Killing The Thing You Love - Part 2

A student continues the story of his first deer stalk, his motivations for seeking a sustainable, eco-friendly way to source meat, and the surprising emotional affect of taking the life of a wild animal.   

The Valley of Sinking Hearts, Continued

Having our progress brought to a sudden holt, hiding behind Ben while looking around his right shoulder, wide-eyed, I feel like a child hiding behind his dad.

Like the two Roe we saw ping off into the treeline earlier, walking in our direction are a female and little one. Darker in colour than the Roe, apparently these are Sika.

Unlike the Roe, these animals do indeed feel more switched on. They’re not bouncing around. Instead, they move cautiously and with an air of extreme suspicion. The female's face looks serious as she sniffs the air. These aren't the goofy Golden Retrievers we saw earlier - these are black German Shepherds.

Ben is absolutely still, save for his gloved left hand that he is bringing up to cover his face, again with the painful slowness I’m learning is essential in this game. If we spook these Sika, their warning call will all but spell the end of our stalk.

I realize he's concealing the only part of him that isn't covered in brown or green material.

Shape, shine, shadow, shade, silhouette, and movement - the considerations for concealment. More weekend warrior stuff comes back to me.

I follow suit and with equal slowness start to hide my exposed face behind his right shoulder, leaving just my right eye to continue watching these animals that were staring right at us.

Again, these deer were not viable targets for us. But we were certainly viable targets for them to sound the Neighbourhood Watch alarm.

We looked on as, eventually, their interest in us reduced, but never quite fully went away as they started to bimble around on the slope in front of us.

As they climbed up and further away, Ben was able to whisper for me to get on my binoculars and take in this sight that nobody walking normally in the woods would ever see. He explains that luckily for us, the wind is swirling around and doing weird things down here, which meant the Sika could smell that something was up, but couldn't tell exactly what.

He also points out that had a stag been with them, we likely would not have been able to take the shot anyway as they were mostly 'skylined' - meaning that there was nothing solid behind them to catch the .308 bullet that we'd be sending in their direction.

The image of dog walkers getting zapped flashes through my mind again as the Sika eventually disappear from view.

But my thoughts go somewhere else as we both exhale with relief and continue creeping through the prickles and mush. With minutes lost on this bit of hide-and-seek, as exciting as it was, I am feeling even closer to failure. I start to manage my expectations and try to self-soothe with the fact that this has indeed been incredibly fun anyway.

As we get onto dry land on the other side, I ask Ben the thing I don't really want to know - how much daylight do we have left? “Ten minutes. Fifteen, tops”, he says.

Shit.

He explains what remains of our plan. Looking left through the valley, about a hundred-and-fifty metres away, was a grassy open space as the ground levelled out. From the darkness we were crouched in, the remaining daylight filling the open ground over there gave it a heavenly feel.

Heading Towards the Light

Sika will be coming out into that open space around now as they leave the trees on the right-hand part of it, Ben says. As he says this, I can almost see it in my mind's eye. Wishful thinking, perhaps, as this was our last hope, but in my imagination I see a stag walking from right to left across that grass.

Moving off, I am struck with the familiar sinking feeling again. And it is then that I realise what it is.

It was almost exactly on this day two years previously that I had immersed myself into another rite of passage; a cage fight.

While it was for charity and nowhere near the level of seriousness of the professional fights I enjoyed watching, it was a big deal for me nonetheless. And like this adventure today, was something I had on my must-do-one-day list for years.

To my horror, I lost that fight. It was extremely, close, however. And while I wasn't certain that I was winning at any point during the three two-minute rounds, I didn't know that I had lost until it came to the decision at the end, and my opponent's hand got raised.

In the same way today had been full of excitement and beautiful encounters with wildlife, that fight had been one of the most exciting and entertaining (for the crowd) that night. We both received a lot of congratulations.

And in the same way I felt good for throwing myself into that challenge that nobody asked me to do, I had zero regrets about attempting this unusual thing I was doing today.

