I still haven’t forgotten the eyes of the first animal I ever killed.
When I was 10 years old, my dad took me dove hunting near our home in South Texas. This seemed a natural evolution, I imagine, given that he’d shown my brother and me how to handle his .370 rifle and 20-gauge shotgun.
I took deep satisfaction from the few times we actually shot the guns, usually at tin cans and glass bottles my dad set up at a quarry. And when my parents got me a compound bow, I joyfully practiced on a bullseye set up in the backyard (I also once tried and failed to kill a bird with it, for which I was immediately grateful).
So it seemed that “real deal hunting,” as my East Texas dad might say, was a logical next step. But when I did strike a bird with a shotgun blast aimed directly above my short body, it was only a wing. The dove fluttered down to the ground and lay there looking up at us with its cute little bird eyes, at which point my father gently explained I should wring its neck and end its misery.
Being a sensitive kid, I folded immediately. And my dad, being a nice guy, didn’t push me on it, and did the ugly deed himself.
This memory stayed with me for a long time. I couldn’t imagine being a hunter. I just didn’t have the emotional constitution for it. That memory became a story, the kind that we tell ourselves over and over again.
Then age has its way of changing things. After 28 years, I wasn’t the same 10-year-old boy frightened at the thought of taking another life. I would still feel the pain of killing an animal — I knew that. I also knew that the toll of living — loss, illness, disappointment — had aged me in ways I couldn’t know. Death was no longer a mere concept, but a living, breathing threat.
For me. For the people I love. Certainly for my aging parents.
So when my editors asked me if I’d attend a deer hunt camp for journalists, I immediately said yes. I surprised even myself. I didn’t know if I had changed enough to kill a deer, but I knew I was different. After years of swearing I’d never use a gun to kill another living thing, I decided it was time to find out if that was true — or just another story we tell ourselves.
Hunt Camp: A Field Far, Far Away
Flying into Nebraska, I couldn’t help but notice that — from above — it looked exactly as flat and unspectacular as I’d expected. Just an endless patchwork quilt of perfect squares of agriculture, each with different patterns of crops on the inside.
But as I kept looking, I noticed strands of geographic interruption, actual hills and rock planes formed by the few rivers running across this vast landscape. I didn’t know yet that those hills were exactly where I was headed.
At the airport, I met up with Jackson Crawford, a 25-year-old Moultrie brand rep with the slurred accent and easy swagger of an East Texas country singer from 1960, and Matt Williams, a 44-year-old gun magazine columnist radiating folksy, Middle America kindness. I liked them both immediately. Moreover, they were exceedingly nice to me. I arrived in Nebraska exhausted from a previous media trip and with a slight cold, so they brought dinner back to the hotel room for me, without being asked.
We arrived at our final destination the next day, driving into those bands of hills I’d seen from above. As we wove between corn fields and over grassy ridges, we emerged into a cowpie-covered grazing area surrounded by a small grove of trees, a pond, and a green ridge line that looked like it could roll on forever. This was the hunt camp of Arterburn Outdoors — or it would be once we set it up.
Part of camp is setting up camp, and Joe Arterburn himself (a short, bearded man so friendly looking we joked he should be the new logo of Swiss Miss) wanted to make sure we writers were around to hammer in stakes and help move boxes.
Joe, I would find out later, mostly organized these camps as a labor of love. He’d worked for decades as communications director for Cabela’s, hosting media camps for wimpy writers like myself (my words).
Now retired, he continued to do the same thing, bringing together brand reps and local hunters to share a hunt with outdoor writers who’ve never had the experience. The secret weapon of this year’s camp, I soon realized, was the group of people it had brought together.
The Joys of Eating Meat
The highlight of hunt camp was easily the food. Specifically, it’s the culinary creations of a convivial mountain of a man with an infectious smile and bawdy sense of humor. Brooks Hansen fashions 5-star meals out of game animals that are often disregarded among foodies — as he loves to explain.
Make no mistake: The goal of ethical hunting may be to eat what you kill, but Hansen makes sure the animal becomes delicious along the way. Each night’s dinner felt like another round of evidence in the ongoing argument against those who believe “normal” meats from domesticated animals are somehow safer or tastier.
From cheesy bison burgers to bloody moose and elk steaks to cream cheese–filled venison strips (all served medium rare) — I recall few weeks of my life when I ate better.
These backcountry banquets fueled the unfeigned camaraderie of hunt camp evenings. Nothing about these raucous dinners felt insincere. Epic, thousand-year-old poems tell us that a successful hunt demands celebration — and these guys didn’t need much of an excuse to start with.
Every day beginning on the very first night, one of us four writers came back to camp with a deer to be cut up and prepared for eating. We’d listen to the story of the hunt, eat a dinner that felt like a feast, get drunk on beers and rye whiskey, lose ourselves in chaotic conversation and laughter, slowly disappear with an “Irish goodbye,” and then walk back in darkness to our tent before most knew we’d given up until the morning.
The kindness of each and every person was evident, from the relaxed Nebraska hunters to the pious Mormons, introverted Coloradans, and salty Texans (that’s me).
By the third day, every writer had bagged a deer — except for me. I had spent 2 days in a deer blind waiting for a pretty doe and a decent shot, but nothing yet.
