Written by Masa Takei | 21 October 2011

Day 214

Still have hunting on the mind. Something happened recently that further clarified for me what makes hunting what it is for me (or what it isn't).

My neighbour, Toni, came up my path with a flashlight late the other night. A dinner guest of hers had come back to say that they’d seen a deer in the road with its head wrapped in netting. She asked if I could check it out, as it may need to be put down. I’d already pulled out my contacts, as I was headed to bed, planning for an early morning hunt. But I put on my glasses, a headlamp, grabbed my rifle and headed off down the hill to the road that runs past our cabins.

The moon was waning off full and flooded the landscape with a silver light. The road was clear, nothing in sight. But as I walked down the road, a deer burst out of the bushes galloping with an awkward gait, streaming about six feet of heavy green netting behind it, the kind that people here use to keep deer out of their gardens. It came to a halt in Toni’s pullout, facing me, its head a ball of cord. Then it fled off into the brush by the slough. It buried its head in a salal bush a short way in with its rump facing out and the net trailing behind it. There it stayed in a pitiful, “if I can’t see him, then he can’t see me” posture.

My glasses were collecting condensation and refracting light from my headlamp, so I headed back up to the cabin to put in my contacts and get some gloves. On my way back down, I was hoping that the deer had escaped the net and bounded off into the night to further leave tantalizing tracks across the dunes by the beach. And I was surprised to find when I got back, that the deer was indeed gone and there was just the green netting left on the ground.

Relieved, I picked up the netting to take to Toni. The netting was snagged on a bush and I gave it a yank. Then the bush yanked back. From the thrashing that ensued, I gathered that the deer was still attached and had just burrowed deeper into the bushes while I was gone. I pulled on the netting, feeling for all the world like I was fighting a giant halibut with a handline. The deer was tiring and I managed to haul it out into the open. And there it stood, alternately digging in its heels and thrashing backward. It was a good-sized buck. I could only assume that it was antlers that had caused its head to become so enshrouded in netting. I could see that it was not going to come off easily. I’d had grand visions of wrestling the deer to the ground and cutting the netting away, saving the majestic buck. And afterward, it would come regularly to my cabin to eat crabapples from my hand, and we’d have a special bond that transcended the predator-prey relationship, kind of like the reverse of that fable where the mouse removes the thorn from the lion’s paw. But I wasn’t prepared to risk getting kicked or gored, or hacking at the mess of netting around its head with my knife. I tried to calm it, talking in what I thought were low soothing tones but it all seemed a little disingenuous as ultimately I knew that I was going to shoot it.

It was getting more and more frantic but also more and more tired. Just as I was trying to figure out how I was going to tie the net off to a tree to free up my hands, Toni came down the path. She saw the state of the animal agreed that shooting it would be the most prudent and merciful and thing to do. She took hold of my end of the net and I chambered a round into the .308.

Even with it dead, it took us a great deal of fiddling to untangle the netting from around its antlers, its snout, and from in its mouth. There are burn marks from where the net had wound behind its leg. It was a good-sized two-point buck, a healthy animal, something that I would have felt lucky to harvest on any hunt.

We field dressed it in the headlights of Toni’s truck and hung it in the wood shed. Even though the animal was stressed and shot through with adrenaline the meat wasn’t going to waste.

Despite having intended to go hunting the very next morning and having this buck seemingly delivered into my hands the night before, it didn’t feel even remotely the same. It underscored that hunting for me isn’t about pure meat retrieval.

As it turned out, when I was butchering the animal, I found sign that the deer had also been hit by a car. Four or five of its ribs were broken and a shoulder was shattered even though I’d shot it in the neck. There had been an unusual amount of blood when we’d field dressed it and the meat was bloodshot and bruised. I was now even more glad that I hadn’t wrestled with the deer. We decided to let the meat go.

