Hunting For Meaning
The first animal I killed as a young boy was a small song bird. I was at my family’s ranch between Uvalde and Leakey, TX and I was armed with a Daisy BB gun. Not yet brave enough to cross the creek behind the house or to let the comfort of manmade structures out of my sight, I hunkered down behind a large, random boulder neatly placed at the foot of a small cedar tree, just beyond the fenced yard of base headquarters (the ranch house). I was patient, stealthy…breathing lightly through my mouth as I was taught, in order to make as little noise as possible. My effort was rewarded with a tiny song bird landing on a branch not more than three feet from me. I had already cocked the Daisy so I gently pushed the safety button to fire, exposing the ominous red ring indicating danger was imminent. With the moves of a leopard, I slowly slid the tip of the barrel over the lip of the rock. At this point the exit hole for the BB was less than two feet from the mighty bird perched on the branch above me. I took aim. My breathing slowed. I lined up my sights and centered my trusty Daisy into the breast of my prey. I slowly exhaled and gently squeezed the trigger….PUUTT! The Daisy bucked into my small shoulder and I blinked in conjunction with the discharge. When I opened my eyes, the bird was nowhere to be found! I panicked and raced around the rock, scouring the branches for my trophy. It was long gone…or so I thought, until I noticed movement on the ground below me.
I looked down, and at my feet was the bird that had been happily sitting on the branch just a moment earlier…and it was still moving! Ever so slightly, attempting to breathe with a BB lodged in its chest. A small red spot of blood appeared on its feathers as it struggled. I was frozen. A lump appeared in my throat and I dropped my gun. All of what I expected disappeared with each breath of the struggling creature. I never considered my BB would not kill the animal, and honestly I hadn’t thought much past the hunt itself. I dropped to my knees and scooped up the song bird as tears began to burn my cheeks. My misery increased when I heard the tiny whistling sound it was making with each labored breath. Working myself into a frenzy, I had no idea what to do next…so I did what any sensible young boy would do. I gently placed the bird on a soft patch of grass so it would be comfortable, grabbed a scoop shaped rock and quickly dug a small trench in the loose dirt below the tree. I then ever so carefully picked up the wounded (still alive) bird, placed it in the trench and then covered it with the loose dirt. I piled a handful of rocks on top of the shallow grave so animals couldn’t get to the body (again, not quite a dead body) and marked the grave with a tiny cross shaped stick. I sank into the rock until I gained my composure, allowing time for any signs of crying to wear off, before grabbing my gun and trudging back to the house. I never told my dad what happened when I saw him, but I thought about it nonstop for the rest of our trip. As much as I was able to at that point in my life, I had my first serious internal struggle regarding life and death.
A year or so later I witnessed a deer being shot for the first time, marking the first time I experienced a large animal, larger than me, having its life taken. I had previously seen many deer cleaned at the cleaning station. Men standing around in the cold, enjoying a colder beer, as the hunter was celebrated and the story was relayed to each new face who showed up. The animal, usually field dressed in order to preserve the meat, was systematically skinned and often times quartered while family and friends were gathered just close enough to be supportive, but not close enough to be asked to contribute to the work in any way. I had seen it numerous times, but I had never actually seen the actual act of killing, just the aftermath. The occasion came about due to an intense rain storm followed by a heavy snow storm as the temperature dropped. My entire extended family was at the ranch to celebrate New Years when the weather turned…and it really turned! So much so that every road getting into the property was washed out and inundated under feet of water. There were at least twenty people there and we had no way to leave the property. To reach the ranch, one had to travel over ten miles on dirt roads through four other ranches. The roads crossed multiple low water crossings that had to be continuously maintained. When a serious flood occurred, it could take weeks to get the roads back into order using graders and bulldozers. We were trapped. And worse, we were trapped with little food.
Behind the ranch house, we would spread corn and routinely have a herd of twenty to forty deer show up each evening for our viewing pleasure. They were never hunted, just there to watch. However, this was about to change. I distinctly remember the adults having a conversation about our food supply and the need to kill a deer in case we ran out. My uncle pitched the idea of killing one from the herd behind the house and the adults agreed it was a good idea. My dad did not allow me into the backyard, but he did allow me to watch through the window as my Uncle Bobby crossed the yard to the back fence with his rifle in hand. It was dark and the deer gathered under a large floodlight while they ate. I had my face pressed against the glass as Uncle Bobby leveled his rifle toward the herd. Fire exploded from his weapon and the herd exploded in every direction…all except one. I will never forget the image of a large doe writhing in the misty light, giving up her life, with the still silhouette of my uncle leaning against the fence, waiting for her adrenaline to wear off. She quickly calmed and stopped moving as the blood left her body. It became hard to see her, as a whitetail blends in almost perfectly with its surroundings when it is still. I like to think my dad allowed me to watch the event at that young age as this was truly a matter relating directly to nourishing our family. It was a great learning experience about what it takes to feed humans. It marked a different contemplation about life and death…not so much about struggling with the concepts, but about accepting them.
