The Ten-Point Buck

My high school friend got married during her senior year. That is not a scandal. The scandal is the day that she chose for her wedding.

November 4th. Opening day of deer hunting season. Everyone at school is horrified. The concept is unbelievable, insane.

She is a seventeen-year-old girl who should know better; she grew up around here.  Her husband, twenty years older, should know better. Not surprisingly, the courthouse is empty on the day those two crazy kids get married.

Deer hunting is the male-dominated sport that takes over all of life and conversation each fall in Northern Minnesota. The anticipation of getting your hands on a folded piece of paper with a thin metal tag attached to it is like Christmas to any man over the age of twelve.

You either want one, are getting one, or have applied for a doe tag that year. Applying for a doe tag is for people hunting meat, not trophies. Trophy hunters are ridiculed. They are that mysterious gang of “people from the cities” who “come up nort” every fall and only want trophy bucks.

“What a waste.”

That statement, followed by a spit onto the ground, is the proper response whenever someone mentions trophy hunters or hunters from the cities.

Long before boys discover girls are different, they dream about deer season. As soon as they are old enough, or complete the NRA gun safety class at school, they buy a deer tag. In classrooms, hallways, and on the bus to and from school, the only topic of conversation is deer hunting.

On opening day, school is excused for kids old enough to hunt. Many take advantage of the day off, but few kids actually go into the woods. Yet every year, their tag gets filled and registered. The wives, daughters, and sons deemed unsafe with a gun are the purchasers of the “reserve” tag. The extra tag is for the deer that is too small, or the big buck that was shot just a little before or after the season. Every hunter knows where to register an extra deer without displaying the carcass, making the venison in the freezer legal.

The old men gather in the evenings beginning in September. Coffee or beer, cigarettes, and Mom’s chocolate-chip date bars fuel endless hunting discussions.

Where are the deer trails? How many deer are people seeing? What time of day are they moving?

Someone is always identified as a suspect of feeding deer to attract them. A dirty trick, everyone agrees. But if a little grain accidentally spills from the combine in the north field, well, that is different. No one needs to bait the deer in our area; the white-tailed deer here are fat and lazy. They live on haystacks in winter, grain and corn in fall, and clover-filled alfalfa fields all summer. Baiting them would be overkill.

I know that long before winter starvation feeds too many wolves, the whitetails discover our haystacks and silage pile. Nature eliminates the weak and old, but the young and hungry find food. On winter mornings, I scrape frost from the window and look out at a herd of beautiful deer eating the fruits of my summer labor. Lazy bastards.

When Dad starts hunting legally, he tends the deer like a shepherd tends a flock. When the snow drifts reach our hips, we ride horses through the woods to “check on the deer” and look for wolf kills. If we find evidence of wolf kills, it means the deer are starving and weak. Deep snow prevents them from digging down to the grass. If the bark has been stripped from low branches, the deer are desperate.

If Dad suddenly yells, “Whoa, you son of a bitch!” my mare has spooked and is dragging him through the woods. I learn a lot about nature from my father.

As we ride through the woods, Dad watches for paths and patterns. Deer are creatures of habit. He knows they will follow the same routes next fall. While tending his flock, he is already planning how to ambush them during deer season. Every observation becomes intelligence for the strategy meetings around the kitchen table.

The first sign that deer season is approaching is the arrival of Cousin Darius. The son of Dad’s sister, our Aunt June, was born during World War II. To me, he is ancient. Older than Donna and Tubby, and they are old.

He stands taller than Dad and weighs more than three hundred pounds. Darius speaks with the Finnish accent that he learned from his father. The combination never seems right to me.

A giant man with the voice of his father, a short, thin Finnish farmer. On top of Darius’ head sits a ten-gallon cowboy hat decorated with enough pheasant feathers to suggest an entire flock sacrificed itself for the cause. With a little room to take off, the hat could gain altitude. The hat looks plumper than some of the pheasants my father shoots. The hat means my cousin is "cool," and I have absolutely nothing in common with him other than a bloodline.

Darius is always smiling and laughing. His booming laugh shows off his even, bright white teeth. Teeth that normally ride around on the dashboard of his pickup. Darius puts them in only after making sure we are home. His dentures are purely decorative and only worn when around "company" or for "visiting".

