If You Didn't Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat?

by Bill Heavey

  As for the next moron hunter I bump into, fair warning: The gloves are off.

  Take That, Deer

  I started this deer season with the usual optimism, wondering if Milo Hanson and I could save on expenses by traveling the sport-show circuit together after I bagged my record buck. I did take a doe early on, which was encouraging. I mean, add 100 pounds and 220 inches of antlers and you’ve got yourself a retirement plan. But after a while I wondered if I weren’t just another gullible steer on the ramp to the slaughterhouse. Hey, must be some big fun going on in there or we wouldn’t all be bunched up so tight to get in, right?

  I kept at it. By mid-October, I had year-and-a-half-old bucks running under my stand regularly. But at that time of year a young buck is about as horny and clueless as an eighth-grade boy, and I wasn’t after the seed stock. Especially not when, at first light from 30 feet up a tulip poplar one November morning, I spotted something brown in the briers with antlers well outside its ears. The sight was so fleeting and the buck’s silence in that crackly brush so unnerving that two minutes later I was no longer sure I’d actually seen it.

  On another morning in trees so thick I ran out of shooting lanes as soon as I started climbing, I threw together a ground blind upwind of a trail that led into a deep, narrow slit of a stream valley. I had stolen my mom’s new outdoor watercolor seat—a lightweight three-legged folder—for this purpose. (Mom is not even 80 yet and quite spry, so I knew she’d manage.) After a while, I threw out some doe bleats. Usually my bleats have the slightly hysterical edge of a sheep being molested in a dark parking garage, but this time I immediately heard something crunching my way. I saw 4 points on one side as he closed in, and I clipped onto my bowstring. Then my rangefinder bumped against the bow and the crunching stopped. It was a standoff, an agony of waiting. I shut my eyes and focused on the inside of my eyelids, on the red-and-black formlessness there that reminds you the utility bills are due. I made myself breathe in through the nose for four counts, hold for four, exhale for four. I remembered—I have no idea why—being punished at summer camp 40 years ago for mouthing off to a counselor. I’d been made to stand outside the bunkhouse after lights-out with a brick in both outstretched arms while the mosquitoes formed a buffet line along me.

  Then the buck took another crunching step my way. Shifting ever so slightly to draw, I felt the stool going over backward. I went along for the ride. That afternoon I brusquely returned it to the woman who’d brought me into the world. Thanks for nothing, Mom.

  Next, having drawn an archery tag for Kansas, I invited myself to hunt the property of Richard Stucky, a farmer I’d pheasant hunted with once. I knew he’d be too polite to refuse. To my surprise I felt no qualms as he and his son, Steve, busted their humps to put me on the biggest buck I’d ever hunted. He was an 8-pointer headed toward 10, with tines that kept going long after you’d gotten the message, much like the poorer sort of revival speaker. With a rifle, I could have killed that sucker three times over four days. I thought I had him the first morning, 12 feet up in a creekbottom hedge apple, when I heard that telltale steady crunch. Trembling, I drew as the sound grew louder. One step more and … the luckiest possum on earth waddled into view. An hour later, the buck showed along the far edge of the bottom, just out of range and shielded by brush. I grunted. He stopped, looked my way, and bedded down. He stared in my direction for 20 minutes before standing, relieving himself, and walking on.

  That afternoon, Richard and Steve staged an elaborate push based on where they guessed the deer would be bedded. Steve approached on horseback to lessen the spook factor; Richard flanked him at a slow walk. Half an hour later the buck passed within 45 yards of where they’d posted me, walking but not scared, once again screened.

  On the fourth day, I saw a bobcat and heard a chorus of squirrels barking at it like PTA moms who have just discovered a registered sex offender in the neighborhood. Then, at last light, I heard two deer walking. The final smudge of sunset sky was turning gray and purple at the edges. Five minutes later they came out into the open. It was past legal light, but through my binoculars I could make out the buck with a doe, both standing broadside at 30 yards, relaxed and feeding. Those long, curving tines glowed radioactively in the amplified light.

  I’d done my best and come up short. He’d beaten me fair and square. When that happens, all you can do is take one last look through the glasses and grope for the words to salute your quarry. “You son of a bitch,” I said.

