STORY: How Hunting Sometimes Goes
The second feature story from The Westrn is here! Lean into wind, pressure, joy, and a poem to close out the piece.
Wind
I don’t know much about the scientific mechanics of wind, but I can navigate it to the extent that an idiot with a heavy wind in their face knows they’d rather be walking in the other direction.
An early memory: I am holding onto the chain link fence that separates our front yard from the cows of the dairy farm across the way, the barbed wire a few feet beyond. Stretched across the northern Ohio skyline, a tall wall of clouds hovered over a blackness of their own making. Below them, a skinny tornado formed, reached its twisted finger toward the earth. I am five years old; my dad is holding my hand, safety inherent. We stand in the backwash of the wind together, out of danger, but staring right at it.
The pressure of air on the move — wisp-light or heavy — touches a body, a plant, a marking left behind. Odor particles push in with air particles, spreading into the world where they may or may not touch olfactory receptors. Imagine blowing a tufted white dandelion down to its center, watching the initial deluge spread into the open air beyond you.
“Bighorn sheep,” I said to the girls as we made our way up the red canyon wall, “Do you smell that?”
The women on the wilderness trip looked at me with smiles and questions. I smelled the herd well before I noticed pointed oval hoof marks in the sand, the places where they’d walked, grazed, and bedded themselves down on the edges of Utah’s Green River. The smell— sweet, dank, and earthy — swirled up from the ground as we disturbed the sun-hot sand, like steam off a freshly roasted chicken.
I picked up the broken tooth of what would have been a young lamb; I stuck it in my pocket. Nearby, I found half of a lilliputian jaw. A broken-off nose guard. A small piece of pelvis. Remnants of a little life.
On another day, I am hiking through tall cathedrals of quaking aspen lit up with the electric chartreuse of fall. I am in full camo, bow in hand. My friends Seth, Paul, and McKenzie are with me. The hunting feels less about hunting than running through the woods like a gaggle of excited kids, until an elk bugle rips from the pines below us.
In the same moment, we’re hit with a hot rising thermal that smells like this herd might be close enough to touch. We all breathe the scent into the bottom of our lungs and look at each other, eyes wide as saucers, hearts in our throats.
We cut the kid vibes and act like hunters the rest of that day. We don’t see a single elk. Nor do we get within shooting distance of a damn thing.
When hunters talk about an animal catching their scent and booking it, we call it getting “winded”. As if the wind is at fault for blowing, as if the wind is our Judas Iscariot and not so often our most beloved shield of protection.
In 2021, the final day of the Montana rifle season was so hot I pulled out my summer archery clothes and even they felt heavy. I tracked my way up a thin game trail that followed a trickle of a mountain stream, and after a steep bit of incline, I was sweating so much that I needed to take a second to cool off.
The clearing was brief, maybe twenty yards across and thirty long. I closed my eyes for a second as I stood, breathing deeply, and suddenly — the unmistakable sound of a deer snort. I opened my eyes and fifteen yards out, a buck steps out of the lodgepole and into my spot.
The spike mule deer might have been blowing at me, but there were no indications that he either saw or winded me. I’m still as stone. He takes a step forward, another step, and another. My breathing ceases.
When deer are nervous, they move like a bird on the ground about to take flight. They step forward and their body rocks backward with the motion, as if they’re balancing energy in two directions. They’ll often raise a leg and stomp it down with impact, making a statement of their discontent to no one at all.
This little deer tried very hard to be brave. One rocking step, another, another. A stomp. A step.
He’s closing in, now about eight feet away from me.
One more step, now six feet away, and BOOM he hits my scent cone. He’s run straight into an invisible wall of my hot-and-sweaty making. The little man whirls and turns like I’ve cracked a bullwhip. Now, he knows I’m there. He bounds to the edge of the clearing, and in the semi-safety of the lodgepole, he cranes his neck and looks back, nostrils flared, eyes ablaze, curious as ever — despite the terror.
I spring to life with laughter. He whirls again, becomes a muted ghost in the trees.
I don’t follow him; he’s as safe as a critter listed in the Endangered Species Act. I’m both ecstatic and cooled out. I walk straight up the mountain and for hours nothing happens.
I don’t fill my deer tag that day or that season.
Pressure
The next time you drive by a ranch or a farm with a substantial number of horses in a field, look for the round pen.
It’ll usually be there, near the house or the barn. And what you’ll see is a circular fenced-in corral typically with a single gate, measuring about 50-60 feet wide in diameter. Sizes and materials vary, but the overall execution is the same.
Historically, circular spaces for horses and livestock date back as far as the round-edged ledges of ancient Roman coliseums and arenas. Circuses have used the same idea in their performance rings for hundreds of years. Bring the pen into the present, though, and some folks will say it was one brand-name trainer or another who popularized its use, but a good idea often takes flight with many feathers flying adrift.