But in the end, after so much build-up, I ultimately lost that fight. Which at the time felt so horrible I thought I was going to be physically sick.

And this, I realise, is the familiar feeling I had been trying to manage since we entered this dark woodland.

As we make our way through the gloom towards the illuminated open space, rather than push the feeling to one side as I had been doing up until now, I breathe into it. Surrender to it. And allow myself to feel it. And with that, it disappeared. My anxiety was replaced with gratitude for this amazing experience.

We are paralleling yet another barbed wire fence immediately to our left. On the other side of it are trees that will conceal our approach to the open ground, so Ben suggests we get in there to do so as we are currently very exposed.

This fence has a fairly large space between the bottom wire and the leafy ground. Ben takes a knee, carefully unslings his rife, and places it silently on the other side of the fence, under the bottom wire. Getting on his belly, he follows it through, quietly shuffling sideways like a side-stepping alligator while I pull the wire up. I copy his technique this time.

We edge closer to the open ground, now hidden in the shadows of the trees, eyes locked onto the glowing grassy oasis on the other side of the fence that within minutes would be too dark to operate in.

Soon, we run out of trees and are forced to pass back under the fence. After this, we'll creep just into the open ground itself, and take a look towards the trees that the Sika should be coming out of, but which still sat out of our line of sight from where we were. And that would be it. The end of our stalk. I can't say I'm not disappointed, but I'm at peace with it. Life can't be all ups.

Ben does his alligator trick again, and I do the same, except I manage to get my left jacket sleeve snagged slightly on one of the barbs. Getting to my feet to join Ben who is already standing, in the growing darkness I try to inspect my brand new Seeland Woodcock Advanced jacket and am relieved that I can't see any damage. And as I start to bring my eyes back up, something is happening.

The King of the Sika

I sense it before I can see it. Something happening in the open ground in front of us. Ben, just in front of me and slightly to my left, somehow, without moving or making a sound, absolutely comes alive and is vibrating with invisible energy. Sixty metres away... movement. Antlers. Huge antlers. The vision I had earlier of a stag crossing the open ground from right to left becomes a reality. Except, I could never have imagined he would be this bloody magnificent. He is illuminated in a way that makes him look unreal.

Somehow, Ben is now behind my right shoulder and has the shooting sticks open in front of me. Like a camera tripod, these provide a stable platform to rest the rifle on when firing from a standing position. They greatly increase the chances of placing an accurate shot much more than supporting the rifle with the arms only, minimizing the danger of the animal suffering unnecessarily.

Slipping the rifle onto the sticks, Ben says something to the effect of "You've got this", as I get into the position he had taught me a few hours earlier.

The stag stops dead in his tracks. Broadside. Staring right at us. Trees and ferns on a slight hill behind him to catch the bullet. Perfect. I start to get into the aim, and with him now magnified in the telescopic sight of the rifle, I have to stop myself from just standing here, letting myself be awestruck by the King of the Sikas.

My point of aim is above the front leg, halfway up the body. This is where the heart and lungs are located and provide the most instantaneous death possible, save for putting a bullet through the head and destroying the central nervous system. The reason we're not aiming for the head is because it's a smaller target that moves a lot more. Ultimately, the risk of injury and suffering is too great, I am told.

As I adjust myself behind the weapon, he bolts, galloping loudly through the trees and ferns. Shit! I wonder if my movement was too hurried. I wonder how such a big animal can move with such grace. I realise that being so close to such a powerful animal with giant weapons on his head is pretty scary. Surprisingly, I'm not that upset that he got away. I'm feeling a high from even having him in my sights.

Ben tells me to stay in position and quickly rummages in one of his many pockets. In my peripheral vision, I see him put something in his mouth. From my YouTube research prior to today, I know what this is. Blowing through it like a whistle, it lets out a loud noise that replicates a deer call.

As he has a couple of practice goes on it, I realise it's not exactly like a whistle. There is obviously a technique to it. Ben tests a few positions until he's happy, and out comes a loud noise that, to be honest, sounds like a comical kind of kazoo sound to me, but gives me hope nonetheless that this might not be over yet.

