Deer Me

Tim is going to West Virginia to go hunting with my brother next week, an annual tradition. Don't get me started on his lame explanation as to why he needs to leave Saturday morning when hunting season doesn't start until Monday. Something about male bonding (beer). Please don't point out how hunting season coincides so very nicely with Margaret's chilly fall soccer tournament, the same way last spring's male ski trip (beer) coincided with her very rainy spring soccer tournament.  I mean, I love crying and cursing the GPS lady as I try to find far-flung soccer fields on my own.

Oh well. This post isn't about my marriage; it's about the big ole buck that is standing in my yard, right outside my office window at 9:30 on a Wednesday morning. It has a huge 10 point rack, and like his buddies who sauntered by earlier, seems undeterred by the traffic noises and barking dogs of suburbia. Pretty as they are to look at, these deer spread Lyme's disease all over the region and eat my plants. As an outraged Margaret said when she was little, "The deer ate our Pasta!" She meant hosta.

But just as this post is not about my marriage, it's not about the the moral ins and outs of hunting either. I've never killed a deer and don't plan to, unless you count the time I hit one with my car on the way to school. Anyway, I convinced the kids and myself that, "She's fine! Really!" I don't want to get into all that here.

It's just that I'm a woman of thrift and ease.

It's seems like a lot of hoopla to travel five hours away to hunt something that hangs out on your lawn in broad daylight.

I think it would save a lot of time and money and gas if it were legal for me to go outside and bonk this deer on the head with one of my comfortable shoes. No need for a license or equipment or travel time. Think of the money saved on beer alone.

Somehow I think Tim would go anyway.

Wounded Pride

Ever since I put a picture of Tom on my blog with a big gash on his forehead, I’ve been meaning to tell you the story behind his injury. In hunter’s parlance, he “got scoped.” When I was in college, “to scope” was to check out hot guys. This morphed into calling all hot guys you liked your “scopes.” Well, this is different from what happened to Tom.

He was in WV hunting with my brother. I was at home seething because he always leaves me alone with the kids for the first part of Thanksgiving week while he takes this trip. It took me until about Wednesday to get over myself and realize that leaving a mom home alone with two toddlers is vastly different from leaving her home with a 7 and 9 year old who are in school 6 hours a day. I had also overlooked the fun of having cereal and/or grilled cheese for dinner each night and blogging until 2 am without feeling like I had to explain myself.

During this year’s hunting trip, my 11 year old nephew rose to the ranks of the adult hunters by bagging 3 deer. Tom’s pressure to perform rose too. You see, Tom was not raised in a hunting family. When he and I married, my brother and his fellow hunters welcomed him warmly and spread the love of expensive hunting equipment, copious amounts of fried food, and male bonding, but Tom was still on the fringe. What he needed was to bag a huge buck.

Over the years he has endured some teasing, most of it deserved. There was the year he took a novel out into the woods with him and was caught reading under a tree. Or when he got excited and shot a “button buck”—when he was supposed to leave it alone so it could mature into a massive beast. Another time he fell asleep and nearly got trampled by a herd of deer running down the hillside on top of him. My brother and his friends are Southern-ish good old boys. Burps, farts, dirty jokes. Tom is all Northern private boarding school. Reserved, tidy, preppy.

So, when Tom did take a shot at a deer this year, not only did he miss, he bashed his head in with the scope from his rifle. Blood everywhere. Wounded pride. A Harry Potter-like scar. Much explaining to do at work, at church, in the hood. It didn’t help his self esteem when my brother let me shoot a rifle off the porch at a target and I almost got a bulls-eye. Beginner’s luck.

Oh well, part of me wants him to start hating hunting since I’m not really in love with the concept and so we can all travel together for Thanksgiving next year. The other part of me wants him to get back into the game and keep trying. This will be a great example to the kids about perseverance, and who knows, he might even bag his elusive “Moby Buck.”