A Thousand Deer

by Rick Bass

  I whispered to Mary Katherine to lift the rifle and place it over the top log, or between two logs, and to find the buck in the scope, and to be ready, should he move forward and place himself in a position where she could take a clean shot. He was about eighty or ninety yards out.

  Mary Katherine couldn’t find him in the scope—so many trees, so much snow on the ground, so much sky; who among us had not known that frustration of seeing a thing with bare eyes, but then not being able to find it with the scope, the instrument that was specifically designed to aid, not hinder, our vision?—but it was good practice for her, and we were in no rush, for I was beginning to perceive already that this deer was intended for us, for her. We—she—might not be successful in taking it, but we had not come to this place, this random corral on the first hunt and the last day of the season, to not be presented with a chance, as long as we kept up our end of the bargain.

  After more gazing—more be-rutted mesmerization—the buck suddenly lowered his head and charged not the doe, but the fawn. Whether it was a mock charge or the real thing, I couldn’t be sure; it looked real to me, and I think it did to the fawn, too, for it stumbled over logs trying to get out of the way, zigging and zagging and tail-flagging almost as if at play, and yet using the scattered windthrow for an escape route, which made me think perhaps it was not play.

  The fawn, the yearling, came straight at us, eyes wild—thundering, if so small an animal can be said to thunder—and was just on the verge of running right over the top of us before it saw some small movement—perhaps our own eyes widening—and veered away, kicking up a spray of snow as it bounded over the brook, which was so narrow that Mary Katherine or I could have similarly cleared it.

  It’s always the problem with getting in too close on a herd of deer or elk: once one of them discovers you, even the best-laid plans will usually begin to crumble, with that one discoverer—be it doe, buck, or even clueless yearling—huffing and snorting and blowing your cover. I was a little discouraged that already we had come to this part of the hunt; though thrilled, too, that we had seen so much, and in such a short time, and on so short a venture. As if somehow I had been gifted, some strange and wonderful recompense for all the countless hours spent slogging, crawling, sliding, trudging, lost and beaten, in which no game at all had been sighted. As if all that failure—or perceived failure—had merely been preparation for the summary deliverance of this luck, this grace.

  The yearling chose not to stick around to blow our cover. Wisely, I think, he added the threats of the day—an angry older buck, and hunters crouched with rifle raised—and decided the heck with warning the others, and if they didn’t want him around anyway, fine, let them figure it out on their own.

  Amazingly, the scene before us settled back down: adjusted itself to even more of a wintertime picture-pastoral scene of classic holiday tranquility. The lissome doe rose to her feet and cantered off a short distance, looked back at the buck, and then loped across the creek herself, farther upstream, and I thought for a moment that she too was panicked: but perhaps the buck would remain oblivious, and as he stood there, trying to figure things out, I continued to try to assist Mary Katherine in locating him in the scope, though to no avail.

  Then he began moving, his winter-gray body passing slowly through the trees, antlers gleaming, and possessing a different, more significant musculature than the doe.

  “I think we’re going to get a shot at him,” I whispered. Mary Katherine shifted, lifted her eye from the scope, saw him, then put her eye to the scope and found him. “I see him,” she said.

  “If he stops, and you’re comfortable with the shot, take it,” I said. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. But if you want to take this deer, he’s a nice one, and this is a good hunt.”

  She tensed, stilled herself, and I could tell that was her answer, and slowly, I put my fingers to my ears.

  The buck did not stop, however, and disappeared into the trees that lined either side of the brook.

  Still, it wasn’t over. He was clearly tracking the doe and yearling, and it was possible, I knew, he would walk right into our laps.

  “Come with me,” I whispered, noting an even more strategic hollow into which we could nestle ourselves, one with better crossbar-spars for resting her rifle. A perfect brace and a perfect set-up, whether the buck continued downstream toward the tangle in which we were hunkered, or—best of all—crossed the creek and moved out into the fairly open stand of mature larch, where he would be hugely exposed, and even closer. The perfect thing would be for him to saunter through that beautiful open forest, visible all the way—his eyes trained for the gone-away doe and also watching his footing amidst lodgepole—to a fairly open point on a little knoll, about fifty yards to our right, where I could, if he was still walking, give a little grunt on the deer call, at which point—becalmed as he was now—he might turn his head to look in the direction of the sound and pause broadside, searching for the thing he had been looking for, the thing upon which he had been focusing. And then—if it was a clean good shot—he would know nothing.

  I explained all this to Mary Katherine, pointing and gesturing and whispering quickly as we belly-crawled to our newer, more secure spot. Excited but also calmly confident, I had the sense, the image, that our tiny sounds were obscured by the riffle of the brook—that the buck was crossing the creek, and that in a short few moments we would see him appear on the other side, in that more open area, as if he had walked onto another stage.

