Of Woods and Waters: A Kentucky Outdoors Reader

The Meadow

RICHARD TAYLOR The Meadow From Girty (1977) SHOT THIS MORNING a fine red buck. Twelve points. Having slept in some beeches, I wake to sounds of a squirrel cutting, his long incisors gnawing small bitter beechnuts somewhere close. Breakfast. Cocking and priming, quiet as I can I settle back in my robes to spy him out, my sight fixed on leaf-ends as the uppermost glow out of the half-light and burn white along the edges, trunks still steaming. And wait. A quarter hour later brother squirrel and I both sense some third presence, the feel of some interloper moving over my body like waves. Then the hush. For a moment or two everything goes stony as we listen: insects, squirrel, twitter of thrushes, even yesterday's shower mammering in the branch. Then as evenly starts up again. Some minutes pass before I see him. Thirty paces off, head bent in the browse, a fat buck grazing his way through the high grass which abounds in the clearing. This clearing, a meadow not much larger than the shade of a sizable tree, is to my right, now fortunately upwind. Peculiar the way he moves and chews, methodically and cautious, raising his head now and then to catch my scent, but doesn't. He is so close I can see the dark wet dew line on his forelegs, parts of him still vague in the blue film sunlight is cutting now. The antler tree sprouting out of his crown rolls in time with the working of his jaws. Fickle, he tries one delicacy, then another, gathering salads, his arched neck deftly yanking and twisting the forage from its roots. His winter coat 308 he has not shed yet. It's matted and shaggy, the color of dry bark, parts of it stuccoed with flaky mud. I can just make out the ring of dung beneath his tail. Careful not to spook him, I maneuver my body into a line with his, bringing my weapon to bear. I draw a gradual bead to the center of his chest just above the jointure of the forelegs, then slowly squeeze. But my aim is off. The ball strikes slightly higher, entering right of center, and penetrates the upper neck. Ordinarily this would not stop him dead though he would likely bleed to death in some thicket several miles away. Yet this time it is enough. Too late, he pitches and bounds toward the brush. The ball must have sliced his vitals, for he wavers even while his reflexes gather the muscles into flight, gaining speed only to crumple twenty or so paces away in deep clover. Mortal. I move toward him as if under water, my ears still swarming with the shot, that high-pitched paining sound that fills my head like a hemorrhage. When I reach him, the tremors are already in his extremities, legs stiffening in awkward jerks, large buck eyes glazing. The hooves, fine and sharp as chisels, even sharper now, have that clumsy look things take on as they are separated from their functions, lose their grace. Bending closer, I find the knot of blue-stem stuck between the front teeth, still dewed. Life and death flop in my head. Life and death. I see the long jaws chewing and now still, the yellowed glint of the cuspids with their chaw of green. My hand, no longer mine, moving by some instinct of its own to my side where the knife is. The same hand pressing the blade to cut out the tongue and liver, delicacies . Both being warm yet, more live than dead, they steam. These and some fillets from the tender part of the shoulder are all I can carry. The rest I must leave for the buzzards. Times I have seen the creeks fill with carcasses, bloated does minus one steak or a tongue. Next, I strike a fire, skewering some choice on a green stick, roasting it brown and dripping. This, with the last of my parched corn, makes a passable breakfast. RICHARD TAYLOR 309 Full, I stuff what's left in my pouch, remembering to cut enough sinew from the shank to re-string my moccasins. The grass nearly dry as I gather my gear to move on. The carcass already drawing its wreath of flies. Crickets fretting their thighs inside my head. Sun inching higher. Not a gesture of cloud in...