The Best Hunting Stories Ever Told

by Jay Cassell

  I know that one explanation for such happenings might be that a hunter can become so familiar with a stretch of landscape—so wedded and connected to it—that his or her chances of success are sharply enhanced. And to some extent I believe that’s true—that there are certain specific areas, like individual fields or wild gardens, that speak deeply to a hunter—areas where that hunter’s comfortable, landforms which he or she understands more deeply and intuitively than others, though for no known or apparent reason.

  But I think that within those wild gardens, there are smaller areas or pockets that are more akin to what I consider not so much the body of the earth, but its wild DNA: or individual cells, at least, within the larger body, which—as long as all else remains healthy—will continue to regenerate, producing their various mysteries like magma upwelling through a vent or fissure in ceaseless birthings. I want to believe that.

  A hunter who knows his or her half-million acres, or million acres, may hold a dozen or two such places in his or her mind, like talismans in a small leather pouch. There is a joy to be had in finding new places—particularly in following the winter tracks of animals into a new wellspring-place—but there is a deep pleasure also to be had in returning to those specific sites with which the hunter is already so intimately familiar—some unique flex or crevice or compilation of landscape that draws, and nurtures, a certain species of animal, and a certain kind, year after year (and in that manner, nurturing the hunter, too).

  All the way up, this last afternoon, I was pushing hard—hunting attentively, on the way up, but focusing also on the singular image of picturing myself up in that quiet place at the top, sitting there in the last moments before dusk, and watching. If I pushed hard, I could still make it: I was right on schedule.

  A herd of does crossed the steep slope in front of me, passing from north to south, and I paused to watch them in the early gloom. The first of December, with good snow and ice underfoot. It felt more like winter already than autumn. The does passed on by, and I hurried upslope, on through the place where they had crossed. I was hunting hard, but strangely, I had stopped wanting a deer again, and was wanting only to get to the top of that ridge, to sit quietly for a few minutes before dark and watch the light fade from the sky, and from the season. That was the only image I had, and it was an idea that brought me peace.

  As I got closer to the top, the slope grew even steeper, and the snow became more wind-scoured, until it was like a shield, a frozen skin sculpted to fit perfectly the curve of the mountain. There was no purchase for either my hands or my feet, so that I had to kick little footholds, step by step, into the frozen shell: but I knew that once I reached the top—very soon now—I would be able to rest in my hiding spot and watch and wait.

  And now that I was closer—maybe twenty yards from the top, but moving slowly, punching out each step one heel-divot at a time—I was, almost as if bidden to do so, beginning to imagine a buck passing through that spot.

  It wasn’t about desire, any more—or rather, not desire for a deer—but instead, the desire to be in that spot, that place—that cell—at that one certain end-of-season dusk—and that in so doing, the drift of a deer might be intercepted.

  So intent was I upon gaining the ridge that I had stopped hunting, and was instead only mountain climbing: ascending into the icy, windy fog, with the mist hurtling past. I was taking caution not to slip and fall, I was concentrating on the last few steps, and then, finally, the last handhold of exposed wind-scrubbed rock, with which I could pull myself over the top.

  I’m not sure why I paused and looked to the north, over to the other side of that stone chute, the stone chimney. But something turned my head, as I paused to rest for half-a-moment before pulling myself up over the ridge; and when I looked north, I saw a wonderful mule deer buck walking through a little opening about a hundred and fifty yards away. He had just come out of the trees and was crossing the ridge on the other side of that chimney: circling around, perhaps, to the very place I was hoping to get to, and where I’d been imagining a deer. It seemed that we were both angling in on the same place, and that I just happened to have glanced over and seen him converging—as if previously, he might almost have been traveling in parallel with me.

