In December the white-tailed bucks run does until their hinds are dark with sweat and they stand shaking and exhausted, surrendering to the insistence of the reproductive process. It is the beginning of deer-hunting season in Gadsden County, and just like everywhere else, the deer take a beating without much thought given to the well-being of the herd.
My neighbor’s motto (as it is with all the Bubbas in the Union) is a truculent “Shoot the shit out of dem sums-abitches.” A sorry state of obtuse thinking for a species about to celebrate the two-thousandth anniversary of the birth of a spiritual leader who advocated compassion.
Shooting deer in Florida is almost always practiced from a tree house, or stand, overlooking a mound of corn, beets, sweet potatoes, or anything else deer enjoy eating. Not to be confused with hunting, which by definition is the pursuit of game, this passive involvement with nature includes waiting, watching, and shooting; it is not hunting in the same manner that shooting doves is not hunting. Seeking, searching, chasing, ferreting out, or even casting aimlessly about the woods as I do applies to hunting. Sitting on one’s ass waiting for an animal to come to bait is just that: sitting on one’s ass, wearing dirty-looking outfits. The skills most sought after in this endeavor are immobility and the ability to shoot a bullet inside the radius of a Ping-Pong paddle at a hundred yards.
However, the ambushing of game (and man) coming to food and to water holes is as old as predation. And although elitists like me look down upon the sport as a form of mendacity, it has its merits, particularly for the voyeurs, the listeners, and the dreamers. Whenever I really want to get personal with nature I’ll sit in a tree stand and wait. I’ll wait as long as it takes for the entire natural world within the radius of my sight to manifest itself, and if I wait long enough and sit quietly enough I’ll fool nature’s tenants into resuming their lives unaware of the peeper in the tree, the peeper who by virtue of being alone with his beginnings feels a deep joy and pride in being alive and in a position to observe what others couldn’t care less about.
A few days before the deer season, my neighbor, Sergeant B. J. Pruit, calls on some friends and in a party atmosphere sight-in their rifles, crank some rounds, and suck on belly beers. The party starts slowly, a shot every five minutes or so, a walk to the target, a debate on velocity, elevation, grain, and powder—all the specifics that excite hunters. But as the afternoon lengthens and the beers settle and the time between drinking and pissing shortens, the tension on the range quickens and the momentum builds to a crescendo. Volleys of bullets scream through the air, bury into trees, fracture empty cans, fly aimlessly into clouds; shoulders ache, eyes redden, foam builds, and rational thought evaporates. Just before dark the countryside is at war with itself and afterward, long after the sun has dropped behind the last tree stump, a final salvo is loosened by those who simply can’t stop pulling on the trigger; undoubtedly the same nucleus of men virulently terrified that the prerogative of shooting at the night may one day be taken away.
In Texas I witnessed a fine example of sporting impatience at a camp where the deer feeders—erected on metal derricks, exactly one hundred yards from the tree stands—are automatic and noisy. Twice a day a pound or two of corn is loosened out of a solar-activated grain-spreader onto a plot of bare, sandy earth, a stage of coagulated blood hardened by the hooves of a thousand deer. Before the sound of the cogwheels has faded in Norman Nimrod’s ears, deer and turkey race out of the mesquite mottes to get a first lick at a purposefully scant amount of flying food. The shooter waits for the grinding of the gears to end and lets fly one hundred and eighty grains of lead at the biggest deer, forks over two thousand dollars to the smiling owner, and heads for home, full of temporary cheer and a flushing kinship with Daniel Boone. However, as there is no way of posing for a picture with a dead animal without looking retarded, the feeling eventually passes and the picture yellows on the wall. Death soils the best intentions and that is why blood and agony work best on the six o’clock news.