Why I Do Not Hunt

So I'm running down 65 through Indiana and morning is coming on. I can see the sky lightening up in front of me. It looks like it's going to be a beautiful day. A mini-van passes me and scoots back over in front of me and continues on down the road. No big deal. Plenty of room between us.

Good thing too. From out of nowhere, well, not nowhere actually. Actually he came from the bushes. Anyway, here comes a big buck. I just have time to note the size of the rack when he runs right in front of the minivan. She hits her brakes hard and I see her swerve to the left trying to avoid the buck. Man, it's a biggie. That sucker is going to do some damage.

And over he comes. I could not believe my eyes. This big old buck comes flipping over the top of the mini-van and crash lands in the middle of the road. I've been on the brakes for some time now and traffic behind me is slowing up. I hit my flashers and head for the shoulder. The deer has landed in the right lane and I holler out on the CB, "Dead buck in the granny lane, southbound, at the 183. You wanna move left. I'll try to get it moved.

I jump out and go check on the mini-van. The woman inside is shook up and is shaking in her seat but she's alright, no injuries and she soon calms down. She gets out and we check out her damage. Actually, it's not too bad. I sure would have figured a lot more. Her hood is bent in where she hit the buck, but apparently she knocked his legs out from under him and threw him up over the top of the van. She's got a small dent above her windshield and other than that there's nothing. No fluids leaking. No weird noises. All seems well. She smiles.

"Thanks for stopping," she says.

"No problem. Just wanted to make sure everything was okay."

"Is he dead?," she asks.

"I think so," I say. " He's still laying there where he landed. If he were still alive, I figure he'd be up and gone by now. Wanna go with me and check?"

"Sure," she says and we start walking back towards the deer as traffic is crawling by in the left lane.

I'm not much of a hunter, never have been. So verifying the demise of an animal is usually confined to whether or not I can see any obvious indications of death. Massive open wounds, blood flowing, severed head, those kinds of things. I've never shot a deer but I have seen many of them strapped on the hood of a Buick and they always seem to have blood dripping from the nose and the tongue hanging out. Maybe this is the universal sign of death in deer.

As we get closer, I am amazed at the size of the rack on this thing. Huge! I try to count the points but I keep losing track as I shift from one side to the other. "Sure is a big one," she says.

"Yep. Maybe a record of some kind", I say.

"So do you think it's dead?"

"I think so. See the blood dripping from the nose and the way the tongue is just lolling out there like that. I believe that is the universal sign for death among deer. I think I read that somewhere."

But just to be safe, I pick up a stick and start poking at the deer to make sure. No movement. I reach out and grab it by the antlers and give it a good shake. Nothing. It's got to be dead.

"I think it's dead," she says. "What should we do with it? Do we call someone?"

"I think you're supposed to call the police and they'll have it removed, but I've seen so many of these things lying by the side of the road and it sure would be a shame to waste all that meat."

"You think you want it?" she asks.

"Well, if you don't think you want it, then sure, I'd take it."

"How would you get it home?" she says.

"Well. It really should be bled out so the blood doesn't spoil the meat. But I don't think I want to do that right here on the side of the road. It might gross people out and it's sort of dangerous to do that right here."

"So what are you going to do?"

"Tell you what. If you can help me throw it up in the back of the truck, I'll take it down to the next rest area and I can hang it up there from the back of the trailer and bleed it out. It's cold enough right now that it won't spoil before I get it home and get it butchered."

And she agrees. We grab this monster by the antlers and start dragging him to the back of my truck. After much heaving and hoeing we finally get him up in the trailer and I shut the doors on him. All I've got in there right now is about half a trailer full of light bulbs going to Columbus and there's plenty of room for a deer carcass. So we are both happy. Her car is drivable and I've got quite a bit of extra meat to help out at home. I feel like a hunter gatherer from the Mesozoic period. Or one of those Oic periods.

We say our goodbyes and we're on our way. Life is good. Just six more hours to Columbus, then about an hour and a half to home and I'll get to work on skinning a deer. How hard can it be, right?

It was about 30 minutes later that I noticed something strange was going on. I had been listening to my Ipod, ZZ Top specifically, and so the music was a little loud. It was in between 'Cheap Sunglasses' and 'Legs' that I first heard it. A bang. Or it might have been a bong. Not that kind of bong. The bong you get from whacking a gong. And now I sound like Dr Suess. Maybe it was more of a bang. Yes, definitely a bang. And there it was again. It was then that the thought "Oh Crap!" ran through my mind. Quickly followed by "NO!" and then some others that I'd better leave out of here. My mother reads this blog you know.

