Nolan Takes Me Hunting

“You like to hunt?” Nolan asked without taking his eyes off the road as he drove us to the stadium where we’d watch our sons play football in a little while.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean ‘You don’t know?’” He was eyeing me now and tugging on his thick black beard.

“I’ve never been hunting, so I don’t know if I like it or not.”

“You want to go hunting?” he invited.

“Sure,” I said, because “No, thanks” would seem so rude. This was early in the football season and I was actually hoping to find some friends among the parents of the football players to sit with at the games. Did I really want to go hunting? Maybe. I most certainly wasn’t sure.

Maybe I had been hunting some 35 years ago as a teenager. My friend Gene and his younger brother Randy lived with danger. From a cramped rental house shared with a dozen guns and an alcoholic father, they often escaped into the surrounding pine woods with 22 rifles or 410 shotguns to terrorize rabbits, squirrels, wild turkeys, or anything with a pulse. I joined them a few times. Gene loaned me a bolt action 22 rifle with a tiny scope. Noisily tromping through the underbrush with weapons cradled in our scrawny arms, we sought something to shoot. If living things were unavailable, we’d make rusty tin cans dance with bullets.

On the last of these escapades, I spotted a grayish brown sparrow preening on a limb perhaps 15 feet away. Peering through the scope I centered the cross hairs on its breast and pulled the trigger. A tiny eruption of feathers swirled where the bird had perched. I found the remains on the ground, red mixed with gray, like my emotions. I was proud of my accuracy, yet ashamed of having needlessly killed this innocent creature. What a waste of time, of a bullet, of a life. It was the only animal I’d ever killed with a gun. I’d never gone hunting since.

Had the question been “Do you want to kill something?” or “Do you enjoy killing things?” my answer would have been “No.” So why had I agreed to go hunting?

Maybe I saw it as another novel experience in what had already been an extraordinary 49^th year of my life. In January I had strolled for the first time the streets of Rome, Florence, and Venice, shooting roll after roll of film. In August I had taken my first wilderness hike with my art historian friend Peter. We backpacked eight days in the Wind Rivers Range of western Wyoming, trekking over 50 miles with a 45-pound pack, mostly above the treeline at 10,500 ft. Thus, when faced with the question “You like to hunt?” my response was driven in part by my desire to sample new adventures.

Perhaps I had agreed because I’d heard hunters talk about how much they enjoy the solitude of the woods, the sounds and sights and smells of nature, about how a few hours in the woods away from the working world rejuvenated them, about how they didn’t even have to fire a shot to consider the time well spent.

Or perhaps I had agreed because hunting is something that “real men” do. Real men patch leaky plumbing. Real men wield hammers, saws, and axes. Real men get dirty and do not complain. Real men wear camouflage but call it “camo.“ Real men scoff at discomfort. Real men are unafraid of cholesterol. Real men appreciate a sharp knife and a lethal firearm. Real men go hunting and shoot to kill.

He might just as well have asked “You want to be a real man?”

My answer would have been the same uncertain “Sure.”

Our wives chatted in the back seat of Nolan’s Tahoe as Nolan drove us west. I saw his maroon and gold Wolverine baseball camp that commemorated Woodruff High School’s multiple state championships back in the day. Nolan’s burly son Jake was the starting center for the Wolverines now, a 6’2” 235-pound junior whose helmet was decorated profusely with stars earned for especially important plays. My son, 5’7” and 145 pounds, got in as a wide receiver.

Twenty years ago Nolan had played on state championship teams at the same high school where our sons now burst through a paper banner held by cheerleaders. Nolan had dated the drum majorette, now in the back seat brushing the hair of their 5^th grade daughter.

By the time I entered high school, I too was 6’2” but weighed 85 pounds less than Nolan’s strapping son. I had an excuse to avoid sports. I was afflicted with a disease that made my slender shins ache most of the time because the tendons were only tenuously attached to bones. Nevertheless, I admired athletes. One of my duties as the yearbook photographer was to get photographs of these heroes in action.

