Posted on 03/23/2002 2:35:54 PM PST by antaresequity
I began to write a response to a fellow freepers post on a different thread. When I got done...I felt like posting this as a seperate article. Maybe this isnt the proper forum for these things...but here goes anyway...
Please indulge me and let me share a hunting story with you:
I grew up in Marin County California; specifically on the Tiburon Peninsula. Tiburon used to be quite rural in the early days and was a maritime train depot town. Freight from the North Coast would travel by train to the switching yard along the bay. There the 
rusty box cars and flatbeds piled high with lumber would be pushed by grease and soot covered steam engines onto large wooden ferries. The ferries would leave from Raccoon Straits and steam across the bay to the city. Upon their return, the ferry would would be loaded with cars carrying goods from distant markets that had landed at the Port of San Francisco. Those were the good old days.
As a kid I took up hunting in the hills and woodlots of the peninsula with a bow and arrow. Nobody in my family was a hunter, it was an endeavor I had taken upon myself. I had purchased the bow with the Blue Chip stamps I had collected working as a bag boy at our local market. Back in those days you hand carried grocery bags to the cars for the ladies in exchange for a few bits. Instead of taking cash I would ask for their stamps. It was an intrinsically wiser move, for the value of the stamps when redeemed at the Blue Chip outlet was worth far more. I bought many things as a youth this way. Bicycles, fishing poles, football gear, a compass to find my way...and a Bear youth re-curve bow with some spruce arrows.
I spent countless hours shooting into hay bales at the dairy near Blackies pasture. I was able to jump onto the slow moving trains and ride the flat cars out to the dairy. I practiced and practiced with that bow until I could hit a paper plate by moonlight at fifty paces. I would frequently practice at night as the days grew shorter in fall. The plate was an ephemeral light spot in the darkness. You couldn't see the flight of the arrow, but the sound of it punching through the plate would signal a hit. Practicing this way, the bow became an extension of my body and mind. I could stare down range, fixated on the ghostly plate. I would close my eyes and draw the bow, finding the target almost every time. It was a Zen like experience. Satisfied that I had achieved a level of skill worthy of the game I was to pursue, I turned my attentions to the hunt.
I spent countless hours and days in the woodlots and hollows stalking around with and without my bow. Unlike the rest of the kids who would walk the railroad tracks after school, I would head inland and walk the ridges home. I would pause at the hollows and gaze down into the wash beds that where choked with Madrones and Oaks. Late in the afternoon the deer would come up from the cool shade to 
graze in the warmth of the receding sun. There was a rhythm about it. As the sun would begin to set the deer could be found moving up to the ridges as they browsed their way east. Come sunrise they would be on the eastern side of the peninsula in anticipation of the first warming rays of early morning sunshine. The sun would then chase the deer back over the ridge to the west and the cycle would repeat. Spending time with them and the rest of Gods creatures alone on that ridge after school are some of the fondest memories of my childhood.
I began to name the different deer. Some because of a peculiar physical trait like Droopy, whose right ear never stood straight up. Some for their behavior like Mom, who always stood between danger and her babies. She always threw two fawns. And then there was Flattop. He was the wisest and largest deer amongst all of the herds. He had particular knack of always putting at least one valley or ridge between us. He was a magnificent animal. His antlers were unlike the other deer, they spread out very flat and wide and then swept up into a rack. I got to know this deer so well, I could identify him by his body silhouette, his gait and mannerisms. When I was walking with my friends along the tracks and gazed up the ridge at my hollows, I was able to pick him out of a herd that may be browsing along a ridge.
He and I developed a bond of sorts over time. I chased him for 3 years with my bow. I had numerous opportunities to kill other bucks, but I wanted him. We would play cat and mouse in the brush and woodlots, and he 
seemed almost to enjoy making a fool of me every chance he could. Many times I would stalk him only to have him double back on me. When I took to standing and waiting, he would stop on the trail out of range while his herd mates would ignorantly ambled by less then 20 feet away. He would then let out a little snort and move off in a different direction. It was an endless game in which I was trumped incessantly.
This went on for 3 years, and as I became as seamless in this environment as Flattop, I was able to draw closer and closer to him. I had made a deal with myself not to shoot unless I was assured a fatal shot. At times I was able to get within 30 yards, but a twig or branch stood between us, so no shot. Then one day the moment arrived.
