"Exactly what your father told me not to"

That was my response to the question: "What'd you get?"

The thing being referred to? The first deer I ever killed.

I had decided several months ago that I wanted to go hunting. 3 reasons for this:

1. I've become pretty close with 2 guys in my nieghborhood, both of whom hunt. A little male bonding in the woods is good.
2. I have acquired a taste for venison since we moved here.
3. I am a fan of Michael Pollan and the real food movement. We're members of our local CSA, we don't eat anything that has over 5 ingredients listed on the label, and the farther we can check out of the industrial food complex the better. 

Hence, going deer hunting makes sense to me. It's another Southern experience to write about.


We headed out Saturday afternoon to a place outside Seale, AL, about an hour away. After turning on gas and water at the camping trailer, we camo'ed up, sprayed ourseleves down with scent masking, and headed out into the woods, each person to their own stand. I had a shooting house (aka, an outhouse with openings on all sides to slide the rifle through) to sit in. It was a beautiful afternoon with a gentle breeze. It was quiet, peaceful, and the gentleness allowed my thoughts to wander. I didn't care that I didn't see one deer the entire afternoon.

When darkness fell, we headed back to the car and made it back to camp where we started a fire, cracked beers, made dinner and had a good time. The father of the guy who's place we were at was with us as well. I think he really enjoyed being around his son's friends because he was downing beers like water.

4:45 am came too early, and with a headache from the night before. Clean clothes (so they didn't have the smell of a fire on them), Pedialite, two advil and some coffee and I was ready to go.
 As I was standing outside the trailer waiting for the other two to get ready, I had the following conversation with the father:

Him: "Now, son, we run a management program out here, and what we don't like to do is shoot buttonheads."

Me: "Huh?"

Him: "Buttonheads are adolescent male deer whose antlers having come up yet. We like to let them grow up to become big bucks in a few years."

Me: "Oh, I see what you're saying."

Him: "So, if you're out there and you see a deer, try and see if you can see the antlers poking through the top. If not, shoot away."

Me: "Uh-huh..."

Him: "No pressure, though."

Me: "Yes, sir."

Him (trying to make me feel better):"...But if you do shoot one, don't worry. We've all made mistakes. And besides, it's hard to tell how big a deer is if it's by itself. There's no scale to judge it by."

Six am rolls around and I am sitting in a tree stand twenty feet off the ground. It's still dark. Because tt rained overnight, water is dropping off the branches and the leaves. It's the sounds of the forest that I am most atuned to, listening for footsteps, squirrels, bird calls, anything that might indicate movement on the ground. At the same time, I'm tired, having not slept all that great the night before. I am drowzy, allowing my eyes to slip close for just a second before opeing them to scan the ground in front of me.

Two hours go by, and again, like yesterday afternoon, nothing. I'm hungry for breakfast, and thinking about calling it a day. I close my eyes again, and when I open them, there she is in front of me. At least, I think its a she, and I get excited. Adreneline courses through me. My pulse quickens and I immediately start to try to control my breathing. Since my rifle has been propped out in front of me in a shooting position, I don't have to move much to get myself ready for a shot. I peer through the scope of the rifle, searching for antlers, or anything else hinting that this doe is not what I think it is. The words of the father regarding size creep into my head, and I judge quickly about how big this thing actually is. I assume its big enough to shot, and take aim, putting the crosshairs of the scope to just behind the front leg.

My heart is pounding through my chest, and I take a few deep breaths, conciously trying to slow my breathing and calm myself. What I don't want to do, at all, is to not have a kill shot. I want it to drop as quickly as possible. A sudden flash of realization at what I am about to do passes quickly through my head as I am ever so gently squeezing the trigger, preparing to take the life of something "substaintial" and on purpose.

The rifle fires. I know its a good shot. Smoke from the barrel clouds the scope and I look up quickly to see the deer standing there stunned. He then darts awkwardly to the right, visibly limping, and I know I got him. He leaps over a hill and is gone from view.

