The sky was intensely black when I arrived at my hunting area, which surprised me. I knew the moon was waxing toward full, but it had obviously set before I arrived. I hadn't expected that. The stars were brilliant, startling, and Orion and his hound were already on the hunt, so sharp and clear you could almost hear the baying. Mars was as big as an egg, the perfect martial red color. I stood and watched a short while, letting the sensation of the vast universe spread over my head soak in a bit. Medicine for the inner man.

My moccasin-clad feet were wet to the knees before I had walked a hundred yards through the field, the chill, heavy dew dampening and deadening the sound of my movement. The sense of anticipation was high as I approached my intended spot. First day of a new season, unlimited possibilities.

I sat under a large cedar tree on the edge of a field, with some persimmon trees close at hand on my right front. The limbs of the cedar hung down in front, making a very effective screen for anything approaching in the field. I've seen many a deer in that spot over the years. I had arrived early, ninety minutes before sunrise, so I settled down and just watched the light ever so gradually build and the world wake up. A light, misty fog lay over the fields, and as sunrise approached the scene spread before me was worth the trip. Slanting yellow light broken into millions of beams as it passed through the trees, a rosy glow developing on my left above the new sun, the chill, crisp fall air, and the total quiet... well worth the trip.

Eventually I had to break into my reverie and get back to the business of hunting, because a doe and fawn showed up fifty yards in front and on my right, in the open, feeding toward me. Pure magic, the way they materialize like that. They meandered around in that area for twenty minutes, feeding close, the doe as close as twenty yards at one time. The wind was blowing from me to them, but not directly. Directly enough, though, because after a bit the doe perked up and began looking me in the eye, then turned and trotted slowly away. She never stamped her foot or blew, didn't raise her tail, but she knew something wasn't right and stopped seventy-five yards out, turned and stared for a while. The fawn continued feeding, but then became suspicious, also, turned and trotted slowly away, tail up and waving from side to side. Its tail looked as tall as it was. They both disappeared into the woods on the other side of the field. I was hunting a fat doe for my winter meat, which is what I always hunt, instead of bucks, and I realized I might not see another deer that close today, but there was nothing I could do. I could never get turned to cover them, they were too close, too far to my right and there was not enough screen between us. After years of hunting deer on the ground I've learned what I can get away with and what I can't when they are close in. I never even tried to put the move on that one.

Five minutes after they left, two big tom turkeys fed in from stage left like the next act of a vaudeville show. Full-bodied birds, moderate beards, twenty-five yards out and beautiful in the early light. Burnished copper iridescence. It took years for the population to increase to the point that we see them frequently on my farm, but nothing could please me more. My favorite wildlife.

After a bit I heard a rustling in the trees to my right and spotted a big fox squirrel moving toward the persimmon trees. They were loaded with fruit, and squirrels use them heavily when they are. I watched him for some time, moving about in the top, collecting and eating the fruit. We made an appointment for a later date, since I was otherwise occupied, today.

I decided to move to the edge of a small woods lot nearby, on the southern edge because the wind was northerly. On my way I walked near a small pond in the woods and saw about twenty-five wood ducks paddling about or perched on a downed tree in the water. Arriving at my chosen spot just inside the lot, I sat facing north, looking into an area of heavy brush and second-growth trees, with an open area to my back. About thirty minutes later a Cooper's hawk came streaking in from the left like a blue-grey arrow, three feet above the ground and ten feet in front of me, wings set and moving fast through the dense brush, death on the wing. He was gone in three seconds. How do they do that? Rather, how do they do that and survive? Time must run very slowly for them.

