The Art of the Hunt

It's the first of December, the first Sunday of Advent, the second weekend of shotgun deer season in Northern Illinois.  Hunters took out so many of their brethren with rifles that high-powered weaponry are no longer allowed in the hunt.  We had frost overnight and the corn stubble sparkles in the weak light of early morning.  Intermittent dull pops echo across the river as the sun breaks over the hills.  Four they come:  three men and a boy, shotguns over their shoulders, single file to the red pickup truck parked mid-field.  They have been hunting the bottoms of Plum River.  They are not empty-handed.  The lead hunter carries a bundle of fur, likely a small coyote.  There's no bounty on coyotes, but you can get a few bucks for the pelt.  I love to hear the coyotes yodeling across the fields and hills, and I'm hoping it's not a coyote, but you go out, you gotta bring something home, I suppose.  The farmers hate the coyotes, fearing for their herds, but I find the deer more dangerous, maybe the most dangerous critters out there (only because the damned wild turkeys have not yet turned on us).

Deer lay in wait in the ditches, leap fences to assault vehicles, waiting for their main chance.  It's become a game to them - they are no longer the game themselves.  Last night at dusk a couple of big bucks leapt merrily across my path up by Georgetown Road, then a doe and two fawns stepped daintily out of Wenstrom's driveway, flicking their fine white tails for me to admire up close.  I don't hunt, but I wouldn't mind thinning the herds with a strategy beyond messing up the grill of my car.

We live on Loran Road, a regular deer park in rural Carroll County, but they don't necessarily limit themselves to the countryside.  My friend was driving down the main street in a nearby town when a deer ran out into the street and into her car.  Took nearly a month to fix the damage, since the body shops are so busy with rampant deer damage.  My own story, and I assure you it's true, gave me new perspective on how the deer view their role in the driving drama.  I was walking down to the mailbox and saw a buck standing in the alfalfa field across the road.  I could hear a truck downshifting at Indian Trail, just up the road.  The buck ran full tilt down the field, took a sharp right at the ditch and waited for that truck to come down the hill.  Waited for it.  When the truck came around the bend, the buck leapt out into the road.  I heard him snorting with laughter.  What sport.

They are after us, my friend.  True story.