Читать книгу Never Cry Halibut - Bjorn Dihle - Страница 8

THE FIRST DEER

WHEN WE WERE SIXTEEN YEARS OLD, my good pals Jesse Walker and Ed Shanley and I skipped school to hunt Sitka blacktail deer. We stumbled through drenched blueberry bushes, thorny mazes of devil’s club, and tangles of alders until we got to a mountainside covered in old-growth spruce and hemlock. Grabbing tree roots, we clawed up a steep slope of moss, rocks, and loose soil. On mountain benches, we crossed rain-swollen creeks running brown and sank into skunk cabbage-covered muskegs.

“How am I supposed to keep up with an English mountaineer and a savage?” Jesse muttered from the back as we emerged from dark forest into a subalpine meadow. We rested atop a fallen tree to feast on marble-sized blueberries. The rippling dark-blue swath of Lynn Canal stretched to the north. The first of autumn’s snow dusted the Chilkat Range on the western horizon, and the gigantic white summits of the Fairweather Range loomed beyond. To the east, 1,500 square miles of glaciers and mountains separated our community from the expansive taiga of the Yukon. Admiralty Island, a wilderness of brown bears and rainforest, stretched a hundred miles to the south. With purple-stained mouths, we spoke softly about the little we knew of hunting, mostly stories our dads had told us. I pointed Jesse in the direction of where we planned to camp.

A big Sitka blacktail watches the author from high on a mountain on Admiralty Island.

“This is the last time I’m climbing a mountain with you guys,” he growled as Ed and I hurried ahead to get in an evening hunt. Ed and I crested the top of the mountain and glassed a valley. To our surprise, a deer placidly grazed on deer lettuce and blueberry leaves below. With pounding hearts, we stalked as close as cover allowed.

“Too far!” I whispered as Ed and I looked at an unsuspecting buck less than a hundred yards away. “Do you think you could hit it?”

“No, too far!” Ed agreed. The buck’s antlers splayed out beyond his ears. We cursed under our breath and tried to figure out how to sneak closer. We belly crawled a few yards more before the deer snorted and disappeared into the brush.

The sun was sinking toward the summit of Nun Mountain when we stumbled upon a large, blond, hairy beast snoring beneath a jack pine. The creature groaned, roared, and shook itself. For a second, I nearly readied my rifle before Jesse rose to his full height, eyeing us malevolently. After a brief conference, Ed grabbed the other rifle and strolled off toward where we had last seen the buck. Jesse and I snuck over to the edge of a bowl and glassed the grassy stretches.

The Chilkat Range glistened red above the murky-blue Pacific. In the last moments of shooting light, I noticed Jesse flapping his arms like he was trying to fly. Upon closer examination, I understood him to be gesturing at the valley below. Two hundred yards away, a deer cautiously emerged from the dark forest. There was something phantasmal in its form as it tentatively moved through the failing light. I had my grandfather’s ancient .308. Its bolt didn’t work well, and in all its years of existence, it had only killed one or two animals. I belly crawled a few yards closer and awkwardly clanked a round into the chamber. Through the old four-power scope, I rested the crosshairs on the tiny image of the deer’s chest. It seemed impossibly far away. I hardly noticed the report of the shot.

“I missed!” I told my wild-eyed friend after he charged over. Staring down into the gloom, we saw no evidence of a deer or movement. The last of the alpenglow faded from the glacier-covered mountains. “I wish I hadn’t shot. I missed, but we should go take a look to make sure.”

We felt our way down a steep, slippery slope of deer lettuce, occasionally sliding. Jesse stopped and squinted into the darkness.

“I think the deer’s lying there,” he said.

The deer, a fork-horn buck, lay staring at the forest twenty yards away. I sat, clunked a bullet into the chamber, put the crosshairs on the base of his skull, and pulled the trigger.

Overwhelmed, Jesse ran to the deer, dodging kicking hooves and shaking antlers, and lay atop the animal as its life left it. Ed, hearing the shots, made his way down to us. Together, the three of us gutted and hung the deer in a small spruce. Covered in deer blood, we slept on heather and deer lettuce next to a fire that night.

The smell of sweat, deer, blueberry leaves, decay, spruce, and hemlock accompanied us down the mountain the following day. Our packs sagged with the weight of the meat. The wind rustled trees, and condensation dripped from branches. That night we fried heart and barbecued ribs. None of us had ever eaten a meal so fine.