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ORION, The Deer and the Dream Team
By Bob Love
 When I went out to check the weather that morning I knew this was the day we’d been waiting for; there was something in the air that I’d felt before, a familiar voice telling me that the hunting would be good. Silhouetted by faint starlight, the clouds that had been jammed up on the Divide for a week were beginning to break up and head east. We would look for one clear day, maybe two, before the next front moved in from the coast. It was the peak of the mule deer rut and the old herd bucks would be on the move, looking for receptive does. With the change in the weather they would all be feeding, slowly drifting towards the winter range along the trails that their ancestors had carved into the mountainsides; the herd moving like one being, guided by an ancient, inborn intelligence that linked each animal with the other, and the present with the past. Everything felt right.
My son, Orion, had turned twelve last winter, so this was his first hunting season. He woke easily and got ready to go while I cooked breakfast. It was seemed like I’d been preparing him for this day his whole life. Before he could walk, I’d carry him into the woods, getting him aquainted with his new home and its inhabitants so that he’d grow up with a sense of belonging and an acceptance of the natural way of things. When he was older, we would wander through the doghair lodgepole flats behind the house and I’d try to disorient him, then ask him to point towards the river, the bridge or home. I wanted him to nurture and trust his intuition, even when his rational mind told him not to. Over the years I’d outfitted him with the gear he’d need and showed him how to use it. He’d bought a used Model 70 .270 last spring with the earnings from his wood-splitting business and we’d spent many summer evenings reloading and shooting. He’d gained confidence in the gun and in his ability, and I knew he could hit game if he hunted right and waited for a clear shot. It’s easy to teach someone how to shoot, and kill, but you have to work on a different level to teach them how to hunt, how to take another creature’s life with reverence and respect. It’s a learning that comes from within, from time spent in wild places watching and listening, just being there; a learning that brings an awareness if the connections that form the web of life, a state of mind, and a place of mind.
To the Australian aborigines, this place is the Dream Time: a time when the earth was featureless and barren, when mountains, rivers, stars, plants, animals and people were created by the journeys and interactions of Totemic ancestors who imbued each thing with their own spirits. These journeys and battles are preserved through stories and ceremonies, which link each person to the landscape there. This connection is essential in a climate where agriculture is impossible, where survival depends on an intimate, intuitive, in-your-bones knowledge of the land and its creatures. Even though technology’s numbed our senses and distracted us, some of us still hunt, fish and gather wild food. We have a primal need to know when the whitefish run up river to spawn, where the huckleberries ripen first and where you can find them when the elk are bugling; we know that the whitetail fawns are born when the wild strawberries ripen and that the red squirrel and the blue jay talk to each other. We see the interdependence of all the things and the need to be a part of the circle. When you’re hunting right, you enter the Dream Time. Your mind is out of it, and you become as much a part of the place as a lodgepole, a lynx or lichen on a rock. You insert yourself into that world and become invisible, living in the present, no ego cluttering things up. When you’re fishing you’re like a heron; when you’re hunting, like the wolf or cougar. Without practice, and being there, the trail to this place grows in; the blazes heal and you have to find it again.
Orion and I had spent the early part of the season hunting in the Salish Mountains west of home; short trips in gentle country meant to strengthen his legs and get him used to packing his rifle in the woods. I killed a whitetail buck on one of these hunts, which allowed me the freedom to spend more time helping him. We saw a lot of deer, but none offered themselves to us. As the season progressed, we started to hunt the North Fork for mule deer, but the weather was mild and they were scattered and hanging high. Even though we didn’t see many deer, it was time well spent, because Orion learned the country and got stronger. I could tell by the way he moved that his mind and body were tuning into the rhythm of the mountains.
Dawn was breaking when we left the pickup and headed up the hill. We had to get through some rough, brushy country before we were into deer; alder in the slides, and yewbrush under the timber, which is a mixture of spruce and subalpine fir. I’ve hunted this ridge for years, and have found an easy way through this place. It’s part of the price you pay to get there. The snow was knee-deep on me and crotch-deep on Orion, even with me breaking trail. We rested when we started to sweat, trying to keep our scent down. Thorny devil’s club stalks marked springs that we could hear flowing under the snow, and chickadees pecked at the alder catkins in the gray morning shadows. The deer would be feeding too, not far from their beds. After climbing for an hour or so, we broke into shale cliffs and ledges—mule deer country, where Doug-firs are twisted and wind-bent, their roots like talons dug into the mountain’s backbone. I saw something move about 200 yards above us, and with the glasses made out the hind leg of a doe feeding in some maples with a few other deer. They winded us, and headed uphill and west, but weren’t spooky. The wind was coming out of the east and from below us, so it was futile to stalk them. I knew that it would blow out of the west in a few hours, so for the time being we’d have to hunt into it, gain elevation and wait for it to shift. Orion probably thought I’d lost my mind: there was a herd of deer in front of us and there was probably a good buck in the bunch, but we were going to head in the opposite direction. We had to climb until we hit the highest game trail, then wait for the wind to switch to hunt into it. The deer would be below us, strung out in small bands along the mountainside. By staying above them and keeping the wind in our favor, we could get the drop on them. The sun wasn’t quite overhead when we reached the highest trail. We hadn’t seen any deer on the way up and I could see the fatigue and disenchantment in Orion’s eyes. We were winded and hungry and I sensed the barriers of the “real” world breaking down. I was entering familiar territory, but it was brand new to Orion. We were slipping into the Dream Time, becoming invisible.
