We hiked silently back towards Waddle Creek.  I was ahead of Ken, and when I heard another hissing crack behind me, I didn’t look back.  I could see the forest thinning out before me, and I knew that we were getting close to Waddle Creek Trail, that scar cut through the forest, attempting to tame it, to give it order.  The trail that would deliver us back to camp, back to Boone Falls.

Ken tapped my shoulder and broke me out of my unhappy thoughts, and I turned around to see excitement on his face.  This caught me off guard, and I knew that it could only mean one thing.  The tension between us dissipated immediately and I grinned as he motioned for me to quietly follow him.

Ken stopped about ten yards back, and we crouched low in some thick underbrush.  We were on the side of a slope now, and Ken pointed down into the ravine below us.  About 40 yards away, there was a thick mass of bushes; a tangle of tall ferns and galax.  The leaves were shaking steadily.  I scanned the bushes, while Ken loaded his rifle and looked through its scope to get a better view.

“Doe or Buck?” Ken breathed, and handed me the rifle.

I carefully took the rifle from him and aimed the scope at the bushes.  The thick galax leaves obscured the target; looking through the scope only enhanced my view of the shaking foliage.  “I have no idea what it is,” I answered.

“It must be a buck.  Look at the leaves shaking,” he whispered.  “It’s too big to be a doe, right?”  He was still whispering, but his pitch rose unevenly.

I knew that the regulations prohibited taking a white tail doe, and that a violation came with stiff penalties.  In my mind, I heard John Sr. reciting the Fifth Commandment: “Be Sure Of Your Target Before You Pull The Trigger.”  I was afraid to explicitly invoke his teachings, however, after my previous conversation with Ken.  “Wait,” I urged.

Ken kept the rifle at his shoulder, his eyes wide open and his reddened nostrils flaring.  The barrel lightly swayed in his hands.  The forest stood still for three long seconds, as we both watched the bushes.  The leaves shook again, and Ken’s grip tightened.  “It’s a buck.”

The certainty in his voice and in his face told me that I couldn’t delay or prevent the shot.  I backed away.  The crack of the rifle echoed in the trees, and then the forest was silent.  I stood and looked down to the tangle of bushes.  The animal had fallen to one side, his weight pushing aside the vines and broad leaves.

Ken had already covered half the distance to the kill, taking long strides through the heavy bushes, almost skipping.  About ten yards from the spot, he stopped and took a few steps backward, dropping his rifle to the forest floor.  I ran down the slope towards Ken and the man that he shot.

By the time I got to the body, Ken had inched forward to the man, so that we both arrived at the same time.  He was a Hispanic man, lying on his back on the bare forest floor.  The ground underneath him was a rough circle of soil picked clean, the perimeter a tangle of the leaves and vines which had previously sheltered him.  His dungarees were dirty from kneeling in the dirt and his tan shirt, caked with blood and soil, rose and fell rapidly as he struggled for air.  Darting back and forth between me and Ken, his deep brown eyes were wide open, screaming confusion and fear.  Next to him lay a bag filled with the greenest, most beautiful galax leaves that I have ever seen.

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