  No sooner had we gotten settled than indeed we saw a deer enter this other, more open stage—but it was the doe.

  She walked among the giant trees, exposing herself almost the entire way—and Mary Katherine asked if she could shoot this deer.

  “No,” I said, tenderhearted, “she may still be with that yearling. Let’s wait on the buck. I think he’ll be coming.”

  The doe walked on, then, aiming for that little knoll, where—as if we had already seen it in a vision—she paused, then disappeared over the back side of it.

  Now the buck came into that clearing, following the doe’s trail as if fastened to her by an invisible packstring. He stopped at one point sixty yards out—“Take the shot if you want, and if you’re comfortable,” I whispered, to which Mary Katherine whispered, “I see him, I see him,” and again, I covered my ears—but then he started walking once more, and I felt Mary Katherine relax with disappointment, though still eager, still ready.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ll get another chance. He’ll cross right through there, and I’ll blow on the grunt tube, and when I do, you be ready, because he’ll stop. You don’t have to shoot, but if you do, hold steady, exhale, and squeeze cleanly.”

  We waited, watching the deer cross his final steps toward that place to which, if you are so inclined to think about such things, he had been striding for forty-eight years, or for all time: and we watched, together, as if counting his final paces, as he moved nearer that spot where I would blow on the grunt tube and, distracted from one purpose, he would stop and turn and look in our direction.

  Mary Katherine’s and my breath rose in twin vapors. The buck kept moving through the old larch forest. Soon his path would carry him beyond us. I raised the grunt tube to my lips and blew, and—again as if we, with our imagination and desire, or something else with similar design and desire, had planned such—the buck stopped broadside in the open and looked in our direction.

  “That’s a good shot,” I whispered. “Take it if you want it.” And once again, I covered my ears, and watched.

  I had not expected her to hit it. I had expected her to shoot high, or low, or not at all. I was delighted to hear the concussive sea-roar for which I had been waiting and, despite being hopeful and having planned for success, was astounded to see the deer hop hunch-backed, all four feet off the ground like a bull in the rodeo, and then take off running.

  “I missed him,” she lamented. “I don’t know how, but I missed him.”


  I laughed. “No, you got him,” I said. I pointed to the knoll. “He ran around behind that and then fell down stone dead. You’ll see.”

  She shook her head. “I missed him. I can’t believe it,” she said. “I missed him.”

  “No,” I said, “I guarantee, you hit him.”

  She wanted to get up then and go see, but I explained to her that we had to wait. Generally an hour, I told her, but with so much snow down, we could cut it to a half-hour wait here.

  It was a pleasure to sit quietly with her and replay the hunt in each intimate detail, and to praise and brag on her, and to see her pride and pleasure at such discussion, leavened as it was, however, by doubt.

  It was a wonderful microcosm of our life. She was in a hurry to go ascertain her success, or lack of success, while I was delighted to be enjoying the moment, savoring that required waiting time. She was in a hurry to grow up, while I wanted to wait quietly just a little bit longer. One more year, one more month, one more week: this half hour, this moment, anything.

  We sat and talked quietly, until we began to shiver. I kept telling her not to worry, and she kept worrying. It was a good transition time, I realized, for her to adjust to the reality of what had just transpired, and her participation—that she had indeed just killed an animal, which, as millions of people have pointed out, is not at all the same thing as walking into the store and purchasing it.

  We got up and walked slowly, quietly, to the place where the bullet had intercepted the deer. I purposely brought her in on its backtrail, so she could see in the snow the before-and-after of the deer walking, and then running, and the scatter of loose gray hair on the snow, and the blood sign that indicated, like a signature, the fact that we would soon be claiming this deer—but when we came to that divot-spot of hump-shouldered sky-leap, I could find neither hair nor blood, only tossed-up black earth and humus from the sharp-hooved bolt, and Mary Katherine despaired, believing in her teen heart, and not at all for the first time, that I was wrong and she was right.

  “It’s got to be here,” I said, still confident, though I have to say, I went from 100 percent to maybe 99 percent. I followed the tracks a little farther and finally found a few drops of blood, and four or five loose hairs. “There,” I said, though I was disappointed by how little there was. What if she had only creased his back, barely even breaking the skin? And after I had assured her otherwise. Perhaps there is no guide who has never been in this heart-sinking position, but it was my first time.

  We followed the tracks carefully, quietly, in case the deer, only lightly wounded, or perhaps not at all, should leap up in front of us. I showed Mary Katherine how important it was when tracking a deer to not step in its tracks: that you always needed to preserve the option of being able to come back and reinterpret things. That you could easily—and often did—get thrown off-track, and that when that happened, you would have to circle back and start over.

