The Mindful Carnivore (27 page)

Even when an arrow hits exactly as the hunter meant it to, bypassing major bones and slicing through heart or lungs, it rarely kills instantly. In the past, I—like other antihunters—would have argued that this makes bowhunting cruel. In recent years, though, I had read accounts of deer and elk flinching as a razor-sharp broadhead passed through them, calmly going back to feeding, then collapsing a few seconds later. Though I didn’t care much for hunting videos, I had watched a few. I had seen how arrow-shot deer sometimes went only a few yards, walking slowly, before going down. In slow motion, I had seen how those that ran were already springing into motion before the arrow struck, apparently reacting to the sound of the bowstring, rather than the impact of the arrow. And I had read accounts of people being hit by broadheads and feeling no pain.

A well-placed arrow, I had decided, might not be a bad way to go. I would certainly prefer it to getting hit by a car—which is, of course, how lots of whitetails die. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, more than a million auto-deer collisions occur on U.S. roadways each year.

Having come so close to wounding that doe, however, I was uneasy. Mark had told me about the few times he had hit and lost a deer, despite careful shooting and exhaustive tracking. Such experiences had brought him close to giving up hunting. If even longtime hunters could be sickened by such an incident, I had a good idea how this greenhorn would fare. If my first shooting of a deer resulted in an endless blood trail, it would be my last.

Three weeks later, I sat with my back to the base of a maple, awaiting first light. Overhead, spruce and fir wove a dense canopy. In the faint dawn, and into the full brightness of midmorning, I watched and listened. When a barred owl swooped in and perched, a nearby squirrel ceased its chattering.

Now and then a rifle popped softly in the distance. The desire for quiet was part of what brought me this far back into the woods—a half-hour hike from home, far enough from roads to deter most hunters. I did not want to repeat my first opening morning: shots close by, orange gloves discarded alongside entrails.

The place felt good, like the sweet spots I had chosen to fish each summer as a boy. Not far off, two saplings had been rubbed bare by a buck’s antlers. I had a hunch I would see deer here.

Whether I would see a
legal
deer was another matter. Rifle-season regulations dictated that I could only shoot a buck. Moreover, the rules had changed in the past year. Under pressure from hunters who wanted to start seeing more mature bucks, Vermont had instituted a spikehorn ban. (“Spikehorn,” meaning a buck with only a single “spike” antler on each side, is technically a misnomer. True horns, such as bovines have, grow throughout an animal’s life, while a cervid’s antlers are shed and regrown annually.) Under the new regulations, a buck was only legal if it had a “fork” on at least one side: the main antler plus a second point at least an inch long.

The next morning, I was back in the same spot. The air was still. A few minutes before sunrise, I heard steps in the dry, frozen leaves. My heart started jackhammering. I caught a glimpse through the thick woods: a deer walking away, about forty yards off. I grabbed the grunt call that hung around my neck. It was a gift from Mark, a simple tube housing a plastic reed that vibrated when I blew through it, imitating the grunting sound often made by whitetail bucks during the autumn rut. Hearing the sound, a territorial buck would often investigate. The instant I blew, I heard the animal change direction, turning straight toward me.

It could be a doe, I told myself. I raised my rifle, bracing arms against knees. Or it could be a spikehorn. Whatever it was, the deer was coming, weaving among the close-grown softwood trunks.

Moments later, the animal stepped out from behind a spruce just fifteen yards away, stopped, and stared at me. I stared back.

It was twenty minutes into legal shooting time, but light was sparse under the evergreens. Even with the deer that close—even looking through a low-power scope—it was hard to make out details. Were those just ears, or was I seeing antlers, too? After a second, I made out tall spikes. Then I saw a small side prong at least an inch long. A legal buck. I lowered the rifle a fraction, crosshairs moving toward heart and lungs. In that instant, the whitetail wheeled back into the trees.

A moment later, through a narrow slot between tree trunks, I caught his silhouette as he paused to look back. Almost without thought, I put the crosshairs behind his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The silhouette disappeared.