For some time all was quiet. I sat and watched, listened and ruminated, just enjoying being there. Dressed in settler's garb of 1778, with moccasins, leather leggings, breeches and linen rifle shirt, armed with a 20 gauge flintlock fowler, carrying a powder horn and leather shooting pouch over my shoulder, I was a time traveler in the most pleasant sense of the word. There was nothing I would rather be doing this morning, no other place I would rather be. I'm no longer a young man, and I don't know how many more years I'll be able to engage in the annual fall hunts I've enjoyed so very much for most of my life. They have been a sustaining influence on me for a long time. I cherish each one now like the last bottle of a wine of perfect vintage, anxious for each new taste, but knowing full well it won't last forever. Hunting in the old way, with the old guns and wearing the old garb has added a spice to my life which is impossible to describe to any but those who have already experienced it. Sitting there waiting for whatever was to come next, I was content. It couldn't be any better, whether the deer showed, or not.

Squirrels were out and about that morning, and first a fat grey and then a big fox squirrel passed through the tree tops nearby. I haven't been squirrel hunting for a while, must remedy that soon.

I sat for nearly two hours with no activity, and was thinking of interrupting the hunt for a snack. Then I saw the tell-tale twinkle of deer legs moving past the gaps between trees in a small thicket about seventy-five yards away. There is an open lane between my woods lot and the next, and the deer seemed to be moving along it, possibly headed in my general direction. It seemed to be a single deer, and the impression I got from its body size and gait was that of a buck. I eased my Jackie Brown 20 gauge flintlock fowler onto my knee and concentrated my attention. That makes the old pulse quicken, doesn't it? To no avail, though, it apparently wasn't coming my way. Nothing happened for thirty minutes, then there was that twinkling, again, in the same spot. This time there was definitely more than one deer, maybe three or four. Waiting again to find out if I was on their track, I had about decided not, when I saw an ear twitching only about thirty yards in front, behind a dense area of brush and downed trash.

I pulled the trigger of the fowler and silently eased the cock to full. For what seemed a very long time I caught glimpses of deer moving around over there, but never the whole deer. A twitching ear here, a moving leg there, the vague impression of a deer body or bodies. But, how many, what kind? Maybe three, one larger than the others, does? A doe with two large fawns? I just couldn't tell. They dawdled around for several minutes, and I had about decided that they would never show themselves and would wander away with the brush still screening them. Suddenly, the larger doe apparently caught a whiff, saw or heard something which alarmed her. Up shot her head into the clear, ears fanned wide, eyes as big as dollars, obviously standing on tippy-toes and about to bolt. I placed the tip of the front and only sight on my fowler between her eyes and held it steady there, while holding myself as still as a stone, because she was looking holes through me. I searched hard for a view of her chest through the brush, but it wasn't going to happen. It was the head shot or nothing, and I had never done that before. She seemed to get light on her feet as if about to explode into motion. When I decided she really was almost on her way and that I had no other choice if I were going to shoot, I squeezed off the shot. Instant ignition, let's hear it for flintlocks! Sometimes the cloud of smoke from the shot obliterates everything immediately, but not so this time. Before things disappeared I thought I saw her go down like a stone. I stood and began to reload, watching a white spot which I thought might be white deer belly moving a bit on the ground. It suddenly became still, so I stopped my reloading and walked forward. It was deer belly. She had been dead before she hit the ground, shot directly between the eyes.

So I had made meat once again. And it was that fat, healthy doe I was looking for. I sat down on the ground beside her and spent a few minutes just enjoying the moment, contemplating life, death, the predator-prey relationship and other non-trivial things. Such moments are important to me. Important to me only for what I make of them, of course. As Clifford Geertz said, "Man is an animal suspended in a web of significance he himself has spun." Such moments are significant to me because I choose to make them so. That is such a big part of our life, though, isn't it? And I choose to make this, for me, a significant event, a memorable day, a model of how a doe hunt should go.

That's the fourth deer I've killed within fifty yards of that spot, all with the flintlock fowler, all in period costume, all hunting on the ground as the old boys did. After a day like this one, I have no plans to quit. At least, not voluntarily.

Copyright © 2005 B.E. Spencer All rights reserved.