Opening Day

The sun had not yet risen on the first day of deer season.  The air was cold enough to show exhaled breath.  The ambient darkness was fading into grey, and the first hints of orange were peeking over the tree line.  Dad had always said that a hunter had to be up before the deer, which meant a hunter had to be up before the sun.

Showers were a no-no.  Deer could smell the soap.  Apparently soap was worse than unwashed armpit or synthetic raccoon piss.

The early light illuminated the rifle my dad had bought for my birthday.  Bolt action, 7.08 mm.  The scope had been sighted in over five months of shooting at targets in preparation for this day.  Clothing had not been as carefully thought out.  Shivering and sunflower seeds are apparently how hunters pass the time.

That and visualizing.  A buck, eight points, would step out from between the yaupons to enter the field.  It would walk into the middle of the field and stand there, flanked by mesquites, staring up as regal as an insurance logo.  A shot would ring out, just one, and the proud beast would fall dead.  His head would be stuffed by the following Saturday, the same regal pose flanked by Star Wars movie posters, glass beady eyes watching Mario Kart.

“Ocho” wasn’t the last.  Imaginary bucks are no limit, and as sunflower shells pooled at the bottom of the stand like the sand in an hourglass Ocho was followed by a ten point, a running twelve point, a leaping twenty point bigger than anything the family had ever brought down.  Antlers as big as an elk’s keeping watch over this year’s dinners of venison steak, venison sausage, venison chili.  Dad would call uncles and cousins to come see the trophy. 

“Can you believe it?  My boy got the biggest buck in the county.”

A shot, an actual shot, shattered the image.  In a gap in the tree line between pastures a deer collapsed to the ground.

Dad got there first.  He set his rifle down and pulled out his folding buck knife.  The three point’s eyes rolled around as it flopped and twitched on the ground.  It kicked out its legs and kept trying to lift its head, kicking up tufts of dust as blood seeped from its nose and pink foam gurgled out of its mouth around the protruding tongue.  Its chest hitched and heaved, and blood spread from the hole in its side where the bullet had punctured its lung as the deer slowly drowned in its own blood.  It was still twitching as my dad kneeled down beside it.

“Dad, don’t…it’s not dead.”

“Just nerves.”

“Don’t.  Please.”

He waited until it stopped kicking, until the chest stopped moving.  The tongue lay still on the ground, and the eyes stayed open as Dad sunk his knife into the chest below the sternum and began sawing back towards the genitals, having to pull back and hack at times at the sinew.

“Can you help me?”  he asked as he began pulling out entrails.

“No.”

He looked up.  “We’ve got to get the guts out so the meat doesn’t spoil, and we need to bury them so it doesn’t attract predators.”

“No!”  I threw the gun down in the dirt and ran all the way home.  He didn’t call after me, or chase me, or ever speak of it again.