It was still dark when two men, father and son, mounted the hunting stand ladder. The father, 83, the son 61, climbed carefully, laden as they were with gear. The son with the deer rifle, safety on, slung over his left shoulder and backpack over his right, followed the older man up the ladder. The father carried a pack, but no gun, for he had lost interest in hunting many years ago; if truth be told, so had the son. The backpacks contained water, a thermos of black coffee, donuts, ham sandwiches and bananas. There were also the father’s binoculars, bullets and a knife for dressing the game.
At the top, the father stepped onto the platform, unlatched the door, moved inside and positioned the chairs so his son could enter. Each man arranged his pack’s contents on the floor. The cold West Texas air penetrated their sky house and they made sure that the sliding glass windows were shut tight.
First light was not more than fifteen or twenty minutes away. Snuggled in warm jackets, coffee in hand, they demolished their breakfast of donuts. No words were spoken. Both men knew human voices carried a long distance and their prey had very good hearing. On this day, their prey was an eight point or better male deer. In this part of West Texas, hunters were permitted to kill female deer, but neither man had ever killed a doe; it was an unwritten rule.
First light arrived; the horizon was not yet visible, but soon the warming rays from the east would peek through the windows. The father smiled and took up his binoculars. In front of them lay a wheat field planted for deer; each side heavily wooded with scrub oak. The son sipped coffee, the father studied the right side of the field and saw, milling around, a large number of animals. Soon they would move across the field from right to left. On the left side of the field, the father had placed an elevated barrel with a timer and several hundred pounds of corn. Soon a whirring sound would let all the wildlife know that the feeder had dispersed the morning meal. Wild turkeys, deer and other creatures would head for the feeder. The whirring started, jarring the morning solitude. Young bucks and does crossed the field. The father continued to watch through the binoculars. The gun remained in the corner, loaded with the safety on. The son ate a banana while the father drank more coffee. The sun moved into midmorning; the men’s jackets were piled in the corner. They donned their dark glasses. Creatures disappeared into foliage and out of the growing heat. They both waited for lunch.
It had been their experience that big bucks moved at lunch time; there were at least two of them in the scrub oak. The feeder whirred again; it was 12:30 p.m. Nothing in the field, and then there he was; a huge buck with a gigantic rack. Neither man could say how he got there.
The father, peering through the binoculars, whispered, “it’s fourteen or sixteen points.”
The son raised the rifle to his shoulder, pretended to aim at the front left shoulder, pushed the safety off, took a deep breath, exhaled, and pulled the trigger. The buck went down and lay still. With the safety back on, the son slung the rifle over his shoulder, and, picking up his backpack containing the tools to field dress the deer, descended the ladder.
He heard his father shout from above, “The buck is up and moving.”
The son hurried to the clearing just in time to see the huge deer amble into the trees. The father, bringing the rest of their gear, joined his son. Both men walked to where the deer had been shot; an outline in the wheat field marked where he had fallen and, most puzzling, no blood colored the flattened wheat. The son laughed. He stooped down and picked up a huge antler with eight points, half of the big buck’s rack.
“The bullet must have hit the antler at the base of the skull and stunned the buck,” the father said.
The half rack was mounted in the ranch house, providing lots of good conversation for visitors. The father, pleased the big buck lived in order to enhance the gene pool, was flabbergasted the son had missed an easy shot. The son decided he would have to sight in his rifle; he had purposely aimed ten feet above and five feet behind the big buck’s head and almost killed the majestic beast.
This was the last hunt for both men. The father died thirty months later and the son never sighted in his rifle.
Copyright 2015 by Wes McCain
Labels: Memoir