Deer Hunting in America
Shiflett, Dave
Dave Shiflett DEER HUNTING IN AMERICA The buck stops here—or was that a doe? „ T urn down the volume, Floyd. I think one's coming.” That's how you hunt deer in Prince Edward County, Virginia. In...
...There was one bright spot in theevening...
...The animal's hoofs are said to be capable of inflicting serious wounds...
...No, daddy, I mean inside my sleeping bag...
...He vomits through the night...
...Thank goodness no schoolchildren were walking home," I said, "or the deer would have run them down...
...That's when you blast them...
...RICHARD Few pleasures are greater than taking a New Yorker hunting...
...No tears were shed, however...
...It was almost time to start talking story placement and telephoning in an art order...
...The three of us searched the area, but found neither deer nor blood...
...Sure enough, four deer cut across the road into the pine thicket...
...Richard had on a blaze orange poncho and a hat of the same, meaning he could be spotted by airline passengers as they passed over the heart of Virginia...
...But no deer showed, and as Bill swallowed all this information, he did a commendable job on the beer supply, causing us to retreat to the store THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1987 19 to await the evening hunt...
...We stoked the campfire, turned on the radio, and fell to boasting...
...If this sounds familiar, it's because hunting is the most political sport going, and the anti-hunters, owing more to V. I. Lenin than Teddy Roosevelt, are creating demons from which to save the world...
...At the time of our trip, the death toll in Virginia was seven, the latest having been killed a few weeks before in Fincastle when he was mistaken for a turkey...
...If I turned around, I could hit Floyd's house with half a biscuit, no tailwind necessary...
...Having been up perfecting Bigfoot proof number four, I tell Christian of the rain that has been falling for an hour or so...
...I could hit Bill in the head with a dinner roll if I wanted to...
...All were spared, as it wasn't doe season, but seeing a deer in the field, even if you're an experienced hunter, makes your heart beat at about the same rate as hearing somebody jimmying your front door in the middle of the night...
...Big Bird's jackboot has not ground out the hunting spirit...
...It cannot be long before the state, with its game wardens and licensing procedures, is charged with sanctioning a religious practice...
...But wait a minute...
...Perfect weather," I said...
...Often, they'll stop dead in their tracks to see what you're whistling at...
...That's not how the sport is generally portrayed, of course...
...Get 'im...
...So we talk about Burt's head and shooting out of Floyd's living room and bagging gobblers with a sand wedge (kill 'em and behead 'em in one stroke...
...The dogs start to bark...
...We toast him when the spirit moves us...
...I saw three does, Richard and Bill saw nothing...
...And again, at 1:30 a.m., the child arises...
...proofs of Bigfoot's existence—and then drop off like a couple of bridge jumpers...
...Much pleasure was taken when civilization demanded to see a driver's license before it would serve Bill a beer...
...Instead, Richard's eyes glowed, as if the centuries had been stripped away, as if his eyes had never beheld a letter to the editor, a traffic light, or a vegetarian's scowl...
...You never see guys like my neighbor Eric, who apologizes to each deer he kills (like the aborigine in The Gods Must Be Crazy) and who spent days in agony because he was unable to put an injured deer (that someone else wounded) out of its misery...
...Once inside the tent, we get comfortable in our bags, converse about the usual topics—i.e., how it is that the sky never stops...
...Christian wants breakfast...
...And who is going to ticket a lion for eating a gazelle...
...The victim himself thought it an imposition, he being 54-years-old at the time of the incident...
...Who can say...
...For all I know, the children have been taught that deer grow up in stable homes and become Methodists...
...So of course it is possible to shoot a deer from an Oldsmobile, Bill...
...As was expected, Bill and Rich quickly adapted to this sybarite's paradise...
...But they'd better start shouting the good news from the rooftops soon, because guys like Bill and Rich are all that stands between us and a life of mandatory oatmeal...
...We take our position on the benches and hold it half an hour or so...
...Having been informed that a New York editor was involved, the hunting party was given two rooms...
...I look around, but we are by ourselves...
...Don't know...
...Christian just wants me to kill a deer...
...I picked them up at five Tuesday morning and we were back at the vineyard just after nine...
...About two biscuit throws up the hill stands a gazebo...
...I pulled a lounge chair out of Floyd's aluminum tool shed, folded it out to full length, and reclined...
...Wonder how Rich will look on a peg leg...
