The Silence of the Deer

As a young lad I thought hunting deer was cruel and unnecessary.

Where I come from, a boy does not become a man until he kills his first buck. When I first witnessed a deer being shot, I didn’t feel special at all. I was horrified, although I did eat the meat that came from the bones of that peaceful animal.

According to men in Central Pensylvania, when hunting wild game, an adolescent experiences a rite of passage of sorts. It’s like when you see your first pubic hair. It’s similar to what our ancestors must have felt when finding food after not eating for days. I hunted for years but never experienced that rite of passage.

I was a sissy while growing up and not very good at hunting. Buck with at least 16 points on their antlers have walked into the cross-hairs of my rifle scope and I missed them completely. Sometimes I felt cursed because even my younger brothers bagged their first buck years before I did.

My step-father, known as “Bob Cat” on the CB Radio took me hunting for several years and could not throw me from his hunting nest– a tree stand, until I learned how to properly gut a deer. If the intestines are not removed from the animal shortly after its death, a risk of meat spoilage exists. I was not allowed to hunt on my own until I watched how to properly kill and gut a deer.

Finally after years of freezing my balls during December hunting expeditions, I witnessed the shooting of a deer. Bob Cat shot it. I refused to pull my gun on it. He slapped me and nearly knocked me from the tree we were in because I was such a sissy. He shot the larger of the two deer standing under our tree.

The doe fell to the frozen ground quicker that I ever imagined it would happen. It were as if all the earth’s gravity were placed on top of the doe.

The smaller deer, obviously still a fawn that had lost its spots but not its love for its mother, let out a terrible cry. I didn’t even know deer made sounds. But the cry sounded like that of a child screaming. Even Bob Cat had never experienced such a dramatic deer death.

Sadder still was how the fawn refused to leave its mother’s side as we climbed down the tree to fetch the food for our tribe. I cried terribly. Fortunately I didn’t put mascara on that day.

Bob Cat was so heartbroken that he shot the fawn too.

"That meat will be very tender." he proclaimed as he wiped a tear from his whisker.

My rite of passage didn’t come through until years later until after my dear Shawn the fawn fell to the frozen ground as if all the earth’s gravity were cast down upon him.

I cried like that baby deer in the woods of Three Springs when AIDS shot him.