The Hunter & the Buck

A light breeze greeted the hunter on the opening day of Deer Season. It was right before dawn and the Sun had painted the Eastern sky with streaks of purple, pink, orange and yellow.  The caffeine from his morning coffee and the adrenaline of the hunt were keeping him awake. Which was a good thing. Falling out of a deer stand would surely lose him his man card. Or worse.

He gripped his rifle, his instrument of death, and viewed the woods around him. Off to the Northwest was a clearing. It had been planted with rye grass and was a natural magnet for the deer that lived in the 1,000 acres he hunted. He sat high above the ground, serenaded by sound of his own breath and the breeze that whispered through the pines. It was a symphony of near silence only interrupted by his own heartbeat.

A snapping sound off to his right woke him out of his trance.  It was soon followed by the rustling of leaves — rustling too loud to be just a squirrel or even a coyote.  He slowly picked up his rifle and looked through the scope.  The human eye is particularly good at detecting motion and he noticed something large moving toward the clearing.  He followed it with his scope until it moved into the field.

It was a buck. A large buck. No, a huge buck. He quickly counted the points on its antlers as it stopped to eat its last breakfast.  A 12-pointer.  The hunter’s heart began to beat rapidly has he aimed his rifle right at the buck’s heart.

He started to pull the trigger and then stopped.

He slowly put the gun down and felt over his own heart. There he felt the rough ridges of a scar. A massive scar from his cancer surgery.  Cancer that was missed by three other doctors before a fourth found it.

The deer heard the hunter and looked directly at him. Both the man and the animal gazed at each other for a minute before the buck ran off into the woods.

“Today wasn’t your day to die.” the hunter said, “Just like it wasn’t my time either.  You won’t be so lucky next time. ”  He stopped for a moment, rubbed his scar and whispered under his breath, “next time.”

The hunter had given the buck another precious chance to live — Just like the one he had received not so long ago. He set the gun down and watched the dawn wrap its arms around the woods around him.