But it wasn’t a complete waste. Alicia and Douglas, a couple of (former?) vegetarians who were interested in deer hunting, and Alicia’s visiting cousin, André, got to see their first deer being skinned and prepared for butchering. And Chris the Mapper, took the carcass and canned the meat for his dog, Banti. The antlers, I kept to use for rattling while hunting during the fall rut. I’m still looking forward to that early morning hunt.

Written by Masa Takei | 18 October 2011

Masa introduces us to Meredith Adams of Sparks Energy. She is a neighbour and has become a friend to Masa and erected the first wind turbine at north beach. She gives us a brief introduction to the possibilities of living well and sustainably with solar and wind produced electricity.

Keep coming back for updates as Masa documents his epic adventures for radX.ca. His new video diaries will be published every Tuesday, along with a weekly written blog.

Written by Masa Takei | 14 October 2011

I hadn’t expected to enjoy hunting so much. If you’d told me five years ago that I’d be hunting at all, I would have laughed/sneered in your face. Like many urbanites, I had an image of hunting that involved loud men in camo and big trucks, beer empties flying out the window. ‘What kind of person gets pleasure from killing things?’ I used to think. The reality is that I’d been killing things all my life. I’ve always eaten meat, and for there to be meat, something needed to have died. Just because I didn’t do the killing myself didn’t make me any less complicit.

I’m writing about my transition from non-hunter to hunter now for a magazine piece and am finding that I stray into long, discursive pontification, justifying or defending the decision to hunt. That I have the impulse to do so warrants examination itself.

But here, I’ll simply, unabashedly tell you what it is that I enjoy about hunting. Perhaps ‘enjoy’ isn’t the right word. I find it satisfying and rewarding. These are feelings that have germinated since getting my first buck just last season.

First, there are the exceptional places that we go in search of game, places that we otherwise would have no reason to visit. The estuaries, forested slopes and meadows studded with islands of trees. Even the clearcuts, piled with slash and scrubby young second-growth have something to offer, if just to see a small stand of old-growth spared from the saw or even to hear the distinctive water drop call of a raven we’ve come to know in a particular area. Much of the time is spent exploring and bashing around, gaining new perspective on land that we may have passed by many times before without much thought.

I say ‘we,’ since more often than not I’m hunting with others. And that would be the second thing that I appreciate most, the time that I get to spend with friends in a shared purpose. And the après-hunt to me is an integral part of the hunting itself.

But even when I’m hunting alone, there’s the heightened awareness of my surroundings. I’m rarely ever otherwise conscious of wind direction, the noise that I’m making, and so completely absorbed by what's happening in the forest around me.

Then, of course, there’s the meat, the organic/free-range meat that I’ve worked hard to get. And if cooking is gratifying, then it’s even more so, when you know that you harvested the ingredients yourself. It’s a special feeling to feed yourself and others with what you’ve hunted and gathered. Having killed and processed my game, I also have a more visceral understanding of the direct connection between something dying so that I can eat and live. It makes me have more respect for my food.

Still, my initial reaction after dropping an animal is sadness. I don’t enjoy the killing part. This may sound contradictory but that’s the way it is. I feel sadness and remorse each time I’ve taken an animal’s life and I’ve been told that feeling persists in even veteran hunters. I follow the tradition that I was taught, which is to stop and acknowledge the animal, to give thanks.

Because the deer here is an introduced species and booming in population, the hunting season is nine months long and the bag limit is 15. Hunting has become an integral part of my life up here. Yesterday, I wrote in the morning, paddled waves in the afternoon, and hunted with friends in the evening (we didn’t even see a deer, but we did see an owl glide past as the moon came up and some gnarled, mossy bog trees that were straight out of a Tim Burton film). If I’d only got some building in, it might have been a perfect day.

Written by Masa Takei | 11 October 2011

Masa enjoyed an adventurous weekend outdoors with Chris the Mapper, hoping to catch Thanksgiving dinner. It's a good thing that Masa's friends do not rely on his hunting and gathering skills to survive and provide. At least not for this year's holiday.

Keep coming back for updates as Masa documents his epic adventures for radX.ca. His new video diaries will be published every Tuesday, along with a weekly blog.