Good Luck, Little Buck
Deer season starts today in New Hampshire, and this is no time for attitude if you are a handsome buck.
We hit the brakes driving home in the truck the other evening to allow safe passage for a handsome, six-point buck. He was on the left when we came around the corner, about to step nonchalantly across the road in front of us. If we had come to a stop a hundred feet in front of him, I’m not sure he would have moved from his original position. He was a pretty chill deer. My wife said, “Better be careful, Mr. Deer.”
Good advice. Deer season starts today in New Hampshire, and this is no time for attitude if you are a handsome buck. It varies, region to region, but in our part of the state the season will run this year until December 7th. While it goes on, we will be wearing fluorescent orange hats and jackets outdoors. Our dog, Huckleberry, who customarily wears a bright orange collar, will now don an orange vest. Before our walk yesterday morning, we dressed him with it for the first time this season, and he looked sharp. We call him Orange Lightning as he bolts through the woods. Together, we will stay away, as much as possible, from the environs open to hunters for the next month, moving to another location if, when we arrive, a truck is parked there already.
I have never had much interest in blood sports, but I don’t object to them provided hunters intend to eat what they kill, a fair standard, I think. The key word is “hunt,” because there may be instances where an animal is dispatched for reasons apart from food—a fox in the hen house, for example. I go along with protecting the chickens, even as Mr. Fox was doing what came naturally. But if you are going into the woods to bag a deer, a moose, even a bear, I hope the plan is to serve it at the table—mine if necessary.
Around here, the hunters I know are very much that sort. They all have their secret jerky recipes. And they are committed conservationists. I learn more about the woods and the animals that live in them from my friends who are hunters than those who are hikers like me. Their wisdom comes from the hours of stalking and waiting, mostly off-trail, in a tree, or hollow, looking and listening. We hikers breeze by a lot of things. I will pick a place in the woods to sit for ten or fifteen minutes—longer if I have gone to the trouble to climb a tall hill or mountain. But what is ten minutes to a thousand acres? A jot of time. One leaf that falls to the ground.
The desire to stay in one place long enough to grasp its routine is a constant with me on my walks. Alas, for most (all) of my excursions, I am accompanied by Orange Lightning, who is against abiding. We must always be on our way. The hidden creatures of the forest, I’m sure, are appalled by his running around. It’s clear he can’t catch a thing while chasing squirrels up a tree. They all scatter for the same reason people avoid the obsessively talkative person in an airport lounge—“Hey, how are you? What’s your name? Where you headed? I’m Huck—call me Orange Lightning—Over there’s my owner. Ooo, wait. Where’d he go?”
For a few years, when my wife and I owned an inn, we hosted an Annual Game Dinner, which took place over the winter, bringing together the area’s sportspeople (yes, there are women who hunt and fish). Attendees would contribute their bounty, bringing it to us ahead of time. We would convert it into a menu, starting with passed hors d’oeuvres, followed by a three-course dinner. There was generally salmon from Alaska, and trout (often as pâté). Local venison, of course, pheasant, moose, bear (twice, I think), and elk. One regular participant always contributed his special wild boar sausage—from actual wild boars.
If you want to know where the rubber meets the road in the culinary world, it is in preparing and serving the proceeds of people who have, very likely, spent days isolated in the cold, beginning at dawn, fumbling home after dusk, in hope of a split second opportunity to procure fresh game for themselves. It is one thing to disappoint a guest with an overcooked slice of meat from an animal that arrived by truck. It is another, to disappoint a guest with an overcooked slice of meat from an animal they carried out of the woods on their back. Receiving a prized loin of moose one year, the contributor said, “If you overcook it, I’ll . . .” Etc.
I took no offense. To the contrary, we embraced the chance to honor both the hunter and hunted, which is a sentiment that develops in us—carnivore or not—the closer we get to our sources of food. It is worth repeating in reverse: that the honor we give to our food decreases the farther we get from its source. It does. It just does. And I won't argue about it.
For deer and their pursuers, those proximities will get especially close beginning today. After two days of rain, most of the leaves are down. Cover is compromised. Temperatures are forecasted to remain in the forties. It will be cold and wet, for everyone hunkered in the woods.
After breakfast, Orange Lightning and I will seek a well-groomed trail. We won’t plan to sit and stay.
Good luck, little buck.