Deer, going south.

It s a Monday in deer hunting

season, and I m rolling north on the

highway, watching deer headed

south.

Buck on a mini-van.

Doe in a homemade trailer.

Two bucks in a truck.

Stifflegs, hooves to the sky,

brown bodies lashed and strapped,

soft muzzles lying on cold steel.

It mvst seem to someone not part

of this hunt like a cold, crude thing,

the river of deer headed south.

There is no tasteful way to haul

home dead mammals the size of

deer, no graceful way to get that

meat from the woods to the freezer

without laying it out there for God

and everybody to look at.

Antlers, ears, red slit in the

belly, spindle legs, all in a 55 mph

glance.

The critter-on-the-truck phenom-

enon is almost unique to deer hunt-

ing. Moose are usually too big to

haul around in one piece. They re

most often cut up and lugged

around in sections. Grouse and

pheasants and ducks and other

small game are tucked away in the

bottom of a boat or in the comer of

a pickup bed, out of sight to all

except maybe the dog that retrieved

them when they fell.

But there are those bucks, one

tied up on each side of a red all-ter-

rain vehicle in a wooden trailer

bound for points unknown.

What we can t know, can t see,

those of us passing in the opposite

direction, are the stories that travel

with those deer. For the hunter in

the truck, that isn t just 130 pounds

of venison on the roof of the family

mini-van. That s four days of wait-

ing for five seconds of activity on a

platform in a tree in the woods.

That s three days of walking the

woods before the season, checking

for signs that the bucks are still

using the old, familiar territory.

That isn t just a mammal

strapped to a machine. That s inter-

minable waiting and gray skies and

a chickadee on a gun barrel and an

alarm clock clanging in a dark

shack and a hoof crunching on brit-

tle leaves and a piece of brown

between two trees where it wasn t a

moment ago. It is heartbeats and a

held breath and an opening and a

shot. It is tired legs and a friend s

help and a trail of hope as tenuous

as a piece of deer hair on a dogwood

sprig.

It is, finally, suddenly, merciful-

ly, the brown form on the snow,

perhaps a prayer or a tear or at

least a quiet moment on one knee,

red forearms in a body cavity, the

continuing and deeply felt involve-

ment with a winter s worth of din-

ners. Not just a deer, but a story.

Not just venison, but a process. Not

just a life taken, but a life given.

It isn t pretty, no, headed south,

hooves up. Not nearly as neat as

the Big Mac youql order and have

handed through your window at the

next town. That somebody else has

calved and penned and raised and

fed and killed and cut up and

trucked north and tossed on a grill.