At age five, I became a killer. Deep in a forest near St. Louis, my father’s father crouched beside me, training me to detect slight movements in high oak branches. Level a rifle barrel. Rapt, I nodded, lined my sight notch, and blasted my first Eastern Gray squirrel into oblivion.
Later, when I asked to transform my quarry into a squirrel skin cap—to do like Davy Crockett—Dad demurred. Too bad. Maybe he’d have entertained my request for a celebratory trophy crown had he known that day would be my pinnacle as a passionate, capital-H Hunter.
I didn’t get out of the game of game hunting with force or fury. The long family line of huntsmen I come from didn’t rebuke me dramatically—If you don’t kill with us, you’re dead to us! And no epiphanies or shimmers of Buddhist enlightenment while screening Bambi sparked my choice. Yes, I veered into vegetarianism through college, which made for vexed homecomings. When I refused my maternal grandmother’s smoky, succulent green beans at Thanksgiving, on account of them being cooked in the company of a doorstop-sized ham hock, her face twisted terribly, as if she’d bitten into what she believed to be a Milky Way bar, only to learn it was a lemon wedge.
By college’s end, I was ready to renounce my meatless life. A high school pal who also swore off meat in college confessed similar, renewed cravings. So we decided to quit vegetarianism, cold turkey, together. Cruising suburbia, we embarked on an epic protein relapse, picking up chicken wings at Hooters, and waving hamburgers like flags out our windows. Farmers, lock up your bacon!
°°°
Early in youth, I didn’t mind positioning salt licks, or waiting out quail or pheasant in tall grass; only the exhaustive tick checks afterward (like lice screenings on steroids) irritated me. After hunts, I’d accompany Dad to his taxidermist’s home office, where he hoped hearing the process of stitching skins and drying skulls would stoke fascination. But I’d fostered an authorial antenna already, and intently studied the taxidermist’s mother instead, who remained silently glued to her chair each visit—was she stuffed too?
While my hunting thrills dulled, delight in fishing never flatlined. In fourth grade we relocated to an outer suburb of St. Louis, its subdivision offering a “lake” (read: pond with inflated sense of self) of our own. My grandfather’s joy at being able to pop by and cast with us whenever he wished was palpable. He’d left school after tenth grade to financially support his immigrant family (my surname is sliced out of Pytlinski), but raised a surgeon son. Receiving from that son access to a private fishing hole made for a richer reward than if Dad had bestowed Malibu beachfront property.
I loved it, too. Deep silences between sunfish or perch bites made great practice for maintaining patience with a pen later, realizing that reeling in a solid sentence took time. The flamboyant, Day-Glo colors of lures also attracted my ADHD-afflicted mind to angling. And if there’d been a catch-and-release option involved in hunting land animals, I imagine I wouldn’t have given up that game quite so fast.
°°°
The nadir came when I was ten: my first (and last) duck hunt, which we will forthwith refer to as “The Fowl Incident”. I enjoyed shooting less by then, though I’d become a better shot. I had no inkling Dad was ratcheting up degree of difficulty, in terms of both hunting species and arsenal. He felt I was ready for a weapon with bigger bite. In place of my .22, he set me up with his 12-gauge shotgun: something like operating a stick shift after years of automatic transmission.
The Fowl Incident occurred one gloomy November dawn. Trudging through tall grass, cold rain darting into my drowsy eyes, I loaded the shotgun with red shells, listening closely to murmurs of a nearby flock. When the waterfowl took to the skies, I swiveled, leveled, fired. In a sense, the shot was a success; I saw one duck in the formation halt, then drop. Trouble was, I dropped too. The recoil shook the stock off my rain-slicked shoulder, slamming it smack-dab into my nose. I toppled to the gummy marsh, hunted and hunter felled simultaneously, like Balboa and Creed at the end of Rocky II.
Blood gushed from my nostrils; an upside-down volcanic eruption. After stanching my wound, Dad carted me to our car in waders, my panicked sobs deepening with each sinking step he took in the sludge.
°°°
While my wound’s scar and cartilage is still visible, there’s no trace of the duck I took down. It didn’t make its way to the taxidermist’s office for mounting. Same as with squirrels I shot, or fish I caught. And let me tell you, my adolescent home is flush with critters. Proof-with-a-roof of one person’s obsessive passion. Dad designed the den with no floor dividing it from upstairs, creating a two-story, Tudor-style testament to trophy hunting. A museum of dozens of dead heads: Imagine Madame Tussaud’s as devised by Theodore Roosevelt. It features domestic animals aplenty: antelope, elk, fish, pheasant. African safaris added two varieties of zebra, along with wildebeest, warthog, and dik-diks. The museum is a floor-to-roof spectacle, featuring a bearskin rug at foot level (mind the fangs when stepping shoeless by its open jaw), a full-body mountain lion in mid-growl, and half an aoudad halfway up the wall, with front hooves resting on a fiberglass “ledge.”
