A reckoning at dawn

Published 9:33 am Thursday, January 8, 2026

Perhaps I was sad over the fact that the holidays were ending. Perhaps it was the lingering sadness over a son-in-law’s leaving to head back across the world to do his job serving our country, or perhaps it was the feelings of melancholy that always seem to linger within me after the holidays, the post-Christmas comedown blues, if you will.

Whatever the case, my eyes were moist with tears as I stared into the eyes of the buck that lay beside me on the ground. I had knelt beside him to pray and give thanks for the life that he had given, the life that I had taken.

“It’s the cold morning air,” I told myself, “That’s why you’re crying.”

A locust shell serves as a wonderful reminder of the promise that comes with each new year—a sloughing off the old and a bursting forth of the new. Photo by Brad Dye

As I sat beside the buck, my hands on his warm body, I thought of an old friend’s sobering words about “watching the light go out of a lot of eyes over the years.” His experience, gleaned from a lifetime’s work at the local wildlife refuge and from his own life’s experience as a hunter and trapper, made me think much more deeply about what it means to hunt, to take a life.

His words have never left me.  I think of them without fail each time that I shoot a deer, a turkey, or even clean a fish that I’ve caught.  I also always think about the words of Charles Dodd White, “I believe it speaks well of a man to cry for an animal he has killed.”

The morning, brief as it was, had been special. I had returned well before dawn to the spot I had hunted the prior day, a day in which I had seen no less than 26 deer come and go, several bucks among that number.

I had spent that entire day in the woods, aside from the 30 minutes spent grabbing a quick lunch at my favorite country store, and it felt wonderful.  There’s something magical about being fully immersed in the woods from sunup to sundown.

This morning, my return trip, I had walked in by the light of a full moon, a moon so bright that I could easily see the fine detail of each piece of bark on the trunk of the pine tree as I climbed into the stand.

About halfway up, I noticed the abandoned shell of a locust clinging to the bark.  I paused a moment to study the husk, a potent reminder of the promise that comes with each new year, a sloughing off the old and a bursting forth of the new.

After settling into the stand, I watched deer come and go in the moonlight through my binoculars, the images of their bodies as clear as if I were studying them at midday.  At 6:32 a.m., legal shooting hours, I rested the binoculars beside me on the seat and focused my eye through the riflescope.

In those waning minutes of the gloaming, I watched several more deer come and go, the hues of their coats changing as darkness transitioned to light.  Lost in the moment, in the sounds of the woods coming alive, I was taken by surprise when the buck appeared.

He seemed to materialize from nothing with no sound to warn of his approach, strange on a quiet morning with no wind and a blanket of crispy leaves covering the forest floor.  A lone doe had crossed the lane, and a moment later he was there, looking each direction up and then down the lane, surveying all that was his.

I was an outsider in his domain, unseen, hidden inside my elevated blind.  It occurred to me that had I been standing exposed in the lane when he appeared he would have disappeared in similar manner, a dematerialization back into the netherworld from whence he had emerged.

The taking was swift, one minute there, the next minute gone.  Such is the way of taking.  I sat for a few minutes in the stand to allow my racing heart to slow before climbing down and walking to him.  Why do I grapple with this so after a lifetime of hunting?

As I sat beside him, the morning sunlight’s rays filigreed through the trees, that thought consumed me.  It was still all that I could think about as I drove out and drove home.  Perhaps, I reasoned, it is maturation, growth over my years as a hunter.  Perhaps, more accurately, it is an overwhelming desire to honor the life I have chosen to take.

Whatever the answer, it seems that it’s something I will continue to grapple with as long as I hunt, and I can see no future that doesn’t involve that for me.  As long as I eat venison (or any wild game for that matter), I want, no, I choose to be a part of that process, rather than removed from it.  I hope, as Dodd so aptly stated, that “speaks well” of me.

Until next time, here’s to the hunt, to honoring the lives that we take, to grappling with the realities of that taking, and here’s to seeing you out there in our great outdoors.