  He stopped and lifted his head to test the wind. I crouched quickly and kicked in another foothold, and an elbow-hold, and tried to find the quickest and best fit of my body against the curve of that slab of ice. My heart was still pounding from the exertion of the climb and I was not yet ready to fire—I watched the big deer through my scope, but the image danced and wavered—and although I was anxious and eager, I was not overly so; it was enough of a wonder just to be seeing such a deer, and particularly under such dream-like circumstances.

  There was another, smaller buck with him, hanging back, half in and half out of the trees, but my focus was on the one out in front. I don’t know why he remained there, looking around—he had glanced in my direction, but I do not think he had seen me, tucked in tight against that snowy cliff-face, and with the wind gusting and the blueblack hues of nightfall rushing in—and it’s even possible to believe that that big buck understood somehow that it was the end of the season, and that with the challenge of the hunting season draining away in the last of the day’s light, he was pausing, preparing already to step ahead into the next challenge, the greater depth of winter.

  My breathing had stabilized, the deep raggedness was gone. I braced against the cold rock, held steady, and squeezed.

  A complete miss: the deer did not even flinch. He turned and looked in my direction, and took one step forward. I bolted another bullet in, braced, squeezed—and missed. Again the deer stood still. The brass of my bullets rained onto the rock and made a tinkling sound. I fired again, elevating a notch—believing that the deer might be farther out than I’d estimated—but again he merely stood there for a moment, though seconds later he whirled and ran back into the forest from which he had come. For a long time afterward, I could hear the thunderous compression of his stot as he galloped, flying for thirty feet in a bound, straight back down that chimney.

  After he was gone, I sat there for a long while in the new silence. I had not even finished absorbing all of the onrush of good luck, so that while I was disappointed at missing, I was still feeling great about having seen the animal, and having had a chance. Always, in this kind of situation, you wish you could do it over again, you wish for one more chance—but certainly, I couldn’t complain.

  I traversed back down the ice-shield, kicking new steps, and crossed the chimney and waded through the deeper snow to go check out the tracks—to be absolutely certain the animal had not been nicked, and to follow his tracks on down the mountain. I knew I wouldn’t get another shot at him—the light was sliding away as if following him all the way down the mountain—but I could at least follow his tracks out.

  I had completely forgotten about the smaller buck. I suppose subconsciously I had assumed he had galloped on off down the hill with the big deer, but I wasn’t thinking of him at all when I reached the tracks, and was instead examining the snow carefully for blood sign.

  I heard some little noise back in the trees, or glimpsed some movement, I’m not sure—and looked up and saw the face and antlers of a mule deer looking at me, from not fifteen yards away.

  I didn’t know if it was the big one or the small one—I just saw antlers—and though I’d found no sign, my first thought, for the deer to still be there after all my shooting, and so close, was that it was wounded.

  The deer saw me, and whirled and bounded. Without thinking, I raised the rifle and swept the scope over it and fired just as it jagged around some trees.

  I had no idea whether I’d hit it. I’d only been trying to get another bullet into it, believing it was wounded, in the snow, at dusk. I went to the spot where it had been standing, watching me, expecting to find blood or hair, which I could then track, regardless of whether the snap-shot had connected, but there was nothing. Oh, I though
t, a mistake, a bad one, a dumb one. I shouldn’t have made the snap shot.

  I took a few more steps, looking for possible new blood from my hasty shot—fearing the worst—and found some.

  It was nearly true dark, now. Maybe thirty seconds of legal shooting light remained, or maybe a full minute, by the clock: but it was dark, cloudy, wintry, waning.

  Ten more steps—true dark, now—and I came upon the incredible gift of a mule deer buck lying stone dead in the snow, as if he had been there forever. It was the smaller deer, and the bullet had gone in at an angle, striking almost every vital organ in him.

  I think that there is a difference between fortune and luck. I was almost too rattled to even know how to begin to address my gratitude to the deer, the mountain, the season, and the chimney. It had been great fortune to get to see the big buck at dusk—to have been so indisputably summoned by it. But this—this embarrassing, in-your-face presentation of fool’s luck—almost shamed me, and I barely even knew how to feel about it. Grateful, sure; but shocked, too, by the rampant, excessive generosity of it.

