later), and I saw him, not ten feet away, just as he left the ground, and I released the arrow and saw it disappear into the center of his chest, just vanish into him. He was already in the air and hit by the arrow when he saw me and he couldnât change the direction of his jump but he tried and so instead of hitting me full on, he twisted in the air and hit me with his side as he fell over me.
It was like being hit by a truck. I went down, arrows and bow flying. One of his legs tangled in the bowstring and in the violent kicking to get loose he broke the bow and several arrows that had been tossed out of my quiver as I went over backward. (I was indeed very lucky not to have fallen on one of the broadheads, the fate a year earlier of a man I knew. He fell out of a tree-stand onto one of his own arrows; the broadhead cut the artery on the inside of his thigh and he bled to death before he could get help.)
In this case, other than being soaked and covered with mud, I was unharmed. The deer had been hit solidly. The arrow had driven into the center of his chest and slightly up, hitting the heart almost exactly in the middle. After colliding with me, he had continued over in a sideways somersault, bounded to his feet, taken two staggering steps, then settled, rather than fallen, in the grass.
I was a mess, with broken arrows and the bow in pieces, string wrapped around my head and the deer kicking his last. I had been told to always test a deer by poking it to make certain it was dead so that it couldnât kick you when you leaned over it. But as I rolled to my feet and moved toward the buck, my hunting knife in my hand, I saw that he was truly dead. His eyes were glazed and gone and he wasnât breathing. I felt the sadness that comes with killing when you hunt but also the elation that comes with having succeededâit makes for an odd mixture of emotions. I gutted the carcass and cleaned it out with grass to keep the meat from rotting. Heat from the guts as they begin to decompose will cause this, even in hard winter, because the hair keeps the carcass warm and allows the internal organs to go off.
I had taken a very large buckâeven dressed out he was close to two hundred pounds. At the time I weighed about a hundred and thirty. I was in the middle of a quagmire swamp two miles in from the road where Iâd left my bicycle. And then it was four miles back to town.
I was to learn, as Brian learned later, that there is sometimes a huge difference between hunting and killing the animal and dealing with the results. I had to get the deer back to town, where I knew a butcher who would cut the carcass up into freezer-sized packages in exchange for a quarter of the meat.
I somehow horsed the buck out of the swamp; it took me well over an hour to go the short distance to higher, more solid ground. Once there I used the bowstring and my belt (I would never again hunt without a fifteenfoot piece of light rope in my pocket) to rig up a waist harness, which I looped through a hole in the buckâs lower jaw, then around my waist, so that I could drag the dead deer to the highway.
Sounds simple, doesnât it? I mean, I knew it would be hard work but it sounds simple. I would just take my time and drag the deer to the highway, then tie him across the bicycle in some way and push him back to town.
Except that I was dragging an animal that weighed more than me and there was no snow to make the dragging easier.
It was a nightmare. I started dragging in midafternoon and I had not gone a mile when darkness caught me. With the dark came increased rain, and I was on the verge of making a wet, cold, very dreary camp. I didnât have a raincoat on, just an old canvas duck jacket that was semiwaterproof, and I was soon soaked and getting colder.
I stopped dragging the buck before hard dark and set up camp in some willows. Luckily I was on the edge of another small swampâthere were hundreds of them in this
It was like being hit by a truck. I went down, arrows and bow flying. One of his legs tangled in the bowstring and in the violent kicking to get loose he broke the bow and several arrows that had been tossed out of my quiver as I went over backward. (I was indeed very lucky not to have fallen on one of the broadheads, the fate a year earlier of a man I knew. He fell out of a tree-stand onto one of his own arrows; the broadhead cut the artery on the inside of his thigh and he bled to death before he could get help.)
In this case, other than being soaked and covered with mud, I was unharmed. The deer had been hit solidly. The arrow had driven into the center of his chest and slightly up, hitting the heart almost exactly in the middle. After colliding with me, he had continued over in a sideways somersault, bounded to his feet, taken two staggering steps, then settled, rather than fallen, in the grass.
I was a mess, with broken arrows and the bow in pieces, string wrapped around my head and the deer kicking his last. I had been told to always test a deer by poking it to make certain it was dead so that it couldnât kick you when you leaned over it. But as I rolled to my feet and moved toward the buck, my hunting knife in my hand, I saw that he was truly dead. His eyes were glazed and gone and he wasnât breathing. I felt the sadness that comes with killing when you hunt but also the elation that comes with having succeededâit makes for an odd mixture of emotions. I gutted the carcass and cleaned it out with grass to keep the meat from rotting. Heat from the guts as they begin to decompose will cause this, even in hard winter, because the hair keeps the carcass warm and allows the internal organs to go off.
I had taken a very large buckâeven dressed out he was close to two hundred pounds. At the time I weighed about a hundred and thirty. I was in the middle of a quagmire swamp two miles in from the road where Iâd left my bicycle. And then it was four miles back to town.
I was to learn, as Brian learned later, that there is sometimes a huge difference between hunting and killing the animal and dealing with the results. I had to get the deer back to town, where I knew a butcher who would cut the carcass up into freezer-sized packages in exchange for a quarter of the meat.
I somehow horsed the buck out of the swamp; it took me well over an hour to go the short distance to higher, more solid ground. Once there I used the bowstring and my belt (I would never again hunt without a fifteenfoot piece of light rope in my pocket) to rig up a waist harness, which I looped through a hole in the buckâs lower jaw, then around my waist, so that I could drag the dead deer to the highway.
Sounds simple, doesnât it? I mean, I knew it would be hard work but it sounds simple. I would just take my time and drag the deer to the highway, then tie him across the bicycle in some way and push him back to town.
Except that I was dragging an animal that weighed more than me and there was no snow to make the dragging easier.
It was a nightmare. I started dragging in midafternoon and I had not gone a mile when darkness caught me. With the dark came increased rain, and I was on the verge of making a wet, cold, very dreary camp. I didnât have a raincoat on, just an old canvas duck jacket that was semiwaterproof, and I was soon soaked and getting colder.
I stopped dragging the buck before hard dark and set up camp in some willows. Luckily I was on the edge of another small swampâthere were hundreds of them in this
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