My First Unsuccessful Hunt
With each rushed step towards the car I felt my shoulders regain their tenseness (before they had never completely relaxed). Everything was too rushed and now all I had to look forward to was a three and a half hour car-drive back to school; I practically had to run from the woods and onto the road in order to get to work on time. Hours later, as I approached my college town, I realized I wouldn’t have time to change clothes. I would indeed be working in my camouflaged outfit. As I stood in front of that building on that black-topped lot staring at the window to my reflection, it felt wrong. I didn’t like having the real me stand so close to this façade. Everything seemed darker, shadowed, harsh, as I found it impossible to make excuses for enduring the little things that before I would ignore. Usually the hunting trip at home revived me, giving me strength to get through the tough repetitions of the town but it was different this time. This time I was a deer eating out of someone’s backyard, forgetting that I didn’t even like corn, that it was too loud here, and that people were watching me. This time I was unhappy.
It had been a long spring turkey hunt in my home of Minnesota. We were walking my favorite parcel of land. I knew the hills here. I knew the tree I had leaned on three years back when I got that Tom with my sister, the golden field where we saw the coyotes, and the ditch that once had a washing machine thrown on its side. Trees grew around and atop it until finally, years later, it was finally taken away.
Every morning my Dad, sister and I would get up; them energetically, me yawning as I would klutzily get ready. He would drive and they would talk while I dozed on and off until finally we would arrive at the hunting land. Slowly we would press our doors closed and walk around to the back. I would put on my vest, one call in my left pocket, another in my right. I would dig out four of my yellow shotgun shells. Picking up the gun I’ve held since I was 12, with all of its scratches, I would load one at a time and listen to the harsh forbidden clicks in the still dark woods.
“Who cooks for you, who cooks for you all?” Is the Barred Owl hoot my dad would mimic to the forest. Gobbles would echo back to us, and we would start walking towards the perfect trees to lean against. Usually I would stare around me, completely void of thought, not knowing if I was truly awake or not; just present. This day I felt exhausted and I let my head automatically fall forward until my chin met my chest. Soon again my head would bolt up scanning and sore, aware of the flapping of wings and rustling of trees as the turkeys flew from their roost to the ground below them, ready to start the day. And thus would begin our chatter with the turkeys. Soon however, my chin dropped down again. We didn’t have luck that first day, didn’t see anything. They continued to hide.
The second day seemed as hopeless as the first with very little action in the quiet woods, but hours later I found myself creeping toward birds we heard over a hill. I looked over the incline in front of me, ready to shoot. Lifting my gun, I lined my site up to discover the battery was dead. I had accidently kept my site on from the moment we first heard movement; which was long ago. I panicked, thought I saw the dot of pink fair enough to make a shot, and that turkey lived on. I rushed, I shot at nothing, I was angry. It was the first time I’d ever missed a turkey.
That last day I woke up with a panic I wasn’t accustomed to. I didn’t realize how important it was for me to leave those woods with a trophy, as if I needed a bird to show that I had gained something that weekend. As the hours ticked down to the deadline for my departure, my heart started sinking, wondering why I blew the one shot apparently I was going to be given. As the last fifteen minutes of the hunt loomed I tried to breathe in the beautiful afternoon. The moment was tainted as I kept getting premonitions of the tired dreary drive ahead of me, but then, there was a sound.
We called back and soon we were making music with a very confident bird. It was coming fast and I barely had time to situate myself facing the opening it would soon encroach. As I saw the beautiful Tom breach the hill I also saw the quake in my arm; my legs providing no rest, stuck folded beneath me on the ground. It came closer and I felt the panic of missing again. I couldn’t believe how close to the time I had to leave this bird arrived, and it seemed it could only be a test, a taunt, perhaps even a cruelty. My weak left arm would soon fall off if I didn’t shoot now. My heart paused, I shot, the bird dropped, I hugged my dad goodbye, and I ran to my car to leave the woods.
As I drove, and the land becoming flatter, the car stuffier, and my eyes heavier, I realized my dissatisfaction with the hunt. It seemed that for the majority, I had forgotten the reasons I love to be out there. I rewound past memories of hunts where I wouldn’t shoot a bird in front of me because it didn’t feel right, I couldn’t get the perfect shot, or simply because that day I just wanted to watch. I remember shaking my head throughout the drive wondering where that hunter went. I realize that in the end, shooting that turkey (although it provided me with meat), didn’t provide me with satisfaction. Instead, I had felt like I had had to prove something. I felt like I had to erase my embarrassment of my rushed stupor earlier in the week. I had felt that if I walked out of the woods with no bird, I walked out with nothing.
I’m not sure the second shot during that hunt was much better than the first. Somewhere along the line it was forgotten that I was first a nature explorer, and second a hunter. I walked into those woods with a deadline that led to foolish mistakes and an edgy demeanor. As a result I had forgotten to breathe; to enjoy. Instead of feeling the throbbing in my left arm, waiting to align the perfect shot, I should have been enjoying, watching the confident animal. I should have watched it as it strutted to and fro before me, as its fan opened and closed after each gobble. Maybe then, there wouldn’t have been a constant throbbing in my head, still burdened with the artificial aspirations of the college life, human life.
This hunt, I was a woman with something to prove. I had dragged my feet through that land, getting lost in my head. I wandered wearing a foreign demeanor. Yes, just like the uncomfortable me trying to wear her hunting clothes to work, here out on the land, normal apparel/attitudes are forbidden and should immediately be stripped. If one stands out, the entire purpose is defeated. Even the sound from the shotgun seems to harass my ears as I pull the trigger. It screams: I am human; hear me, hear me! But I do not want to be heard. I do not want to be seen. I just want to be. I want to stand next to the tree and be its sister. Soon I believe, I will stand still so long, breathe so evenly, that my feet will become roots, my gun will turn into a branch, and I will stay there forever soaking up the sun; growing.
