BOING: Death to Bambi

AH, THE FRAGRANCE of death is permeating throughout North Idaho. It seems the further you get from downtown Coeur d’Alene it feels more and more like the bad side of Detroit.

Gunshots, killings – and that’s just in the mountains past Lake Fernan.

It is deer season, baby, and I’m getting ready to assassinate the kingpin of the forest. Bambi, once my childhood friend, is about to meet his maker (and I’m not talking about Walt Disney).

Oh how I yearn to bathe in the blood of the dead.

Sure, I have shot a grouse, caught a salmon and dropkicked a squirrel, but to bring down a beast as big as myself makes me shudder just imagining the sheer possibilities – the gallons of blood, yards of entrails and unholy smells are worth the 22-year wait.

I got my first deer tag this year, and I’ll be dammed if I chalk up a goose egg.

ON SATURDAY MORNING, I made a decision: I called in sick to work because I was going to hunt. I was unwavering in my mission (though I did watch the first half of the Michigan-Ohio State game), and prepared for the hunt of a lifetime.

Rifle? Check.

Camo jacket and Carhartts? Check.

Lawn chair, pillow to sit on, peanut butter sandwich and deer call? Check, check, check and check.

Indeed, it was to be a glorious day.

I nestled into my lawn chair under my Grandparent’s deck, tossed a few marshmallows into my hot cocoa and leaned back as gunshots echoed throughout the mountain like Independence Day. I’m the first one to admit that some people don’t call what I do “hunting.”

These are the same people who don’t shoot grouse from moving vehicles or hunt by the light of the moon. They also follow the “laws.”

But my hunting guide (my cousin Geno) told me long ago that we write the rule book as we go. So what if we sat in lawn chairs next to the dryer vent at our grandparent’s house? At least we keep warm.

WE SET UP a decoy up on the hill, complete with a two-way radio next to it. We sprayed deer piss liberally across the meadow. Then we sat under the deck.

Most people wait hours, sometimes days before seeing a deer on their hunt. We waited 15 minutes. But as a massive buck approached and we grabbed our guns, an ear-splitting screech pierced the still air – it was the sliding door to the deck.

We like to consider ourselves great hunters – real men of the wild – yet we often times forget we are sitting next to a house; it was time for Grandpa’s cigarette.

Thus, the deer ran for its life.

So between the door sliding open and close every so often, the occasional sound of cars driving by and the ever-present noise from the washer and dryer on the other side of the wall, we simply waited.

This time, unlike numerous other hunting trips under the deck, we had a radio next to the decoy. That enabled us to use a deer call from the house, through the radio, and it sounded like it came from the decoy!

Illegal? Most likely. But that’s the only way to get the big deer.

After watching one tiny buck cower away from our daunting decoy (the rut was approaching, and thus bucks will attack each other for first dibs at the most beautiful babes of the backcountry), we waited a little while longer.

Being the impatient imbecile I’ve been dubbed, I decided to no longer wait. I’m not missing out on a deer this year, so as it got darker I concluded the next deer to walk out was going …

Boom-shakka-lakka!

I dropped that monster of a doe so quick I heard the valley shake when she hit the mud. So what if it didn’t have antlers, it was a big deer and it was now dead – by my own hands!

Nevertheless, my cousin was the one who gutted, skinned and hung the bloody carcass from the rafters in our garage. Long story short, I basically just pulled the trigger and then watched Geno slaughter the slain beast.

But already, I cannot wait until next season. I have the urge to ungulate anther, a passion to kill again. There is a dead deer in my grandpa’s garage right now waiting to be cut up, but I’m already contemplating my next kill.

I may not have butchered Bambi, but I murdered his mom.