Real men play football in high school. I took pictures.

Football brought our families together. We met for dinner before many of the games and sat in a tight cluster of portable stadium seats every Friday night, cheering for our sons, congratulating each other after good plays. We became friends.

……

“What would we hunt?” I asked.

“What do you want to hunt?” Nolan responded. “We can hunt deer, turkey, wild pig, whatever.”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” I said truthfully.

“How about deer? I’ve got 40 acres in the southern part of the county that I’ve been hunting since I was a boy. It already has deer stands set up. Good hunting there. Plenty of deer. You’ll have a pretty good chance of getting one.”

“Fine with me.” I said, contemplating a potential dilemma: would I actually shoot a deer I if I saw one?

My wife asked that very question a couple of days later.

“Sure,” I said.

“No you wouldn’t,” she said. She knows me well enough to know that I’d rather not.

“I’ve been thinking about it. At first I figured that I probably wouldn’t even see a deer so I wouldn’t have to face that decision. That would be the easy situation. But then I thought, ‘What would I do if a deer came within range?’ “

“Couldn’t you shoot but miss it on purpose?” she suggested.

“No. I can’t miss on purpose,” I pronounced indignantly.

“Why not?”

“Everybody knows when you’ve fired a gun. You can hear the blast for miles. If you miss, well, that’s embarrassing. Your hunting partners would want an explanation. How would it sound to a bunch of hairy-armed real men to be told by a rookie hunter ‘I promised my wife I’d miss on purpose.’”

“Anyhow, I’ve decided that if I there is some wayward deer unfortunate enough to wander within range, I intend to kill it.”

“Why?” she wanted to know. Her tone conveyed disapproval.

“Gerald loves venison,” I said. Gerald is professor of sociology at the same college where I teach. “He makes all sorts of things from deer meat. His family loves it.”

If that weren’t reason enough, I added “Doug is convinced that deer overpopulation is responsible for the near elimination of trillium from the forests around here.” (Doug is a botany professor, and a colleague in my department.) “When I went with Doug to his study areas in Croft State Park, I saw trillium growing inside fences which kept deer out. Everywhere outside the fence, the deer nibble the trillium until it is almost gone. Too many deer can be bad for the system, and really bad for trillium. So if I see a deer, I intend to shoot it, try some of the meat myself, and give the rest to Gerald.”

“You may not even see a deer,” she teased.

The hunt would certainly be less traumatic for me if she were right.

……….

“Do you have a gun?” Nolan inquired.

“Somewhere in a closet I have a 22 rifle that my brother gave me when he got the hunting fever. Back in his twenties, he went hunting with a few of his buddies Got a big buck the first time out using one of their high-powered rifles. Hunting cost him a small fortune after that. He bought an expensive rifle with a scope, all sorts of camo, even got a 4-wheel drive Blazer. Passed that little 22 on to me.”

Nolan nodded. It was hard to know whether he thought a 22 would be a perfect gun for a puny college professor.

I paused and then fully revealed my ignorance by asking “Is there such a thing as a semi-automatic rifle?”

“Yes.”

“Then I think that’s what my brother gave me. A 22 semi-automatic. I’ve never actually shot it. It’s probably not sufficient for deer hunting.”

“Right. You’ll need something more powerful. I can set you up.”

I wasn’t surprised. I had heard from my wife, who works with his wife Angie that Nolan has quite an arsenal. People joke that he could equip the National Guard with firepower.

“What do you want to hunt with? Automatic, lever action, bolt, or pump?” Those terms triggered memories from my youth.

I recalled shooting a BB gun powered by yanking repeatedly on a lever to generate enough energy to propel a tiny BB perhaps 15 feet along a trajectory as random as a moth‘s flight. I was unfamiliar with the operation of lever action rifles, though it seems that the cowboys of black and white westerns of my youth used lever action rifles to dispatch wildlife and Indians without remorse.