  Mr. November

  It was November, the great hinge on which the deer hunter’s year swings, and the only thing that mattered was being in the woods. I was driving on expired plates and taking my meals standing at convenience-store microwaves while my gas pumped outside. It didn’t seem right that my dinner cost $2.19 while my car’s was $35, but until they make a vehicle that runs on beef-and-bean burritos, there’s not much I can do about it.

  The wide-racked buck that had ghosted through the briers and into my dreams at the end of October paid me another visit on November 6. Inching up a yellow poplar that morning, I had been thinking that another 6 feet would be about right—good lanes and high enough to avoid detection—when a tug on my 30-foot tote rope stopped me short. That’s how gone I was, thinking 36 feet was a reasonable height. I had barely settled in when he came along, scent-checking for estrous does. I grunted. He kept walking. Louder. Seventy yards off, he froze, looked for the challenger at the base of my tree, let his eyes travel up. With three effortless arcs, he vanished into cover. I still hadn’t registered points, just that he was bigger than anything I’d ever seen in these woods.

  Nine days later, dusk overtook me in a tree downwind of what I fervently hoped was what biologists call a staging area. Suddenly, a doe scampered into the clearing and began feeding. The buck crashed through the bushes, grunting nonstop, not 5 feet behind her. All I remember is that she was drawing him away, that it looked like 30 yards, and that it took forever to find a lane and the spot behind his shoulder. Then he was running downhill as previously nonexistent does exploded like popcorn out of the brush. I had a fleeting memory of the shot feeling good. Then my mental odometer turned up all goose eggs. I did have the sense to climb down slowly, but I couldn’t have told you where he’d been, whether he’d been moving, or if my arrow had hit him. Nor could I find any part of the arrow, blood, or the divot he would have made on his first leap. I stood there, figuring that either I’d just shot at a huge deer or it was time for a psychiatric intervention. I needed to find out which.

  My friend Jay Wheeler and his son Joe, hunting nearby, came over when they saw me walking in circles. Joe found blood 40 yards past where I was looking. We followed the trail, one of us standing at the last drop while the other two looked ahead. There would be a big medallion of red, then nothing for 10 yards, then a pinprick of blood. In an hour we pushed the trail just 40 yards using my penlight. Then Joe went for a bigger flashlight and a rechargeable lantern, but at 6 P.M. he and his father had to leave. I blood-trailed alone for another hour, going an additional 30 yards before the flashlight died. I left the lantern glowing faintly at the last spot and raced to a store for batteries. Three hours later, I had gotten only another 150 yards. I would not allow myself to wonder if I’d killed him. My universe had telescoped down to the square foot of ground before me, to the text of leaves and dirt I was kneeling to examine. I hadn’t eaten in 10 hours, but I wasn’t hungry. I was feeding on light, leaves, and pinpricks of blood. At 10 P.M. the second set of batteries ran down. I backtracked to the creek for a reference point, whereupon I discovered it was now running uphill. I knew these woods, knew it was impossible to get truly lost. But the wave of panic that coursed through me knew things, too. I bushwhacked toward the faint glow of a distant road, stopping for neither bush nor brier nor my own hat being snagged off my head.

  The storm that moved in that night was worse than predicted and lasted for 24 hours. It wasn’t until the day after that I could get back into the woods. And th
en, at 8:30 on a sun-washed morning, I walked right to him, antlers bright against the dark ground. He was 104 steps from where I’d left the lantern, 20 inches wide, an 8-pointer with bases I could just encircle with my thumb and forefinger, the right brow tine broken halfway up. I’d taken out one lung but nicked the other. The only record book he’d make was the one that mattered: mine. I had taken the boss dog in this patch of woods. I stroked his flank, at last loosing the euphoria, relief, and sadness that floods over you when a long-held dream is granted.

  I took the next day off, rested, even opened some bills. The following day, sitting at my desk, I realized it was still November and therefore a good time to hunt. I shut my computer down and threw my gear in the car. Machines can always be turned back on. But November is a show that closes after 30 days no matter how good the reviews. The next one won’t come along for 11 months, and tickets to it are not guaranteed. I’d get around to the bills and the license plates. Right after November.