When in work, a round pen is a space in which energy flows in a circular manner. At base, here’s what happens: pressure is applied and relieved. Without square spaces in which to get cornered, a horse sticks to flight rather than fight, and thus we have a tool on which to build a common language.
This happens mostly at liberty, meaning a horse is free from lead ropes, long lines, reins, or even halters. The horseman might carry a flag or a long whip of some sort, but it’s not a punitive piece of equipment. Rather, it’s an extension of the human arm, used to more clearly direct energy. And energy is the only currency in this ring.
At first, uneducated horses are explosive balls aflame in a space as small as a round pen. Turn a shoulder and the horse rips away without style. Step back and the horse slams to a dramatic stop. Oftentimes, the energy is too much for the horse to bear, so you simply let her continue around the circle until she decides to tune back in. There is security in flight, but it can only go on for so long. Energy in motion is a dwindling resource.
As she tires in this endless circle, her head lowers, she might lick her lips and chew, she slows. You step even further back. You release the pressure. She comes to a stop and turns to face you. You’ve used her mind to finally get down to the very thing of hers you’d like to borrow at some point: her feet.
Eventually, over many sessions, these energies meld, the space becomes more liquid than fire, the transfer is less abrupt, congenial, no big deal. Mind and feet move together, and a team is born out of this exchange.
Once fluency is achieved, a horseman can press defined amounts of spacial energy against the horse’s shoulder, toward his middle, at his hind end, and across the centerline of the horse’s body to switch eyes, change the rate of pace, turn on his forehand (front legs), turn on his hind (back legs), and stop dead in his tracks, even from a full gallop. All with the human on the ground and the horse at liberty.
Anyone can learn this dance. Well-socialized horses speak the language without ceasing. Watch them move each other around in a field, and you’ll find their discussions to be loud and full of many arguments. My hay, my water, my space, my friend. Should younger or less tuned-in horses not listen, the most adept linguists turn ear, hoof, and teeth to get a reaction and they’ll go as big as they need to, sometimes injuring themselves and others in the process.
In the language of equines, this stretched spectrum from peace to violence is the only currency.
Those herds of horses you often see standing in a field quietly and dopily have it all worked out, and they’ve worked it out multiple times. Hierarchical places are known and established, but they must be held onto or they’re up for grabs. When all is quiet, energy is at bay — until something or someone winds it up, then the process starts all over.
Herd dynamics aren’t unique to equines; we horse folk usurp it and somehow find harmony on occasion. The best among us tune into it as if it’s something called down from another universe. Be assured; that’s not me. I am simply a plebian invoking my own limited skillset of observation and duplication.
But, understand the basics of this herd language intimately enough, and it can also inform the way you move across the country as a hunter.
Horses are, after all, a prey animal.
Watch a herd of elk after learning bits and pieces of the language, and you’ll begin to make out some of the same words. Ears forward, noses touch sweetly, friends for a moment — ears pinned back, a fast-moving nip, space given.
To my eye, deer are less bound to the large herd dynamics of horses and elk, but they’re still similar in interactions. Rutting bucks lower their heads and drop their ears in aggression, squint their eyes, slow down their movements, then speed them up with force, and face off. Does often tussle, wrestle, rear up, and push each other around for resources and relationships.
Most of the big game animals that I’ve killed have known I was there, with certainty. We’ve made eye contact, established boundaries, figured out thresholds, and it was to their own detriment.
Here, it bears mentioning that the space between living energies in wild landscapes is not penned into a circle. It alights on a much larger scale.
I walked a mile and a quarter through the central Montana sage to get to my 2019 mule deer. He was a wide and handsome rutty 3- or 4-year-old, with a single doe in his harem. She distracted him just enough to help the method hold.
The sage offered a small measure of cover, and I worked my way to him slowly and methodically. I approached him, closing an angle of space that kept him on the little slice of public land instead of hopping a nearby fence to private.
He’d let me know his threshold by raising his head and lifting a leg in uncertainty, and I’d back off the pressure, wait for his distraction, then make another attempt. He moved everywhere I asked him to go, quietly, without much ado. At the end of the stalk, he was so assured of my non-threatening presence that I made my way into 90 yards, in full view, and pulled off a prone broadside shot that was absolute perfection. One bullet, one animal. Dead in an instant. Meat in the freezer, a buck of my own.
After I pulled the trigger, I wept over this buck like I’ve never wept over an animal before. And today, if there’s any bullet I could take back, it would be that one. For four years, I’ve sat with this mystery, and it’s a feeling that hasn’t come up again in the animals I’ve put into the freezer since.
But this wasn’t a simple stalk, nor was it a fleeting moment where I had only a split second to make a decision. It was a complex dance, and it was an intentional form of communication between two beings. A conversation, one I’ve had many times with domestic animals I hope to never pull a trigger on.