He lets loose a couple more toots before lowering the little device. Ben is about to say something, and I brace myself for bad news expecting to hear "We lost him, but well done" or "That was close, but not today".

My heart stops as something unbelievable happens once again. Not from the green that he ran into, but from the direction we first saw him come from, once again the King emerges. Except this time, he's not walking.

Charging out from the dead ground, presumably coming to kick the crap out of whoever was playing that kazoo, he comes to a halt in the same place as before. Except now he's facing more towards us - and is looking for a fight.

I don't know if Ben places his hand on my back, or whether his support and encouragement just feels like that, but I can feel him behind me both physically and energetically. And I am filled with the feeling of 'this is it'.

Getting my eye into the telescopic sight once more, Ben flicks off the safety and lets me know I'm cleared to fire. "Front leg, behind the shoulder", he says.

The stag's energy is completely different. He is puffing his chest out and I can almost smell the testosterone coming off him as I place the crosshairs where they need to go, pulling the buttstock tight into my right shoulder.

Everything slows down. My breathing. My heartbeat. All thoughts leave my mind. And after hearing Ben whisper "Slow squeeze", all sounds disappear as I enter my own little world. Gently exhaling, as I was taught, I feel the slightest pressure on the pad of my right index finger. I keep pulling. The rifle kicks into my shoulder as the sound of lightning cracks through the air.

Seasoned shooters like Ben can take a shot on a high-calibre rifle like this without blinking. I can't. And in the fraction of a second that my right eye was closed, the stag had already started running, and in an instant had disappeared in the same direction he ran the first time. It’s impossible to say whether I saw this through the rifle sight or with my naked eye.

I raise my head and breathe out loudly through pursed lips. My mind is empty, save for the whisper of a thought that is something like, What did I just do? Not because I feel shame. It was something more like waking up from a dream.

And yet I feel surprisingly calm. Slightly excited. Slightly joyful. Slightly in disbelief at how today has gone. Slightly concerned for the stag. But calm.

Not in the moment, but later on, I am reminded of something our teacher taught us when I was briefly studying Japanese swordsmanship.

In that art, at the end of every simulated fight sequence, after the 'killing blow', and the symbolic enemy was cut down, the same ritual process of shaking off the blood from the blade and re-sheathing was practiced. As the sword is returned to its sheath, you slow your breathing and movements down, and finish with a bow.

I learned that this wasn't really about teaching you to keep your sword clean, or showing respect to your opponent, so much as giving you a 'calming down' ritual that would happen automatically at a time when the untrained person would become extremely ungrounded and even potentially traumatized - the moment of killing.

I think Ben says something like "Well done", before asking me about the shot. You can feel when you've pulled the trigger too fast, held your breath, or not exhaled enough before firing - all mistakes in marksmanship. I let him know that it all felt fine. I possibly could have exhaled a bit more but I definitely didn't hold my breath.

He comments on how the stag just ran, without any obvious flinching movement that would indicate he just got hit with a high-velocity bullet, but Sika are often tough as nails like that.

We wait for a couple of minutes with the rifle still on the sticks. At this point, we don't actually know for sure what the situation is, and another shot may need to be taken. Ben says the next step is to make our way over to where he was standing when I fired, look for signs of blood, and follow the trail until we find him.

The Breaking of Hearts

Taking control of the rifle, with one smooth movement he ejects the empty shell casing into his open palm, places it in his pocket, and flicks the safety catch.

He lets me know the safety is on with a round in the chamber. Of course, I know this, but he says it anyway because to do so is standard operating procedure. Having taken the shot, now is not the time for whooping and high fives. If anything, Ben doubles down on the professionalism.

We head toward the fading light of the open ground, and Ben's extreme cautiousness confirms my own feelings that this is a potentially dangerous situation. If playing the kazoo pissed that stag off so much, I can only imagine how much he wouldn't like someone shooting at him. I ask what the procedure is for a charging stag, and with rifle in hand, Ben says "To stay behind me!".

