Hunting Speech

It’s 5-something in the morning when the alarm goes off. I force myself out of bed despite the fact that it’s Saturday morning. “You only get so many days like this,” I mumble. Thirty minutes later, my boots are crunching across the frost as I make my way towards my usual spot. I settle in and my heart rate slows as I sit in the pitch-black darkness, waiting for the world to wake up. I doze off for a few minutes and awake to the chorus of the woods as the sky turns gray, then pink. There is no Iphones, no TV, no conference calls, no routine, no voices—just birds and squirrels going about their business.
It’s close to 7 a.m. when I see gray shapes slip out of the tree line. The thrill that shoots up my spine wipes the November cold from my limbs. There’s something primal about the first sight of game. Alert and careful, the column of whitetail deer emerges for breakfast. A peek through the binoculars reveals they’re all does exactly what I’m looking for. I wait for them to calm down and start browsing on the edge between the forest and the field. Even from 100 yards away, the deer sense that something isn’t quite right. Every few seconds the lead doe’s head bolts upward with her eyes and ears locked on my location; her nostrils test the air but the wind is in my favor. I dare not blink. When her head eases down in search of another acorn I make my move, raising my gun slowly until I’m in a solid, seated position. I pull the stock tight to my shoulder and cheek, rest my triceps on my knees and dig my heels into the earth to anchor the whole package into a steady platform. I take a breath and exhale most of it as the crosshairs settle into a small orbit on her shoulder—it’s never as steady as it is in the movies. I lose sight of her from the recoil of my gun after I take my shot. The sound of the bullet’s impact echoes across the thick morning air and lets me know that bullet found its mark.
There’s a sense of elation as I approach her, but there’s no high-fiving or