Ready for the Big Hunt
Hunting
season has arrived once again, which would normally mean that at some point or
another one of my children will begin to moan about the inherent injustice of
having a father who does not hunt.
Usually
the biggest whiner is my son, Casey, who cannot understand why I do not wish to
march out into the wilderness and kill something. I have tried to explain to him that it is not
that I am against killing something, I am just against killing something I
won’t eat and the things that you can hunt and kill I will not eat.
Of
course his response to this quite rational explanation is to remind me that I
have threatened to kill him on numerous occasions.
“If
you kill me are you going to eat me?” He would ask. For this reason I have
ordered a 55 gallon drum of barbecue sauce, just to keep him off guard.
This
hunting season I shouldn't hear any whining from my son about not hunting
because I plan on taking him hunting this fall. I have found a way to reconcile
my son’s thirst for bloodletting with my resolve not to kill anything I won’t
eat.
While
everyone else is busy tromping through the wilderness in search of deer or elk
or antelope or any of the other woodland creatures that are at this very moment
wondering what they have done to make so many people want to kill them, my son
and I will be hunting cattle.
“Cattle?” My son asked while sitting at the dinner
table. “What do you mean cattle?”
“I
mean cattle. Cows. Moo. Beef, the main ingredient in fine hamburgers
everywhere.”
“You
can’t hunt cattle Dad.”
“Certainly
you can hunt cattle. I've seen huge
herds all over the place.”
My son
shook his head, which he is prone to do when having a conversation with
me. “That’s cattle rustling Dad.”
“No,
cattle rustling is when you steal a cow.
We’re going to shoot a cow.”
“That’s
not hunting.”
“What
would be missing?” I asked. Being inexperienced in hunting, I thought
maybe he knew something that I did not.
“You
have to be out in the mountains, tracking the animal, hunting it down, taking
aim with your prey in your sights.”
He had
obviously been reading something I hadn’t.
“Yeah, well, we’ll do all that, just with a cow, or would you prefer a
steer? Maybe I’d better get us a
steer.”
“Do
you know how much trouble you’d get into if you killed somebody’s cow?”
“It’ll
be our cow. We’re about out of beef in
the freezer, so instead of sending a steer to slaughter we’ll take it out and
hunt it down.”
“In
the back yard?”
“No,
not in the back yard.” He obviously wasn't thinking clearly, what kind of hunt could you have in your back yard?
“We’ll take it down to your grandpa’s property and set it free. We’ll give it a good head start while we slip
on our camo gear, and then we’ll hunt the beast down.”
“What,
while its chewing its cud in the middle of the field?”
I
shook my head. So little imagination in
one so young was downright depressing. “It won’t be chewing its cud in the
middle of the field. We’ll make it
stampede.”
“A
stampede of one cow?”
“One
steer. Sure. Why not? More than one could get pretty
dangerous.”
“How
are we going to make this steer stampede?”
“I’ll
shoot at it first.”
“What
if you hit it?” Casey asked. I could see he was starting to think this
idea over a little bit. And all this
time he thought I was crazy.
“It’s
not possible for me to hit it. I can’t
hit the broad side of a cow or anything else,” I said and in this I was not
lying. In military training I was given
three clips and an M-16 and told to shoot my target as many times as
possible. I missed it every time with 90
rounds. My drill instructor was
speechless for perhaps the first time in his military career. In eight years of military service I had the
distinction of never actually qualifying with my M-16. This is perhaps a good reason why they put me
in a job that required a pencil instead of a weapon
“So
we’re going to hunt down and kill a cow in Grandpa’s field while wearing
camouflage?”
“Sounds
great, doesn't it? You can have your
first kill and I’ll take photos of you with the ferocious steer.”
My son
thought for a moment and then smiled and nodded his head. “Can we have the head mounted?”
Suddenly
I wished I had just said we weren't going to go hunting.
