On Bird Language

Snapshot of a hunt, sketch poetry, lessons learned.

Bird language is the idea that in nature, the animals are always talking. That they are announcing what is going on in the woods, who is coming and who is going. And, it’s the idea that, if you listen, there is always something to learn¹.

Monday night, just before sundown, I sit in a tree, swaying with the breeze, watching a spike buck² eating acorns, making his way down a ridge. From a tree a few yards away, further into the bottom, I had watched the week before two does do the same thing, wind me, and creep off, blowing, jays crying sneak-sneak! I moved my stand after that, higher up the ridge, thinking that might make a difference.

The spike warily — so warily, that at first I think he is a mature doe — or a ghost — continues down the ridge. He stops often, scenting, then putting his head down to eat — only to jolt back up moments later, waiting for something, someone — for me — to make a wrong move. I lean back, worried he’ll feel my pounding heart, frozen in my saddle, bow unsupported in my left hand, quivering.

Slowly, moving without moving, I begin to raise my bow. He looks up, making eye contact. I look away, watching in my periphery, breathing.

Easy, brother.

A chipmunk alarms, then a squirrel. His attention shifts, ever so slightly, tuned to the language. A racoon, suddenly, jarringly, comes out of the swamp. The buck abruptly turns, as startled as me, watching it, unable to take in everything at once. In the confusion, I draw, unnoticed.

I have one small shooting lane, twelve, maybe thirteen yards from my stand. I fix my pin on the window, waiting. As he steps through the branches, I release.

Earlier that afternoon, sitting in the tree, I dashed this sketch for Kiddo and the Warthog:

I’ve seen twice now a hawk
swooping through the forest canopy
as I sit, waiting for deer —

His shadow sets off alarms from
jays, chipmunks and squirrels —
I look up as he lands
just a few branches away.

When I told you that morning
that I would be hunting,
you tell me, L, to catch a deer
so we can eat it.

H., you laugh — you love meat —
nodding in agreement.

Right now, I’d like nothing more
than to catch a deer
so we can eat it.

But instead I’m listening to
bird language and watching
the setting sun light leaves on fire,
waiting for deer.

Later that night, as I finished rinsing the blood off my hands, I reflected on this hunt. If I were to recall it around the campfire, I would call it a success — but, one in which I made mistakes, one which brought with it lessons to be learned³. These are the type of lessons that you can’t pick up from reading about these things in books or magazines or YouTube videos⁴. They’re lessons you can only learn from experience⁵. And you need to take those experiences with your eyes entirely open, with a radical embrace, the good with the bad, the success with the failure. I’m just beyond grateful — and beyond stoked — that I’m lucky enough to be able to have them⁶.

We’ll see you back here next week.

1. In Maine, we spent a lot of time going over bird language. Coincidentally, my friend Kyle sent me this article a few days before I left for Maine — another sign that the universe is sending those signals.

2. A spike buck is a one to two year old male deer whose antlers haven’t developed the characteristic spread with multiple points. Their antlers appear more as “spikes.” These younger bucks are the most likely to be the ones to cause property damage, to be hit by cars, and have the lowest odds of surviving into the next season. I was hunting in an area where the land owner — a conservation trust — is focused on population management to keep the forest healthy and ensure the understory doesn’t get destroyed. That, coupled with the fact I’m hunting first and foremost for food, made taking this particular deer very attractive

3. In the spirit of radical living, I’ll reflect on some of them now. My first shot hit high on the deer, and a bit far back. I was fortunate in this sense that my arrow severed the deer’s spine, paralyzing it — but the first shot wasn’t fatal. Because it didn’t move far at all — maybe 10 yards — I was able to immediately take a follow on shot that ultimately killed it.

There were a couple reasons for this misfire: one, the shot was well under twenty yards. I thought I had my slider set to twenty yards — the shortest distance I have sighted — but it was actually set to closer to twenty-five. While this might not seem like a lot, given I was sighting almost 10 yards further out than I was aiming, this caused me to hit high. The lesson: check and recheck your sight even when your heart is beating out of your chest and you’re worried about spooking a deer. Two — I didn’t properly account for my height in the tree and the angle of the shot. I was twenty feet up in the tree, plus on a ridge another ten feet or so from the bottom, where the deer was. Because I’ve been doing most of my target shooting from the ground, I wasn’t thinking about how that extreme angle would affect my shot placement. That, coupled with the deer taking another step I didn’t factor in, maybe a little string jump when it heard my release and also some possible deflection on a branch left me a shot I wish I could have taken again. But now I know — practice shooting from a stand and from steeper angles. Aim a touch further forward. These adjustments need to become second nature based on the situation.

Another lesson: I correctly realized I needed to adjust my set-up spot based on the actual deer movement, not just what I “thought” deer movement should look like. Mrs. CWD helped me understand this after I told her about my sit last week, where I saw a bunch of deer, but didn’t get any shots. “That was a win, though — you learned something!” she told me.

However, when I moved my platform, I didn’t do a great job accounting for how high up I would be — and ended up positioned directly in front of a fork in the trunk, one I couldn’t shoot around. So I had to shift where I put my platform — which resulted in me needed to take an off-sided shot, which can be difficult when you’re hunting from a saddle. If I had spent a little more time thinking about the tree, I might have been able to avoid that and given myself a better shot opportunity earlier on — avoiding the steeper angle and the smaller window.

At the end of the day, though, the hunt was a success. I feel terrible about not making a clean first shot, but I do find solace that I was able to follow up quickly. I’m thankful for the deer, which will give us meat and meals for the next several months. And, when I get out again next, I’ll be able to make better decisions in the field.

4. Not even watching MeatEater videos of Steve Rinella field dressing a deer.

5.

Christian Pung

states this eloquently in his recent essay “No Guts, No Glory.”

6. A very, very enormous thank you to Mrs. CWD for allowing me the opportunity to sneak off into the woods a few times a week in the fall, leaving her to hold down the fort alone with our gremlins.