Thursday, November 30, 2006
Bill Cochran's Outdoors: You are never more alive than when a predator
Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.
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Some people think deer hunting is about death, but those of us who have been afield the past couple weeks or so know it is more about life.
It is a time to get all of your sensory cylinders fine tuned and firing. For the most part it isn’t making something happen as much as having the patience to wait for something to happen, and being ready when it does. It is sitting and watching and waiting and looking and listening; straining your eyes and ears while a breeze caresses your face.
You have to slow down to become the predator that you were made to be, and it can take a few days as you teeter between being domesticated and being wild.
The best thing to do on a deer hunt often is nothing at all, to plant your rump in a treestand or against the base of an oak -- and wait. It can make for a long day.
You approach your stand when the morning sky is star filled, and a hard frost is crackling under your boots, turning the toes white.
Once in place, you watch daylight give shape to the terrain around you, and you hear the birds wake up. A gray squirrel scampers down a tree pausing on a branch to scold you, its tail and its composure in the form of a question mark.
What warmth you kindled on the journey to your stand quickly escapes through the seams of your clothing. Your toes and fingers hurt. You shiver. This is good. The cold will move the deer, you say. It will give the rut a kick in the butt, you lie to yourself. Before long, the day takes a sharp turn toward summer, and the deer shut down.
By 9:30 a.m. you are fighting the urge to eat your sack lunch.
You watch the terrain to your front until it becomes as familiar as the picture on your living room wall. You have a compelling desire to leave your stand, to move, to get your blood flowing, to bring relief to the cramps in your legs, to go to your pickup. Why go to the pickup? There is no good reason, other than it is there.
You hear a shot in the distance, from a powerful gun, maybe a .30-06 or 308. Then a second shot. You wonder about the second one. Is it a follow-up killing shot or a frantic, hurried second shot because the first missed? The more shots the less likely a deer has fallen; still, it can appear that everyone is getting a deer but you.
The lazy day is beginning to approach dusk. You fight the urge to leave your stand early, to abandon one of the very best times to see a deer, and for a reason no more compelling than Andy is coming on TV. Or that you might flush a deer on the way out. Fat chance.
You glance over your shoulder, as you have many times during the day, but this time there is a brilliant, rose-colored sunset filling the sky. You bask in its beauty for a full minute.
When you turn back, there is a deer, a buck, sleek and graceful, where there had been emptiness all day. Its presence energizes the setting, making you tremble, like a string under tension, not from the cold this time, but from some primal reaction born deep within you. Apart from that, deer hunting would be just another way of shopping for meat.
The buck isn’t the kind that will see the insides of a taxidermist shop or be a ticket to a big game show. It is a breeder. Its neck is engorged and its long legs give it a purposeful stride, the kind that says, “I’m looking for action.” It is an attitude that has caused it to do something stupid, like stride across the grassy opening you are watching.
You put the crosshairs of your rifle on his shoulder, but hold fire because he does not stop and you do not like a moving target. You yell, a trick that will get a deer to rein up 95 percent of the time, but he acts as if he hasn’t heard you. In a few steps he will be in the safety of a thicket.
Then he stops, not to look in your direction, but to put his head down, as if to pick up a tidbit or suck in the scent on the grass before him. You pull the trigger. The deer bolts a short distance into the cover and falls.
You are flooded with warring emotions. There is breath-taking elation, but also remorse, not so much for the deer (that too), but for the fact that you wish one of your favorite hunting companions, your son or your wife, had been there to take the shot, to share the moment.
You go afield with the purpose of killing, but when that occurs it may least represent what a hunt is all about. It is to be a predator, to be alive, to feel the cold, to be hungry, to share a tree with a cedar waxwing, to stay put when there is the urge to make something happen, to hear frost under your boots, to watch a sunset and to be in the right spot to see a deer stride into your limited field of view just as you had planned.
