Fins, Fur, Feathers, and Bone

Trying to advertise my blog I sometimes post a little blurb about the current post and include a photo to “catch the eye” of perspective readers.

One lady took exception to my use of a photo of three squirrels I had taken.  She wrote, “I really try not to judge those who do hunt simply because I don’t agree with it — everyone has a right to it.  But I find it unnecessary to photo these critters as though it was a work of art.  I love and respect all wee beasties, and I respect that some hunt, but I don’t agree with posting photos of the shoot. It’s just very sad. Sorry, that’s my opinion.”

I had to respond.

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While I respected the lady’s opinion, I wanted to explain my own beliefs, thinking and hoping it might help her to understand that I, and many others like me, don’t revel in the death of our prey, but celebrate their lives.

“Thanks for sharing your beliefs.  This was not intended to be a display of death as a work of art.  Rather, it was intended to show the results of a successful hunt in its least repugnant state.  I do think that squirrels are beautiful animals but I believe my legal and ethical harvesting of them for food is a higher form of honoring them than someone driving through McDonalds to pick up a quarter-pounder is a way of honoring cattle.  My photo of the dead squirrels is, I think, more a celebration of their lives and no more an insult to them than a photo of a roast turkey on a beautifully laid out Thanksgiving table is an insult to the turkey.  Again, thanks for sharing your beliefs and for the opportunity to share mine.  Please don’t be sorry for sharing your opinion, but please be open to hearing other people’s beliefs and seriously think about what they say.  That’s how I’ve learned a lot and I think it’s a great way to do it.”

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The lady who wrote the comment might be truly aghast to know that I also keep trophies from some of the animals I take. 

A lot of people don’t understand why hunters like to keep trophies from their outings.  Taxidermy-ed animals and antlers are the most common.  Some non- and anti-hunters see such trophies as macabre reminders of a crime, like a serial killer keeping teeth or jewelry taken from his victims as mementos of the murders. 

The fact is it’s nothing of the sort, at least for me and most of the many fellow hunters I have discussed the subject with.

Let me illustrate.

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I’ll tell you a story from one particular hunt and about the associated trophies.

The day was cool and dry, a perfect day to be outdoors.  I’d gotten permission to hunt a patch of land several years before but hadn’t walked it during deer season.  It didn’t have a whole lot in the way of cover for deer so it looked like it would probably be a waste of time.

The patchwork of ditches that cut across southeast Missouri and make the land dry enough to farm are more often bare of trees along their banks nowadays, but were less so in those days.  That particular ditch had trees and moderately thick undergrowth varying from about 10 feet wide at the narrowest, to around 20 yards wide in a few places.  It looked like a place where you could see any deer within its borders with your bare eyes at just a glance.  Annie and I had stepped into it a few times on some of our walks and I noticed that the ditch dump (the place where dirt was piled that was dug out of the ditch) formed a narrow ridge along the top of the bank.  This made it possible for deer to hide from sight with little difficulty.

But it still looked too small for deer to feel comfortable hiding in.

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Andy was in his early teens and eager to hunt with me. 

I’d scared deer out of cover not much bigger than the ones on the dump, so I had a crazy idea to “push” that particular ditch, just one time, to see if there was any reason to do it again in the future.

We discussed our game plan, with an emphasis on safety.  You know, don’t take a shot if there is the slightest chance of the bullet going toward your co-hunter, don’t shoot toward town, the neighbors’ house, etc.  We had walkie-talkies so we’d be able to share ideas, information, and our locations with each other.

After all, there is no deer huge enough to risk killing someone. 

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My son would walk along one ditch to where he could safely cross the smaller side-ditch that delineated this patch of brush.  I would walk along another ditch and cross around to the other end of the ½ mile strip.  The woods were ½ mile to my west and his end of the cover came to a dead end, making the critters’ best escape route toward me.  When we were both in place I took a spot between two mounds of dirt left by the cranes that had dug out the ditch.  One of them was between me and the direction Andy would be coming from and offered a little added bit of safety for us.  My head was high enough that I could see over the mound his way but my body was pretty well hidden from any deer that he might push toward me.

We whispered into the radios from time to time with info like, “There are two owls in the tree!” from Andy and, “You remembered to empty your rifle, and reload after you crossed the ditch, right?” from me.  Still, the trees and brush around me were quiet, so quiet that I began to rethink my idea of pushing the ditch dump.

“I see your blaze orange,” he said, referring to the brightly colored hat and vest that Missouri hunters are required to wear for safety. 

“And I see yours,” I answered.

Suddenly, there was urgency in his voice, “A buck, a buck!  On the ditch side!” Andy said.  “He’s coming right toward you!”

I wouldn’t believe there could be a running deer between us without me seeing it, but I knew Andy never mistook anything else for a deer…especially one with antlers.

Then I heard it.

