Hunting

It was still dark out and a light dusting of snow began falling when we arrived at the. Phil parked his truck and we both climbed out, and I unpacked and began loading my shotgun. I was twelve and excited, it was only my third hunt and the first two had been uneventful. “I gotta take a piss, you should to if you haven’t already,” said Phil in his thick New England accent that seemed so out of place in the small Maryland town. Phil was my dad’s friend and since my dad didn’t hunt he would take me hunting with a few times a week. Phil finished peeing and gave the ok to head out to the blind. A blind, essentially, is a wooden shed that is covered with grass and reeds to camouflage it from the animals being hunted, geese in this case. When we got to the blind, Phil opened the door and grabbed a plastic decoy goose in each hand and told me to do the same. “The idea is that we make it look like there are geese feeding here in this field, which will attract real geese to land and we shoot them as they come in.” Phil explained to me. Already knowing this, I just nodded. After the decoys were setup all that was left to do get into the blind and wait. The waiting is actually the part I like most about hunting. As strange as it sounds it is the closest thing to meditation that I have ever experienced. You become so totally focused and in tune with the environment that no thought passes through your mind and time is nonexistent. Though I am not sure, after three hours Phil told me to get ready and began blowing into his goose call. I tensed seeing a group of four geese circling back towards our decoys. Once he could see that they were definitely coming to our field Phil dropped his call and turned to me, “I’m gonna give you first crack at them so just wait till I tell you to fire. Wait, wait, ok go.” I put the gun to my shoulder and fired at the third goose in line. It was like being underwater, the boom of my shotgun sounded muffled and dull, the geese’s wings flapped sluggishly, looking as if they were trying to swim through a pool of molasses. After firing my last shot normality returned and I saw that I had hit a goose. All I felt was proud as I walked out to claim my prize. As I picked it up the goose suddenly came to life and began flapping and flailing around. I was so surprised that I almost dropped it, I looked at Phil’s jowly face for instruction even though I knew what I had to do even though I did not want to do it. Holding the bird up by its head, I whipped it around in a hard circle, breaking its neck. As I stood there holding my goose and waiting for Phil, I could feeling heat pour over my hand, I looked down at them expecting them to be covered in blood only to see the warmth was coming from the gooses feathers.