...I hadn't seen him write anything about hunting since the last trip, and I might be wasting my time...
...Sadly, he had more Herod in him than anything else...
...But hunters are finding themselves forced to practice public relations to protect their way of life, and in this spirit I introduced some newcomers to deer hunting over the past two years, hoping they'd fall in love with it and tell a friend...
...Come 1:30 a.m., the boy wakes up...
...Allah Akhbar, as the Afghan hunters say...
...Soon after taking our stand, a deer sticks its head out of a thicket fifty yards away...
...Over lunch in a nearby restaurant (Brunswick stew, cornbread muffins, Bass Ale: $4.74) Rich and Bill spoke with great hope about an afternoon kill...
...A six-pointer fell...
...I could see her Newsweek column clearly: "The Day I Gut-shot Bambi...
...BILL Bill's not the most widely-read editor in Washington, but I figured Meg Greenfield probably wouldn't come along and besides, Bill's shot squirrels before so he's halfway there...
...We went back to the store to wait for Burt, who would be along to direct us to Floyd's house...
...Years of watching "Sesame Street" and Disney may have ruined the boy...
...Knowing that, he might go home and denounce hunting as a waste of time, and probably win a Pulitzer for his trouble...
...Without them, I was lost...
...He was not similarly discomfited when a local poacher was gunned down (30-06 from 103 feet to the back of the head...
...At the latest, it's nine o'clock...
...Richard drove down from the city Monday night and stayed with Bill, who had absolutely been begging me to take him hunting again...
...But he was the surest bet...
...But son," I say, "we can't shoot these...
...Another joins the first...
...As Burt tells the story, the young doctor on duty at the VA hospital in Richmond sawed the top off an old skull and capped him with it...
...Cigarettes burned freely as Black Sabbath roared...
...At Yale this year, for instance, the gun-melters protested the annual hunt by dressing up as deer and prancing through the woods...
...The season had started a couple of days before, and Mildred, who runs the register, said they'd checked about forty bucks so far, some of them very large...
...After a dinner of lasagna, shrimp, and beef, Christian and I head back to the tent...
...The memory of a man who was kicked by a deer flashes into the mind...
...I look again...
...Two of us sat on chairs with our backs to a logging road while a third member of the party sat facing us...
...God was with me...
...Gotta eat, don't we...
...Truth be told, Bill, those high-powered guns are pretty loud, especially when you shoot them indoors, so the best thing to do is slip out back to do the killing...
...In Floyd's living room you can watch television and keep an eye out the window for the deer who walk up in his backyard in the late afternoon to eat his grass and garden...
...Burt came down with a kid who acted like he'd never seen anyone get stuck in a driveway before and they pulled us out with a chain...
...I must admit to having snoozed a bit...
...Then there was the accident in Minnesota, where a young man took a long shot at a deer, missed the animal, and hit his mother, who was standing in her kitchen 250 yards away...
...So the power of the pro-hunting position depends on beliefs that are under constant challenge...
...This time, he retches like a sick dog...
...But the facts about deer hunting are fairly scarce these days, for a fairly typical reason: the truth gets in the way of a higher purpose...
...Bill and I figured that if all we saw were a couple of does, Richard would have plenty to talk about...
...It almost came to pass...
...No antlers...
...Just as a realtor can tell lies all the way to the estate, the hunting advocate can whack the truth around all day, but finally he has to show his wares...
...Shoot the deer...
...We can't have the boy speared, can we...
...these kamikazes was "accidentally" blasted...
...And if Richard went back home and started talking about the benefits of deer hunting, maybe we'd see a big change in the national attitude...
...But as far as I know, no deer came my way...
...The replacement part was a little on the small side, so Burt's head drops in about half a hat size a few inches above the ears, but he's under one roof again and happy for it...
...Soon, he cannot be heard above the sound of the gentle rain that falls on our nylon cocoon...
...The hand gropes, the worst is realized...
...Who knows what the kids at school said when Christian told them he was going out to shoot a deer...
...We took our stands...
...Like most other salesmen, I was depending on the right atmospherics to help me drop my pigeon...
...I can see the deer blink...
...The afternoon hunt takes us to the side of a ridge a hundred yards or so off in the woods...
...20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1987 campsite, its hoofs thundering on the packed floor of the vineyard...
...As we sat around the oil stove, surrounded by Little Debbie pies and listening to the radio, Mildred shouted, "There go some...