I’d retreat from this museum menagerie wing every chance I got. Indoors, that meant my room: a safe space to write emo poems, read about wolverines in X-Men, and listen to Jack Buck’s calls of Cardinal games on KMOX. I also religiously spun my curated collection of 45s. My turntable trophies, donut holes in their centers the wax’s only wounds. Imagining each night I was a DJ counting down my Top 10, marking chart movements of my private rotation.
Because sounds boomed unchecked in that den canyon, I’d also retreat outdoors, aiming endless layups on our driveway hoop. One day, a former critter tenant crossed my path: a squirrel. Not just any, but an orphan our family found in the backyard the winter before. Taking in the scrawny guy for temporary adoption, we named it Tuffy, in honor of it toughing out winter alone. Nursed to health with nourishment out of an eyedropper, Tuffy quickly imprinted: bounding up our torsos, letting itself be cradled in our palms. Once Tuffy was hale and hearty, we released it for good to the suburban wilds…or so we thought. Playing hoops, an errant jump shot had my ball rolling rapidly down our driveway, steaming towards it. Only Tuffy didn’t budge from the orange, oncoming predator. No trace of fear, only a tilted head. As I inched closer, our long-lost squirrel remained still. Until I reached to retrieve the ball, that is, and felt my furry friend’s fangs open a vessel in my index finger.
Tuffy, I gave all the nurturing a teenage boy could muster; you repaid me with a tetanus shot. Did you retain hazy memories of our walls of death, and lash out in fear of being brought back in?
Dad’s museum menagerie did provide usefulness. My teen friend circle was comprised of theatre and film geeks. We crafted several, satiric short films, and satires of buddy-cop flicks. Even at that age, we knew the value of location scouting. We carted in camcorders and lighting kits to shoot scenes in that frozen ersatz zoo. It made its star turn in a film whose jaded focusing character claims to have hunted all prey—including Dad’s birddog Scout, a sweet soft-headed Brittany Spaniel. We “captured” Scout in his crate, getting him to howl on command while awaiting his taxidermized fate. The film finds our antihero hunter lighting upon one last prey worthy of tracking: himself. Crouching in Dad’s office, bookcases lined with Safari Club record books and Hemingway novels, his hands brush along the bearskin, sniffing his fingers with satisfaction as he notes, “I’ve been here,” he joyfully declares: “I am the most dangerous game!”
°°°
The huntsmen on my father’s side are no cussing, PBR-belching bunch. They’re dry Baptists who choose for their vices Goldfish crackers over gin, Twinkies to whiskey. Moreover, they maintain a conservationist stance. Two years following The Fowl Incident, I agreed to apply for a deer hunting permit, and accompany my elders on their expedition. In the early hours, I listened as Dad, my uncles, and grandfather discussed the size of antler rub abrading trees. Speculated how tired the deer would be by the end of rut, where they’d head for water. We’d already glimpsed some button bucks. But they were on lookout for older specimens, with grayer coats. Sure, an occasional antler may have snapped off in prior tussles for territory, or the venison may be tougher, but these AARP-eligible models were the bucks they tended to hunt. Meat was meat; why make a herd less healthy?
I listened to the ecology lessons with real esteem.
Having a permit, however, did zero to heighten my heartrate. Car keys were my prey. During prime hunting hours I hunkered in my uncle’s van, smacking Dorito dust off my fingertips, watching raindrops roll down The Great Wave off Kanagawa reproduction my uncle etched in the rear window. Come Sunday, it was time to tune into Casey Kasem, counting down the U.S.A.’s most popular songs. No shooting bullets for me: what had me rapt were which songs had shot up charts with a bullet. Two by U2, one by INXS. Imagining, as Guns N’ Roses tumbled from the Top 20, Mr. Kasem sending out on my behalf a long-distance dedication. Matt in St. Louis writes: Dear Casey, I recently got my deer hunting permit. Trouble is, I couldn’t care less. While I don’t want to disappoint Dad, my only interest in doe or bucks is lawnmowing money to spend on 45s and CDs. And I worry Dad won’t know what to do with a boy who doesn’t want to drop deer. Casey, could you please play R.E.M.’s It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)?
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Even while I helped the hunters strap their collection of carcasses to the van rack as we left, Dad must’ve known that I’d given up the game. Permanently swapped rifles and bullseyes for pens and keyboards. He could’ve made it more of a wedge. I’m grateful he didn’t. Especially since I didn’t let him live down my scarred nose, not only to get under his skin, but to rub into it guilt’s hard salt.