Dad comments on how good-looking Darius is in his new "store-boughts" and that he "must be beating off the women with a stick."

“Uffda, dose tings make my food taste like plastic or sumting,” Darius tells him, taking his teeth out to eat one of Mom's homemade fried doughnuts.

My cousin Darius is the Santa Claus of deer hunting. If you see him, you know it's near that season of the year.  He brings his collection of guns, each large enough to match his size. Dad calls them “those goddamn elephant guns”. I have no idea what caliber they are, but Dad always tells him the same thing.

“You’re gonna lose half the meat if you hit something. Blow the meat right off the goddamn deer.”

Sometimes Darius brings his friend Ole, who arrives with a similar arsenal. I never learned Ole’s real name. Dad and Tubby simply call him Ole. Apparently, the name Fred has already been overused in our family. Ole doesn’t talk much, just drinks coffee and laughs at the stories. If Darius is Santa, Ole must be his Rudolph.

The harvest is over, and the men can devote more time to planning. Lyle comes over more often in the evenings. Cathy’s younger brother comes to stay with Tubby and Cathy for a few weeks “for deer season.” Uncle Lester, Cousin Ronnie, Darius and Ole, the neighbor men and their sons, Cousin Diana, the only female hunter, Jim Nelson, and Eddie Schmidt gather around our kitchen table. The crowd grows larger each evening as the season approaches, with more neighbors and relatives drifting in to join the planning.

When the hunters (Mom calls them ‘the SWAT team) are not deciding who will drive the deer and who will sit on the stands, they spend hours telling hunting stories. I hang around the hunters to listen as they drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, and talk late into the evening.

“I’m not wearing those damn one-piece orange coveralls like last year. Nice and warm, I’ll give them that. I’m standing there, and I gotta take a crap. I remember from before, and this time I stuffed the pockets with toilet paper. I find a tree, squat behind it, and do my business. Then just as I’m done, I hear them driving deer toward me. I don’t want to get caught with my pants down and my rifle leaning against a tree, so I jump up and pull my coveralls up. I get my arms in the sleeves and wiggle the rest up to my shoulders. Then I feel something thick and warm on the back of my neck. I got a turd on the collar of my coveralls, and now it’s sliding down my back!”

The room erupts in laughter. Someone else jumps in.

“I told that kid last year he shot that buck too soon. I say, ‘You gotta wait until he’s got a hard-on, so you don’t waste the meat.’ I don’t think he knows what I’m talking about.”

Another voice follows.

“Goddamn trees keep jumping out in front of me.”

“The way you shoot, we should just get you a flyswatter,” is the cruel reply.

The conversation inevitably turns to Dad’s hunting adventures. They talk about the year he burned out the seat of his pickup. The hunting season is when he leaves the truck in gear, and it rolls backward through a fence before getting stuck in a swamp. The one year when he is plowing, jumps off the tractor and chases down a wounded deer, and finishes it off with a rock, the day after the season closes.

They laugh about the time the game warden sat at our kitchen table, drinking coffee while Mom was trying to hide deer meat. That leads to stories of when we were all poorer and living on “government beef”, shot out of hunger, not any season regulation.

On deer season opening morning, the hunters gather at our house before dawn. Like military generals, they map out routes and ambush points. Who sits on which stand? Who covers the hill?  Who drives the deer through the woods?  As the patriarch of the clan, Dad has the final decision on any assignment. Dad claims his spot and barks out instructions at everyone else.

“Don’t you drive those deer through so fast this time, either. You’re not chasing them for a damn rodeo.”

After a pot of coffee and a second breakfast, the hunters climb into their pickups and head for their assigned positions. As the years pass, Dad moves a little slower and hangs back from the crowd. Oh, he will hunt and get his deer, but as he gets older, I can see his heart is not in it anymore.

Dad was the man who spent most of his life hunting illegally at night in the deep woods, alone, feeding his family. Legal daylight hunting feels too easy. It simply isn’t his sport. There is no risk in it, no danger at all.  Seems too easy, like shooting ducks in a barrel.

By noon, most of the tags are filled, and dead deer lie in pickup beds. The extra tags are pulled out and are examined. After lunch, the second round begins. At the end of the day, tree branches are decorated with hanging deer carcasses, and Mom launches into her annual rant.

