Hunter's Choice, page 8
CHAPTER 10
“WHAT’S UP WITH YOU?” YUMI ASKED HUNTER AS SHE hopped around in the garage trying to push her foot through the tangled-up leg of her camouflage hunting coveralls. “Big goofy smile all the sudden.”
“I’m just excited to get back out there,” Hunter said, slipping on his blaze-orange vest. And he was excited. Grandpa’s story and his conversation with Uncle Rick had helped some after his morning failure, but his time on the Tower with Yumi and Annette had made more of a difference. It had helped him relax, to push aside, if not forget, his worries about killing. And their long conversation had helped him get past his reservations about Yumi and Annette being here in the first place. He was actually glad they had come.
He would have been a bit lonely without Annette and Yumi, and with nothing to distract him from his failure. Who knows, but if they hadn’t showed up, he might have spent the whole time between hunts enduring pitying lectures from Dad, Grandpa, and Uncle Rick. Sure, the men were only trying to help, but at a certain point Hunter simply wanted to move on.
That’s what this afternoon was about. Moving on. A second chance to make this right, to bring home his first trophy deer. After talking so much with the girls, he felt like he had a team, a group supporting him.
Annette was all suited up in a one-piece set of camouflage overalls, blaze-orange vest, black gloves, and a close-fitting camo stocking cap. Except for professional hunter crybabies like Timmy Ballings, hunting wasn’t a fashion show, but Hunter couldn’t completely push aside the thought that Annette somehow managed to look good even in the bulky gear.
She must have noticed him looking, because she flashed that smile that wrinkled her freckled nose.
Hunter quickly looked away and tried to ignore Yumi’s chuckle.
He and Yumi checked over their rifles, clearing them first, and then making sure they had loaded, four-round magazines ready.
“Guns are prepped,” Yumi said when they were finished.
“Notebook ready,” Annette said. “Pen and backup pen ready.”
Hunter and Yumi laughed.
“Is there much of a difference between the morning hunt and the evening hunt?” Annette asked. Her voice—the way she talked—changed a little when she asked questions for her newspaper story. She still sounded friendly, but she switched to a more clipped, professional tone, perhaps an imitation of reporters she had seen on TV.
Yumi shrugged. “I don’t know. This is my first hunt,” she said.
“Mine too,” Hunter offered. “But my dad swears the deer are more active near sunset. They’re basically nocturnal, he says. So it’s like they’re waking up to start their day, and they’re more hungry and have more energy, after resting all day, to run around looking for food. He thinks by morning they’re more tired, so we won’t see as many of them moving all over.”
“I don’t quite buy it,” said Yumi. “I’ve heard of just as many hunters who believe the opposite. I mean, sure, they’re up all night, but that would make mornings their dinner and near sunset their breakfast. Most people’s dinner is bigger than their breakfast. I think your dad is just going on about a lot of superstition when he talks about that.” Yumi leaned closer to Annette. “A lot of hunting is about superstition and old family stories.”
The men came out of the cabin into the garage part of the lodge and began to suit up. Grandpa smiled and spoke with his usual booming voice. “Who’s ready for some red-hot hunting action?”
“I am!” Annette answered.
“That’s the spirit,” Grandpa said. “Annette, you need to get hunting-certified and get your license so you can join in the fun for real.”
“I will,” she said. “But I’m having a great time just taking notes on everything. This will be a great story for the newspaper.”
“All right,” Dad said. “Same groups as—”
“Actually, could I go with Annette and Hunter this time?” Yumi said quickly, not making eye contact with her father.
There was a moment of silence that Hunter found extremely tense. How was it possible for silence to sometimes be so much louder than speaking or even shouting?
Dad rescued them. “That’s . . . that should be fine, right?”
“Sure,” Grandpa said. “No law says our groups have to be evenly numbered. This isn’t football.”
“It’s fine with me,” Uncle Rick said, trying to sound casual and unimpressed in that way that made it so perfectly clear that he was thrilled Yumi would be going with him.