  VI

  IT TAKES A FREEBIE: FRESHLY RECYCLED BONUS SECTION FOR THE PAPERBACK EDITION

  Stalk Therapy

  Do you ever find yourself thinking about deer when your mind should be on other things? Have you drifted off in a meeting and suddenly realized that everyone is staring at you, waiting for you to answer a question from the boss that you didn’t hear? And so you had to wing it, responding, “Um. . . Maybe we’re rattling too often?” You may be suffering from chronic preoccupation with deer (CPD). This is a seasonal disorder affecting millions of men, often with devastating consequences for their relationships, jobs, and self-esteem. In addition to a weak stream of thought, typical symptoms include:

  • Frequent urges to go deer hunting.

  • A desire to go even though you just went.

  • Suddenly needing to stop the car to go.

  • Waking one or more times at night to go.

  If you have experienced even one of the above signs, you’re at risk for CPD. If you’ve had all four, you’re probably on my speed-dial.

  Although the exact cause remains unknown, researchers have studied photoperiodism, different game seasons set by states, and the relative brightness of Orion’s Belt as possible causes. Severity in a given year can be measured in lost workdays, total consumption of donuts (glazed, powdered, and crème-filled), and a Trail Cam Index based on the sales of Bushnell, Stealth Cam, Moultrie, and Cuddeback products.

  Scientists at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., are pursuing a promising theory: They suspect that CPD directly correlates to the thickness of the Cabela’s fall catalog. Others point out that this merely confirms lore widely accepted by hunters and their families. “Catalog be thin, your man stays in. Catalog be fat, your man’s crazy as a rat” goes an old saying popular among spouses and girlfriends in communities with a historically high incidence of CPD. Many women in these households now don rubber gloves when handling the tome, on the theory that Cabela’s coats the pages with a chemical that facilitates the onset of the disease.

  “I’m not saying for sure that they’re doing it,” said one anonymous woman. “But if they can make an arrow nock with a strobe light in it that glows for three days after it hits a deer, you know they’ve got the technology.”

  The good news about CPD is societal attitudes are changing. Sufferers need no longer hide their condition behind lame excuses such as: “I just realized I left a scent wick hanging and I can’t stand the thought that I may be spoiling the outdoor experience for somebody else!” or “I got lost between the parking lot and the mall and—it sounds crazy, I know— the next thing I remember, it was two days later and I was sitting in a tree stand.”

  Grassroots organizations are working to get CPD treatment covered by insurance programs. Unfortunately, the best therapy currently in use is hunting itself. Treating the disease with the disease may sound illogical. But for temporary relief of the primary symptom (an overwhelming itch to hunt), nothing has been more effective in clinical trials. The pharmaceutical industry, which cares deeply about America in general and you in particular, has been working overtime to bring relief. New drugs such as Antlatrol and Tarsaquel have shown enormous potential to counteract the hunting impulse. Studies show that their efficacy increases when taken with beer.

  Medication is not always enough. Sufferers may have to pursue more aggressive remedies, such as limb amputation, or, in severe cases, discussion of the condition with a spouse or professional. “Talk therapy,” as it is known, fills many people with dread. This is especially true for anyone who is currently a man or who is thinking of becoming a man. I know about this from personal experience, but years of counseling have given me the courage to share my story.

  Last October, I was driving down the highway when a sudden CPD attack forced me to pull over. I wanted desperately to go but felt I couldn’t because of my responsibilities. I became disoriented and broke out in a cold sweat. Finally, I began sobbing.

  “I’m so scared,” I managed to gasp to the woman next to me. “I’m worried that there’s a big buck cruising past my tree stand at this exact minute and I’m not there!”

  Although my companion was virtually unknown to me— she was the saleslady accompanying me on a test-drive of a truck—I was amazed at how much better I felt after this simple confession. Meanwhile, she had bailed out of the vehicle and was running down the shoulder of the road at an impressive clip. Instead of feeling ashamed, I realized that I was admiring the skill with which she covered ground. I couldn’t have run that fast in heels. Feeling better, I drove back to the dealer. Then I went hunting.