  I continued to be discouraged by how little blood there was and by how unhurried the buck’s gait was—the tracks seemed to indicate he was in control of his carriage—and by how far apart the blood spots were. I worried to myself what would happen when we ran out of blood spots, and when the buck’s tracks merged with those of other deer.

  Then the blood spots disappeared completely—after only twenty or thirty yards, we were tracking clean again—and I cautioned Mary Katherine to stop and look out into the old forest to see if the buck might be standing at the far side, looking back at us. It had happened that way with me many times, with deer as well as elk—the snort, the flag of tail, the unharmed animal curious and not particularly wary, during the rut, watching the hunter approach, and with the hunter’s eyes fixed on the ground, rather than on the path ahead—and although I was beginning to worry we might not find this deer, or that the odds were becoming longer with each step, it pleased me to realize that everything I was telling her, this fine last-day morning, was new information to her. It made me feel useful. The only thing now that could make the morning feel finer was to come upon the miracle of the buck piled up a short distance away.

  After forty yards, we came to an ice-bed where he had lain briefly, waiting quietly, while we had been waiting on the other side of the hill. There was very little blood there and I felt less assured than ever.

  It’s all a puzzle, all but an assemblage of pieces, always. Had the buck run those thirty or forty yards, knelt down, then leapt up at our approach? Or had he only lain there for mere seconds before jumping up and staggering on now, thrashing his way toward that final place that in his animal mind was surely only just a little farther on?

  I stopped, trying to slow time down—trying to fully inhabit and remember the moment, being in the woods on the last day of the season with my older daughter on our first hunt—and saw the buck piled up in more lodgepole not another fifteen yards away. Mary Katherine was still staring glumly at the vacant ice-bed.

  “Follow his tracks,” I said. “Keep following his tracks.” I was tempted to say just a little farther, but didn’t.

  And carefully, cautiously, she led the way: head down, moving from track to track—there was more blood now, a lot of blood, and broken logs and branches indicating a heaviness of passage, and I understood that all this had transpired in mere seconds, following her shot: that it was only with our cautious walking that we were seeming to attenuate it.

  She walked almost right up to him—was within only about seven or eight yards when she looked up and saw his long body lying stretched out over the fallen lodgepole, as if still in mid-leap, and with the antlers still held aloft, rather than side-tipped, tilting, as with many fallen deer.

  We approached him quietly, respectfully. I looked around at the day and said, “Thank you woods, thank you valley, thank you deer, thank you Mary Katherine, thank you everything,” and then we examined the animal and remembered the hunt a little further. I took some pictures of her with the animal, and then we set about cleaning it, and as we did so, I pointed out the organs, biology lab writ large.

  She helped, and afterward we wiped our hands in the snow, and then began dragging the deer out, and what a delight it was to sled, me with my aging body, that deer through the woods and over the fallen logs and down the mountain. What a delight, an honor, to feel so acutely, and in such celebration, my own mortality: a task that was once insignificant to me now ponderous and significant. I, too, stumbled and tripped, and stopped often to rest, but was able to gather my breath then and keep going.

  The ravens saw us moving through the woods and began to call and follow, and I imagined how timeless and normal it must have seemed, from their perspective—just two more hunters who had been fortunate enough to find a deer. They cawed and called to one another, wheeling and backtracking our tracks, to that point where we had cleaned the deer.

  Did they know anything, I wondered, of the extra fire and joy in my heart, the pride and strange peace? Or were they simply calling, was it only another meal for them?

  I wanted them to know differently. I wanted them to know how this one was different. I wanted the whole world to know, but it was just me and Mary Katherine, moving quietly through the snowy forest, with everything around us and in us ancient and new.

  CREDITS

  “My Naturalist Mother,” Texas Monthly, July 2010 (as “Wild at Heart”)

  “Records,” Sports Afield, December 1994

  “The Other Fort Worth Basses,” Texas Monthly, November 1991

  “On Willow Creek,” Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, November 28, 1993

  “Deer Camp,” Texas Monthly, November 2011 (as “Eat, Prey, Love”)

  “This Year’s Hunt,” Texas Parks & Wildlife, December 2004 (as “Outsmarted by Turkeys”)

  “The Deer Pasture,” Field & Stream, November 2009

  “The Silent Language,” previously unpublished

  “A Texas Childhood,” portions published in Texas Monthly, March 2003, and DoubleTake, Spring 2003

  “Colter’s Creek
Buck,” portions published in Texas Parks & Wildlife, January 2005 (as “The Second Hunt”) and Texas Monthly, January 2011 (“Stuck Truck”)

  “Aoudads,” Texas Parks & Wildlife, November 2003 (as “Return to the Deer Pasture”)

  “Mary Katherine’s First Deer,” Gray’s Sporting Journal, September/October 2008