First Kill

I shot my first deer this afternoon. It was a doe: beautiful, strong, graceful. Then I cried. I’ve never killed anything before, unless you count the ants I used to fry with my magnifying glass back in third grade.

I can’t really describe the feelings that overwhelmed me in that moment of trigger pulling and smoke clearing (we’re in muzzle loading season), except to say that the doe’s final kicking felt like a "rage, rage against the dying of the light." Even the swirling of emotions in these four hours that have passed since the big bang seem to come from a place where there are no words.

If you’ve seen The Last of the Mohicans, you know the reverence and humility with which life should be taken. At the tail end of an elk hunt, when the arrow has hit its mark and the great beast falls to its last breath, the archer kneels slowly, almost remorsefully and asks the elk for forgiveness, promising to honor him for his speed and grace. I, too, knelt before my fallen doe, her blood reddening the snow beneath us. Putting my hand lightly upon her shoulder, I uttered a prayer of sighs, confessing a line I knowingly and willingly crossed.

My hunting buddies, who had ushered me into this brotherhood of blood, were torn between barbaric yawps and respectful silence, no doubt remembering the moment when they first ended life. This was big, even at 47. I called my father who said, “Congratulations,” but seemed to know it wasn’t the right word.

All that remains is for me to eat this thing, “venison,” they call her, once she’s dead and cooked. The eating strikes me as important. I must eat her. Otherwise I’ve killed for sport, and this was no sport – the pounding heart, the trembling hand, the light-headed nausea. At the table I will take her inside of me, where she will be, where she will stay. My life may well be measured in the before and after of this, though I will most certainly do it again.