The Deer Hunter

A Trophy in Sayre

In 1954, when I was eleven years old, my grandparents lived in Pennsylvania in an area that had a deep tradition of hunting of all sorts but especially deer-hunting. The first day of the deer season was a universal holiday for all the men around Sayre, Pennsylvania. If possible, my father drove to Sayre to go hunting with his father every year. As soon as I was old enough to be trusted with a gun, I joined the annual hunt. Legally you were supposed to be twelve or thirteen, but I began hunting when I was eleven. Grandpa took me under his wing and became my hunting mentor.

My Grandfather really wasn't much of a hunter. He enjoyed the process of going hunting much more than the actual killing. In fact, Grandpa hadn't bothered to check the sights on his old rifle for so many years that he literally couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. But Grandpa really loved going out in the scenic Pennsylvania hills and hunting without really hunting. And he really enjoyed taking his oldest grandson out and teaching him how to hunt Grandpa-style.

So I learned how to spot the trails where deer were likely to be moving on the first day of hunting season, and how to wait on a stand, and how to track a deer in snow. Grandpa and I went out the day before the season began and we scouted out good locations where the deer had made natural trails in the forest. Then we picked spots for stands near these trails where you could wait quietly for the unsuspecting deer to come close enough for you to gun them down.

The first year we went hunting together I learned what it was like to get up at four o'clock in the morning in the freezing cold house and get dressed in long-johns, wool pants, and a flannel shirt. I got to wear my super-insulated boots with a pair of warm wool socks over cotton socks. I learned to pack my lunch, a thermos of hot chocolate, and my ammunition in a backpack. And I finally joined that all-male world of hunters made up of my father, grandfather, uncles, and cousins, as we all shouldered our guns and moved off into the breathtaking cold of the predawn darkness.

Grandpa placed my cousin Corky and me on a stand next to a deer trail that was just visible through a break in the trees. My instructions were to keep watch in one direction while Corky would watch the other direction. Grandpa left to go to his stand just as dawn was breaking through the early ground fog lying in the folds between the thickly wooded, rounded Pennsylvania mountains.

We stood in the freezing cold, with a light dusting of snow on the ground and our ears freezing off. Corky and I were eleven years old and we were both on our first deer stand -- serious business for a couple of young kids. We applied ourselves to watching our deer trail for all of fifteen minutes, then we decided to try out some hot chocolate, and after that our attention seriously wandered.

After about two hours, I was examining my beloved Ithaka shotgun while Corky was throwing snowballs at small birds in a nearby tree when I heard a whistle from the direction of Grandpa's stand. I looked up to see Grandpa waving frantically and pointing at Corky. I looked at Corky and saw a very curious deer that was standing five feet away from him, admiring his snowball throwing. When I stood up and turned around to bring my gun to bear on the deer, the animal bolted away at full gallop. I threw my gun up, got the escaping deer in my sights, squeezed the trigger, and nothing happened. The safety was set on my gun, and the deer escaped, laughing I presume, into the nearby woods.

Grandpa came over to deliver a lecture about paying attention when you were on stand, and Corky and I became the butts of many jokes from our fellow hunters after that first deer-hunting season. We vowed that the next year would be different.

I vividly remember that when I swung my gun to my shoulder, I experienced what we called "buck fever." Buck fever is a sensation that almost defies description for the uninitiated. It is a rising of the primal killing lust that is manifested in sudden all-over body sweats and uncontrollable muscle spasms. The gun barrel becomes a metronome, timing the interior pulsations of a hyperactive adrenal gland as it spurts excitement juice into your bloodstream. Under the influence of buck fever there is no way that anyone can shoot accurately, so my first encounter with a deer was predestined to failure. As I stood and watched the disappearing deer I was deeply shaken by the hormone-induced state of blood lust. At a tender age I experienced a natural drug high that rivals any other drug experience one could ever have. I often wonder how much of the seemingly senseless male attachment to hunting is related to the adrenaline rush of buck fever.

My father and I returned the next year to hunt with Grandpa. Once again we got dressed in our hunting suits and boots. Once again we trooped off to stand watch in the pre-dawn cold. And once again a comic-opera scene unfolded as a curious buck was drawn to inspect the senseless antics of a bunch of hormone-crazed humans.

This year I had vowed to pay special attention as I stood watch at my stand. I was alone because Corky couldn't come, so I stood solitary watch over a deer trail that ran through a field adjacent to a back-country road. Grandpa was stationed inside the small woods on the other side of the field, opposite the road. From his stand, he could cover the trail as it led from the field through the woods.