...When the roll is called up yonder, Rich will no doubt show up with a rifle and maybe a hound or two, ready to go after the big one...
...The first I have ever seen do so...
...But Bill wanted to come back next year...
...He looked surprised, having obviously been taken in by the Calley-in-the-sanctuary myth, in which hunters sleep in swamps, trudge over mountains, and parachute into prairies to get a drop on their innocent prey...
...As we approached our destination, my apprehensions increased...
...The anti-hunters, mostly from the left wing, have more political experience than their opponents...
...All the hunters have on their side is a long tradition (6 million years by some estimates) and the truth...
...Again I commend officer Wyatt L. Overton for a job well done...
...Shoot, daddy," he says again...
...This is how it is, brother: Burt, Floyd's father-in-law, doesn't think you even need a gun...
...Fish killers get off easy...
...The moment of truth has come...
...No deer pass...
...This was a disappointment to me, but a night in the rain might sour him, and I was depending on him becoming the Saint Paul of deer hunting...
...A few moments later he popped out of the bushes...
...One was a buck...
...At the correct moment, with Richard standing at the front door and the host trying to figure out if his guests were about to be taken hostage, the Browning slid out of the case and hit the floor...
...We watch for about ten minutes...
...Deer hunters are presented as William Calley-types who enter the sanctuary of nature to do murder...
...The afternoon is uneventful...
...The O'Grady children leave for school...
...Hunters also wonder why trout fishermen escape all this abuse...
...Their opposition's weakness is exemplified by the fact that not one of Dave Shiflett is an editorial writer for the Washington Times...
...If you don't get a shot, you can at least catch the reruns or part of the news out of Richmond...
...From there, we are on our own...
...We taught him a little hunter safety and gave him a few tips...
...I can see their teeth as they munch a sapling...
...The gun cracked...
...Richard the sophisticated didn't have a gun, since Mayor Koch won't allow it, so I lent him my 20-gauge Browning...
...As we completed our chores, the sun set in the West, a tradition in rustic areas...
...Sure man...
...This seems impossible, but as Shakespeare pointed out, in the right circumstances, it's easy to mistake a bush for a bear...
...If I held the biscuit out in my hand, a deer would probably come and steal it...
...Look at the ground," Burt beamed...
...The first day was disappointing...
...W e slept the night at nearby Hampden-Sydney College because Bill didn't want to camp out...
...I thought...
...Shoot, daddy, he said...
...B ill saw three does the next morning, as did Rich...
...An existentialist Calvinist with a minor interest in snake handling, I hit the sack...
...Another old hunting trick is to whistle at deer as they run past...
...T t was raining and in the low 40s 1 when we parked the car at Throckmorton's grocery, our base camp...
...Maybe he was saying "Shoot daddy," giving an order to someone...
...The two soon fell into city talk, spending long hours listing the shortcomings of various neoconservatives...
...We pitched our pup tent at the bottom of a hill, jamming it with sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows...
...I slipped my 30-30 lever action rifle beside my bag, and Christian and I went out looking for dinner...
...This was not to be, but seeing deer run through a populated area could not but help the cause...
...I handed him the weapon, which he pointed over my right shoulder...
...He is carried to the farmhouse and laid on a sofa...
...He was converted in a big way...
...I don't want to tell him, for instance, that Ihave a perfect hunting record: ten years hunting and not a kill yet...
...Our party spent the morning on stand, with no luck, and returned to camp for lunch...
...Town Councilman A.D...
...01 Grady, who teaches at Hampden-Sydney, is famous for translating (along with colleague Paul Yagasich) the book that won the late Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert 1984's Nobel Prize in literature...
...It's gotten dark, so the hosts flick on the lights to guide us through the vines to the gazebo...
...Like most civilization lovers, Bill forgets that the arrangement is not without its irritants...
...They might hike their pinkies and curl their lips, but then again few of them spit on the floor...
...Bill had along his compass because he got lost once ona hunting trip...
...Both sleeping bags are soiled...
...the reason for ideas...
...The first salvo comes from the anti-hunters, who proclaim the right of animals to a long and productive life...
...I'm goin' out back and kill one with a garden rake, they've gotten so thick," says Burt...
...I told him about a trip I took a few years ago, one which took me deep into the woods—at least 200 yards from the nearest state-maintained road...
