Hunter face

Yep, that's a dead deer. Yep, that's me sometime in the early to mid-90s. This is a terrible photograph. It was night, so the flash created some monstrous shadows. I didn't try to fix this photo. My mom most likely took this photo, as my head is nearly cut off. If you think this photo is bad, the rest of this event are worse. I don't know if my mom would have done any better with the camera in my hand. I don't have a record of it being used. And, well, it's a bit of a crime scene. But at least I got to do my hunter face! Grr! Tough guy.

Why am I posting a photo of me with a dead deer? Well, he's a beaut, for one thing. He's not the biggest deer I've gotten over the years, but he sure is pretty. That's a corn-fed Nebraska deer. It looks like a whitetail. Those were the days. All you had to do was sit on the corner of a cornfield at daybreak or at day's end and these guys are either leaving or descending to feed. Deer are crepuscular, which means active at night. True, sometimes you see them out in the middle of the day, but that's often when something isn't quite normal. Maybe someone is feeding them. Maybe they have no sense of danger because of a lack of predators. Maybe it is overcast, fooling them into thinking night is coming soon. 

Yes, hunting was easy when you sat in a shelterbelt and waited for them to come into view. Hunting in the Black Hills is often a more strenuous exercise unless you know the habits of your quarry. Some of the hardest hunting I did in Nebraska took place on land owned by a man named Breezy Broughman (sp), who lived between Broken Bow and Callaway. (His name had a movie star feel to me.) I remember he owned peacocks because they killed snakes. Sometimes we hunted the rough country of his ranch, but getting a deer out of there was problematic, as it had to be dragged up and down craggy hills across some tough country. We often hunted on a plateau where alfalfa grew. I recall getting a couple of bucks there, one after I got tired of sitting in the Suburban listening to the Cornhusker football broadcast, leaving my brother Jason (he was visiting) and father listening to the radio. It was the middle of the day and deer weren't expected to appear soon. I walked across the field, looked back, and there was a nice buck. My brother and father were a little surprised when I went back and told them I just got my deer. They didn't hear the gunshot because the radio was up so loud.

I have lots of hunting stories. My little Savage .243 I got when I was 12 (and started using when I was 14) killed a lot of deer, never needing more than one shot. What was important about this activity wasn't the game we brought home. It was the tradition we upheld. Sitting in the backseat of the Suburban while my dad chased pronghorns is one of my first hunting memories. When he shot one of those pronghorns, and it was a bad shot, hitting it in the leg, I cried when he had to cut its throat. I still remember feeling sick and upset about the whole thing. But that did not deter me from taking up hunting. One bad shot is just that — a bad shot. 

Those look like mule deer.

My last name means something like "we hunt" (or, "to chase a defeated foe") in German, but my name is probably older than the German language, as someone pointed out. So hunting is in my blood, it seems. I don't know if my son will ever hunt. He has his own interests. Only time will tell. But, for many years, this is how the men in my family bonded. It was perhaps a rite of passage. We did more than just put meat on the table.

I get down on myself because my health is not what it has traditionally been. I'm not the biggest guy nor the strongest. Yes, I intend to get into better shape for many reasons. But the truth is, I am in many ways more capable at 42 years old than at other times in my life, and not only that, but I am also more capable than many who are younger than me. So I expect to get out there in the fields, hills, and valleys many more years and, hopefully, make that hunter face a few more times.

Thank you for reading, and God bless.