Nimrod the Mighty Hunter

I am going hunting this week. This is a great source of mockery and fun for the kids. I have had a hunting license for probably twelve or thirteen years. I have an archery tag, turkey tag, and an antlerless deer tag (the license comes with two buck tags). I own no rifles or shotguns and never have. When I first took the hunter education course, I couldn’t afford a compound bow, which has sights and can assist on long pulls, so I bought an inexpensive traditional recurve bow off Craig’s List. I also own a high-powered pellet gun that can kill birds, rabbits, and woodchucks.

My bow has a fifty-pound draw. That’s strong enough to kill a deer. Trouble is, you have to be within about twenty yards for a true kill shot, meaning that any deer I kill will have to be remarkably stupid. We can’t rule out this possibility, though.

A few years ago, my mother-in-law was driving on 495, and from nowhere, a deer leapt into her path. She clipped and killed it, somehow doing only minor damage to the car and not even requiring a slowdown in her travels. Deer do this sort of thing with some frequency, so the intelligence can’t be that high. In this case, after hearing everyone was fine, my kids messaged me: So Grammie has killed more deer than you, right, Dad?

Laugh away, kids. If at first you don’t succeed, buy more expensive equipment.

So I got a pop-up blind. The real hunters get tree stands. If you remember that I don’t do plumbing, you might understand why I don’t climb trees and drill in a platform to hold me up. I read about a guy who went missing while hunting. They found his body at the base of a tree where he had fallen from his stand. Nothing would make Lauren happier since my tree stand mortality chances would be about 75%. So for now I’m not doing that.

It’s still fall turkey season. Those bilious bastards are bold as hell and their droppings are all over my yard. They are actually dumb enough to walk right up to you or stare down your car. During Covid, I actually got off three shots against them but missed all three, in one case by only an inch or so. My kids don’t believe that last point, and they love to roll out my old football saying: Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. It’s important to say it with a Texas drawl. Graham has been mocking me for years with that saying and finally said over dinner the other day, “What does that mean anyway?” Well, son, everyone plays cornhole now not horseshoes so you wouldn’t know.

This week, I will also have my pellet gun on hand in case a squirrel or rabbit or starling happens by. I have one dead starling and several dead woodchucks to my name. They don’t call me the Highland Sniper for nothing (or ever at all actually).

A few weeks ago when turkey season opened, Dobby found a turkey feather in the woods and refused to drop it. I shared the picture with the family. Naturally, doing so brought a barrage of messages: He’s brought home more turkey than you ever have.

So why do I “hunt”? When the kids were young, I was always looking to take them to do things that were close by, inexpensive, and in nature. A lot of times, I was trying to let Lauren sleep in on a weekend. We went fishing a lot of Saturday mornings at local ponds. I took them on hikes and taught them to look for deer sign—hoof prints, droppings, bed-down places. We also saw coyote prints and droppings, turkey prints and droppings, and a host of other animal sign. On at least two Thanksgiving mornings, I knew Grant would be up at first light and no one else would want to be, so I took him squirrel hunting. We never brought anything back, but we spent a couple of hours together studying a canopy of trees, listening for rustling, and watching the twitches of limbs. Take a hike in the woods and you experience them one way. Go hunting, sit still, and focus on sounds and movements you never have before, and you experience them another way. I imagine it’s similar with bird watching.

Of course, it’s not like that for all hunters. My friend Abby grew up on a farm in North Dakota. We were talking about deer season once, and she said, “Deer are menaces to a farm. My dad gets as many tags as he can and fills them.”

“Oh,” I said. “What kind of hunting does he do? Still hunting? Stand hunting? Blind?”

She laughed. “Nah. He goes out in his pickup, sees em, pulls over, and shoots em.”

Oh.

Well, the likelihood I fill any tag with any game this week is small. And if you happen to spot my blind in the woods, I’d advise you to watch out, but you’re most certainly not in any danger.