...Who knows what awaits us two biscuit throws from the gazebo, the last outpost of civilization...
...As we talked, I noted a sound from somewhere behind me and to my left, but one of my companions was recounting how he had brained a 14-point buck with a piece of soapstone from forty-five yards and I didn't want to interrupt...
...Two of the guests were big-city newspaper editors, time being of the essence...
...Shoot, daddy," Christian whispers...
...Off in the woods a little way, a deer is snorting...
...More good news awaited us inside...
...And you want to shoot them anyway...
...I'm not too late...
...Though so young, he realizes that we are in the process of separating ourselves from that which is commonplace and comfortable...
...We drove the two miles to Floyd's front door, parked, and hiked in, which is to say we walked around back, scattering a few cats and chickens...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1987 21...
...At the alumni house, his first act was to locate the thermostat and raise the temperature to tropical levels...
...I had no Taj Mahal to offer...
...Shoot, I bet even Meg's blood would have been up if she'd been there...
...Chuckie" Reid Farmville, Va...
...Neither has horns...
...Maybe I misplaced the comma...
...Deer tracks were everywhere...
...The camp is moved to the top of the hill, right beside the gazebo...
...I don't know if Seifert hunted deer, but he sure made life tougher for the Czech government, and he knew oppression, just like deer hunters...
...They're all over...
...Richard's first shot had been from about 70 yards, a respectable miss for a beginner...
...The situation is reminiscent of the pre-Reagan era, when conservatives tended, to let left-wingers take it all by default...
...In an attempt to improve his outlook, we took Rich up for a few glasses, of wine with the O'Gradys...
...CHRISTIAN As the new season approaches, newspapers begin running letters about hunting...
...I reach for the 30-30, but before I fire out the door to clear the area, the deer moves further out...
...We camped at the Rosebower Vineyard, which is about two miles from Floyd's house...
...You sit here long enough and some'll show up across the road," she said, pointing to a power line that cut straight away from us through a pine thicket...
...Who knows what the teacher might have said...
...The remainder of the trip was uneventful, save for when the Olds got stuck in Floyd's driveway...
...If such a right did exist, they point out, no animal has the right to kill another...
...One thing Richard was prepared for was other hunters...
...Bill went down to the far right corner of the back yard...
...From my stand I could see him easily, a great orange presence in the trees, like Mama Cass dressed by Stanley Owsley...
...I figured that the trick with Bill was to give him the comforts of home while making him feel like he's on a safari...
...Though the vineyard is an extremely civilized place, having played host to Stephen Spender, James Dickey, and other literary bigs, the feeling of being in an authentic wilderness is possible, especially when the proprietors keep the stereo turned down...
...Something might run by," I said, handing Bill a Budweiser...
...Now I know how Scrooge felt on Christmas morning...
...Bill, on the other hand, saw three does eating clover in the pasture behind Floyd's house...
...He decided to try his luck with a .357 Magnum pistol, and wondered, as we drove the three-and-a-half hours from the District to the Prince Edward hunting grounds, what his chances were...
...Then again, Bill is my boss, and if I didn't take him along he might toss me out in the street...
...In this case, the man was shot from 100 yards with a 30-06...
...And so I took my son deer hunting this year for the first time...
...In this way we passed the trip...
...The next morning we pack up andbeat it for home...
...At night's end, Bill the Episcopalian and Richard the Catholic got into a High Church debate about which sect serves the best wine at communion or whose priest wears the prettiest robes, or some worthy topic...
...This apprehension, plus, fear of an early interest in knitting or yoga, cause many hunters to introduce their children to the field at a fairly young age...
...Many are obsessed with their cause...
...W e rise just after six and decide to hunt the gazebo...
...The child is undressed, redressed, and admitted to my bag...
...Bill doesn't follow the logic, but a potential convert needs logic less than he does a sense of the possible...
...Three tosses and a chip shot beyond is the house where proprietors Tom and Bronwyn 01 Grady live with their two sons...
...Christian holds my hand firmly on the way down the hill...
...On the way, Christian says he always thought that deer could talk to each other...
...Had it gone off, it would have blown a big hole in Richard's head—although as we saw in Burt's case, the hole could have been patched...
...That's how deer hunters really are...
...The balmy atmosphere, flush toilets, and numerous gin and tonics caused him to blather on painfully about human progress...
...He also talks about bagging turkeys with a golf club...
