Inside the Wild 2

By Larry W Oakley

The wild is a heartbeat away inside each of us. That’s as true for a commuter who sees a coyote on the way to work as it is for the hunter who sees one from a tree stand in the woods.

L.W. Oakley knows the wild in both places, and he has taken readers there in his successful first book, Inside the Wild. Readers come back fro

• Language: English
• Publisher: Burnstown Publishing House
• Release date: Oct 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781772571745

Book preview

BOOK ONE

HUNTING

CHAPTER 1

Sometimes, before I go to the hunting camp, I get a detox footbath. An electric current is passed through the water to draw out toxins from my body.

The woman who runs the business also teaches people relaxation techniques and stress management.

She goes on spiritual retreats for weeks to meditate in silence and seclusion. She is a very relaxed, enlightened, and peaceful person.

During my footbath, I often tell her hunting stories and even read some of my columns to her from The Kingston Whig–Standard.

One day, while I sat with my feet soaking in a saltwater footbath, I told her the story you are about to read.

When I finished, she said, You bring out the killer in me.

Why people kill deer

Hunting alone in the autumn woods heightens your sense of awareness. You hear the old wind returning far in the distance, rustling through the trees. You smell a cedar swamp on that wind and feel yesterday’s rain rising from damp earth. You see the flick of a tail or the twitch of an ear from a deer that has not yet seen you and never will. For a short time, you become a small part of the natural world.

Each hunter has a favourite place in the woods. Mine is in a cedar tree. It’s located deep in the woods far from the camp. When I bring someone there for the first time, I point to it and say, This, too, is my home.

I used to think I came to the hunting camp and the woods and the tree to hide.

When people asked me, What are you hiding from back there? I responded by saying, Everything. And by that I didn’t mean wild animals. I meant life and its rules and routines and responsibilities.

When you spend hours waiting and watching from a tree in the woods, you become very aware of your own thoughts. It was in the tree that I first realized that I wasn’t hiding at all. I was searching for something: not for pleasure or happiness, which is what most people—including me—are looking for most of the time. I was spending my time in the tree in the woods searching inside myself and trying to find the simple truth about why I hunt.

It was in the tree that I realized that when people ask, Why do you hunt? they really mean, Why do you kill deer?

I have pondered that question and tried to understand it for endless hours while hunting in that tree. I wanted an answer that was as simple as the question. I kept trying to find the words. I remember the day I finally heard them. They were spoken by that familiar voice inside my head. There were seven words strung together.

The first time I spoke them out loud was at the camp while standing watching a game of euchre after supper.

As the other members of my hunting camp sat around the table playing their cards, I asked no one in particular but everyone at once, Do you know why we kill deer? No one looked up. They just kept playing and watching their cards when someone at the table answered me, No, why do we kill them?

We kill them because we love them, I said.

The game stopped immediately. Now everyone looked up.

What the hell does that mean? someone asked.

We don’t kill them because we hate them. And if we were indifferent to them, why would we bother? We pay attention to the things we love. We find out and want to know everything about them. We respect and even honour them. We wish we could be like them, especially in the woods, where they are smarter and faster and better able to survive than us. They eat the woods, so we eat them. We look for them everywhere and we see them in our dreams. They have broken our hearts, but we will love them until we die. We love them because their wild blood runs in our veins and their spirit has touched our soul. Most of all, we love deer because we are hunters.

Being in the tree started out as one thing and became another. It hid me and gave me shelter. I learned patience in the tree and how to look, not just at the world around me, but inward. What I have seen from the tree has given me wisdom and understanding and enlightenment. I am the tree.

Eventually, I realized the tree was a natural place to want to be. I had found a home in the tree because it’s where my journey began. It happened a long time ago when an ape climbed down to the ground and stood up. More hungry than afraid, it walked out across a grassy plain and left its tree behind.

CHAPTER 2

The greatest and most moral homage we can pay to certain animals on certain occasions is to kill them with certain means and rituals.

Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955), Meditations on Hunting

Honouring the dead

When you see a deer while hunting your first thought is, It’s a buck, or, It’s a doe. If it’s not looking at you or bounding away, you immediately say to yourself, It doesn’t see me.

You instinctively remain still. You don’t breathe. Your heart pounds — not just in your ears but in your throat and through your arms and down your legs. Its beating is so loud you don’t hear the click of the safety being released by your thumb.

As the deer lowers its head to sniff for the scent of danger, you raise your rifle.

Then you see the deer while looking down the barrel of your gun with one eye and a single thought. You ignore his antlers and find that big patch of brown hair behind his front shoulder.

When he lifts his nose in the air to detect approaching danger, your finger curls around the trigger.

He is doing what he does best — trying to stay undetected. He is living his secret life as he always has so he can have his secret death.

But you will soon deliver death to him and it will be a terrible surprise.

He does not know what a gun or bullet is even after he hears the bang and feels death inside him. He only knows he wants to stay alive.

Solitary deer standing on point in swamp.

When you pull the trigger, you don’t hear the bang or feel the gun jolt against your shoulder. You only see the deer.

Your lives collide in that moment but have been connected from the day you began your search to find him. You pursued him not just because he didn’t want to be found but because he is so good at it. To be successful, you must do better what he does best. You must remain undetected and see him first.

When a deer is hit hard, it can run a long way on a last breath and the final beat of its heart. I shot a buck that ran hundreds of yards after he was hit. He was still alive when I found him. He was unable to stand, but his four legs thrashed wildly at me. He raised his head and grunted beneath my stare. I could see that he wanted to kill me for killing him. He had the right.

When he released his final breath back to the woods there was a soft sigh. Then his tongue relaxed and slid from the side of his mouth. He did not close his eyes.

Only then was it safe to touch him.

Most hunters spend a long time alone with a buck that they have killed before others in their hunting party arrive. They will ponder what they have done and at times speak in a quiet voice to the dead deer.

They usually thank the deer and say, I’m sorry.

But they’re not sorry for long and they’re not sorry ever again except until maybe the next time.

Mostly they’re very excited and happy. Hunters call it the Rush.

The buck is dragged from the woods where he lived his life. The part of him that remains behind on the ground disappears within hours. Death always attracts a crowd. It’s no different in the woods. By morning, no trace remains that he even existed.

Hunters often return to a kill site the way people return to the gravesite of a loved one. They come for the same reason: to remember and honour and respect the dead.

Any place a hunter has been successful will be tried again. They return and wait and hide in that same place. They relive and remember the details and discover new ones as they see the drama unfold again — always with the same outcome.

Sometimes another buck appears, and another story is added to your treasure chest of remarkable memories. You can recall the feel of the wind, the smell of the swamp, the lay of the land, the last shreds of light, and the first sound of an unseen deer approaching death — the same death that waits for us all, no matter how it happens.

With a simple gesture, a proud hunter shows you which deer is his.

You realize that over time you think of these deer more than anything or anyone else; even more than loved ones.

Then, one day, you realize the deer you just killed is a loved one.

You have your picture taken with it and put your arm around it to show everyone it belongs to you. You keep that picture in an album with your other family photos.

Sometimes you frame and cover the picture with glass and hang it on the wall. You may even pay hundreds of dollars to try to keep the memory of that deer alive not with a plaque or headstone but by