Confident that Ben would be able to defend us, I still note the location of the nearest tree to sprint for and climb up if those antlers come roaring towards us.

Unable to find any blood, Ben tells me it's not uncommon with big Sika stags, because of their high body fat, to not bleed externally; they just hold it all in.

Using the magic thermal scope, Ben sees the heat signature of something amongst the nearby ferns to our right - the direction the stag had emerged from both times. Ben says if it's not him, we'll have no choice but to venture into the now very dark path that we saw him run off into, which he doesn't seem super excited about. I follow Ben's slow approach towards where he saw the white blob of heat. He is moving with extreme caution, when suddenly, he pauses. And then I see him relax. It is my stag. He is lying on his left side, extremely still, eyes open, staring off into space. I start to feel a mild cocktail of things. Mildly joyful. Mildly awestruck. Mildly sad.

Ben stops us and goes into teaching mode. We have to observe from a safe distance to see if we can see the abdomen rising and falling which would indicate breathing. We do not. He then snaps off a twig from a bush to do the 'eye poke' test to see if there is any blinking. There is not.

It's official. I killed him.

I'm taken out of my mild trance by Ben sticking out his hand for me to shake. With a big smile, he congratulates me on a remarkable first hunt, I thank him for making it possible, and together we share our disbelief at what just happened as we stand in the dimness that would now be too dark to safely hunt in.

He asks how I feel about pictures, which I'm fine with, as I find myself being pulled down to kneel beside this magical beast. I suddenly have the urgent need to take my gloves off; as laying my bare hands on him - feeling him - becomes the most important thing in the world in that moment.

Having let loose the deafening crack of the rifle into the woods, and got what we came for, there's no need for us to be quiet anymore. And yet we are. A moment's silence save for the patter of rain on the peak of my cap.

I feel a slight disappointment that I can't feel the warmth of his body. His thick fur is soaked through and actually cold to the touch, preventing the kind of tactile connection I was desiring at that moment.

In the years building up to this day, I have wondered several times if I would cry if I ever found myself kneeling beside an animal I killed. Maybe just a tear at least. I also wondered if I would have some last-minute moral crisis as my finger took up pressure on the trigger.

In the end, neither of those things happened. I simply offer a silent thank-you. It's also here that I discover what the interesting smell in Ben's truck was. So this is what deer smell like.

And as I sit there, stroking him somewhat like how I would a dog, albeit a giant one, and exploring his antlers and head in a way that a living wild stag would never let me in a million years, I become aware of two feelings.

There is the part of me I'm most familiar with; the part that loves animals. And often loves them in a way that is embarrassingly childlike. The part that shows up in a specific and incredibly unmanly voice I find myself using when speaking to them. It's the part that wanted to play and cuddle with all the deer we saw today.

And there is the other part of me that loved the hunting part of this hunt. It's a part of me that I'm also familiar with - the tiny trickle of adrenaline I felt as we 'prepped for battle' by the truck - but never before in relation to animals. I feel it slightly when cutting, cooking, and eating meat, and I realise the question I needed to answer was if that part of me could enjoy turning an animal into that meat.

And that answer was soft a yes. And it was mostly this part of me that was here now with my deer. More so than the childlike animal lover. And it was this more serious, focused, goal-oriented part that stayed with me as Ben and I took an antler each and dragged this 90kg animal up a grassy hill back towards field number two.

What was interesting, was to feel these two seemingly opposing parts at once. To feel them interact and change in their proportions to each other, even as I watched on and received a bloody gralloching (gutting) lesson from Ben, in preparing the body to go off to the butcher, while Ben took the head to process the antlers.

It was this mix of feelings that allowed me to feel happy to discover that the bullet went through the Sika's heart. Happy because it meant that his last moments would likely have been a sense of simply fading away a few seconds after taking off. Far less suffering than a purely natural end in the wild, even if the thing that made him sprint off was a gunshot.

And it was this mix of feelings that allowed me to also feel my own heart being tenderised by the mental image of his sprint suddenly slowing down, him falling onto his left side as we found him, and fading away.

