Case: Finding peace is a deer hunter's dream

A deer stands still in the forest.
A deer stands still in the forest.

He never liked walking to his stand in the dark. It had nothing to do with fear of something unseen. There were hunting buddies who admitted to being jumpy before daylight. He just disliked the inconvenience, stumbling in the dark, the branches in the face and knowing that no matter how hard he tried he could not be quiet enough.

That was it: the failure, the failure to do something as simple as slip in unheard on a deer path. Failure and regret over failure rode him like an old saddle. Several people seemed to be reminding him of his many failures lately.

He tried to shake it off and watched as the low gap on the ridge came into view. The first rumor of light dared to open the black of night and show him the way. Carefully he climbed into the stand, always mindful of a fall. The safety line was clipped to his vest, and his bow hung on its rest when the first crow testified for the new day.

Deep in the hollow below him a barred owl answered, and he smiled. The owl was either signing off from his night shift or just letting the crows know he was there. Much closer to him, a cardinal seemed to tweet a sleepy response to it all.

photo A buck walks through the forest.
photo Contributed photo / Larry Case

He liked this part maybe best of all: listening and watching the world around him wake up. Maybe it had been like this every morning for hundreds, even thousands of years? But now in the short span that he would be here, he could watch it all happen for a few years. Was it much the same before he got here? Would it be the same when he was gone?

You're getting pretty deep for a simple bow hunter, he thought.

He always tried to be prepared for the first crunching of leaves on the forest floor, but as usual he was taken by surprise. A squirrel often was the first visitor at daylight, but now a doe ran by the stand so fast he thought she must be chased by a predator. As soon as he thought that, a little spike buck zipped past on the doe's trail, so intent and so serious for his age the hunter laughed out loud. He couldn't help it - it just happened.

He sat and wondered how long it had been since he laughed like that, spontaneous, without thinking. Way too long.

After the flurry of activity with the two deer there came a long quiet spell, and he felt the cold and the need for sleep creep up on him. Leaning back in the stand, he pushed against the bar in front of him and tried to burrow deeper into his clothes. The fleece on his collar felt wonderful, and he imagined pulling up the warm blankets of a bed around his neck. He knew dozing was not advisable in a treestand, but he was wearing his safety harness and the stand had a safety bar in front of him.

While he dozed only a short time, the magic of dreams swept over him - dreams, where much can happen in a very short while. In the dream he walked to his stand in broad daylight, and none of the animals around him seem to mind. Several placid does grazed next to the trail as he passed and watched him like tired cows. Several turkeys followed him up the trail and even passed him when they felt he was going too slowly. A few brushed against him in the narrow trail; lost in the dream, he thought there was nothing unusual in all this.

As soon as the turkeys made their way around him, his boss from work met him on the trail and handed him some papers that he said would explain that all the recent turmoil with him on the job had been settled and keep up the good work. Even in the dream he was confused and watched as his boss turned and walked away, disappearing into a laurel thicket.

When in the dream he reached his treestand, for some reason he knew there would a massive buck there waiting for him. The buck watched him intently but made no move to flee. The was some understood treaty between them that he would not attempt to draw his bow on the buck until he had slowly climbed into the stand, taken a seat and then counted to 10.

The buck walked away nonchalantly as soon as he sat down, and he watched the deer slowly amble through the woods for a long way, much farther than he normally could see a deer in these woods. Far off the buck stopped and looked back at him as if to say something, but then stepped out of sight.

From long practice when he awoke, ascending out of the dream as if he were climbing out of a well, the hunter did not move and barely opened one eye to look around. As in the dream a buck was standing there watching him - not the monster he saw in the dream, but a buck nonetheless. It was no surprise when he made a slow move to reach the bow the buck snorted one time and sprang away in crashing leaps of a real deer, not like a dream buck.

He was surprised at the angle of the sun. Had he slept that long?

He slowly climbed out of the stand and ambled back down the trail, following the dream buck. He felt more rested than he had been in days, and though he had to go back to work and the real world tomorrow, somehow he felt it would be all right. Maybe he would tell his boss that he had seen him on the way to his deer stand.

Contact Larry Case at Larryocase3@gmail.com.

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