Hunter had to smile, watching Uncle Rick trying to hide his grin as he finished suiting up.
“All right, then,” said Grandpa, pulling his worn old hunting cap with the silly-looking ear flaps down onto his head. “Rick, your group will set up in the same place as this morning. David and I may push from another area. There are some other hot spots for deer I’ve seen on my trail cams. We may check them out, try to send the deer your way. But regardless, we’ll make sure to stay well out of your shooting range.”
“Still, make sure you have a clean, safe shot,” Dad said.
“Absolutely,” Grandpa agreed. “Safety is most important. Always.” He didn’t say anything for a moment as he drew in a deep breath through his nose, letting it out in a satisfied sigh the way a man might do upon finishing a big delicious meal. “Well, here we go again. What we have to do this afternoon is let the morning hunt, and let everything else, go. A hunter needs to be fully present. If he’s too concerned with past successes or failures or if his mind is on paying the bills or whatever else from life, he’ll be distracted, and he might miss that crucial moment.” Grandpa looked from one person to another, gesticulating with his hands as he spoke, excited, fully into all of this. “If you’re thinking about some faraway thing when you’re out there, you might miss a subtle movement out in the shrubbery that will clue you in on where the deer are. You might fail to get your rifle ready in time, miss the perfect chance. That’s what’s great about hunting. It’s just us, right here and now, out in nature, in a contest against some of the smartest, fastest, most skilled navigators of wilderness possible. For the time that we’re hunting, everything else—all the frustrations and bull crap from the outside world doesn’t matter.” The man smiled. “So what do you say? You ready to hunt?”
A little shiver went up Hunter’s back, and he nodded, trying—and mostly succeeding—to push back the doubts that had plagued him this morning. The situation was different now. He’d had more time to think and prepare himself for the kill, and he was heading out into the woods with a group more tightly knit as friends than they had been before. Dad had said hunting was about family and friends. If that was true, then he was better equipped than ever to succeed on his second try at his first hunt, and he did not worry about how he would bring himself to kill a living creature. He did not.
Once, his father had surprised him by taking him to a Seahawks game in Seattle. The team had done poorly in the first half, giving up two fumbles and failing to get a decent offensive drive going.
“Well, maybe they’ll do better in the second half,” Dad had said.
Hunter doubted that very much. How could a team that had punted more than anything else suddenly start scoring and putting up a good defense? But after halftime the Seahawks seemed like a different team. They completed some great passes on their first series, and their defense quickly regained possession of the ball.
“Sometimes halftime can change everything for the better,” Dad had said.
The day’s hunting halftime had energized their whole crew, and Hunter was eager to get through it. This was how this trip was supposed to feel, how he had always hoped it would be.
They agreed that Uncle Rick’s team would leave the lodge about twenty minutes before Grandpa and Dad. After all, if they weren’t set up, the whole plan didn’t make much sense. Unlike the dark morning, Hunter emerged into bright sunlight, walking in the middle of the group, following Uncle Rick south.
Yumi had started out up front with her father, and Hunter thought he noticed Uncle Rick walking a little taller, a hint of a smile on his face. Uncle Rick wasn’t very good at hiding his delight in hanging out with Yumi again. She even playfully bumped her shoulder into him as they walked. He gently bumped her back.
About ten minutes later, Yumi fell back, joining Hunter and Annette five yards behind Uncle Rick, who merely nodded and winked at her.
Yumi shrugged with a satisfied smile as she walked back to her friends, looking like some kind of action hero combat girl with her camo gear and rifle. Although she hadn’t said so, Hunter could tell that at least some of the anger and resentment that had plagued her when she arrived at the lodge had melted away. A lot could be communicated without words, just in the way someone walked or carried her gun.
The path upon which Uncle Rick led them went to the top of a high hill. They probably took this same route in the morning, but the predawn darkness had hidden the world. Now all four of them stopped for a moment to take in the scene. Before them stretched a breathtaking view of Idaho’s wilderness. Tall spruce and pine trees and the Payette River beyond them. Another stretch of woods carpeted the land all the way to the high mountains in the distance. A couple of hawks or eagles glided on the breeze, circling in the far distance. They were so high on this hill that Hunter almost felt as though he flew with the birds, like them also seeking prey.