I also got bolder in waging warfare with words. Our big trigger, no surprise, was gun control. Arms were where I could get him up in arms. Our most public tussle—sponsored by the Commission on Territorial Male Debates—transpired not in his house, but his father’s. A scaled down version of his menagerie, it included a recessed den flush with ducks flushed from blinds, and Springfield “trapdoor” rifles crisscrossing over a fireplace. It was a house filled with heads, and filled, more importantly, with minds kind to his cause.
We duked it out at dinner armed only with fork and Jell-O. I kept rankling him. How did prohibiting assault rifles undercut a “well-regulated militia”? Who exactly was “coming after” his guns? As our domestic disturbance roared, our relatives quieted. “Who needs a Saturday night special to track elk?” I scoffed. “What kind of hunter has to rely on an AR-15?”
“So guns kill,” he said, throwing down one last gauntlet. “Fine. Let’s ban cars, then. They kill
too. So do axes. So do snowmobiles.”
“Yeah, but those other items? They do other things. Axes chop trees. Cars carry people to
places. Handguns? Their only function is hurt and kill.”
“That’s not true!”
His bellow was so big, I thought I’d overlooked something. So did every eye in the room. We waited for his retort, the concealed carry comment that would put holes in my logic. The silence, as utter and eerie as the moment before flushing flocks of birds.
Finally, he exhaled deeply, and declared: “They can start fires.”
The room erupted. Not with his relations’ applause or affirmations, but their laughter.
I’d stung him with a direct heart hit. Beyond a fight, he’d lost a fantasy: there would be no hours spent cleaning barrels, no father-son African safaris on the horizon. Though technically we went on one last “hunt”, one that didn’t involve a single shot. Driving us home on windy backroads one rainy night, he suddenly pulled to the shoulder. He spotted roadkill, and asked for help clearing it. We put on pairs of his surgical gloves. Hoisted a red fox, stricken dead but still intact, in his trunk, gently laying it on a Glad trash bag we prepped as ad hoc gurney. It felt briefly like a mercy mission. Then he revealed his actual aim. I’d unwittingly assisted him in acquiring a new piece for the museum menagerie. Its paws and haunches soon to adorn our carpet, memorialized for admiration.
One member in our ranks wound up admiring it most.
Not long after the fox joined the menagerie, our other Spaniel, a Cocker, went into estrus. This unleashed our Brittany’s id. With the Cocker in heat, separated from Scout, urges to make time and puppies flooded our birddog’s birdbrain. He pointed himself—paw, nose, and other parts—at the stiff but comely fox. Eventually, Scout’s love nips ripped ample chunks off the fox’s ears. Thinned patches on its coat. The damage got so severe, we had to consign the fox to the basement.
°°°
So much of hunting’s success relies on waiting. Realizing I’d rather toss 45s on a spindle then shoot clay pigeons, or watch Redbirds barrel up Busch Stadium fastballs rather than clean gun barrels must have dejected Dad, but he let those stings glide away with grace. Took it upon himself to come home after agonizing days operating in surgical theaters, and catch a barrage of my curveballs until we lost the sun, before beginning to bite into his cold dinner. Made a point of listening to whatever music I was taking a sonic shine to at the time—even during my Death Metal years! Shocked me by renouncing his longtime NRA membership, appalled by the group’s radical overreach. And made himself available, most of all, to read my writing, watch my films, and attend my plays.
Raising two teenagers of my own now, I’ve learned the slow lesson of how parenting doesn’t mean meeting in the middle as far as passions go. If you’re doing it well, you stay doggedly on the trail your children’s affinities, adjusting accordingly into the version of yourself closest to what they, in the moment, require.
And assure them, during early stays at the museum menagerie, that no animals on the wall will come to life while they’re sleeping.
Two summers ago, I was named the Hemingway Writer-in-Residence, an award enabling me to focus on writing projects while living in Piggott, the tiny town in northeast Arkansas where Papa wrote A Farewell to Arms, only 90 minutes south of my papa. During my stint, I worked inside the very barn (now part of a museum) where Hemingway staged scenes of human struggle with nature, ravages of war, and pondered, How many periods can I cram into one paragraph?
Thanks to this proximity, my parents were able to celebrate Father’s Day and their anniversary with me, in my residency apartment. Dad had retired from surgery soon before, around when I became a tenured professor, and I see some improbable overlap in our careers. We’re both teachers. Our respective crafts involve incisions, though I admit deleting dreadful metaphors involves slightly lower stakes than removing gallbladders. During our celebratory weekend, a docent provided my parents with a personal tour of Hemingway’s home. Dad thrilled as the docent described Hem’s haunts and habits. In the barn the tour hit its high mark, as Dad got to study not only Hem’s safari photos and journal entries, but the game Ernest hunted.
These were reprints on display, not originals: specimens provided by a private hunter, not Papa’s collection. Dad asked if the museum could use further donations. Personally, I’d be thrilled to see a buffalo or warthog transplanted off the menagerie walls.
But let’s draw the line at the red fox. No one should see the sad state of that poor beast