The only weapon my father ever owned was a bolt-action 22 that he used exclusively to repel unwanted dogs and cats from our rural property. Stray dogs that upset our pets or pooped in our yard were treated to a dose of “rat shot” in the rump. They’d howl and disappear quickly into the woods, sore but still alive. As far as I know, my father never shot to kill.

As a boy I begged to shoot that rifle, and when I had reached what was deemed an appropriate age (perhaps 12), my father dutifully pulled the dusty rifle from the corner of his closet while my mother warned of the dangers of firearms in the hands in of the inexperienced (or even the experienced), recounting tragic stories where lives had been unintentionally abbreviated by incompetent gun handlers, bullets flying from “empty” guns that had inadvertently “gone off,“ instantly creating widows or orphans or vegetables that drool on their pillows in nursing homes for decades. Having heard all this before, Daddy and I slipped out to the back porch where he briefly described the operation of a single-shot bolt-action rifle. In less than three minutes, I had fired a bullet, felt the small shove of the stock in my shoulder, and the gun had been returned to its place of nearly eternal rest in the darkest corner of his closet, obscured by Father’s Day ties worn even less frequently than this rifle was used. This rite of passage was surpassed in brevity only by the “birds and the bees” talk which I apparently missed in its entirety.

I vividly recall the only time I used that gun without permission. Having convinced my parents that I had some essential high school function, I stayed home alone for the weekend while they went to the beach without me. After squandering an evening cruising MacDonald’s, I backed into the carport well past my usual Friday night curfew. Exhausted, I unlocked the door and went inside but as I did, I noticed a car parked across the rural road in front of our house. It was partially obscured by trees. Very suspicious. Why would a car be parked way out here, five miles from town at this time of night? Without turning on the lights, I peered from every window of the house, hoping to determine what type of car it was and perhaps why it was parked there. Impatiently I waited for passing cars to illuminate the mystery but traffic was sparse. My imagination raced. Was someone out to play a trick on me? To threaten me? To harm me? Could that car belong to a burglar? A stalker? A kidnapper? A murderer? Though tired, I was incapable of sleeping with this threat lurking less than a hundred yards from my bedroom.

I devised a plan. I crept into my parent’s bedroom, fumbled to extract the rifle from its repose, pinched a 22 rifle bullet from the plastic case in the top dresser drawer beneath my father’s handkerchiefs, and tiptoed to the carport. I inserted the bullet into the chamber and pulled back on the knurled knob to cock the rifle. I silently slid it the driver’s seat of the ‘67 Buick, rolled down the passenger window, and rested the barrel on the windowsill, pointed in the direction of the mystery car where a felon certainly lurked. I cranked the old Buick and I eased it to the end of our driveway, left hand on the steering wheel, both eyes squinting to see the car still motionless on the side of the road. My right index finger was poised on the trigger.

I yearned for a passing car. After what seemed like several eternities, one appeared, and in the beams of its headlights I was finally able to identify the car which had driven me to this predicament. It was a highway patrolman, a trooper with a radar gun out to catch speeders. Relieved, I backed down the driveway, went back inside, and returned the rifle to its closet. Once in bed, I replayed the whole saga, embarrassed at my lunacy. Then I remembered that I had cocked the gun with a bullet in the chamber. Now it was propped in my father’s closet, dangerous and deadly, only one layer of sheetrock away. I darted to the closet, now gingerly handling the rifle, terrified because I knew of no way of getting a bullet out of the chamber other than pulling the trigger. I fiddled with the knob. I jiggled the bolt. The deadly bullet remained in place. Again, my imagination raced. What if I simply returned the rifle to the closet? What if somebody reaching in to pull a shirt from a hanger accidentally shot themselves? How could I explain that? So I waited until the patrolman left and then I took the rifle outside, aimed low into the dark woods, and pulled the trigger. Pulling back on the bolt, the spent casing flew out of the chamber. I returned the blasted gun to the closet and finally went to bed.

