The Hunt

When the fall comes, think of me. I can be heard on any mountain, seen in any town, and felt in any man who has a passion for living as his father lived, learning what he taught and breathing the free crisp autumn air that he breathed. And so I climb the high mountain in search of the great buck, if only to get a glimpse of him and feel my heart skip a beat before it jumps out of my chest. The great buck I seek is king and keeper of the woods just as I am the keeper of all that my father taught. And as I do all that I can to bring the great beast to my sights, I know that he is king and that it is I who am wounded, for time is fleeting, and my family is gone. The king is proud and runs hard with great, outstretched strides that make him invisible between the trees. His loins have succeeded in carrying a bloodline of superiority to a land that will prosper whether he now lives or dies. But I will surely die………

The Buck was a rogue creature that had wandered off its stomping grounds, a square two-mile territory deep in the heart of the third ledge of Jenkins Mountain. There were no other bucks that were massive enough to challenge his kingdom, and he ruled it quite effectively with brute force and psychological torture. He was now entering his fourth rutting season and the third as the most dominant buck on the mountain and ruler of deer and all small creatures. His strength was proven in battle not just with those of his own kind, and there were many, but also in self-defense against the wolf, the coyote, and the bobcat, all of which suffered in their meager attempts at sustenance. Their needs were cruel and inconsequential compared to the severity of the only task in life for the male deer, to procreate. And this he did, and did well. For a buck in the wild, he had an obsession with greatness. Every beat of the heart under the blanket of hollow white chest hair was a beat for masculinity and the intense desire to pass on the seed of life to a keeper who could nurture and protect it, keep it warm and make it grow. And there were but only a few that could complete the mission of giving birth to his offspring. The seeds from him grew big inside the bellies of the does of Jenkins Mountain, and some died while giving birth or shortly thereafter. For this reason, as if knowing the fateful outcome of his mates, he took to the hills high and low on a crusade to impregnate as many does as possible through the peek of the rut, and in doing so find and mate the toughest females on the mountain. Rough and ready and hung bigger than and more genetically superior to any other buck on the mountain, this buck moved with a frenzy of the possessed. Shrouded in sweat and fesses, its face pasted in a foamy saliva from its mouth to its ears and dribbling urine and seamen down its hind quarters, this buck became to the hills, the standard bearer of the rugged and untamed, with the bloodline of royalty swelling between its legs and the crown of a king atop its head in the form of fourteen glorious points.