If I Was Hunting

If I Was Hunting The footprints are obvious enough. Even a child or woman could read them. The prints stand in moisture and dirt on a gray painted cement walk that lies clammy at my feet like a corpse's skin upon rigor mortis. Individual trails converge on the doorway. So many prints have merged. The high heels, moccasins, tennis shoes and bluchers mix into a density at the door that denies all individuality, but only mass, volume, and milling of animals about a water hole, or places of bedding, feeding, rutting. On the mountain he pointed out sign. "Look here, the size of that print, a buck as large as them tracks." The saplings were shredded and antler worn. "Here, here, look at the size of them pellets. Shit, they're thick over this mountaintop. Look at all them prints. They bedded over thar by them small white pines. Hell, you put that stand up that tree. Them paths cross thar, see. I'll set up down yonder above the springhead where they water. By Ned, we'll get us deer." I look across the street to the two-story office building with an open corner window. If I was hunting, that would be the place for a man to put himself. The quarry not aware at 8:00 a.m., a milling herd bunched at the narrow of the doorway. "Gawd, they been thick in here. You can smell 'em. Can you smell deer?" I can smell man-scent. —John Cantey Knight 71 ...