Remembering that I need to wait at least 5 minutes before looking for it, I sit in the stand. "You don't want to come up onto a deer that still may be alive. You'll freak it out, it's adrenaline will kick in, and you'll make it run." I stay in the stand, and after 10 minutes, I get out of the stand.

I walk over to where the deer was when I shot it, looking for blood. There is nothing, and then I head over to the ridge where the deer disappeared. I come to the top of the hill, and see it lying on the ground, 10 yards in front of me down the hill. It's lying on it's side, eyes wide open, with a blush of blood on its stomach indicating the exit wound. The eyes open tell me its dead. I move the head with my foot. No response. I squat down and put my hand on its side, and feel that it is still warm.

I am suddenly sad, and I realize what I've done. I know its cliche, but regret and sadness flood me. I know I can't take it back. I have taken its life.

I take the legs, flip it over and and find the entry wound, right where I wanted it to be. And that's when I look between its legs and see them. "Oh shit." I look at the head, and I can barely make out the antlers just poking through. But there there, clear as day. "Oh shit. Shit!," I repeat.

I take both the front and back legs together and drag the 60 pound deer up to the path. It's defintely an adolescent, defintely young, and defintiely a male. I lower the legs and the body of the deer onto the ground, and I just look at it, still dazed at what I just did.

I really don't know what to do, so I head back up into the tree stand and wait, stupidly thinking that more deer will arrive so I can shoot them. (Interestingly and despite common sense, more deer showing up is a possibility). After 20 minutes, and it being 8:30, I know my friends will show up soon. So I get myself out of the tree stand and wait for them. I see them in the distance not 5 minutes later.

As they walk up to me, one of them say, "Did you shoot?"

"Yup."

"Did you get it?"

"Yup"

"What you'd get?"

"Exactly what your father told me not to."

Both of friends laugh, and walk over to the deer to examine my "prowess". They look at the antlers and mercifully both say at the same time, "Oh, there's no way you could have known it was a buttonhead. Especially if it was by itself."  This makes me feel marginally better.

We take the deer back to camp, where we puncture holes in its calfs, just above its knees so we can lift the deer up to gut it. With its belly facing me, and its head pointing to the ground in a bucket, I take a sharp knife and make a small incision at its groin, splitting the outer hide, and exposing the layer of fat and muscle underneath. I run the incision all the way down, over its breast bone and below its neck. At the same place at the groin, I make another incision, this time slicing through the fat and muscle, opening the body cavity. A weird "pfft" sound escapes the body cavity as air from the body escapes. I get spooked, and the guys laugh at my squirmishness.

My shot was on an angle, and I have severed the intestinal track. What this means is that I have dessimated the GI tract of the deer. I've "gut shot" it. Not good for 2 reasons.

1. The possibility of the digesting food ruining the meat, and
2. The smell. It's f'ing awful.

We have to work quickly to clean out the guts. But I get to the breastbone with the knife, and I can't pull it through. My buddy grabs the sawz-all, splits the bone, and out everything spills into the bucket. Blood is all over the place because of the gut shot, and I start to hose down the cavity, cleaning the blood and material that was in the stomach.

I'll spare the rest of the details, but at the end of the day, he's clean. My buddy cuts out the inner tenderloins and I place them in a plastic bag so I can cook them later. These are the most tender part of the deer, and because he is so young, these will not be as "gamey" tasting as older deer tend to be. (I cooked these the next night, sauteeing them with onions, garlic, olive oil and finishing them off with a bit of red wine to makes a sauce. They were delicious.) The rest of the deer was dropped off at the deer processors to be turned into link sausage and cube steak.

All in all, I realize that my "innocence" is gone, and I made a mistake. The deer I took was way too young, small, and male. I'm glad I got the nerves out of my system, and I know what not to do in the future. So, I guess that means I'll do it again.