We took a break and ate some trail mix in the shelter of some stunted, gnarly subalpine firs. The whole world seemed to be laid out before us, and we picked out landmarks and watersheds that make this place our home. The wind tapered off until we could hear Skookoleel Creek roaring in the green-timbered canyon below us, then it slowly strengthened and blew from the west. It carried the raunchy smell of the urine of rutting bucks and the astringent taste of the shredded willow bark that was ground into the bases of their antlers and the sweet musky scent of the doe in heat. I had a vision of the wind lifting the hair on their backs and the glint of winter sunlight in their black eyes.
I told Orion to chamber a shell and go ahead of me on the trail, reminding him that this was the moment we’d been waiting for all these years, and the only thing that mattered right now. We side-hilled along for about a quarter mile, stopping every few steps, slipping in and out of the shadows, all senses wide open, taking everything in. A fat spike buck stepped out on a ledge 50 yards uphill and stared at us, unblinking and curious. He was behind a big fir windfall and Orion couldn’t get a clear shot, so we just waited. A 4-point with bone-white antlers and a narrow, high rack walked out of the serviceberry brush and stood beside the spike to look us over, but Orion still couldn’t get the shot he wanted through the tangle of the windfall. The 4-point winded us on an upslope breeze and took off with the spike on its heels. I blew on my deer call, hoping it would slow them down before they went too far and alarmed the other deer. We stayed still for a little while to let things quiet down, like watching the ripples from a thrown rock soften back the into water. We’d walked along the trail about a hundred yards when we came to an open park, windblown bare of snow. The spike was eating some dry grass by a broken-off snag, but his partner was asking tracks; I caught a glimpse of him as he melted into a fir thicket in the draw ahead of us. When Orion laid down to get a steady rest, the spike spotted us and walked behind the snag, annoyed at us for disturbing him again. I whispered to Orion that it was his decision whether to shoot or not, that this deer would give himself to us if it was meant to be. We laid there in the snow, waiting for the spike to make a move. Last summer’s frost-dried balsam root leaves rattles and clattered in the wind, and the caribou moss hanging from the fir limbs waved like rivergrass in a restless current. Orion said he couldn't’ kill the spike because he seemed like a child to him, but we didn’t move, sensing that we were surrounded by deer.
A doe came out of the timber below us, with a massive 4-point walking stiff-legged behind her. He was like some kind of mythical being, swollen-necked and red-eyed, power radiating from his dark, heavy antlers that seemed to have a life of their own. He felt our eyes on him, and saw us. The dream deepened, and we looked into each other’s souls. Orion clicked the safety off, the metallic sound foreign and unsettling in this world of wood, bone, rock and horn. The buck decided to ignore us, and stretched out his nose towards the doe’s scent glands. He hesitated between steps, and Orion squeezed the trigger. He rocked with the impact of the bullet, hit behind the shoulder, staggered, but didn’t go down, dead on his feet but too strong to die. When Orion shot him again in the neck he collapsed and slid past us in the snow, his antlers rattling on the rocks, flopping and crashing through the timber until he hit a windfall. I slapped and pounded Orion on the back and he yelled “I got a deeer!”, drawing out the word like he did when he was learning to talk. I’ve killed a lot off deer, but I’ve never felt the magic this strongly: I was ecstatic, out of my body, awestruck and speechless. The spike and the doe had moved off a little ways and started to feed again, while the ripples of our disturbance faded into the wind. We thanked him for giving himself to us, stroked him and held him and watched his eyes turn blue and glassy in the sharp air, knelt in his blood and worshipped his power.
Camp robbers, always the first ones on a kill, appeared magically, drifting in from all directions, calling to their brothers, raven and coyote. We fed them chunks of fat while we cleaned the buck, his hot blood making our frozen hands tingle. We thanked the deer again, asking forgiveness and blessing, thanked the mountains, the trees, the wind and the water for our sustenance, and headed down towards the road, the buck tobogganing and tumbling through the snow, the broad trail blood-flecked, smelling of fresh-turned earth and crushed fir needles. When we stopped on a ledge to rest, Orion touched him and said “He’s in heaven now,” and I saw that at this place, and at this time, we were all in heaven: that the blood in the snow and the blood and the blood that congealed on the cold steel of our knives was our blood, and the water that boiled from the springs and roared through the rocks in the gorge and held the sky in the beaver ponds was also our blood, and the blood of these mountains, that the wind that blew streamers of snow off the cornices on the cliffs was the breath of these mountains, of the deer and of us. And I saw that as long as fathers can pass this knowing down to their children and show them how to make their living from the land with gratitude and humility in their hearts, the world will be right and one life will fold into another until the end of time.
Orion The Hunter's Institute
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Helena MT 59601
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