I trained my deer. Then, I killed him.
Joy
I’m sitting in a blind with my friend Ty near Abilene, Texas. I’m hunting; he’s not. 68 yards below us, a corn feeder has just delivered one of its twice-daily rations. From the scrub oaks and juniper, two whitetail bucks appear with a couple of dancing does.
“That’s a nice one,” he points out. And he’s right, it is a nice buck. It’s what hunters call a typical 8. Both sides of his antlers are tall and perfectly symmetrical. He has four tines on one side and four identical tines on the other. He’s healthy, fit, and nearing the prime of his life.
Nearing, being the key word.
Earlier, the manager of the Guitar Ranch explained what he wanted to see in the bucks we’d tag afield.
“The older bucks have roman noses that curve away from their faces, and their necks will be thick, almost bulging. These are key indicators that they’re 5- or 6-year-olds.” The guides here have set eyes, game cameras, and hunters on the bucks of this ranch for years. They know the animals; they see potential in the young ones. It’s a style of management that works toward a goal of quality marrying quantity, pure and simple.
Though the ethics are suspect to some, the beauty of corn-fed whitetails on a 35,000-acre ranch is that you can be wildly picky about what animal you’re taking from the population. There is no need to fill a tag out of scarcity or chance; it’s simply a waiting game. You can pass on animals until you don’t need to, because the mature animals are there. And on such a wide swath of private and tightly managed land, human competition is not.
The 8-point, to me, lacks the roman nose. The neck is thicker than the other buck, for sure. But it’s the rut. These boys are feelin’ their oats. The second buck is younger, a typical 6, probably two-and-a-half. To me, the bigger buck might be 3 or 4. He just doesn’t seem to match the description.
On this trip, I was the only woman out of eighteen hunters and industry folks in the bunch. The ranch manager told me explicitly that I could take any deer I wanted. It’s an extension of graciousness that comes from the soft hearts of gentlemen. I am always chuffed at a bit of princess treatment, though I am hesitant to abide by its extended boundaries.
Chivalry, alas, is not dead.
We sit and watch the herd for about 45 minutes. Tyler is waffling. He thinks I should take it, promises me I won’t get in trouble. I hear him. But, at this point, my gut says no.
Then, from the road we drove in on, a hot buck snakes in like a copperhead. Low to the ground and weaving, his eyes are nearly closed and blinking heavily as he hones in on the young bucks. He pushes the boys all over the place, away from the does, away from the corn. The crowned king of the rut in the red dirt castle, arrived and on the hoof.
“Ok, you HAVE to take this one,” Ty is stoked. His energy buzzes inside the metal box. Two games are now at hand. “We’ll see,” I say, with a laugh, before getting a good look. To me, all of these Texas whitetails look physically small from our perch on the hill. They’re not the big-bodied mule deer I’m used to looking at up north. I want to take my time in this decision.
Through binos, I compare him to the younger bucks in his midst. His nose protrudes outwards in a heavy arc away from his jawline. He’s a good two inches taller at the back, and his own carries a slight sway. He’s an atypical 11-point, with five tines on each side and one brow tine added to the right side.
Check, check, check. I grin at my friend, and I load my gun. The energy in the blind goes up another 10 degrees.
Everyone seems okay with the act of hunting, and the practice of eating. The kill is where things get tricky between hunters and the public. The same debate rages on and on about grip-and-grins, those pictures where hunters happily hold a horned head and snap a shot.
“People don’t like to see dead animals,” one side rages. “But it’s tradition!” The other side rants.
I don’t have a problem with grip-and-grins. I’ve come around to understanding the photo as a part of sharing a moment where context doesn’t need to be given to the inner circle.
My gun now loaded, I take my time dialing in the scope to a comfortable magnification. I breathe deeply, using my range finder to figure out distances, though they’re all between 60-150 yards. A lot of deer are milling about. He’s moving. The shot isn’t clear. A few opportunities come. Poor Tyler is going to lose it; he’s now at the point of spontaneous combustion.
In this moment, Ty and I are at opposites, and I love the dichotomy of our setup. It’s fun when someone is all in, but I know that this is the first sit of the trip. There will be others. I also know, inevitably, that this is more a harvest than a hunt. I am not an expert of this landscape, but a participant using knowledge handed to me by the people who engage with it every day. I want to do my best by them in this scenario, shot or not.
But, after what feels like a long while, the deer offers up a clean shot, quartering away but close. I take it. The inherent violence of the moment means I pull the trigger, the gun kicks back into the meat and bone of my right shoulder, and this buck is on the ground in an instant. No thrashing, nothing happening. I load another bullet. I’m here testing a gun; the Weatherby 6.5 RPM packs a wild punch at 64 yards. The buck doesn’t move an inch. We wait 15 or so minutes.