The rest area has still not appeared but I can no longer wait. I dive for the shoulder in a hurry, dust flying out from the back of the trailer. I get as far off the road as possible and hit the parking brakes. My flashers are going as I jump out of the truck and run to the back. Morning is in full bloom now and traffic has really picked up. I reach for the door of the trailer and get ready to throw it open, and I stop. From the sounds I hear emanating from inside the trailer, it appears that my skills at determining the death status of deer is severely lacking. This thing sounds like it is trying to punch it's way out of my trailer as it kicks and thrashes around inside.

And do you remember what I have in there that might provide this manic buck some cushion for his inevitable slips and falls? Yes! That's it. My precious load of light bulbs is doing it's best to make sure that Mr. Buck does not get hurt as he falls around inside my trailer. I can hear them giving up their very lives for him with no more than a whimpering tinkle.

I want to throw open the door and get him out, but he's sure to jump out into traffic and probably cause another wreck. What to do? What to do? Then it hits me. I run back up to the tractor and grab the CB. "Anybody got a copy on this radio?"

"Copy that" comes back and I start trying to explain.

"I need traffic stopped. This is the big truck on the southbound shoulder and I need all traffic stopped behind me. Anyone north of the 152, you need to stop before you get to me."

"What's going on?" and "We're not stopping for nothing!" and "Anybody want to buy a radio?" comes flashing back in a hundred different voices. How do I tell these guys that I'm getting ready to turn loose one really pissed off buck out on the highway.

"Hazardous Cargo!" I scream into the radio. "It's loose in the trailer and I don't know how it's going to react when it hits the air." Which is somewhat true, right?

I get a couple south bounders hollering out for a brake check and they block the highway. As a result, the northbound starts to back up and slow down to see what's going on. The word gets passed to them and they're stopping the traffic as well. When I finally see that all traffic is stopped I head to the back of the trailer again and start to ease the door open. As I'm doing so I hear a trucker behind me holler out, "Don't open that! Wait for the HAZMAT guys to get here!"

I turn around to tell him it's okay. But I've already opened the door enough for Mr. Buck to get a glimpse of light and it is anything but okay. He heads for the light, as any good deer would, and promptly bowls me over with the door, head over teakettle. Mr. buck hits the ground and is skidding right toward the other driver, who jumps back so fast that he trips over his own feet and down he goes. But Mr. Buck doesn't stop there. His mission seems to be to hunt down the man that locked him in that rolling coffin and meet out some justice.

That man would be me.

I see him spin on the shoulder of the road and look straight at me. Until this time, I thought only bulls pawed the ground, and then only in bad movies. But no! Mr. Buck wants to express his anger and he begins to throw dirt up over his shoulder just as he charges.

I may never win the high jump, but I know now that I can clear the back of a trailer deck without a running start. Up I went, with a mighty roll, as Mr. Buck comes a-snortin and a-huffin. Something else I learned. Deer can clear the back of a trailer deck as if it's not even there. Here he comes, right up over the deck and into the trailer again, trying to kick me in the head as he passes over my quivering huddled body. He gets by me and I roll out the door and quickly duck underneath the trailer. I hear him skidding around in there as he gets turned around and out he comes again looking for his nemesis, that would be me.

He soon spots me under the trailer and I learned one more lesson for the day. Deer cannot crawl. "I thank you, God, for your foresight in designing these animals with this limitation." I am safe. At least for the time being. That is until the video gets posted on Youtube. "Big Bad Truck Driver attacked by Bigger Badder Buck." I'm sure it will appear soon.

Mr. Buck is thoroughly frustrated by now but he soon realizes that I am beyond his reach. He paws and snorts and throws more dirt around as he shows me who the real Alpha Male is between us. He finally quits snorting bucksnot on me and struts off into the median, does a slow circle, observing the audience he has gained, and slowly strolls across the northbound lanes and disappears into the trees.

"You can come out now," an Indiana State Trooper says. When he showed up, I haven't a clue.

"Not yet. He could be back. I think I see him just inside those trees over there. I think he's waiting for me to come out so he can have another go at me," I say.

"Come out now," the trooper says and I slowly crawl out from under the trailer. It's then that I hear the laughter from both sides of the highway. But the trooper is not smiling.

"You want to tell me what's going on here?" he says.

I thought it was fairly obvious what was going on here, and it crosses my mind to say as much, but as I glance inside the trailer at the devastation of the "buck meets bulb" massacre, I know that there is no way anyone is going to believe this. But what the heck. Let's give it a try. So I begin...

"So I'm running down 65 through Indiana and morning is coming on..."