……

“I’ll try the bolt action,” I said, hoping for remedial instruction on the operation of a bolt action rifle that would have been useful 35 years ago.
“No problem. I’ve got a sweet little Ruger M77 you’re going to love. Jake got his first deer with that gun. Maybe you’ll get your first with it.”

“I hope so,” I said without conviction.

Traffic picked up as we neared the stadium. Nolan found a parking spot not too far from the entrance. We set up a table at the back of the Tahoe and sat in folding chairs while eating sandwiches and potato salad.

“Is next Saturday morning good for you?” Nolan asked between mouthfuls.

“Sure.”

“What time you want to get started?”

“I can be ready any time.” I boasted.

“How about 4:30?”

“OK. Where?”

“I’m just kidding. 4:30 is too early.”

So he was testing me. That’s OK.

“Well, when is good? I have no trouble getting up early. I’m usually stirring by 5:30 so I can be ready at whatever time you say.”

“How about we meet at the gas station just off the Interstate one exit above the county line at quarter past six? You know where that is?” Nolan proposed.

“Yes. I’ll be there.

“OK.”

“You need anything?” Nolan asked.

“You’ll have to tell me what I need. Remember, I haven’t done this before.”

“I’ll set you up. You can wear Jake’s camo jacket. I have a camo ski cap and some good gloves. You have some boots?”

“I have those hiking boots that I wore in the Rockies.”

“Be sure to wear a couple pairs of socks. It’s going to be cold sitting there.”

Saturday morning I was up at 4:30. In the dim light of our bedroom, I pulled on my red long johns as quietly as possible, dressing in layers, topping off with the fleece hiking jacket that had warmed me well in Wyoming. After walking the dogs, eating my scrambled eggs and grits, and downing three cups of coffee and bringing one for the road, I grabbed my camera bag and departed beneath a starry sky for the 30-minute drive to our meeting point. The sky lightened from an ominous gray as I drove south. I pictured real men at this very moment chugging coffee from dented Thermos jars. I had trouble getting my favorite china cup to sit level in the cupholder of my minivan.

Nolan flashed the lights of his truck as I entered the parking lot of the gas station at precisely 6:15.

“You need anything?” he nodded to the convenience mart.

“I don’t think so. I’m ready.”

“Follow me. We’re just going a couple of miles.”

I fell in behind Nolan in his 4X4 pickup. Other hunters were leaving in their trucks. I imagined these veteran hunters get a kick out of observing inept newbies like me. Today, I’ll be the entertainment, but that’s OK. They’ll set me up for some prank. They’ll glance at each other with knowing grins when I do something stupid. But that’s the price I’m willing to pay.

We drove along for several miles on a narrow two lane. When he eased his truck into an overgrown yard by an abandoned home place, I pulled my minivan into the tall grass along side his truck.

Nolan tossed me an insulated camo jacket, a pair of thick wool gloves, and a plush head warmer that matched the other items. We dressed quickly, talking softly in the cold air, mist appearing with every breath. I joined Nolan by the bed of his truck where he opened two large cases as if they were laden with plutonium bombs. From one he extracted a sleek rifle which he inspected briefly before showing me how to load it.

“This here is a Ruger M77 Bolt Action,” he said as he admired the weapon. He showed me how to put a bullet into the chamber, the mechanism of the bolt action, and the safety. I paid close attention to the safety, a little black sliding lever operated by the thumb. In the back position, the gun is on “safety” meaning that it won’t fire even if the trigger is yanked.

“Take a look through this scope,” he urged, handing the rifle to me.

I held the rifle up and peered through the scope. “Amazing!” I marveled. The image was bright and crisp even in this dim light.

“That’s a Leupold scope. A pretty good one,” he stated with pride.

“No doubt about that,” I said, trying to imagine what Bambi and his mother might have to say about this apparatus.

He opened the other case and lovingly lifted a beautiful rifle with an even more impressive Leupold scope.