'Childlike Animal Lover' kept my heart open. At no point, even when pulling the trigger, did I feel cold towards this animal.

But it was 'Hunter/Killer' that did the job. And, in truth, enjoyed it.

And therein lies the issue for many people who are opposed to hunting - this is one of the many reflections I have in the days following as I let it all sink in.

The Dignity of All Living Things

At the time of writing this, it has been six days since I killed one of the most beautiful animals I have ever seen in my life. And he has been the first thing I've thought of every morning since.

As the high of the hunt settles down, the level of growing sentimentality towards, and connection with, the deer has been surprising. I have had opposing feelings go to war with each other in my mind and heart, which I tried to explain to a few people.

Some got it. Some didn't.

But in the end, while it doesn't make sense that I feel what can only be described as loving and inexplicably protective of this deer when I'm the person who killed him, it doesn't have to.

His majesty, his wellbeing, and his dignity all meant something to me before I killed him. And now, as I wait for the butcher to process him into the meat that will fill the chest freezer in my garage, and nourish my family over the coming months, these things mean even more than when he first appeared like an animal spirit that gloomy evening.

What I can also feel is that if I continue to source my meat in this way, the intensity of this sentimentality will certainly fade a bit with each successive hunt. But the enjoyment of the hunt will not.

And that's the issue many people have with this. It's the enjoyment.

While most people can get their head around the need to manage deer populations for all the reasons mentioned previously, and that means certain deer needing to be killed in the most humane way possible, what people get uncomfortable with is the thought of the guy pulling the trigger having fun.

Which is an uncomfortable feeling I share, even as a (now) trigger-puller myself.

With this realization, I am extra grateful that the man who took me on my first hunting experience is also a friend to animals. That the subject of Deer Management, as far as I can tell, is more his thing than the shooty bit. This, combined with his professionalism, and probably because he's very British, meant that the whooping and high-fiving never happened.

Not that there's anything inherently wrong with those things. But I think my personal preference is to not.

The other part of deer hunting that many get uncomfortable with is the 'trophy' part of it, the whole antlers on the wall thing. This was also something I could relate to. During my initial consultation with Ben, I acknowledged that even if you're taking a deer for meat purposes like me, it seems wasteful to not do something with the antlers. However, I still wasn't sure I was interested in keeping mine if we took a stag.

My feeling towards this has changed a lot. I don't know if I'll ever relate to wanting to take a stag for his antlers, but as someone who has hunted for meat, and with my growing sense of connection with 'my' stag, I can't wait for Ben to send me his antlers once he's done his thing with them.

I was amazed by them when I was kneeling beside the stag, and I can't wait to touch them again (although they may go into the garage rather than up on a wall in the house).

Having looked into it, I've learned that there are quite a few deer stalkers, in the UK at least, who feel the same way. The antlers they keep are mementos of the hunt, rather than the point of the hunt. Though of course, there are exceptions.

In the end, I feel deeply satisfied that I'll know exactly where my food for the coming months has come from. That I was there at the very beginning. And while I'm not part of the butchering bit, I have been as present to the whole process as I could be.

This animal will have been born, lived a full life (about 7-8 years), passed on his genes, been killed, and eaten all in the same county. The total distance from field to table will be less than two hours by car. The only way I could leave less of a carbon footprint would be to have eaten him raw there and then on the grass.

I know he lived wild and free because we found him that way. I know he died in a way much swifter and with less suffering than growing old, weak, starving, and possibly diseased in the wild, because I killed him. I know he was treated with dignity because Ben and I treated him with dignity.

He never saw the inside of a farm, even a 'free range' one, let alone a factory farm. He ate what he wanted to eat and lived the way he wanted to live. And that feels good.

But being an ethical meat eater isn't about making dietary choices that allow you to feel great about yourself. It's about meeting the truth of life and death in a way that is unafraid to experience some heartbreak. A heartbreak that is unavoidable when the thing that is dying is also something you love.

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