a bird in the hand

Tonight, for the first time in my life, the piece of meat on my dinner plate is there entirely because of me.

My dad phoned me yesterday to see if I wanted to go out to the country and go chicken hunting with him. [an aside here: I am still unclear as to what exactly these "chickens" are. All I know is that they're some type of grouse, perhaps ruffled, but not actual prairie chickens, which are endangered. Up north, they hunt ptarmigan, which they also call chicken. Neither Pa nor wikipedia are any help at all in figuring this out.] I’ve never really hunted before, except for one half-hearted attempt to get a rabbit a few years ago. But the land where my dad hunts is beautiful, and the day promised to be sunny and lovely, so I agreed.

This morning, I realized what it means to go hunting. I’ve been around hunters all my life, and I have no problems with it at all. I eat wild meat with gusto. But when I’m the one doing the killing, it becomes a bit of a different story. I wondered whether I’d be able to pull the trigger, how I would feel about the inevitable goriness of it, how disappointed I’d be if we didn’t see anything — or if I shot and missed. Chickens aren’t the smartest of animals, nor are they that cute, so I figured I’d be OK, but I really wasn’t sure.

It was a perfect fall afternoon. We quadded out to the land, rode in to the woods a little ways, and stopped to get the guns out and loaded. My dad had just finished giving me a refresher on how to shoot, when about 30 feet ahead, I see a chicken, calmly walking along, head bobbing, paying absolutely no attention to us. (I told you they were stupid.) We’d been there not ten minutes, not enough time for me to really start thinking about what we were there to do. I raised my gun, sighted, fired… and hit. Right where I wanted to. My dad ran over and dealt with the final dispatch, yelling, good shot! And that was that. I had killed an animal, with no regret or second thoughts.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around in the woods, trying unsuccessfully to find more chickens. We rode back to the house; I finished cleaning the chicken, packed it up in a ziplock bag, and brought it back to the city with me. Half of it (legs, breastbone, neck, and heart) is currently simmering for soup. The breasts I sauteed with mushrooms and onions and a bit of beer. They were delicious.