feathers for direction when released.
I had already killed a deer with a rifleâactually an old 16-gauge single-shot Browning shotgun with slugsâby the time I began to hunt with a bow, hunting with my farmer uncles in the fall. This was less hunting than it was gathering meat. Men with rifles were posted at clearings while boys and other men were sent to âdriveâ the woods through and push the deer out to be shot. It was not particularly sporting and was not meant to be. It was gathering meat for the family for winter. I was carrying a shotgun nearly longer than I was tall, staggering through swamp grass and snow up to my waist, when a buck jumped up in front of me and stood still, broadside to me. I raised the shotgun without thinking, cocked the hammer, and shot. The buck dropped, the big slug almost knocking him sideways. I, of course, got buck fever and stammered a yell for my uncle Gordy, who was pushing brush next to me, and he came over and helped me gut the buck and drag him out to the road so we could add him to the row of deer already taken by the posted men. It was my first deer, but it couldnât really be called hunting so much as just luck for me and panic by the deer, which stood forty feet away while a kid knocked him over with an old single-barrel scattergun and what they used to call a punkin-ball slug.
Hunting, true big-game hunting with a bow, is much more an art and much more demanding, and initially I wasnât sure how it should be done. Some people would simply find a deer trail and either hide in brush or get up in a tree and wait, on a âstand,â until a deer came by. Others would put on soft moccasins and walk slowly, very slowly, through the woods, as quietly as possible, and walk up on feeding or bedded deer and get a shot at them before they were aware.
I initially decided to hunt by moving, I think more because as a young boy I wasnât patient enough to sit and wait. Later I favored the stand method, working from camouflage. And my first bow-killed deer was taken that way.
I was near an old abandoned homestead, long ago rotted to wreckage by the northern winters, and I saw a small buck walk behind the caved-in building. I waited a few seconds at full draw until he walked out. Everything worked as it was supposed to and I hit the deer just behind the shoulderâone of the blades of the broadhead actually cut the side of his heartâand he walked a few steps, and lay down, then curved his head back and died.
But it was my second kill of a deer with a bow that truly applies to Brianâs hunting in
Hatchet
. Two years later, when I was fifteen, I was hunting and absolutely nothing was going right. Normally, fall in the north woods is a time of clear days and nights, crisp weather, wonderful bright sun and brilliant leaves. That year there was none of it. It rainedâcold rain during the day, all day, a soft, gray drizzle that froze at night into a thin layer on the ground, too thin to hold weight, so that when you tried to walk on it you broke through into the cold mud, and everything, everything in the world had a cold, wet drabness that made even my fifteenyear-old bones ache.
It was, paradoxically, the best time to walk-hunt. The water kept the grass unbrittle, so it didnât crackle and make noise, and the water dripping from limbs covered the sound of walking. Years later I learned that storm fronts create the best conditions for hunting because game animals lie down and are not as wary as normal. It was the kind of hunting Brian would have to doâhunting when it wasnât necessarily pleasant to hunt; hunting because he had to, hunting to live.
About three one afternoon I came to the edge of a swamp that was absolutely covered with deer trails, many of them so fresh the water was still running into the hoof prints. The swamp presented a problem. I was wearing rubber boots, hardly the thing for quiet walking, although in that weather
I had already killed a deer with a rifleâactually an old 16-gauge single-shot Browning shotgun with slugsâby the time I began to hunt with a bow, hunting with my farmer uncles in the fall. This was less hunting than it was gathering meat. Men with rifles were posted at clearings while boys and other men were sent to âdriveâ the woods through and push the deer out to be shot. It was not particularly sporting and was not meant to be. It was gathering meat for the family for winter. I was carrying a shotgun nearly longer than I was tall, staggering through swamp grass and snow up to my waist, when a buck jumped up in front of me and stood still, broadside to me. I raised the shotgun without thinking, cocked the hammer, and shot. The buck dropped, the big slug almost knocking him sideways. I, of course, got buck fever and stammered a yell for my uncle Gordy, who was pushing brush next to me, and he came over and helped me gut the buck and drag him out to the road so we could add him to the row of deer already taken by the posted men. It was my first deer, but it couldnât really be called hunting so much as just luck for me and panic by the deer, which stood forty feet away while a kid knocked him over with an old single-barrel scattergun and what they used to call a punkin-ball slug.
Hunting, true big-game hunting with a bow, is much more an art and much more demanding, and initially I wasnât sure how it should be done. Some people would simply find a deer trail and either hide in brush or get up in a tree and wait, on a âstand,â until a deer came by. Others would put on soft moccasins and walk slowly, very slowly, through the woods, as quietly as possible, and walk up on feeding or bedded deer and get a shot at them before they were aware.
I initially decided to hunt by moving, I think more because as a young boy I wasnât patient enough to sit and wait. Later I favored the stand method, working from camouflage. And my first bow-killed deer was taken that way.
I was near an old abandoned homestead, long ago rotted to wreckage by the northern winters, and I saw a small buck walk behind the caved-in building. I waited a few seconds at full draw until he walked out. Everything worked as it was supposed to and I hit the deer just behind the shoulderâone of the blades of the broadhead actually cut the side of his heartâand he walked a few steps, and lay down, then curved his head back and died.
But it was my second kill of a deer with a bow that truly applies to Brianâs hunting in
Hatchet
. Two years later, when I was fifteen, I was hunting and absolutely nothing was going right. Normally, fall in the north woods is a time of clear days and nights, crisp weather, wonderful bright sun and brilliant leaves. That year there was none of it. It rainedâcold rain during the day, all day, a soft, gray drizzle that froze at night into a thin layer on the ground, too thin to hold weight, so that when you tried to walk on it you broke through into the cold mud, and everything, everything in the world had a cold, wet drabness that made even my fifteenyear-old bones ache.
It was, paradoxically, the best time to walk-hunt. The water kept the grass unbrittle, so it didnât crackle and make noise, and the water dripping from limbs covered the sound of walking. Years later I learned that storm fronts create the best conditions for hunting because game animals lie down and are not as wary as normal. It was the kind of hunting Brian would have to doâhunting when it wasnât necessarily pleasant to hunt; hunting because he had to, hunting to live.
About three one afternoon I came to the edge of a swamp that was absolutely covered with deer trails, many of them so fresh the water was still running into the hoof prints. The swamp presented a problem. I was wearing rubber boots, hardly the thing for quiet walking, although in that weather
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