  I tried to calm myself down by telling myself that clearly, it was meant to happen this way—but that didn’t so much calm me down as agitate me further, as I realized again that so much of it seemed to have already existed as if in some fluid, dynamic design. Why was I uncomfortable with such forcefulness, such generosity of both spirit and matter? Would I have really preferred to believe that I, and not the great world, was in control?

  I cleaned the buck in the new darkness, still disbelieving at my luck. I’d be home late that night, and my family would be thrilled. The weather was perfect for aging—I’d be able to drag the deer all the way down the steep mountain, atop the winter-deep snow, loose fur and redstain scribing a wandering sentence of success—of phenomenal luck—all the way down—and then I’d be able to hang the deer for ten or even fourteen days, no problem. It was still a couple of miles to the car, but downhill all the way—I wouldn’t even have to quarter the animal; wouldn’t have to return later in the night for a second trip.

  This, I thought, is my lucky year.

  After I’d cleaned the animal, I cached the entrails under a spruce tree for a marten, wolverine, coyote or wolf, and started down the mountain, rifle gripped in one hand and the deer’s mahogany antlers in the other.

  The sky was clear, it was gloriously cold, I was honored and ecstatic to have had such a hunt—to have hunted hard the whole season, which in itself was reward enough, without this incredible bonus—and because the mountain was so steep, and the snow so deep, I grew tired, though the deer slid along behind me almost as if flying.

  Sometimes the deer would accelerate and would slide into me from behind, trying to travel down the mountain faster than I could go; other times it would skate around in front of me, so that I was running along behind it. Once, I tripped and fell, but held on to the deer, as well as to my unloaded rifle, and rode the deer quite some distance down the snowy mountain, holding onto it as I might grip the neck of a horse swimming in the surf.

  I had to stop and rest often, panting. It was gloriously exhausting work, I was drenched with sweat and my old man’s muscles were aflame. The season was over, and someone, or something, had given me a deer, and I understood now to let go of the guilt and simply enjoy, and revel in, the generosity of that gift. At each rest-break, I would lie on my back, panting and staring up at the stars, ass-whipped, but knowing I’d be even older and more tired next year, and that these were the good old days.

  Go ahead and enjoy it, I thought, lying back in the snow and looking north, down into the snowclad bowl of the valley in which I lived. It won’t last forever, nothing lives forever: enjoy it. And while I was lying there, leaning against the body of the deer, my old body steaming despite the great cold, and with plumes of breath rising from my lungs, I noticed some electricity overhead: and as I watched, the first faint strobes of northern lights began to pierce the starry sky.

  And while I understood this was coincidence or perfection—that it was not about me, that I was but a gnat on one mountain in one valley on one cold winter night in one world—I was once again amazed by the extravagant density and perfection of this last day—the richness.

  Why is the world showing off, part of me wondered, and how wonderful it must be feeling, to be revealing so many secrets, and, What does it mean?

  I couldn’t answer any of those questions, of course. I could only keep saying thank you to everything I saw, and everything I remembered. And to write it down, when I got home, so that one day my children, if they ever wonder about such things, will know what it was sometimes like, late in the autumn, to go up into the mountains looking for meat.

  River Notes: Three Days of the Savage Life

  BOB BUTZ

  Friday, November 21

  I’m all by myself in this canoe, maybe on this whole river, given the time of year and the fact that for days they’ve been calling for one hell of a storm.

  Snow. There’s over a foot on the ground already, which makes it great for spotting deer. Shortly after the put-in this morning, I drifted by a pair of them—two does—bedded down under a cedar tree a stone’s throw from the water’s edge. For a moment, I considered my bow lying there unstrung in the bow. But then I thought better of it: the deer were too close, too soon. I paddled past without looking at them, without looking directly into their eyes, and they let me by without bolting, without so much as twitching an ear.

