On Tagging Out
Hawks, deer, wide-angle vision; advice from friends.
I had aspirations to write about cooking this week, about recipes and precision. But — it being a short week — things kept coming up and before I knew it, it was Thursday afternoon and I was up in a tree stand listening for deer. In the downtime before the deer started moving, I took my phone out to start writing. Almost as soon as I did, a hawk swooped down and landed in the tree next to me. It looked at me for a minute as I fumbled to open my camera and snap a photo, and then it flew off1.
It was hunting and didn’t have time for photos2 or phones.
I took that as a lesson and put mine away.
About an hour later I watched as a buck meandered out of the woods behind me, checking the wind as he went, watching, smelling, and listening for does and for me. He moved closer, half-stomping, half-prancing and at thirty yards presented an almost perfect broadside shot. In Massachusetts, where I hunt, you can legally take two antlered deer each fall. With a clean shot on this buck — a bruiser who had already lost one of his antlers fighting with other bucks during the rut — I punched my second tag, “tagging out.” I’m beyond stoked and immensely grateful to have another deer to put in our freezer, refilling it with as clean meat as you can find3.
During the Spirit of the Hunt course, one of the lectures is on the “Eight Points of Awareness” — the concepts and ideas you need to open yourself fully to the natural world. One of these concepts is that of “wide-angle vision:” the idea that you’re taking in everything around you at once, experiencing the world as if you’re looking down on it like a bird of prey. Like a hawk. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I saw a hawk yesterday afternoon; nor that I saw one a few weeks ago as well, while I was in the tree, just before I took my first deer. When you open yourself up to the world, connecting to it without a screen as an intermediary, things start happening4. Like I’ve been told: “It’s all in your imagination until it isn’t.”
So last night, instead of writing about the balance between precision and intuition in cooking, I was field dressing, cleaning, and hanging a deer. Instead of opining on the pressure of cooking for others, I was reflecting on sacred hunts and gratitude. I was thinking about hawks and the interconnectedness of everything.
As I was texting my friend Jay about the deer, telling him about filling my tags, he wrote back — perhaps in jest — with “Lou from Cow We Doin’: On Tagging Out.” So thanks, Jay, for the inspiration5. Sometimes the universe, in the form of a friend’s sardonic praise, throws you a softball when you need it — and today, that’s what we’ll take.
We’ll see you back here next week, with a recipe6, for sure, and maybe even with that essay I was teasing.
I had my nice camera, an OM System OM-5 — which I bought partially because it’s an almost perfect outdoor camera and well-suited for hunting excursions — with me. But, as cameras are wont to be when you need them, it was still in my pack, not yet taken out.
Not that I got one, mind you.
I’m also thankful because at the rate that Kiddo and the Warthog — especially the Warthog — are eating venison, Mrs. CWD and I have scarcely had a chance to enjoy it ourselves!
Or really, they’re always happening — we just normally notice them.
If you came here hoping for a recipe, you can blame him.
Courtesy, believe it or not, of Auntie eMD!
Must’ve been a helluva scrap to lose an entire half!
If I’m fortunate enough to be teaching at the college long enough - I want to create a lit/writing/philosophy course about hunting as a basis for sustenance and connectedness.
Right on man. Wide angle. Good job.