The deer stumbled into a corn stubble field some 250 yards from where we had emerged from a shelterbelt on the south side of the field. The remaining corn stalks appeared broken, dry and fallen over into rows covered in fresh snow. The field ended in a semi-circle bordering a cattail slough left dry by a summer with no water. The cattails that had stood tall with cotton-ball heads, now brown, arced from fresh wet snow, creating low tunnels and cover for local fauna.
Even at the long distance, the white background backlit the whitetail buck and revealed what we suspected — a broken front leg, rivulets of blood running down the leg into the snow.
It was the Sunday of the second and last weekend of the November deer season, and my dad and his best buddy, Eddie, had taken their deer early in the week. Eddie had arrived for the butchering of the deer earlier that morning, and the hunters sat and drank coffee, reminiscing a bit before the work started.
I hovered around the table, absorbing the hunting talk as I suppose only a 10-year-old can.
About the time the two hunters got up to get to work, a pickup pulled up to our farmhouse. Two young fellows, dressed in red and blaze orange, clearly deer hunters, got out.
A nephew of Eddie’s and his partner had wounded a deer the day before and were unable to find it. They had tracked Eddie to our place, hoping he would come to help them find the deer. They talked for a bit, and Eddie was familiar with the area where the deer had been lost.
When Eddie asked Dad if I could go along, my heart sang. If it had to do with hunting count me in.
We traveled back-county roads some 12-15 miles before pulling over near a long shelterbelt running east to west. A wheat stubble field bordered the south side, and an 80-acre section of what was then known as soil bank — now known as CRP, short for Conservation Reserve Program land — bordered the north side.
Soil bank is land that farmers leave alone to grow wild and provide cover for wildlife of all sorts. This chunk of ground had been growing for a number of years and had tall grass, willow shrub, chokecherry patches and plenty of young saplings. Lots of cover and food for deer, and that’s where the deer had been lost.
Eddie had one of the young hunters stationed at the far northwest corner of the soil bank while we spread out and moved through the field. The thought was to move the deer and take it when it broke into the open on the other end.
The deer did move, but it moved out, concealed by a fence line we hadn’t seen from the other end.
The tracks in the fresh snow offered evidence the deer had been hit in the left front leg. Blood in the snow and drag marks from the injured leg told the story.
The fence line ran north for a half-mile and abutted another back road, with a shelterbelt on the other side. Eddie had the two young men go back to their truck and drive to the shelterbelt while he and I walked the fence line, following the deer tracks.
The deer stuck close to the fence line, the tracks revealing the difficulty it had. Spots where it had stumbled and fallen, leaving pools of blood, and the scuffling that showed the hardship of righting itself.
A deep ditch bisected the fence line, and the deer had fallen and slid backwards before another attempt took it across. Lots of blood. I had a queasy feeling in my stomach.
Young as I was, I had a thorough understanding of the life and death cycle that plagues every living thing. For an animal to survive, other organisms must die. The death does not have to be at your hand.
My hunting upbringing stressed the importance of killing cleanly, with the minimal amount of suffering.
When I was about 7, we had a steer that needed to be butchered. It stood in a stall built in the pasture for the purpose, and Dad came up alongside the animal, rubbing its flank with one hand, while the other hand placed the .22 pistol barrel behind its ear. He pressed the trigger and the steer dropped like a stone.
Dad told me then that that’s how all animals should be killed, with no suffering. I never forgot it, and this deer we followed didn’t fit the script.
As Eddie and I followed the track, I began to have a sense of urgency. To that point, it had been hunting, just like any other hunting. The clear evidence of the deer’s struggles changed the feeling. I just wanted to find this deer and end its suffering.
I suspect Eddie sensed the change when he said, “You have to take enough time to do this right, or you’ll end up never finding the animal.”
We made it to the next shelterbelt, where the two hunters waited. They had not seen the deer when it crossed the road and went into the trees. The shelterbelt was maybe 100 yards long, and Eddie had the two split up and go around each end while he and I went through the middle, still following the tracks.
We had just gotten through the trees and saw the deer when the shooting started. There were puffs of snow all around it as rounds went by, missing. In one motion, Eddie dropped to a sitting position, raised his rifle and pressed the trigger. The big buck dropped in the snow, dead.
Grateful the deer was dead, I joined in celebration with the two young hunters, relieved and happy to have their deer.
When we were driving away that day, Eddie said to me, “Now you know why your Dad and I work so hard at our shooting skills. No hunter wants an animal to suffer like that.”
The day left a mark on me, but it would be many years before I completely understood its significance.
It’s easy to know things. We fill our mental file cabinets with all sorts of knowledge. Most of it comes with small amounts of real-time perspective. Often we make judgments from some knowledge without understanding what it means from every perspective.
A few weeks ago, I found myself writhing in pain on a death bed, hoping for relief, be it a gunshot to the head or a shot of morphine. Anything to make it stop. I flashed back to the image of that deer, and I finally have a complete understanding of why those moments in time, so many years ago, have meant so much, and have served me well.
Steve Meyer is a longtime Alaskan and avid shooter who lives in Kenai.