“This,” he announced “is my pride and joy. It’s a Ruger, too. A 308 International. See how the stock extends all the way to the end of the barrel. But the stock doesn’t touch the barrel. You can slide a dollar bill the entire length between them to prove it. This is a fine gun, alright.”

I appreciate precision equipment. Instead of firearms, my closets are stacked with dozens of cameras. There are sparkling chrome or brushed aluminum antiques nestled in form-fitting leather cases, Agfas and old Kodaks with delicate knobs, levers, bellows and prisms. The biggest, a 1932 wooden Grundlach view camera, holds 8 x 10 inch sheets of film. My everyday camera bag has two Nikon camera bodies and three lenses.

As we pulled on hats and gloves and zipped up zippers, Nolan told me the story behind his favorite rifle. It belonged to a long-time friend of his who had been called by a buddy to help drag out a deer his buddy had killed. On the way into the woods, Nolan’s friend had been shot and killed by the very man who had called to ask for his help. Nolan’s friend had died on the spot. Nolan had begged the man’s wife to sell him the gun for several years. She finally relented, perhaps knowing that each time Nolan went into the woods with that gun, he would once again be hunting with an old friend.

My mother was right. Guns are dangerous, and in the hands of the overanxious, they’re certainly deadly. I rechecked the safety on the M77.

Nolan was dressed head to toe in camo. I was wearing blue jeans. Nolan ordered me to lift each foot so he could spray something on the soles of my boots to cover human scent. Thus prepared, we began our stroll into the woods down a narrow path that rose and fell, branching left and right beneath pines and oaks. Fallen leaves of autumn silvered with a thin frost muffled our steps. Nolan whispered a few final suggestions to improve my chances.

“Be real quiet once we get there. And no quick movements. Everything has to be in slow motion so as not to scare off the deer. If you see one, bring the gun up real slow. Aim just behind the shoulder, low, to hit the heart. Avoid the shoulder or the rump. That spoils the meat.”

We walked a little farther in silence.

“Your stand is on a hill where you’ll have a 360-degree view. The hill rises up behind you and there will be a slope in front of you. As you’re sitting in the stand, to your left at about 10 o’clock is a creek. Deer like to move along that creek bank so keep a good watch down there. That’s a sweet spot. I’ve shot many a deer from that stand.”

A little further along he said “We’re coming up on your stand soon. I’ll head on down the same trail and over to the next hill. You won’t be able to see me, and I can’t see you, but we can hear each other if we speak up. If you get cold, just yell out “I’m cold” and we’ll leave.”

According to the radio, the temperature was 31 degrees. I had already decided they’d have to haul my frozen carcass out of the woods before I’d confess to being cold. Real men don’t get cold, or if they do, they’d never say so.

“One more thing,” he whispered. “If you hear me shoot, be ready. The deer may come your way, so have your rifle up and ready to fire. If I hear you shoot, I’ll sit tight for a few minutes in case they come my way.”

Optimism and precision equipment. I appreciate both.

After several forks in the trail beneath the thinning canopy of hardwoods, Nolan motioned to a clearing where a deer stand was strapped to a stout oak. With a nod of his head, I left the trail and quietly crept to my perch. Nolan walked on, turning around just before disappearing. He raised a gloved hand in a gesture of good luck.

My deer stand was a metal contraption slanting maybe 15 feet up the downhill side of the tree. It was held in place snugly by nylon straps and remained motionless as I climbed the metal rungs. It nestled beneath a crumbling homemade wooden stand, the floor of the original structure now serving as a roof over the newer model.

It was an awkward climb with the rifle dangling from my shoulder. I tried to move slowly and silently, worming my way onto a tiny platform beneath a safety rail. A strap of nylon slung between two rods was to be my seat for the next few hours. I wriggled into position, pleased that the seat conformed to my buttocks. I checked my watch. 6:38 am. I leaned back to survey my domain. As Nolan said, the view was 360-degrees with the oak tree at my back providing the only obstruction up the hill. Oaks and hickories, the largest some two feet in diameter, towered above. The creek to my left ran quietly in its little ravine. Beyond the creek was a stand of pines with their needles the only green in this serene setting.