  I’m remembering now the color of their fur—a soft color of gray, like soot, almost as gray as the sky that weighs down so heavy now.

  Anchored now in a quiet backwater slough where the Boardman River flows into Brown Bridge Pond . . .

  A moment ago, there were mallards here—five drakes and a hen that shot up over the trees and circled twice before flying out high over the lake.

  Ducks are fair game on this float, and had these given me the opportunity I would not have been as disinterested in arrowing one as I had been with the deer. The only food in my canoe is a three-pound bag of potatoes and three cans of tuna fish. A Spartan diet. One I hope to supplement with some freshly killed meat before long.

  Trout fishing here earlier this summer, it seemed as if I was constantly walking up on deer bedded down on the riverbank. Of course, this got me thinking about swapping my fly rod for a bow come autumn. But the plan got pushed back to now what looks like winter.

  Certainly, there are wilder rivers in northern Michigan—more secluded waters to hunt and lose one’s self for a while. I fished much of the Boardman this summer, so I know the meandering course the river makes. Scattered along the upper reaches are cottages and summer homes, while the lower part is usually choked with canoers and beer swilling inner-tubers in summertime. But all of them are gone now thanks to the cold, gray promise of snow.

  As for the river—truth is, even an inexperienced paddler could float the length of the Boardman in a day. But I’m hunting, so I plan on stretching that a little. In A Witchery of Archery, Maurice Thompson wrote of “Three Weeks of the Savage Life.” I have less than three days.

  The Boardman is a river the young Ernest Hemingway fished on random sojourns from his parent’s northern Michigan home. And what fly-fisherman hasn’t heard the story of Leonard Halladay and the now famous dry fly he invented for fishing these waters, named after his friend Judge Charlie Adams. The river will take me back to the city—Traverse City—the place I moved to for a job one year ago, almost to the day.

  And as for my job, well, let’s just say I knew before I took it that I wasn’t cut out for the nine-to-five. But those paychecks that started coming in like clockwork sure beat the hell out of what I was making packing worms a bait shop. They had a way of making me overlook the fact that my back was starting to hurt all the time and my legs were atrophying to such an appalling degree that I would be embarrassed to bear my spindly shanks come summertime. Unlike others who seem to bulk up with inactivity, I’ve always gone the other way.
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  In a moment, I’ll pull the anchor and ferry myself over to shore. My plan is to set up camp and spend what’s left of the afternoon hunting. Waiting for the storm. After dragging the canoe ashore, I pulled it under the boughs of a cedar tree. There I cleared away a place to sleep. A shallow bed in the snow dug down into the leaves, down into the bear, black earth. I laid out a ground cover (a blue tarp folded in half), my sleeping pad, cold-weather bag, and the rest of my gear. The canoe placed over top formed a perfect makeshift bivouac.

  I hunted the hill up behind camp for nearly two hours and then made my way back toward the river. My bow is a 64-inch hickory selfbow. It’s one of the first bows I ever made, so it’s kind of clumsy and heavy looking. Although selfbows can be particular in inclement weather—specifically the rain—this one has never given me a lick of trouble. I’ve killed with it before, and so I have that much-needed air of confidence.

  The snow was soft and made for quiet walking. But instead of deer, all I crept up on were squirrels. Three grays and a black. I took a shot at the black squirrel where he sat on fallen log. It was a hurried shot and I missed, then spent the better part of a half hour digging for my arrow lost in the snow.

  It started snowing soon after that, a fine, heavy snow. There was no wind or anything, just the snow- flakes wafting down like a million tiny moths, so beautiful that I decided to sit and watch it pile up for awhile before heading back to camp.

  I cut down the hill toward the sound of the river, peeling a little bark from every birch tree I passed. Bark from the white birch makes good fire starter. It lights even when wet. It wasn’t long before my pockets were bulging with the stuff, and it pleased me beyond measure to be thinking of such necessary things.