The other deer are still around. That’s the way it often is, with deer especially. The herd hears the shot, bounces a few yards in surprise, turns, and looks. Animals, like most humans, are innately curious. The young 8-point walks over, ignorant of danger in his midst, and touches noses with the downed animal.
The buck on the ground jumps up in a lightning moment, sprints another forty yards. He gives me a broadside shot between two scrub oaks, but he’s on the move. A second round is loaded; I’m ready. I flip the safety, pull the trigger.
This time, he’s down for good. I don’t know if I cuss or Tyler cusses or we both cuss with the speed of the moment, but the blind is abuzz — it’s high fives for accuracy in the hellfire surprise of a second shot and a deer on the ground, a transition from surprise to relief, and another round of waiting.
Everyone talks about hunting being a counterpoint to the industrial food complex. It is that.
But it is also one of the few places— beyond thoughtful agriculture — that deals with death openly and often with joy attached.
Really, when people rage against grip and grins, they’re not raging against the hunt at all, they’re raging against death made clear. They’re raging at the dichotomy of happiness and death intertwined. A wide smile on the lips of the predator, blood often coloring the lips of the prey.
We text the guides and they give us permission to walk down to the buck.
“No ground shrinkage on this one,” Tyler says. I nod and smile; the buck is big-bodied and impressive.
“Do you mind if I walk up to him by myself? I need a few minutes.” Of course, he doesn’t mind.
I don’t know what happens to the breath, or the spirit, or the soul. Oh ye of little faith, someone beyond doubt might say. But for me, the mystery holds enough clout to keep me humble in my defined uncertainty. The afterlife is delicious in its open-ended grand finale. It’s a question I’m willing to live with.
I am certain, however, about what happens next, when the body of an animal I’ve killed transitions quickly from powerful being to manna built by landscape, and eventually to the energy fueling my own body.
Throughout the rest of the week, I will break this buck down in the presence of multiple professional chefs. Under their tutelage, I’ll better learn to refine my cuts, identify muscle groups and understand their best uses, and process and package each piece with deliberate care. I’m a devoted student; I could do this class every week and never get bored.
When we’re breaking him down, the head chef will point out where his teeth were almost entirely ground down along the molars. The ranch manager will nod in approval and lean over the skull, cross-armed. He’ll say he might have wondered if that particular buck would have shown up at that blind, but they hadn’t seen him for a bit. Sometimes, he says with a wink, it works out that way.
But prior to all this, in those few minutes alone, I converse with this grand mammal as I sit with him, his eyes blue with crossover. My hands pull the warmth from his body — the energy now in transition — as his answer in the dialogue between us.
The guide pulls up and the sun is firing up the north Texas landscape with red, gold, navy, and violet. Little broken canyons and arroyos reach out in short layers out to the horizon, a mesa or two cutting a higher plain into the skyline. The rojo dirt moves toward scarlet, the blood pooled beneath the buck is now black and thick in the cooling evening.
“Let’s move him up high and get some pictures while the light is still here,” Tyler says. We lift his body in the bed of the truck and head up the hill. Up high, on the edge of the Texas skyline, we take pictures that are backlit, making a shadow of my form and the buck’s outline against the falling night sky. The guys direct me to hold the scion of this little earthly corner this way and that, and I do.
Beneath the shaded cover of our combined silhouette, a smile emerges. I leave it there. I hold my body and my buck still in the silhouette against night falling, dark and heavy, over Texas.
How Hunting Goes
I am sitting on a ridgeline
I am walking alone in the dark
I am reaching, reaching, reaching
With hands full of blood
I heard a ruffle of feathers
A bugle in the night
An answer
Bear prints outside my tent
The imprint of an owl
Hunting mice in the snow
I am drawing back my bow
I have just pulled the trigger
I have just fired the gun
I am retying my shoelaces
I am taking off my socks
Where the blisters have burst
I am walking towards Orion
Beneath a new moon
That is invisible, but still there, watching
How I have camouflage on my body
Dirt under my fingernails
Grass woven into my braids
I too am both new and in hiding
Invisible but watching, waiting
Waiting waiting waiting
Until the wait is over.
Nicole Qualtieri (@nkqualtieri) is the Editor-in-Chief and founder of The Westrn. She’s worked in outdoor media for a decade, with brands ranging from MeatEater to Backcountry Hunters & Anglers to acting as the long-time Hunt & Fish Editor at GearJunkie. Her writing has appeared in USA Today, Modern Huntsman, the Backcountry Journal, and more.
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Such a gorgeous piece - thank you for your generosity, grace, discipline, and love for all of us wild things.
Love the small details in the writing. The way the earth smelled, the faint scent of the elk herd as the wind swirls just right, how the light is hitting the landscape. It really paints the picture well and pulls you into the story.