Annette put her hand on Hunter’s arm, and a tingle shook through him. But his senses sharpened a moment later when he saw why she wanted his attention. It was hard to see, but at the far base of the hill, nibbling at a patch of raspberry bushes, were three deer, one of them a small buck.
Uncle Rick’s rifle was equipped with a powerful scope. Slowly, very slowly, he raised his gun so he could take a better look. After a moment, he slung his rifle and then held up two fingers on each hand before pointing at the deer.
This was a little two-by-two buck. Uncle Rick motioned everyone closer. When they’d huddled up, he whispered, “He’s a little thing. It’s up to you. But, you fill your deer tag with this smaller deer, you might have to give up a bigger, better buck later in the season. The Phantom may still be out here somewhere.”
“What would you do?” Annette whispered.
“If it was the last day of the season, maybe I’d consider taking this deer. But probably not. Let him get a little bigger. We’ll never have good trophy deer if we keep harvesting the young ones.”
Annette was writing fast in her notebook. “How long until this one is ready?”
“About four or five years,” Uncle Rick answered.
“What do we do?” Hunter said. “If we go down there and those deer bust us, they might spook out other deer. There might be a bigger buck with them.”
“We’ll have to wait,” Yumi said. “We could hide in these bushes over here.”
“But we have to get to the South Ridge,” said Annette. “We need to be there when the other team pushes the deer through.”
“It won’t do us any good if we push the deer away from our area on the way there,” Hunter said. “We have to wait. Maybe we’ll end up shooting from right here. What do you think, Uncle Rick?”
Uncle Rick nodded, and that settled it. Very slowly, the four of them moved to the bushes Yumi had pointed out, and despite the thorns, they took cover there, waiting for the deer below to move on.
There was a greater sense of urgency to the hunt now, and Hunter thought the rest of his group felt it too. They were supposed to be on the South Ridge. That’s where the deer drive would push the deer. Being stuck where they were, they might miss the big rush that Grandpa and Dad would be stirring up.
Annette whispered close to his ear. Hunter tried to keep focused on the hunt. “How will we know when we can move on?” she breathed.
He shrugged and turned to whisper in her ear. “Not sure. I guess we wait awhile after they’ve moved on. Hope for the best.”
Hunter lowered himself to his belly and mimed to Uncle Rick how he planned to low-crawl to the edge of the shrubs so he could look down on the deer below. His scope wasn’t as powerful as Uncle Rick’s, but he didn’t need to see everything down there with super-detail. He just needed to know when the deer had left, so they could get through.
If there was one thing Hunter had learned growing up in a family so interested in hunting, it was that deer were strange creatures. Except for young fawns, which sometimes chased one another around playing, deer spent their entire lives seeking food or trying to mate. And a buck tries to impress does in the dumbest ways, by rubbing the bark off part of a tree with his antlers or scratching at a patch of ground with his hooves. As Hunter watched the deer down below, he realized there were five or six instead of the three they’d initially spotted. They were nibbling and very slowly moving west.
“This is gonna take forever,” Hunter whispered. But he was wrong. A few minutes later, the young buck forgot the shrub he was eating, and his head shot up straight, big ears twitching. He looked to the east and snorted. The other deer stopped eating as well. In the next instant, they all bolted west. Not a walk or a casual trot, but a full bounding run, that peculiar fast bouncing, front and back legs working as sets, not alternating as when the creature walked. Boing, boing, boing, the animals bounced away, part running, part flying, scared away by something.
Hunter rejoined the others, motioning everyone to move in close. “Something scared them off.”
“They get our scent?” Uncle Rick whispered.
“I don’t think we were busted,” Hunter breathed.
“How can you tell?” Annette asked, pen ready at her notebook.