The first dead human I saw was the body of my great grandmother, “Granny”. She was visiting my aunt in New Braunfels when she died in her sleep. Having experienced two deaths first-hand, there is a lot to be said about drifting off to sleep and never waking up. However, there is not a lot to be said if one is trapped in the room with the one dying in their sleep, which is exactly what happened to my aunt. My aunt was involved in a car wreck in 1979 that left her paralyzed from the neck down. She has limited use of her arms and once she is in bed, she is not going anywhere on her own. It so happened that Granny was sleeping in the same room as aunt Cindy, when Granny decided to give up her spirit. Cindy, who was sleeping less than five feet away from Granny, had a front row seat to the entire process, including the associated sounds…yes, I know, it literally is a scene from a movie…probably a horror movie or maybe a tear jerker about family, loss and some sort of sappy attempt at redemption. To sum up, Granny died. I remember walking into the church and seeing her open casket at the end of the aisle, in front of the altar. I could barely make out her nose poking up above the lip of the casket. I got nervous and began the long walk forward. With each step Granny grew closer and became more visible. I didn’t know what to expect and I prepared for the worst, but the worst never came. When I was standing directly next to the casket, staring at my great grandmother, all I could think about was how she looked different…not dead, not necessarily like Granny, but a weird alternate version of Granny. I was indifferent. I cried because everyone else I loved was crying, not because Granny was dead. I know now that, at that time, while I accepted death, I had no understanding of it. I had no awareness of its finality for the one who dies and those who are close to the deceased. In my mind, Granny was gone and the world moved on with one less person…there wasn’t anything to be done.
Sometime soon after the death of my great grandmother, I killed my first deer. I honestly don’t remember the details of the hunt other than it was an old four point buck. The whole experience is a blur. I remember sitting quietly in the cold, shivering. I remember the old deer emerging from the brush. I remember shaking uncontrollably and realizing that this is what buck fever feels like. I remember trying to center my scope on the animal and how the buck fever made it almost impossible. I remember trying to slow my breathing so the tip of my barrel would stop moving up and down with each breath. I remember squeezing the trigger. The funny thing is that I don’t remember actually killing the deer. The next thing I remember is the deer hanging at the cleaning station and attempting to help my dad clean it. I remember one of my dad’s friends or one of my uncles using deer blood to paint my face to commemorate my first kill. I remember another friend of my father’s seriously explaining why killing one’s first buck required that the animal’s testicles be tied around the killer’s head for the remainder of the evening so everyone would know the killer had taken his first buck. I wasn’t keen on this idea and successfully negotiated an understanding that the blood on my face was enough. Basically, the buck fever turned into an adrenaline ride for the next three hours, bringing me lots of attention, but leaving me surprisingly unaffected by the killing of my first large animal.
I believe it was my third or fourth large kill where things changed. At this point, my dad trusted me enough to allow me to hunt alone. He had seen my skill with a rifle, he knew that I was safe with my weapon, he had taught me how to field dress an animal that was almost as big as I was and he wanted me to learn how to be quiet and attentive on my own. I was stationed on a cliff above a large valley, and from my vantage point, I could see almost 400 yards up one side of the valley and 200 yards down the other. I could monitor all the hillsides sloping into the area and watch the creek-bed that wound its way through the underbrush. Given my wide view, it always amazed me (and still does) how a large animal can suddenly appear directly in front of the hunter, meaning it had somehow negotiated the hundreds of yards in either direction, the hillside or the creek-bed without a hint of its existence. A large sika buck seemed to materialize out of the ground, in a clearing just over 100 yards from where I was stationed. He was impressively large bodied with decent antlers. A sika is considered exotic wildlife and is not indigenous to Texas. It looks almost like a miniature elk and has a dark brown coat. Years before, a rancher had introduced exotics in the area, and given the rough terrain, they soon spread throughout the range and were now almost as plentiful as whitetail. I knew immediately that I was going to shoot him and began taking slow steady breaths, trying to slow my heart. He was walking right to left in front of me, moving from the creek-bed out into the meadow. As soon as I felt calm, I centered my aim just behind his left-front shoulder, waiting for him to stop. He paused, presenting a broadside shot to me. I was ready and slowly squeezed the trigger. The Remington 25-06 slammed into my shoulder as the crack of the bullet igniting echoed like thunder throughout the valley. The powerful animal wheeled quickly to the right, took two steps and collapsed. I quickly chambered another round and watched him through my scope, waiting to see if there was any movement. He lay there motionless for several minutes…I knew he was dead. I unchambered my round, slowly packed my gear, identified a marker in the valley near his body and began hiking down to him. I knew it would take me twenty minutes or so, as I was high above where he lay. It felt good to get the blood moving as it was cold and damp due to a light rain. My legs loosened up and I began the trek through the brush to the old jeep trail that would lead me down to the valley floor.