“I’m hunting,” I thought to myself as a smile spread across my face.

The woods were quiet except for the little sounds from a couple of squirrels scurrying from trunk to trunk. I practiced moving slowly, lifting the rifle to my shoulder in a way that would be unnoticed by a deer only seconds before it would feel a sharp pain in the chest and hear a loud blast. I practiced looking through the scope at a small woodpecker that busied itself for several minutes tapping at the bark of a tree just in front of me. I practiced adjusting the focus and zoom of the scope. I listened to a raucous band of crows in the pines across the creek.

In about an hour I counted eleven gunshots from varying distances in all directions. Would that be eleven dead deer, or perhaps some combination of dead deer and excuses that totaled eleven?

The sky gradually lightened, dawn became day, and the drab leaves still hanging loosely from trees took on more color. As the frost melted, more and more leaves let go and launched into lazy spirals, one by one completing the cycle, returning to earth to become soil and perhaps in a decade to reincarnate as a leaf for yet another season. It was about this time that I had to let go some of that coffee I had enjoyed several hours ago. I stretched into a posture barely conducive to urination. My stream arced through the chilly air and pee splattered into the crispy leaves 15 feet below. I squirmed back into position and resumed hunting as the vapors dissipated.

I agree with those hunters who say that time in the woods is worth it whether game is taken or not. Unoccupied by the numerous and mostly inconsequential crises of work, hunters let their minds wander. Mine did.

I thought about the hunters of Daniel Boone’s time, armed with clumsy unreliable muzzle loaders, hunting not for pleasure but out of necessity. No Gortex waterproofing nor wind blocking breathable fabrics that wick away moisture from the skin. No socks of such chemical and mechanical complexity as to warrant their $12 price and page-long description of their features in hunting magazines. No camo patterns printed in Taiwan or China, unaided by Leupold or Bushnell or Swarovski from Japan and Germany. They hunted at ground level in boots that could be worn on either foot with the same degree of discomfort. They hunted without a license or safety training. Without sticks that, when bent, emit heat in the hunter’s boots or gloves. Without shock-absorbing foam filled cases to transport their weapons. Without polarized sunglasses, trail mix, Vibram soles and steel toes and shanks. Without aerosols to disguise their presence.

Considering all these advantages, perhaps hunting is unfair. After all, what defenses do deer have? Motivated by hunger to search for food, motivated by indescribable, inexplicable and inescapable forces to mate, deer venture timidly through the sole environment that is available to them, equipped only with a keen sense of smell, acute hearing, decent eyesight, and paranoia that makes them wary of every snapping twig or commotion in the leaves. What if a deer could….

Suddenly my fantasy was shattered by a nearby gunshot from Nolan’s direction. Recalling his advice, I brought the rifle into position in case frightened deer were retreating in my direction. I clicked the safety switch forward. Perhaps 30 seconds later, I heard another blast of equal magnitude.

A little while later, I heard “G.R.”

“Yeah,” I yelled back.

“Come on down.”

“OK.”

I moved the switch back to “safety” before I clambered down the ladder. By the time I reached the ground, Nolan was standing on the trail where I had last seen him. I hurried over to see what was next.

Nolan was grinning widely, unable to conceal his excitement.

“You hear two shots?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“That was me. I need you to help me get those deer.”
“You got two?” I marveled.

“Yep.”

We walked up a small hill where Nolan’s stand came into view. Behind his stand, the land dropped off sharply to a big creek.

“One fell where I shot it. We’ll have to look for the other one.”

“Good,” I thought to myself. We won’t emerge from the woods empty-handed. Plus, I’d heard stories of hunters having to scour the woods to locate a wounded animal. Now I’ll get a more complete hunting experience.