“I don’t know,” Hunter admitted. “They were looking off to the east. Frozen. Then bolted the other way.”
“It doesn’t always make sense what they do,” Uncle Rick whispered. “Let’s get going.”
The sun was low in the west. Hunter guessed they had two or maybe three hours of daylight left. He hoped it would be enough. The four of them went down the hill, a rocky slope with only a few trees. In the valley beyond the shrubs the passage narrowed as they walked beneath the mossy rock outcropping again.
Hunter remembered his time here with Uncle Rick this morning, how his uncle had talked about the Army. He wondered if this kind of silent stalking with guns was what it felt like to serve in a war. His only war now was against his own reluctance to pull the trigger when his moment came. If his moment came.
They finally reached the position in the South Ridge gap where they’d stood this morning, and they settled in.
“Now we wait,” Yumi whispered.
“It seems like a lot of hunting is waiting,” Annette said.
“The Army’s even worse,” said Uncle Rick, scanning their range with the rifle’s scope. “Sometimes we’d hurry to get someplace, and then sit around waiting for days. For orders, for supplies, for transport.”
Yumi perked up, listening intently to Uncle Rick talk. Hunter wondered how much he’d told her about his Army experiences. Now that Hunter thought about it, he realized he didn’t know much about anything Uncle Rick had done in the Army or the war. He’d only heard bits and pieces. Their talk this morning was the most his uncle had told him, and that was nothing about what he’d actually done or what had happened to him.
“What’s the longest you ever had to wait in the Army?” Yumi whispered, pretending to pick at a speck of nonexistent dirt on her rifle, but sneaking eager glances at her father.
“Oh,” said Uncle Rick. “Hard to say.”
“Sure.” Yumi’s shoulders fell.
“When we first pushed out to establish our FOB, our forward operations base, in Helmand Province we had a compound with high walls and guard towers, but our tactical vehicles hadn’t come in yet. We had some light Toyota pickups. For about three weeks we did nothing but wait for our MRAPs, kind of armored trucks, to finally come in so we could run missions.”
“What kind of missions?” Yumi asked.
“What?” Uncle Rick frowned. “Oh . . . well. You know, let’s just concentrate on the deer for now.”
Yumi sighed, “Yeah. Sure.”
Uncle Rick looked at Yumi and was about to say something when Annette’s eyes widened and she nodded to the north. Out there in the clearing, about twenty yards up the slope toward their ridge, was a big buck.
CHAPTER 11
IT WASN’T THE TWELVE-BY-TWELVE PHANTOM, BUT HE was a solid five-by-five.
“A nice buck for your first kill,” Uncle Rick whispered to Hunter. “Want to give it another try?”
Annette smiled excitedly. Yumi motioned at the deer impatiently like, Hurry up and take the shot already.
This was it. A second chance. A real nice deer. Great rack. The buck reached down to nibble at some grass, and Hunter took that moment to slowly lower himself to the prone. Once again, he was in the perfect position for a shot.
He set his scope’s crosshairs right over the animal’s heart and slowed his breathing to keep the weapon from jerking around. As quietly as he could, he worked the bolt action to chamber a round, and turned off the safety.
The buck took two steps to Hunter’s right. No problem. They weren’t busted. He had this. He did. Just stay right there. Don’t move.
Hunter slipped his fingertip over the trigger. He watched as the buck raised his head, standing at his full height, his proud antlers high above him. Hunter could almost feel the animal’s heartbeat.
“OK,” Hunter whispered. He controlled his breathing. In and out. In and out. In and . . . out. He should have shot. He lowered his rifle and wiped his face, rubbed his eye. Now he’d shoot it. Now he’d kill it.
But he couldn’t. Hunter lowered the rifle again. He felt a cold dread twisting inside him.
Maybe he was overthinking this. Maybe if he didn’t think, but quickly pulled the trigger. Just shoot without thinking. It was a good safe shot. Nobody was behind the deer or anything. He brought the rifle stock to his cheek and sighted the animal again. He just had to shoot.
The crack of a rifle!