This day I had not been seriously chasing around, and instead was more content to let time pass me by. I found myself daydreaming on a deadfall just off the trail. Squirrels were raucously cavorting in the leaf litter gathering acorns. Scrub Jays pelted the silence with there piercing gravely calls as they chased one another through the tree tops. Curious were those Jays; with a forest full of acorns, they they only wanted the one in their brethrens maw. The dappled sunlight danced across the forest floor as warm and gentle westerly breezes pushed up the draw. It was a surreal moment...I felt invisible as nature went on with life about me.
I reveled in the mastery of His creation, and a doe came running up the trail. As she drew closer, she would pause frequently and look back from whence she came. Passing less then 20 yards away, she paused in front of me, squatting to mark the trail. Finished with her business she took up her pace again, moving into the brush at the top of the draw.
Soon thereafter Flattop came into view with his neck slung low, cat like, stopping intermittently along the trail where she had. I knocked an arrow and made ready. While cautiously moving up the trail he paused in front of me where the doe had left her mark, and time stopped with him. He had a crazed look about him, his neck swollen and thick, 
all the hair on his face was gray as a ghost. He stood motionless for what seemed like an eternity. I raised my bow and drew the arrow back; all sound ceased in the woods. He was broadside at 20 yards and motionless. With a slow deliberate turn of the neck he looked straight into my eyes. They were black eyes and his nose glistened in the broken sunlight. He didn't plead for mercy, he stood accepting defeat, proud and at the prime of his life. I could have closed my eyes and killed him.
I dropped the bow and let the string back. For another long moment we stared at one another. The sweat rolled down my face and the olive grease paint stung my eyes. He turned slowly away and gazed up the trail towards the spot in the 
brush the doe had evaporated into. With a final askance view at me, he marched deliberately up the trail. His shoulders rolled like a crouched cat with each step, and his hindquarters rippled with pent up energy. He disappeared forever into the brush.
I ceased returning to the woods for a month or more, but when I did, I greeted many of my old friends, and did so without a bow. I would take a note pad to sketch or write and returned to that same spot in the woods. I wanted to see my old friend again but he was gone. The younger bucks seemed to carry a renewed sense of purpose about them as they jostled with one another. Winter was upon the forests and hills, and fresh green growth pushed through the fall die back. I exchanged my bow for a camera as time went on...and captured many breathtaking images of life in my forests and ponds, some of which I will share with you here. I never did kill a deer (1) and that old Bear re-curve hangs on the wall today as a reminder to the challenges of life. I learned allot about myself and the world we share in those woods. I have Flattop to thank for that. He is in heaven now and I am sure we will meet again.
1) I took up duck hunting and went on to be successful at it. I found that calling ducks was like playing a musical instrument, and I could make the mallards dance for me. I also learned to call geese with my voice, and once called an immature snow goose down from the fog and it landed in the parking lot at a hunters check station in the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. I believe I quit shooting ducks and geese shortly thereafter; I put the gun down in exchange for the camera again. I still go hunting with friends to their clubs and blinds, but not armed with a gun. I bring my calls and my camera and share the camaraderie of friends. The images I capture are never printed, and end up in the burgeoning file of slides I have accumulated. Perhaps someday I will scan more of these and put them on my website.
199 posted on 3/22/02 7:28 PM Pacific by Terriergal
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My response to Terriergal:
To: Terriergal
none of the guys I knew wanted to take a teenage girl in the woods.
man o man...where were you when i was a yungin?
212 posted on 3/22/02 7:43 PM Pacific by antaresequity
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HJ
man o man...where were you when i was a yungin?LOL! Man I saw that comin' a mile away! :O)
42 years ago but still a fresh vision!
I am the whimp...
It wasn't about whimping out...for fear of blood or killing...for I have killed much in my time...I have stared wounded deer on the roadside in the eye and cut their throats...I have killed thousands of ducks...
It was about respect for the animal that taught me more about myself and life than I could have gotten from decades of muddling through civility and society
That moment in time I can capture in my minds eye with ease...the lessons of life learned there, the lessons about myself in the scheme of things were a result of the challenge that both Flattop and I shared...
I have been and will forever be indebted to him, and my young self for "whimping" out...for going one step further and understanding that it isn't always the result...it is the lessons within the endeavor that make pursuit worthy
Wounded by cars on the road. Road crippled...that became road kill
Like Byron Ferguson who shoots aspirins tossed in the air.... he started by shooting at a candle in a dark room - until he made the candle go out.
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