  Like Father …

  I am 13, as sullen as they come, sitting on what my father insists I call the port side of the sailboat as it cuts through the waves on Lake Champlain. I wouldn’t be out here now except for my certainty of two things: (1) the farther from shore, the bigger the fish; and (2) there’s got to be a honker swimming around down there with my name on it. Back in the cockpit, my father studies the bellied sails like a shaman reads cracked bones. He heels over a fraction more, squeezing the last scintilla of speed from the boat. Mom frets and studies me, wishing for the magic words that would reconcile a warring father and son. I ignore them both, the better to punish them for being my parents.

  It’s all wrong. The boat is too fast, my Dardevle spoon too big, the hardware-store rod bent nearly double under the forces at play. My arms ache. But I’d swim home before letting him see me give up. No one in my family—me included— understands what pulls me from bed at dawn and down to the dock. I don’t need to understand it. I just need to fish.

  Meanwhile—and I won’t appreciate this for decades—my father is experiencing something approaching absolute joy. For him, this is the most elemental experience of nature possible: the hand of the wind upon the sails, his own hands on the sheets and tiller, a dance essentially unchanged across thousands of years. His son’s lack of interest in sailing baffles him. He made me go a few times when I was younger, but I whined and barfed and he eventually stopped pushing it. The truth is, I rejected his interests solely because they were his. Thus has it ever been between certain fathers and sons.

  Suddenly, the rod jumps. Despite my vow of punitive silence, I shout, “It’s a fish!” The drag on the Zebco squeals. My little rod arcs deeply. “Stop the boat, Bill!” my mother yells at my father. “Stop the boat!” We turn into the wind.

  “I’m doing the best I can, Betsy,” he answers. “We’re not driving a car, you know.” The sails collapse. Untensioned wires slap idly against the mast. I reel furiously and at last bring to the side a clump of rubbery weeds. When I see that it’s not a fish, I burst into tears.

  Skip ahead four decades. The first time Dad loses control of his bowels while I’m dressing him, my biggest concern is limiting the damage to his pride. “You shouldn’t have to do this, Bill,” he croaks sadly.

  “Hell, Dad, you wiped my ass for years,” I say, lapsing into the mild profanity with which we solidify our conn
ection when there are no women around. “Well, that’s true,” he murmurs. He is nearly 90, a shadow now, body and mind ravaged from strokes and dementia. One day he insists we have to replace one of the gunnery crews before the next German submarine attack on the convoy. Sometimes when he becomes agitated like this, we sing. Songs, with their mutually reinforcing words and melody, reside in a part of his memory still unburglarized by time. When I start in softly on the Navy Hymn—that triumphant, mournful anthem stamped into his subconscious at the Naval Academy more than 60 years ago—he rises from his delirium. In a voice that belies his wracked body, he joins me (“Eternal Father, strong to save/Whose arm hath bound the restless wave”). I sing until my throat closes up and I turn my head so my tears won’t fall on him (“Oh hear us when we cry to Thee/For those in peril on the sea!”).

  A week later the hospice nurse tells us that he is going, and that although he can’t respond, he can still understand. I hold his hands and tell him that I love him. That he’s been a good husband and father, and that because he was these things he was always teaching me, even when it seemed I wasn’t listening. I tell him that he has taught me to take care of the family. That if he needs to let go, we will be all right.

  Death is not gentle. It’s harrowing to witness the combat of dying: the soul struggling to take its leave of the body and be born into the new world, while the body clings ferociously to its habit of living, even if the living is over. It’s appalling. It’s also holy. I know that I’m lucky to be here, to see him off in his own bed. I hold his hand when his soul catches air and sails out to sea.

  Three months later my mother, sister, daughter, and I are back at Lake Champlain. I’m in the boat shed, sorting coiled lines and foul-weather gear, when it dawns on me that what my father loved about sailing is exactly what draws me to hunting and fishing: seeking the natural world on its own terms, feeling wholly alive, touching something larger than ourselves. He hunted the sea and I sail the woods, but I am every bit my father’s son.