A TIME TO KILL
There is a point at which an animal stops being wildlife and starts being food.
For most of the animals we eat, that point occurred many thousands of years ago, when their ancestors were first domesticated, slowly altered from the wildlife they once were into the livestock they are today. But for those animals that have so far escaped becoming permanent fixtures of our modern agricultural machine, that point lies somewhere between the time you shoot it and the time you place it into a cooler with ice to keep from spoiling.
For me, it was about the time when the duck I killed was splayed in front of me, ready to have its feathers plucked.
On a chilly January morning, a pair of mallards sailed from left to right just a few dozen yards above me and my hunting mentor, Holly Heyser, as we sat inside a duck blind at the Howard Slough Unit of the Upper Butte Basin Wildlife Area, about 70 miles north of Sacramento.
I quickly raised a shotgun to my shoulder and disengaged the safety. I pointed the barrel of the gun toward the rightmost one of the pair. As the bird flapped across the sky, I traced its path with the muzzle of the gun for only a few milliseconds before slapping the trigger — twice — and launching a few hundred beads of steel hurtling through the air toward what I hoped would become dinner.
“You got it!” Holly shouted. I re-engaged the safety