...Officer Overton did a superb job at the intersection of Griffin and Main and with such manner as removal of his hat, placed over his heart until the procession was cleared through...
...We ate part of him for dinner that night...
...Shoot, daddy," he says more urgently...
...What happened next can only be described as a Godsend...
...I've talked to pulpwood cutters who say deer run right up to them while their chainsaws are going full throttle...
...I cried out...
...We drove to a quiet spot a few miles down the road and stood in the rain a few minutes to get the feeling of being in the wild...
...Once back in the woods, I lay down for a nap, and was nearly asleep when the Browning cracked...
...New Yorkers have a lot more country store in them than they're given credit for, and love to sit around and tell stories about their numerous exploits...
...The deer will keep moving to keep warm...
...Within three minutes, he's quiet as a yam...
...As usual, the intolerant side gets shrill early on...
...Again, early to bed...
...Hunters respond that no such right has ever existed, does not exist now, and will not exist as long as man eats meat...
...But then Burt doesn't seem to like guns much, probably because he once had the top of his head taken off by a blast from a 12-gauge shotgun...
...He was ready to give his life's savings to the building fund...
...Yes...
...Suddenly, it begins to run around the I told him about a hunting trip I took a few years ago, one which took me deep into the woods—at least 200 yards from the nearest state-maintained road...
...He was four...
...That's what deer hunting's really like...
...As we entered the Olds, Bill's neck looked swelled, as if he were in rut...
...They are does...
...Who knows who'll come out on top...
...In mid-lie, however, the storyteller, who faced me, signaled for silence...
...He pointed to my left...
...My eyes followed, and there, leaning against a tree, was a 12-gauge Remington pump, a true voice of authority in the hands of the police, and no slouch in the woods either...
...Mission accomplished...
...I suffered these outrages in good faith, that being the price of protecting sacred institutions...
...Instead, we went out for a few burgers...
...He would not have gone back to sleep if he had realized, as I did, that we were not alone...
...Daddy," he says, "it's wet in my sleeping bag...
...Hunters become "murderers" and "carcass chewers" and are said to have severe inferiority complexes and/or infatuations with the Ramboism of the Reagan years...
...So sure, Bill, if Burt can live through that, you can get a deer with a .357 Magnum pistol...
...We beat it down the power line, hoping they would bust out into open territory so we could get a shot...
...Then we returned to the Oldsmobile and climbed inside...
...I longed for a hunter's camp and the inimitable pleasure of reaching into the cooling rib cage of a hanging deer to cut sweet meat, the greatest of delicacies, especially when roasted over an open fire...
...I did drink my Ten High bourbon straight from the jug, hoping this eloquent display of manhood might head off the excesses he would later regret, such as reciting the works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning...
...Besides that, Richard would, enjoy being in a "quaint" place for a few days...
...And if he and Bill and other hunters pass the word, they will dine forever on venison steaks and O'Grady red...
...I sleep beside him on the floor...
...That's etiquette...
...Loaded down with guns, liquor, and mud, wepopped open the front door, only to find ourselves intruding on a dinner party for a candidate for the school's presidency...
...When I visited, she was teaching the old lie that the first Thanksgiving was held by the Pilgrims...
...You just stand still back there and they'll walk right up on you," Burt said as we left the store...
...It comes closer, and soon it is beside the tent—first at the foot, then at the head...
...He's got horns...
...I've done it in time...
...A llama is said to live in the surrounding woods, and the deerhave been so thick that lion dung was spread around the grounds to scare them off...
...You don't see 'em like that in the New York Times, do you, Rich...
...Bill and Rich both bought a case, leaving them behind as we traveled to the alumni house (Bill's idea...
...But the hunters respond with the calmness that accompanies certitude...
...Thank goodness no schoolchildren were walking home," I said, "or the deer would have run them down...
...God's atmospheric hand was seen this time in a letter the local Farmville Herald ran while we were visiting: Editor, The Herald, I would like to commend officer Wyatt Lee Overton for the job he did in the traffic control for the funeral procession for the late Lionel M. Langhorn on Wednesday...
...This disposition, of course, drives their opponents up the wall, especially when hunters quote the Bible, which gives man dominion over the beasts of the Earth...
...Bill was primed...
...I told Richard that if he lost his bearings, just listen out for when Bronwyn came out the front door and shook the dust mop...
Vol. 20 • March 1987 • No. 3
