that people who read about sports tend to buy their books new and keep them on their shelves because the selection was meager to say the least. There were books about football and rock climbing, a couple of rows dedicated to the martial arts, and a couple more about soccer. But in terms of the sports afield, there were very few titles; and a vast majority of those were about fishing.

I tried another bookstore, one that sold new books, and the local public libraries. It seemed there was not a great demand for hunting books in the suburbs north of Cincinnati, so I turned to the Internet. I began with a search for “Ohio Hunting Rules” and came across the Ohio Department of Natural Resources site and a page devoted to hunting regulations. I once read an article about hunters in Germany. Being at least half and probably more German, I have over the years come to respect that country's innate sense of rules and order. Getting a driver's license in Germany takes years, and those caught committing moving violations on the autobahn aren't just slapped with a ticket; they have their privileges removed. Mind you, not for something like causing a ten-car pileup or repeated offenses of driving under the influence of massive quantities of German beer, but moving violations like failing to yield in the left lane for cars attempting to pass. Knowing this, it's no surprise to learn that hunting is taken pretty seriously over there. Getting a German hunter's license requires two years of training, apprenticeship, and overcoming bureaucratic hurdles that would drive an American libertarian to the brink of insanity. As such, most Germans who hunt are of the upper class. They are the ones who can afford expensive game tags and memberships at state-regulated game preserves. The result is an orderly and safe community of hunters and conservationists, well-trained outdoorsmen who are capable of not only surviving but thriving in the natural world and of preserving it.

America is not Germany. And if Ohio is any indicator of national rigidity when it comes to laws and preparedness, it never could be. Reading through the regulations, I discovered that all an Ohioan needs in order to set to the field, gun in hand and pocket full of shells, is a short course in safety—taken either as a home study or a two-day seminar—and $19 for a general license. I know people who've spent more time training to operate a dolly in a warehouse. I made some notes about possible dates to take hunter's safety and downloaded an electronic version of the course manual to Rebecca's iPad for late-night study. I also browsed through the sections of the site that detailed the kinds of animals available in the state for hunting. These fit into a few neat categories: small game and upland birds, which included pheasant, quail, grouse, rabbits, squirrels, woodchuck, and all manner of other wee beasts winged and not; deer; waterfowl like ducks and geese; turkey; and other animals like red fox, feral hogs, and the occasional black bear that makes the news every time one is spotted on the other end of the southern part of the state.

Deer seemed like a natural choice. For the few hunters I do know outside of the family, this is their most likely target. The season is relatively long, broken up by types of weapons—bow, black powder, shotgun, handgun, and rifle—and having eaten my fair share of venison over the years from Dad's hunting trips to Wisconsin, I knew I liked the taste. But I didn't consider it as an option for long. For one, deer hunting is a solitary activity. You may go out with other people, but you are all relegated to your own tree stand or spot in the woods. You sit for long stretches, as I had with Uncle Mark a couple decades before, in the cold, not moving and just waiting. I don't have the attention span to do that. I need a little more action. I also didn't like the idea of camouflage. Bow hunters wear camo head to toe, going so far as to spray themselves with either simulated or real doe urine in order to draw males in close. Camo is for the military and little boys pretending to be in the military, I reasoned. And while sartorial considerations should not have been high on the list of priorities, they were there somewhere. If I was going to invest in clothing and gear, I wanted it to suit my particular idiom, my style, my sense of cool. That was one of the reasons why I gravitated toward fly-fishing. Men in waders casting a line from a bamboo rod and standing up to their asses in ice water just looked a whole lot cooler than some dude sitting on the shore with a coffee can full of worms and, one imagines, a cooler full of cheap beer.

Camo may also have put a dent in the idea of turkey hunting. But there were a few other factors that eliminated it as an option. One, who wants to shoot a Butterball? Don't get me wrong, turkey is without a doubt my favorite meat at the local Subway, but the idea of nestling in close to the ground and calling one close was not appealing. Uncle Mark once told me about going turkey hunting and calling in a gobbler only to hear a shot ring out from the other side of the clearing as another hunter, unable to see him for his camo outfit, nearly blew his head off. I didn't want that to happen. And knowing my luck, it would be exactly what came to pass. And, two, the turkey season in Ohio is in the spring, making it nearly impossible since it was already March, leaving little time for me to get myself in gear and get out into the field for that year's hunt.