When I left for my third hunt attempt, Williams told me to ignore what anyone said about when to pull the trigger. I should only shoot if the moment felt right. For me, that applied to more than the unpredictable, ghost-like movements of deer. I’d need to feel that those around me shared my perspective, and understood my inner conflict without needing to ask. In a short time, I knew that was exactly the situation I was in.
The Pain of Killing
The second I took the shot — gunsmoke twirling, boom echoing — the doe was gone. I’d waited in hunting blinds for 3 days for this moment, and now I’d lost my chance.
The doe had been crossing the river ahead of us, backlit by the sun rising over the low hills. Now she had disappeared, and I had no idea if the bullet that rang out from my rifle had found its target. I didn’t even know if that’s what I wanted.
My guide led another hunter and me out of the blind, and we trudged across the river to see what had happened to that beautiful mother deer whose chest had been in my crosshairs only moments earlier. We meandered on our way to find her, tracing log-covered riverbanks and crossing sandbars — but I knew where she’d been. I couldn’t forget even the swirl of river water where she’d stood, where I had committed to this.
Finally, a smattering of red on verdant river grass. The crimson sparkled in the sun, now high enough to warm up the chilly Nebraska morning, but I still felt cold. We followed the trail for no more than 30 yards, connecting each blood stain to the inevitable end.
The doe lay in the grass, blood trickling from the small hole where I’d shot her through the heart. I put a hand on her soft, warm body, stared at her glassy eyes, and struggled with the feeling in my chest, the stillness that spread from her back to me. Was it grief for the animal or myself? I didn’t know.
I still don’t.
Dressing, Butchering, Growing
Not every hunter celebrates death with a grin. For many, a hunt is defined by the lack of pain they inflict.
My colleague, Rachelle Schrute, hunts elk with a bow, often to feed herself and her family. That practicality coexists with a deep empathy: she cries when an animal suffers too long, especially when it’s caused by her own arrow or bullet.
AllGear Editorial Director Sean McCoy, also a longtime hunter, was supportive when I told him I’d killed a deer in one shot and as painlessly as possible: “I don’t want you to wound an animal early on. It can ruin hunting for you.”
Of course, that was what happened with the dove I’d killed in South Texas. And it took me 30 years to get over it.
Once back at Arterburns Hunt Camp with the deer, I found myself surrounded by people who wanted to celebrate my kill. When I arrived with the deer in the back of a truck, blood leaking out of its heart and dripping through the tailgate onto the ground — I could barely speak, much less tell a thrilling story. Crawford and Williams slapped me on the back and congratulated me. But thankfully, no one pushed me to act a certain way.
A few hours later, I was sitting in an open field cutting into the deer’s body. Field dressing didn’t irk me as much as I thought. Under careful tutelage, I learned how to slice through its supple skin and carve out the tender flesh beneath. In just a few minutes, blood coated my clothes and hands. The meaty parts of the animals would come back to camp, while the remains would stay in the field as food for coyotes and foxes.
A day after that, all of us — from seasoned hunter to emotional rookie — joined in the arduous process of butchering that flesh into proper cuts of meat. I flew home with a cooler full of meat, ready for the grill and slow cooker.
Sitting on the plane watching Nebraska’s endless plains, I felt grateful for the experience of taking a life that would nourish my own. And I felt deep regret for taking a life that would nourish my own.
Two things can be true.
The Conundrum of Killing to Eat
About a month later, I took the first bite of the deer I killed on that Nebraska river.
I organized a dinner party here in my Atlanta home with family and friends, and asked my best friend Diego (a far better cook than I) to grill the backstrap steaks I’d cut from the doe’s body in a Nebraska field. It was raining on our patio, so I held an umbrella over the grill as the coals turned an ashy gray, and laughed with Diego while we drank whiskey together.
Grilled medium-rare, and then lightly sautéed with butter and herbs, the meat was juicy, tender, and delicious — as good as the hunt camp meals, if only because it was from an animal that I took the responsibility of killing.
My parents, Diego, and his pregnant wife Carol — all joined in the feast. No one balked at eating a wild animal I’d killed and brought back from Nebraska. They all thanked me, toasting to my success and the bounty that came with it. This, I thought, was even better than hunt camp, if only because I was sharing the experience with the people I love most in the world.
Yet even now, writing these words, I am overwhelmed at the thought of the moment I killed that deer, and what, if anything, it means about me. I keep thinking of the words of hunter and conservationist Aldo Leopold. In 1949, he wrote, “For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun.”
That newness, though, belongs to a much longer arc of humanity than just modern life. Indigenous peoples were praying for animals long before Western society woke up to the importance of conservation and humane treatment.
Empathy can’t be just a byproduct of civilization, or of spirituality. It’s not reserved for educated humans, nor is it a convenience to be shed at the first sight of risk. It’s a reimagining of how we can live.
In hunting — in the act of killing — I found an undeniable empathy. First for the animal, and then for ourselves, and finally for all the living things that sustain us, from a felled deer to a carrot torn from the root.
I don’t know if killing that doe was right. I don’t know if it’s immoral to kill an animal for food. I do know I can still see that doe’s eyes. I still feel a slight shudder thinking of her gentle spine as I cut into her body. And now that feeling lives with the memory of eating her body surrounded by people I love.
I may never kill another deer. I know that it may never get any easier for me. And for now, that’s enough.
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