In spite of my resolution, after a long, cold wait with no activity, my attention wandered; and when I looked up from a dreamy inspection of my boots, I saw a small herd of deer -- four does and a buck -- halfway across the field, heading straight down the path into the woods. I jerked my gun to my shoulder and got off two quick shots that startled the herd into a panicked stampede, but I hit nothing. Buck fever left my aim gyrating wildly all over the landscape. I doubt that my shots got closer than ten feet to any of the deer.

The startled herd bounded into the woods and the next sound was wild shooting from my grandfather's direction. Two quick shots followed by a third after about five seconds. Maybe Grandpa got one!

But it was not to be. He came walking out of the woods wearing a sheepish grin. He had been standing too close to the path, and he had almost been run over by the fleeing deer. His wild shots had done no more than knock down a couple of limbs in the dense little copse. This time Grandpa had flubbed up, and we stood in the open field and had a good-natured chat about our relative shortcomings as hunters.

While we talked, a large buck came up over the ridge at the top of the field to investigate the unusual noises. A light breeze blowing toward us kept our scent from him, and he began to pick his way slowly, cautiously, down the sloping field, directly towards Grandpa and me.

Grandpa spotted him first and shushed me to be quiet. The buck was about one-hundred yards away by then and still coming cautiously in our direction. He was drawn by the same streak of curiosity that had attracted that other deer to Corky's snowball throwing, but this time he was faced by two hunters who had already had their buck fever attacks. Grandpa and I were basking in the afterglow of our adrenaline hits and we were ready to kill.

Grandpa aimed his old, octagon-barreled 32-20 rifle and squeezed off a shot that kicked up the dirt five feet to the left of the advancing buck. The buck stopped dead in his tracks and began scanning our area intently, searching for the source of the strange sound. Grandpa worked the bolt on his ancient rifle and got off a second misdirected shot that revealed our location to the myopic buck who wheeled and bounded off toward the fence at the edge of the road.

The rest of this scene plays in ultra slow-motion in my memory. The buck gathered himself at the fence as I raised my gun to my shoulder. As he leaped the fence, I sighted just in front of his nose and squeezed off a shot that realistically had no chance of hitting him. His body crumpled in midair and sailed across the fence, skidding to a heap on the other side of the narrow road. He never even quivered after I killed him.

The next thing I remember is looking into the limpid brown eyes of my dead deer as my grandfather straddled its back and slit its throat. "Got to be sure that he's dead", Grandpa said, looking a little green around the gills.

My deer was unbelievably beautiful. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and I had killed him. I couldn't believe it. I was shocked and proud and shaken and elated and thoroughly confused. Wasn't this supposed to be the greatest moment of the hunter's life? Why was I feeling so sickly inside? Why did I want to puke?

The rest of the day I wandered in a daze as we loaded the corpse into the trunk of Grandpa's car, "Never could have got it over that fence if you hadn't shot it like that", drove it home to a shocked Grandma, "Are you alright Jeffrey?" and hoisted it up on the rafter in Grandpa's garage, where an admiring stream of relatives and neighbors were able to gaze with awe upon it, "Biggest buck I ever saw."

He weighed over two hundred pounds after he was "dressed out" (all of the guts were taken out). A mighty buck of eight points, meaning that the antlers had a total of eight points -- the maximum for our Pennsylvania deer. A remarkable achievement for a twelve-year-old hunter who could shoot the eyes out of a squirrel at a hundred paces. A hunter who had nerves of steel. A hunter of twelve years who just wanted to bring back the life of the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, whose corpse was now hanging out back in his Grandfather's garage. An eleven-year old hunter who watched as his beautiful buck was cut up into roasts and chops that were wrapped and then frozen and then thawed and cooked.

When he butchered him, Grandpa found the slug that killed my deer, directly across from his heart, lodged just below the skin. An accidental kill shot that I would live to regret...

"No thank-you," I said.

"You don't want any venison, Son?" My father asked.

"No, it tastes too strong," I said.

My father looked at me suspiciously. Was I being weak, he wondered? Was his great pre-adolescent hunter son just a sissy?

I felt my father's suspicion, but I maintained my cover story that the meat was too gamey-tasting. I couldn't possibly reveal that I was sickened by guilt every time I even thought of eating the beautiful animal I had murdered. And I was doomed to be sickened a lot. It takes a very long time to eat over two hundred pounds of dead deer. Dad even discovered a way to marinate the flesh so that the gamey flavor disappeared and the roasts tasted just like beef. But I still couldn't eat it. I would pick at the pieces and hide them under the vegetables on my plate. My mother would help me with the deception by throwing away the wasted meat without making any comments. She understood my distress, but I don't think my father ever did.

Twenty years later, I quit eating meat.