“Look at all those goddamn deer. And who’s gonna have to cut them all up and make sausage? Me. That’s who. Every damn year. I don’t even know why your father goes anymore. It’s not like we need the meat. I’m so damn sick of venison. We just cleaned up the last of it last month, and now this shit starts all over again. Well, I’m not cutting up and grinding everybody’s deer this year. I got enough to do around here.”

Despite Mom’s dislike of venison, she knows that it’s a losing battle. There is a drive, an instinct honed by generations of poverty, to hunt and forage the land. Being a blood relative, I am assigned an extra tag every year. I am almost thirty before I consider this arrangement.

I love animals. Even the fat lazy bastards that eat the hay I spent all summer putting into stacks. 

I do not particularly enjoy venison, even though I grew up eating it year-round. It's because I ate it so often that I grew to dislike any game meat. Also, I have never shown the slightest interest in hunting. This year, I finally put my foot down.

“Why do I even have a deer tag? Since when have I ever gone hunting? Nobody has ever invited me. Not once. I would think somebody, sometime, would have at least had the courtesy to ask if I wanted to go deer hunting. I get stuck cutting up the deer, but nobody says, ‘Hey Pooch, want to come hunting with us this year?’”

Dad answers without missing a beat.

“Because we’re out in the woods to shoot the damn deer, not make pets out of them. We’d have a whole goddamn barn full of deer to feed all winter if we took you hunting.”

“No more. Enough of this shit. We don't need the meat that badly.”

“Okay,” Dad says.

He agrees much too quickly. That alone makes me suspicious. I stare at Dad as

he avoids looking directly at me.

“Well,” he says, “we got one tag left, and somebody got a little buck this year. Today’s the last day of the season, but he’s gonna go out tomorrow morning. Just for a few hours. But if he gets something, you gotta register it tonight. You can’t register it after the season.”

Somehow, I find myself participating in a crime I never wanted any part of. I am registering a deer I did not shoot. In fact, I am registering a deer that will never be shot.

Using a tag I never wanted in the first place.

I find myself taking a drive to one of those registration stations known for registering deer without seeing the carcass. Such is the power of my father’s orders.

An hour before closing, I step up to the counter.

“I’m here to register my deer,” I announce.

“Okay, hon,” the sweet older woman says. “How big was it?”

“Shit,” my mind screams. Nobody tells me there will be questions.

I have never registered a deer before. I know absolutely nothing about deer sizes. I know they are beautiful animals. I know they are gentle creatures. I know a lifetime of venison stew and venison burgers has been more than enough for me.

But size? What constitutes a large deer? Should I say medium? Small? Average? What is the size of the imaginary deer that will be pursued in the morning?

The woman waits patiently, pen in her hand.

It is against my Minnesotan farmgirl nature to be boastful, to lie, or get an answer wrong. Then somewhere in the prideful back of my brain, a little voice tells me, “Go big or go home.”

I straighten my shoulders and speak loudly enough for the room full of hunters in blaze orange to hear.

“I’m here to register my ten-point buck.”

The room goes quiet.

“Yep,” I continue confidently. “Got me a big ol’ ten-pointer. Real beauty, you betcha.”

Telling Mom and Dad the story later, they roar with laughter.

“Biggest buck of the season,” Dad announces proudly.

My imaginary hunting career has apparently been a tremendous success. Dad is proud of my hunting skills. His baby girl got a ten-pointer! 

But later that night, Mom has a disturbing dream. The next morning, Mom wakes me up to tell me about it.

“You can’t do this anymore, Pooch. You gotta quit hunting.”

“I gotta quit hunting?”

“Yes. All night long, I dreamt about you. You’re running through the woods with your deer tag in your hand. You’re chasing deer, trying to get one to stand still long enough for you to put the tag on its leg. I keep telling you to give up, but you say you think you can get the big buck when he jumps the fence.”

Mom pauses for a second, then, dead serious, tells me again, “You gotta quit hunting. It’s wearing me out. I can’t get any sleep.”

I take a big sigh of resignation and loss, telling her, "I suppose you’re right, Mom. I mean, what are the odds I get a ten-pointer every year?”