Just behind Nolan’s stand was a faint trail in the leaves used by animals to traverse the bluff above the creek. Forty yards from his stand we found the smaller deer sprawled on the ground. Nolan lifted its lifeless head to reveal where the bullet had entered just behind one eye. On the other side of the head, much of the face had been ripped away as the bullet exited. The deer’s bloody tongue was stuck out to one side.

I had wondered what my response to blood and death would be. After all, I faint half the time I have blood drawn for a routine physical. So when confronting a bloody animal, lifeless yet still warm, would I respond by collapsing into unconsciousness.

To my surprise and relief, I was calm and unemotional while inspecting the entry and exit wounds. This deer was not so different from a roadkill deer. Seeing a dead animal is very different from watching an animal die. I didn’t witness the last desperate gulp for air, the involuntary twitching of limbs, the sparkle in an eye fading to the dull glaze of death, the waning pulses of blood finally subside. Anyhow, I didn’t have time to contemplate because Nolan reminded me that we must find the other deer.

“Look around for a blood trail,” Nolan said. “There should be some blood on the ground near where I shot the other one. Once we find that, we can follow it to the deer.”

I hunched close to the ground, inspecting the leaves for blood but found none. It would be easy to miss blood which would blend in with these wrinkled red leaves of oak and hickory.

Nolan headed down the embankment toward the creek. “Hurt animals seek water,” he said. “That other one is probably down by the creek.”

I continued to search for a blood trail for several minutes until Nolan called out from a distance, “G.R. Over here! I’m down by the creek.”

I scrambled down the steep hill through briars and underbrush growing in the muddy sand of the flood plane. At the water’s edge I saw Nolan downstream, dragging a large deer from the current.

“Pretty good size, huh?” he winked.

“Look at this,” he pointed to the left shoulder, which swiveled freely in every direction. “She must have broken it when she fell.”

“How did you find her?” I asked.

“I thought I heard a splash in the creek after I shot her. Sure enough, she came down here to die.”

“Nolan tugged at the carcass to estimate its heft. “I’d say she weighs about 145 pounds,” he mused while pulling on his beard. “That’s way too heavy to drape across our shoulders and walk up that hill.”

He cut a section about two feet long from a sturdy sapling with his hefty hunting knife. He deftly pierced the blade through the skin between the ankle bones and Achilles’ tendon of each hind leg. Next he jabbed the sapling through both holes, creating a makeshift handle that would allow us to drag the carcass a bit easier.

I grabbed my side. Nolan grabbed his, and we lunged forward, dragging the carcass. It flopped and tilted as we struggled breathlessly through the briars and brush, using our free hands to tug ourselves upward by pulling on the trunks of small trees. During one of our three rest stops as we panted for air, I said, “Nolan, you need to reverse your technique so that the larger deer collapses on the spot it and the smaller deer wanders off.”

“I’ll remember that for next time,” Nolan joked.

Our leg muscles stinging from the exertion, we finally drug the bigger deer alongside its partner atop the bluff. It was light enough now to see that this landscape looked very similar to Croft State Park where I’d joined Doug once to check on his deer exclosures. This looked like a good place for trillium but I hadn’t seen any.

“Let’s go get the truck. I think it’ll make it down the trail so we don’t have to drag these things a half mile,” Nolan suggested.

“I like that idea!”

As we walked back up those trails, Nolan described how he got his deer.

“I actually pulled the trigger four times this morning,” Nolan confided.

“But I heard only two shots come from your stand,” I replied.