All was still. I hadn’t really heard the shot, or even felt the rifle kick. That was how Mark had said it would be. During target practice, you feel the recoil and hear the cartridge detonate, even with ear protection on. When you fire on a deer, though, you hardly notice the gun going off. For several seconds, I just sat, stunned.

Get up
, I thought.
Get up and walk down there. Your first deer is lying there on the moss and leaves.

I worked the rifle’s bolt, chambering a second round just in case, and flipped the safety back on. Then I stood and took a step. There was a flash of movement at fifty yards as a deer pranced into thick cover, tail held high. A second deer?

I walked to where the silhouette had stood. The buck was not there.

Damn.

Would there be a good blood trail? I could see where the earth had been gouged by hooves, as the animal leapt away. If there was plenty of blood, following would be easy. If there was only a little, I would do as Mark did: I would dig out the short strips of bright orange and blue survey tape I carried in my pack and mark each spot of blood as I went, tracking carefully.

Crouching, I examined the ground. Nothing. No blood. Not even a single bullet-clipped hair. I was baffled. Had I flinched, yanking the trigger and pulling the rifle off target? Had the buck wheeled again at that very moment? I didn’t think so.

I went to where I had been sitting and set my blaze-orange cap on top of my backpack. Then I returned to where the deer had been standing, crouched down, and looked back at the cap, reconstructing the straight line between rifle and animal. The narrow slot between trunks was crisscrossed by dead branches.

You fool.

In the dim light, I hadn’t seen the branches against the deer’s dark silhouette. In these woods, though, I should have assumed they would be there.

Retracing the bullet’s path, I found the branch, the torn wood on its underside showing where the small lead torpedo had struck as it screamed along at over twenty-five hundred feet per second. I looked closely. How dramatically had the branch altered the projectile’s flight path? Did the bullet angle down into the moss and leaf duff? Did it shatter? Most critically, did any part of it hit the deer?

I checked the ground again: the spot where the deer stopped to look back, the hoof gouges in the forest floor. I worked my way along, following the buck’s flight.

Inch by inch.

Foot by foot.

Yard by yard.

Still nothing. No trace of injury. Not a speck of red.

Two hours later, I finally shouldered my rifle and pack and trudged home, replaying the scene again and again in my mind, going over all my mistakes, all the if-onlys. The first arrow I loosed at a deer had struck a tree. Now, the first bullet I fired had struck a branch.

I had violated another basic hunting ethic—to take shots only when you’re certain there are no obstructions—and I didn’t even know why. Maybe it had been a mindless predatory reflex, an instinct untempered by reason, my shot triggered by the deer’s flight. Maybe I was just overeager.

I thought of an oft-quoted passage from
A Sand County Almanac
:

A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than by a mob of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact.

Voluntary adherence to an ethical code elevates the self-respect of the sportsman, but it should not be forgotten that voluntary disregard of the code degenerates and depraves him.

Until this morning, I had agreed with Leopold. Now, I wondered: What if Uncle Mark had been beside me, the man whose disciplined practice of waiting for twig-free shots I aimed to emulate? Would I have squeezed the trigger? I thought not.

My highfalutin ethics did little good if I—in solitude—lacked the judgment necessary to implement them. A gut-shot deer, after all, wouldn’t care whether its wound was inflicted by voluntary depravity or involuntary stupidity. Nor did my marksmanship do much good. So I could shoot far more accurately with rifle than with longbow. So what? If I didn’t know my own limitations and couldn’t accurately assess the circumstances, it hardly mattered.

Maybe I should give up hunting. Cath and I didn’t need the venison. We were getting the nutrition we needed without eating chicken or fish every day, let alone red meat.

Two years earlier—after sending me the knife, belt, and grunt call—Mark had written me a note. He acknowledged that hunting, and especially killing, were not for everyone, and assured me that he would not be disappointed or critical if, somewhere down the road, I came to a place where it felt best
not
to pursue the hunt. Had I come to that place now?

