If you are squicky about animal death, skip this post. Go here, instead, and be embraced by the warm Snuggie-like embrace of my love of profanity.

Let us rewind to Friday.

My wife hit a deer. With her vehicle; I don’t mean to suggest she ran up and punched one. In fact, it would be more apt to suggest that the deer hit her. She was mostly stopped, and the deer decided to fling itself at her car. Can’t say why, as he did not stick around to answer questions. Since it’s breeding season, and it was a buck, he was probably jacked up on crazy whitetail hormones. That’s serious business. I saw one antler a cop to death just because he couldn’t get any of that flicking tail from the doe slut next door. This shit is real. Deer erections (deerections?) be crazy.

The deer’s tumbling body, sliding up onto her vehicle and then off of it, did a number to the car, but blessedly not the wife. The car’s front hood now looks like a rumpled bedsheet, frozen in time.

Fast forward to today.

Four pheasants fell to the belching twin barrels of my over-and-under 20 gauge shotgun. Two hens, and two cocks (snigger). This was the tally decided by the Forest God, Cernunnos. I asked him what penance was fair. I showed him Polaroids of my wife’s car, and also put together some insurance forms for him to look at. Cernunnos parted his shaggy man-curtain and idly scratched at his ancient and priapic branch, and then declared it: “Four pheasants it shall be,” he said, his raspy voice containing the howls of a thousand wolves, the rowls of a million mountain lions, and the infinite whispers of endless dead leaves. Then he went back to watching According to Jim.

What I’m trying to say is, upon the Nature God’s proclamation, I went hunting.

I have not been hunting in — what? Eighteen years?

I geared up and left early this morning.

I found a little espresso shop not ten minutes from the farm.

Had a latte, like any hunting man worth his salt. I kept my pinky held away from the mug, just like the Viking berserkers, or the Green Berets trained for such rough-and-tumble gestures.

Juiced, I found myself only an hour later walking the channels carved in fields of corn, wheat and sorgum. A guide accompanied me, but he wasn’t the one that mattered.

The dog, though? She mattered.

German shorthaired pointer. Name of Lossie — not Lassie. The dog is everything. Not that you’ll see the dog much, oh no. You’ll see the corn shudder. You’ll see the dried grasses parting and rippling, like the movement of water when a shark swims beneath. You’ll hear the dog, too, because around her neck is a little Bessie cowbell — cluh-clunk, clah-clank. When the corn stops shuddering, and the bell stops clanking, it’s on. She’s on point. She’s got a bird who’s ready to bolt.

Well, either that or she’s got to pop a squat. Lossie’s an old broad. A solid 13 years old. When she’s gotta tinkle, she’s gotta tinkle.

Skies were blue. Warm, too — surprisingly not the best conditions for bird hunting. The dog gets tired and needs water. The birds aren’t as active, either, and would rather the air be crisp. Worse, no wind. A good gun dog is like a sailboat; most useful in a good strong wind. Without the wind, the dog relies only on those scents lingering toward the ground. With a good wind, the dog’ll smell herself a bird from here to Timbukmotherfucktu. Without them, she’s half-crippled.

I bagged my limit, to my surprise. I expected to be a trembling spaz, having not discharged a weapon in over a decade. And, since nobody makes Call of Duty 6: Modern Birdwar 3, I had little hope for my abilities.

First cockbird (titter!) ran, then took wing right over the dog. I managed a shot, but was nervous shooting so close to the animal. Bird escaped.

Second hen was in the woods. Didn’t have a shot.

Third hen, also in the woods. That sucker took off between the trees. Had a shot, missed, took a second shot and–

Here’s the thing. I’m up there because of my father. As you may know, it was his birthday last week, and he’s not around anymore, so I figured I’d honor his memory and spirit and do what I should’ve done a long time ago. He was an exemplary shot, but with the shotgun, I could mostly match him.

So, the first shot I felt unsteady and uncertain, but on the second shot, it was like I heard him there, giving advice, telling me to shoot.

I don’t mean to suggest that his specter pulled some Obi-Wan Kenobi shit. He wasn’t a blue ghost exhorting me to fire a proton rocket up the henbird’s cornchute.

But, I kind of felt him there. Sort of retarded, sure, but there it is, there you have it, moving on.

On that second shot, I bagged my first bird of the day.

Fourth bird was a cockbird. First shot, missed. Second shot, hit him in the head.

Fifth bird was a little chukar. He took off like a ninja, and bang, bang — nada, zip, nothing.

Sixth was another cockbird. Hunted him for a good long while, the dog roving back and forth, us up and down the same field, like a game of tracking submarines (can’t see the bird, can’t see the dog) — finally he went up and came right over my head.

First shot, nothing. Second shot yielded only a rain of tailfeathers.

We watched that cockbird fly off toward a copse of trees and –

Well.

This is where it gets mean and sad and a little grisly. Nature red in gauge and caliber and all that.

Bird flew up, tried to roost in the top of a tall pine tree in the distance.

Then it fell. Hitting every branch on the way down. Bounce, bounce, bounce. Then, gone.

They said bird’d be lost to us, but we might as well go for it, check it out at least. Then, though, a miraculous thing happened. I spotted another cockbird.

May not seem miraculous, at least not of the loaves-and-fishes variety, but let be explain something: going hunting with Dad was forever an exercise in, “Look, see that?” And he’d point at a deer, a goose, a duck, a squirrel, a groundhog, a stumbling Robomech, something, anything. I’d never fucking see it. I’d blink. I’d squint. I’d press the binoculars so hard against my face they made red rings ’round the eyes. Nope. Sure, I’d say, “Yes?” But I never saw shit. And if I did, it was already too late.

So, to see something like this, well. Miracle, as noted.

We tracked the cockbird and I saw it again, before the dog, and we finally scared it up. My guide stumbled, fell over some corn, and I dicked up the shot, but that’s okay. I saw it, which was enough.

Together, then, we went back to the copse of trees — on a lark — to look for that last bird whose hemorrhoids I singed off with a spray of birdshot, expecting to find nothing.

Except, holy shit. The dog wandered and wandered and finally ducked into a patch of heavy thorn thicket and — boom! Came out with the pheasant.

I’d shot its feet off.

Hell, I said it was gonna get grisly.

That’s why it couldn’t roost. No feet. Imagine trying to grab hold of the monkey bars only to find out that someone had blown off your hands. Tumble, tumble, tumble. Oops.

Final bird was another hen, and I winged her. Thought she’d run and I’d have to hit her on the ground, but the dog scooped her up and gave her to us.

And that was that for my day. Grisly work, I know. And yes, maybe a little cruel. But I am going to eat these birds — I have them in salty water right now in order to leech the blood out. Not sure what I’ll do with all four birds yet. Soup for one. The rest, I dunno. Moreover, you may be morally against hunting, but take a look at all the dead deer on the road, and realize that maybe if people hunted more, you might not see that so often, and you might not have people getting hurt in accidents like that (when I was a kid, a man on our road hit a buck, and the animal came through the windshield and took the man’s head off — ewww). I’m just saying.

Well. Anyway.

My clothes still smell a little of gunpowder.

Happy birthday, Dad.

It was a good day, I think.