Duck and goose hunting had some appeal. Sure, there was camo involved, but remember that scene in Hemingway's
Across the River and into the Trees
where he goes hunting with the Italian noblemen? It seemed like, pardon the pun, such a blast. Plus, I love duck. It's one of my favorite things to eat, and having played golf fairly regularly as a teenager and into my twenties, I have a real disdain for geese. I held that option open for a while, but eventually closed it when I realized learning duck hunting would be something I would do on my own. I don't know any duck hunters. My dad had never really hunted them that I knew of and I wanted this to be something I could share with him.

Bear? Not reliable enough. Dad got one in Canada. So did Uncle Mark. But the idea of trying to find a black bear in Ohio seemed an awful lot like trying to find Bigfoot. Except instead of shooting some grainy footage of the beast with a Super 8 camera, I would have to shoot and, presumably, eat it. Red fox felt too much like shooting a dog. And pigs? Well, the ODNR encouraged any hunter who came across them to shoot feral hogs, so it felt less like sportsmanship than blood sport. I decided to pass.

This left small game and upland birds. After several hours of careful consideration, I decided on pheasant. I remembered going hunting with my dad and uncle and cousin that one time for pheasant, so it fit the family requirement and, since we had done it in a group, it was more social than deer hunting. I knew Uncle Mark and his sons, Will and Tommy, hunted pheasant regularly. Plus, the more I read, the more I realized it was the perfect bird for me. And I remembered the pictures from the L.L.Bean catalogs of upland hunting scenes—men in orange vests and hats, khaki pants, and cool-looking boots walking through fields of tall grass, their English springer spaniels on the scent of birds. I had had a springer named “Quigley.” I loved that dog. The pictures were so inviting. They were the hunting equivalent of men in waders fishing for trout. And it's not like you can get pheasant at the local grocery store. It was perfect.

P
heasants Forever, a group devoted to the hunting and preservation of the bird, describes the ringneck pheasant as “America's Favorite Game Bird.” It's a bit ironic given that, like nearly all the toys in our house, the pheasant is an import from China. Unlike many game animals, we can trace its introduction to the United States to a shipping manifesto. According to the august UltimatePheasantHunting.com, which seems devoted to all the pheasant news that's fit to print:

The Ringed-necked Pheasant was imported to America from Asia, and no other game species introduced to this continent has been as successful at flourishing as the pheasant. One of more than 40 species originating in Asia and Asia Minor, these birds from the genus
Phasianus
are perhaps better known than any of the other 15 groups of pheasants in the world. All are related to the partridges, quails, grouse and guinea-fowls which make up the order Galliformes or chicken-like birds.

Archaeological evidence suggests that large pheasants lived in southern France in the Miocene period, some 13 million years ago. The Greeks knew the bird in the 10th Century
B.C.
and we have adopted their name for the species,
Phasianus ornis
(phasian bird), derived from the Phasis River (now Rion) near the Caucasus Mountains. The Chinese knew the pheasant some 3,000 years ago, but the Romans are considered responsible for the spread of pheasants in western Europe. When Julius Caesar invaded England in the first century
B.C.
, the pheasant followed.

It wasn't until 1733 that the pheasant appeared in North America, when several pairs of the black-necked strain were introduced in New York. Other pheasant varieties were released in New Hampshire and New Jersey later in the 18th century. Not until 1881, when Judge O.N. Denny released some 100 pairs of Chinese ring-necks in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, did the pheasant really gain a foothold in the United States. Since then, pheasants have been propagated and released by government agencies, clubs, and individuals, and for all practical purposes are established everywhere on the continent that suitable habitat exists.

Once I had established what I would be hunting, I quickly found myself consumed in the study of the pheasant. I ordered every book I could find on the subject, ranging from a collection of essays recalling individual hunts and lifetime experiences in pursuit of the ringneck to books on butchering and cooking, even husbandry of American pheasant. I hadn't been so devoted to reading about a single topic since college, and my obsession drove me on. Late at night, with my wife and children asleep, I would spend a half hour or forty minutes reviewing the course material for hunter's safety, then an hour or more reading about pheasants—how they prefer to live near brushy fence lines or scrubby woods that provide cover from predator species; how you're more likely to find them in low-lying areas and how they tend to run when threatened as opposed to fly; how, when cooking them, you need to be sure to add plenty of fat since the meat tends to be very, very lean. I studied techniques for hunting and watched video after gruesome video of the proper means of removing entrails from the bird while in the field.