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People who don’t know deer think they crash through the woods like a pack of cub scouts on a sugar high, but even a running deer usually doesn’t make much noise.  They make a lot less than a human of the same size.  I heard the tiniest sound of leaves crunching along with a few thumps of hooves striking the ground, just before I saw the deer.

His path would carry him right past me and about 10 feet away, between me and the ditch.  I flicked the safety off when I raised the 30.06 to my shoulder.  As the buck flew by me, I pointed the rifle at his boiler room and pulled the trigger.

At the shot, his head dropped and he did a summersault and slid to a stop, dead before he hit the ground.  I stepped toward the animal to administer the coup-de-gras if necessary. 

It wasn’t needed.

“You got him!”  Andy bragged.  “Good shot, Dad!”

“Thanks, Kiddo,” I said with a smile, as I knelt beside the still form.

I placed my hand on the deer’s flank and muttered a quiet, “Thank you, brother.”

Andy interrupted my act of appreciation, “Why’d you shoot it there, Dad?”

I looked at the fatal wound, and thought, “Why, indeed?”

I had aimed at the center of the deer’s chest when I squeezed the trigger, but there was no mark on that biggest part of the buck.  My eyes moved to his neck.  There was a perfect hole in the skin where the bullet had passed through.  I lifted the head and could feel unnatural movement in the spine at the location where the shot had passed through the spine, breaking it and severing the spinal cord, a wound that killed the deer instantly.

He probably never even heard the sound of the shot that killed him.  It was a perfect shot.  Perfect, that is, if that was where I had meant for it to go.

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I examined the body some more, seeking information.  I always want to know what I did right and what I did wrong.  You could call it my desire to become a more efficient killer.

There I go sounding like a serial killer, but no, I don’t check the corpse to extend the pleasure of ending a beautiful life.  Rather, as I’ve told my readers before, the killing is the most distasteful part of the hunt to me.  But it is the punctuation mark at the end of the sentence.  Without the kill we can’t enjoy pounds and pounds of delicious, healthy meat, and I won’t have the antlers and skin to enjoy for years, or forever.

No, I examine the animal to see what I did right and wrong because I believe I owe it to the animal to make its death as quick and painless as possible, and to minimize possible suffering.

This buck had not suffered at all.  He had died instantly, going from avoiding a predator to dead in less than a second…much less.

Why, then was this a bad shot?  Because the bullet had not gone where I had intended.  From that point of view, it was a lousy shot that seemed to say I was a poor shot.

Or did it?

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I gave the spine-shot the credit-due as a quick kill shot, then continued looking for clues as to why I missed my aim-point.  When I tipped his head back, I saw it.  On his neck, just behind the jawline, was a neat, clean slash, right in the place where some hunters cut the throat to bleed the animal, to drain as much blood as possible out of the animal quickly, in the belief that blood taints the meat.  This incision cut neatly through the skin but didn’t pierce any blood veins or slice into the esophagus.

That clue gave me an idea of the solution to my mystery.  I looked back toward where I had been standing when I fired the shot.  A close look showed a tiny briar vine that hung down from its attachment in the trees above, and was cut off at about the height of the bullet’s path from the rifle barrel to the buck.  I examined the truncated tendril and found what I expected. 

The cut was fresh.

Although some will say I’m making up excuses for a bad shot, I’ll share my theory anyway. 

The bullet left the barrel at somewhere around 3,000 fps (feet per second).  That’s over half-a-mile in one second, so the bullet traveled the 10 feet in about 1/300th of a second.  That’s around 30 times faster than the blink of an eye.

When I walk through the woods, normally I am moving at a relatively slow rate, and I push vines out of the way easily.  But at 3,000 fps the vine CAN’T get out of the way fast enough and acts pretty much like an immovable object.  Believe it or not, a bullet moving that fast will ricochet off a little vine like that one, which was less than half the diameter of a pencil.  Not only that, but a bullet may break up when it hits something like that.  My shot ricocheted off the vine and, at the same time, broke apart.  Thus, the two wounds in my deer’s neck.

I have heard but not seen bullets ricochet off blades of grass, and I have seen them ricochet off water – yes, water.  I used to teach my sons the importance of always being aware of what was behind their intended target by intentionally ricocheting a relatively slow (between 1000 and 2000 fps) .22 round off the surface of a pond and into the earthen berm on the other side.

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Back home, the young buck was converted to neat little packages of meat…meat that would help sustain our family for months.  At the same time, I removed the antlers and skull plate they were attached to, as well as the beautiful skin.

The meat from that deer is long gone now, and the sleek skin hangs on the wall of my studio.  The antlers were put on a plaque and hung in my studio as well.  Those antlers are not a trophy worth bragging about in anybody’s book, but I’m keeping them as a reminder of a great day in the field with one of my awesome sons, a day when our plans came together and we earned some meat for the freezer.  It’s also a reminder of the life I took and the beautiful animal I took it from.

It’s not a celebration of death; it’s a celebration of life – life taken, life given, and life lived to the fullest.

That is what my hunting trophies mean to me.

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