Devin's First Deer Poem by David Welch

Devin crunched slowly through the frosted grass
as he made his way down his grandpa's field,
it was the morning after Thanksgiving
with a chill that was bracing and real.

While most of the state was crowding the stores,
causing chaos and just losing their minds,
Devin instead was out on his first hunt,
just south of the New York border line.

His grandpa owned two hundred fine acres,
and Devin liked coming to this rural scene,
a break from his school and from Scranton,
where he had lived all of his years sixteen.

On all of his trips he'd seen the antlers
that grandpa had up on his old barn wall,
noticing that there were more every year,
Gramps was not one to miss out on the Fall.

He'd though of trying it out himself,
but his mother was afraid about guns,
until, at sixteen, she had relented,
it seemed she had a taste for venison.

Some morons at school had given him flack,
assailed him with shrill, Hippyish words,
they'd never seen what happens to the woods
when nobody controlled the deer herd.

Devin had seen it, nothing but ferns,
the one thing White-tails did not like to eat,
stripping off cover from ground-nesting birds,
and small mammals that scurried under feet.

As Devin saw it, you still had to kill
when you pulled a carrot plant from the ground,
eating a fruit was a tree abortion,
to survive something had to go down.

But it wasn't this truth that bothered him
as he approached his grandpa's old tree stand,
instead he fought to calm his pounding heart,
and to relax both his shaking hands.

He double-checked his rifle's safety,
then up clambered up and strapped into the seat,
covered in orange, and fresh scent-killer,
an empty field was all that he could see.

Time passed and all went on quietly,
Devin found it serene and relaxing,
Gramps said you couldn't really count on deer,
that failure was just a part of hunting.

Two hours passed and the morning sun
was climbing ever higher in the sky,
Devin wondered if he should pack it in
when the slightest flicker of movement he spied.

It was an antler behind some thick brush,
but it set a fire in Devin's young brain,
ten minutes later a fiver-pointer stepped out,
with his mind racing Devin took aim.

He put the sights just behind the shoulder,
that's where one bullet would make a clean kill,
then forced though a breath to steady his nerves,
an action that took almost all of his will.

A gentle squeeze back on the trigger
and the slug shot straight out for its target,
the buck jerked hard, then he bolted away,
for a second Devin feared he had missed it.

But the stag faltered, then collapsed hard
into the frosted white and brown turf.
Devin breathed fast, frozen as he watched the
deer sprawl out motionless on the cold earth.

When he climbed down and went out to the kill
he still couldn't believe the shot he had made,
but that young buck lay there before his eyes,
it had been a very successful first day.

As he bent down, and took out a long knife,
he heard new footsteps crunching in the snow,
clad in orange, his grandfather walked up,
"Heard the short, hoped you had laid something low."

He paused and gave an appreciative nod,
"Quite a deer, and your first time at that!
Guess we better start with the field dressing,
then I'll help you drag this fine buck back."

It took a deal of time to dress the kill,
Devin never had done such work before,
but he had to now, to preserve the meat,
so cut through some blood and some gore.

When they dragged the kill back, grandma came out,
said, "Didn't think he'd score on his first day.
There's gotta be sixty pounds of meat there,
better hang him up by the barn to drain."

When that was done they went into the house,
spent twenty whole minutes scrubbing clean,
Gramps was quite impressed, and as a reward
gave Devin a belt from a flask of whisky.

They sat at the table while lunch did cook,
Gramps asked, "How'd you feel when you took the shot?
Devin said, "Nervous, didn't know what came next,
but I'm happy with the meat that we've got."

Gramps said, "Well, You've grown a bit today,
and not because you can make something dead.
Because now you can see what it requires
for a man to keep his family fed.

"It's not just packages at the market,
it's part toil, part sweat, and part fear."
Devin just nodded as he heard the words,
"I'll have to come back and hunt more next year."

Later gramps smiled, and spoke with his wife,
"I think today really did him some good.
Now if we could only get his father,
away from screens, and back out in the woods..."