Thursday, October 13, 2005
Let me start with the fact that I was required by the state of New York to take an additional class on bowhunting safety, of which I was quite skeptical. First of all because there was already a class on "How to Hahvest a Deeah with a Spuoting Ahm" which when translated out of New York and back into English means How to Shoot a Deer, not with a gun or a weapon -- as that instructor hadn't used weapons since he was over in 'Nam (trust me, I wish I was making all of this up) but with a sporting arm. We were failed if we referred to a gun as anything other than a sporting arm, as if the semantics would change the public's opinion on guns. Second, because we had to drive all over the island two nights out of the week right after work until 10pm to listen to Angelo ( I won't even try his last name, as there were two sets of C's and three I's strung together), a large and quite robust Italian man talk to me about bowhunting and all the strategic apologetics I should use to sway the 86% of the population who does not either hunt or actively oppose hunting (our enemies as he so sensitively put it). Digression aside, he spent a good 10 minutes talking about what you should do in the extremely odd chance that you should shoot the deer in the spine, and I just happened to be paying attention.
Lo and Behold, several days later, perched in my stand in the beautiful woods of Long Island, attempting hahvest a deeah, my friend Ty comes running through the woods, "Dude, I killed my first deer!" We give the allotted and respectful time to allow the deer to die in peace, which is also there to calm us down and keep us from chasing a fatally wounded and adrenaline filled animal throughout the neighborhoods of Long Island, disrupting the peaceful breakfasts and stealing the attention of the bored school bus passengers. While we were waiting, Ty was telling the story of how it all happened. Traveling through the woods to push the deer to me, he came across a doe and yearling, and without a release, he manually draws the compound bow and lands a slightly high but quite effective shot on the doe, and she drops like a brick.
Our first inclination was to assume the obvious, a spine shot. But I would be remiss were I not to remind us yet again of the seeming impossibility of such a shot according to the esteemed Angelo. I mean, come on, it was obviously a big deal to him, he spent forever and a day of his self-proclaimed precious time mindlessly lecturing on the impossibility of such a shot. Doubting the evidence, but not my partner's archery expertise, we cautiously approached the deer's original location -- the point of impact. Sure enough, not even a foot away from where he left her, there lay the man's fist deer. An "impossible" shot with half the equipment -- where you at now Angelo?!?
Ladies and Gentlemen, the man, the myth, the legend... Tyler D. Lewis and his first kill:
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