图书标签:
发表于2024-11-24
Deer Hunters 1995 Almanac Deer Hunters Almanac pdf epub mobi txt 电子书 下载 2024
Deer, going south.
It s a Monday in deer hunting
season, and I m rolling north on the
highway, watching deer headed
south.
Buck on a mini-van.
Doe in a homemade trailer.
Two bucks in a truck.
Stifflegs, hooves to the sky,
brown bodies lashed and strapped,
soft muzzles lying on cold steel.
It mvst seem to someone not part
of this hunt like a cold, crude thing,
the river of deer headed south.
There is no tasteful way to haul
home dead mammals the size of
deer, no graceful way to get that
meat from the woods to the freezer
without laying it out there for God
and everybody to look at.
Antlers, ears, red slit in the
belly, spindle legs, all in a 55 mph
glance.
The critter-on-the-truck phenom-
enon is almost unique to deer hunt-
ing. Moose are usually too big to
haul around in one piece. They re
most often cut up and lugged
around in sections. Grouse and
pheasants and ducks and other
small game are tucked away in the
bottom of a boat or in the comer of
a pickup bed, out of sight to all
except maybe the dog that retrieved
them when they fell.
But there are those bucks, one
tied up on each side of a red all-ter-
rain vehicle in a wooden trailer
bound for points unknown.
What we can t know, can t see,
those of us passing in the opposite
direction, are the stories that travel
with those deer. For the hunter in
the truck, that isn t just 130 pounds
of venison on the roof of the family
mini-van. That s four days of wait-
ing for five seconds of activity on a
platform in a tree in the woods.
That s three days of walking the
woods before the season, checking
for signs that the bucks are still
using the old, familiar territory.
That isn t just a mammal
strapped to a machine. That s inter-
minable waiting and gray skies and
a chickadee on a gun barrel and an
alarm clock clanging in a dark
shack and a hoof crunching on brit-
tle leaves and a piece of brown
between two trees where it wasn t a
moment ago. It is heartbeats and a
held breath and an opening and a
shot. It is tired legs and a friend s
help and a trail of hope as tenuous
as a piece of deer hair on a dogwood
sprig.
It is, finally, suddenly, merciful-
ly, the brown form on the snow,
perhaps a prayer or a tear or at
least a quiet moment on one knee,
red forearms in a body cavity, the
continuing and deeply felt involve-
ment with a winter s worth of din-
ners. Not just a deer, but a story.
Not just venison, but a process. Not
just a life taken, but a life given.
It isn t pretty, no, headed south,
hooves up. Not nearly as neat as
the Big Mac youql order and have
handed through your window at the
next town. That somebody else has
calved and penned and raised and
fed and killed and cut up and
trucked north and tossed on a grill.
评分
评分
评分
评分
Deer Hunters 1995 Almanac Deer Hunters Almanac pdf epub mobi txt 电子书 下载 2024