I wanted to confront death, not maiming. I could deepen my connection to earth and food in other ways. Maybe I should stick to hiking and paddling, gardening and fishing. Maybe I should leave deer to other hunters, to farmers defending their crops, to the front ends of the cars and trucks I could hear whining along Route 2 in the valley below.

Back at the house, Cath mentioned that she had heard a shot around sunrise, off to the north.

“That was me,” I said. “Taking another shot I shouldn’t have.” I stripped off my fleece pullover and hurled it at the wicker laundry hamper in the corner of the bathroom.

I returned to the woods two days later, subdued.

Once more in rifle season I saw a whitetail, strolling past some sixty yards from where I had taken my foolish shot. Within seconds the animal vanished, leaving me with the uncertain impression of tall spike antlers, and perhaps a small side prong on one or both sides. I prayed that this deer, apparently whole and healthy, was the same one I had fired on.

In December, I saw one last deer. On the final day of muzzle-loader season, after half a mile of tracking in fresh snow, I caught a glimpse of the animal turning to look back and realized she was a doe. My caplock rested in my hands, the stock nowhere near my shoulder. Even if the deer had been a legal buck, there would have been no quick shooting among the trees.

14

Hunting with the Buddha

I can’t untangle regret from celebration.

—Robert Kimber,
Living Wild and Domestic

A
week later, at a local general store called the Riverbend, I noticed a list posted on the wall: the names of hunters who had checked in deer during rifle and muzzleloader seasons. I scanned the roster, paused halfway down, and did a double take. Richard hunted?

I had met him six years earlier, through Paul, my forestry mentor. Only once had I ever heard Richard talk about hunting, and he had spoken in the past tense, explaining that his Buddhist meditation practice had led him to become a vegetarian. Apparently his diet had changed again. According to this list, he had dragged a buck out of the woods last month.

I wondered if Richard might make a good hunting partner. That fall, hunting alone, I had been keenly aware of my lack of companionship. When Mark e-mailed me about his annual trip to Virginia, I wondered when he and I would get a chance to hunt together again. When I crossed paths with a trio of hunters who occasionally parked their truck along the rail-bed trail, I envied not their success—two of the three had taken bucks in rifle season—but their camaraderie. In January, I jotted Richard a note.

Nine months later, I drove the ten miles to Richard’s place and parked at the bottom of the front field, beside his small red twenty-year-old pickup truck. Pieces of sheet metal were riveted over rusted-out holes in the side panels. A bumper sticker read, “The Best Things in Life Aren’t Things.” Taped inside the rear window of the cab was a paper sign: “Veterans for Peace.”

I hiked the hundred yards up to the house. The small, rough structure stood in the shelter of tall pines, with fruit trees and a vegetable garden nearby. The few lights inside were powered by a single, diminutive solar panel. Richard, who had built the place three decades earlier, took pride in his small ecological footprint, living, as he put it, “low on the hog.”

When I knocked, Richard met me at the door and invited me in through the cool, dim entryway, sweet with the scent of the apples he stored there. In his midsixties, Richard was agile and strong, with the sure, graceful movements of a man in his prime, the angular planes of his face lively, gray only beginning to salt his thick brown hair. His clothes—a long-sleeved shirt and pants, simple, worn, and rugged—suited the kinds of work he favored: gardening, cutting firewood, milling lumber with the portable sawmill he had purchased a few years earlier. And they suited the hike we were about to take. Richard was introducing me to his woodlot and hunting grounds, which he had dubbed the Hundred Acre Woods. We would make a circuit of the property’s perimeter, checking and replacing the homemade signs: “Hunting and All Other Uses by Permission Only.”

Up through his orchard we went, then into the forest, through a neighbor’s sugarbush, up a steep, shale-studded pitch, and further up onto a north-south running ridge. As we went, we talked. Richard, I learned, had grown up in Wisconsin, hunting grouse and rabbits with his brother and cousins. He hunted deer briefly as a young man, but never killed one. In his early thirties, after college and five years in the navy, he landed in Vermont and started hunting again, taking a shotgun for the occasional walk, looking for grouse.