“That’s right. Let me tell you what happened. I heard something behind me to my right. I listened real careful and didn’t move. They came closer and closer along that little trail you saw on the bluff. They passed directly behind me in no hurry. I stood up real slow, took aim at the big one, and pulled the trigger. Nothing. I didn’t have a bullet in the chamber so I had to bolt one in as quietly as I could. I re-aimed at the big one and got off the first shot. She took off running down the hill. The smaller one stayed right there. Didn’t budge. I’ve never saw a deer just stand there so I put another bullet in the chamber, took aim at him and pulled the trigger. Nothing. A dud. Never had a dud before. I couldn’t believe it, and I couldn’t believe that the deer just stayed there frozen while I ejected the dud, took aim and fired again. He stood there perfectly still while I shot him right through the head so as not to spoil any meat.”

He told this with great satisfaction, knowing that this was to be added to that ever-expanding body of hunting lore.

Back at the truck, Nolan showed me how to remove the bullets from a gun without having to fire it. It was so easy. Why couldn’t I figure it out that night 35 years ago?

After a jostling ride in the 4x4 with branches scraping and screeching the hood and sides of the truck for much of the way, we arrived in the clearing and hoisted the deer into the back of the truck. I took a picture of Nolan sitting on the tailgate with a dead deer on either side. He insisted on taking a picture of me in the seat of honor.

“Are you about ready for a biscuit?” Nolan asked.

“I could eat one, I guess. I already ate a big breakfast, but if you’re hungry, let’s get a biscuit.”

Several minutes later we arrived at the same convenience store where he had met a few hours ago. The line at the drive-in window wrapped around the building so we went inside, joining a line of about ten manly men, all completely outfitted in camo, all there for a biscuit and coffee and conversation related to hunting. Was I now legitimately one of them, standing there in my borrowed camo jacket and my boots speckled with blood? Did my blue jeans betray my inexperience?

Waiting in line, we heard the same question over and over. “Did you get one?” When it was Nolan’s turn, he said “No. We got two.” He grinned and nodded toward me.

“He shot two. I helped drag one,” I said, giving credit where it was due.

Nolan seemed to know most of the fellows in line and the others seated at the laminated tables. We got our biscuits to go, strolled back out to the truck where those two deer flopped in the bed, scrambled by the bumpy ride out of the woods.

Was this trip to the convenience mart a ritualistic conclusion to a morning hunting expedition or was it nothing more than satisfying a hunger?

“You don’t eat breakfast before hunting?” I inquired.

“Nope. I did once and nature called all morning while I was in the woods. Most uncomfortable,” Nolan confided.

I chose not to tell him that those four cups of coffee had generated an irrepressible urge about an hour after I had settled into my stand.

…..

Nolan showed me what goes on at a deer processing plant. We left with four tenderloins wrapped in waxed paper and would pick up the rest of our venison in a few days. On the way home, Nolan told me how he marinates the tenderloins in buttermilk before grilling them.

He said, “I’ve had a lot of fun today.”

“Me too!” I said.

“So, do you like to hunt?”

“Yes, I do! Thanks for inviting me. It has been a great experience. Even better than I had hoped for.”

“Today was a great day but I would change one thing,” he went on.

“What’s that?”

“I’d rather it had been you who shot the deer. I wish it had been you in the stand where I was this morning, but I really thought you‘d have a better chance where you were.”

I silently wondered how long the smell of my urine would repel all wildlife from that idyllic venue.

What a genuinely good fellow. So unselfish. Heck, he’d probably even be big enough to forgive me for peeing off his best deer stand. For the moment I decided not to find out about that. Maybe after a few more hunts I’ll be willing to confess. After all, veteran hunters who take out a newbie probably deserve some sort of compensation, some boneheaded act to recollect with a chuckle. I’ll pay up later.

It was nice that Nolan wanted me to kill a deer. As for me, I’m relieved I didn’t have to pull the trigger and I’m happy that I didn’t watch an animal die.

I enjoyed the solitude of the woods, but could I kill a deer? I think so but I’m content for now not having to prove it. Will I go hunting again? Certainly.

“What a day!” I concluded. “I can say that the first time I ever went deer hunting, I ate venison from the grill that same night. Do I have to be completely honest and say that you did all the shooting?”

Nolan chuckled. “You can tell it however you want.”

So I have.