I carefully placed each foot on the loose rock as I descended into the narrow valley. I reached the bottom, crossed the dry creek-bed and negotiated the short ascent into the meadow that held the animal I killed. I waded though the tall grass where the sound of each footstep was swallowed by the dew covered ground, leaving me alone with the rain and my own labored breathing, where the ghost of each breath in the cold, humid air disappeared as quickly as it appeared. I wound toward the old stump that was serving as a temporary grave marker and stopped. There he was, on his left side with his back facing me, his dark coat blending in well with our surroundings. He did not struggle upon my approach, he did not leap to his feet and bolt up the nearest hillside to get away, he did not turn to face me…he was dead. His heart and lungs were no longer working as I had destroyed them in less than an instant.
The rain continued to fall in a slow pitter-patter, unheeded by the wind. I glanced up to my left at the limestone bluff I had been hunkered upon earlier. A mist rolled down its face, mingling with cedars and oaks. The sky was a dull shade of white that hid the blue behind it. Beyond, the blue turned to empty black, marked by the occasional ball of gas or rock. Light from stars long dead, was just arriving. Everything in the universe was exactly the same as it was before I pulled the trigger on my rifle and purposefully upset nature. I stood in awe of what I had done and wrestled with the weight of my decision and the gaping hole that had ripped in the fabric of time that morning. It may seem melodramatic, but until a hunter feels this weight, he or she does not understand their own responsibility, or the importance and seriousness of hunting. For me, it was the moment I pulled back the veil on mortality. For the first time, I caught a glimpse of death as it truly exists on Earth. At this point in my life, I can’t say I was a Christian beyond occasionally attending mass and being forced to take part in the sacraments of the Catholic church. Heaven was a concept, not a hope or destination. The deer opened the pit that morning and allowed me to witness the sudden and violent crashing of this world and nothing.
My hair stood on end as I fought with the realization that death is final…for the deer and for me. For my father, my mother, my brothers…for everyone I knew or would ever know. This was the great mystery, the point where you and I cannot travel until we get there. It was horrifying, mesmerizing, shocking and strangely comforting, to know every creature on Earth would one day make this journey.
I gulped down the lump in my throat and thought about how Native Americans would often times thank the animal they had killed. I knelt down, placed my hand on the shoulder of the animal, and literally thanked him for allowing me the great honor of taking his life as tears welled up in my eyes. I sort of thanked God as best as I knew how. I was overcome with gratitude, a feeling of profound responsibility and a deep understanding of our own fragility. I was a different person than I had been while sitting on the edge of the cliff earlier that morning. At the age of twelve or so, I understood death.
As I get older and watch our youth move farther and farther away from traditions like hunting, I worry. Killing pixels on television with video game systems, seems to be quickly replacing the act of actual killing, where young men and women used to have the privilege of confronting their own mortality. Its odd to think that in order to understand my own mortality, I had to take a life.
I think about the young soldiers we send overseas and can’t help but wonder about the transition from killing make believe characters on TV to killing humans and the rates of PTSD those soldiers have upon returning. I imagine wrestling with mortality on a desert street or in the barracks after surviving a firefight is exponentially harder than what I experienced in the valley that day. But I also wonder if our young soldiers had the chance as a child to wrangle with death, maybe they would be better prepared when facing the topic on the battlefield.
I see around me a world that is growing up disconnected from the land, looking down at a screen rather than up at the sky, where words travel through cellular towers. A world where there is a comfortable cushion between many of our daily interactions and what is real. A place where we can say anything we want on Facebook, because ironically, its not face to face…where we treat others in ways we would never dream of if they were sitting in our living rooms or at our dining tables. We forget we have one common end. Everything else is merely chatter.
A year ago, my great aunt Thressa, who passed away within the last year, sat me down in her house across the street from my parents house. She was a retired Catholic nun who would sit at her window in the front room of her house, just “enjoying God’s presence.” She would sit and and just be…not praying, but basking. She sat me down, and said, “somewhere we went wrong.” I asked what she meant. She responded, “Somewhere along the way, we forgot we all die…and that’s what this is all about.” Amen.
I recently took my oldest son, Jake hunting for the first time. We didn’t kill anything, but we had the chance. I let Jake make the decision and he chose to let the animal live. In fact, he went so far as to wave his red coke can out the window of the blind in order to scare the animals off! But I had the extreme privilege of watching my son have his own confrontation with death and got to walk with him through that experience. Of course I respected his wishes and we spent the rest of our time in the blind watching the animals through our binoculars, eating peanuts, taking videos, laughing, being cold, being silent in God’s creation and in the spaces between Jake’s strained attempts to speak in whispers, wondering what comes next.
Videos!
#1 – Hunting without a gun, only binoculars, with Jake (3.5 yrs) He discovers his tongue in the iphone. 2013
#2 – Hunting with a gun when Jake (4.5 yrs) decided to pass on shooting. He discovers his breath in this one. 2015
South Llano 