Sitting thirty feet up in an old spruce tree, on a little metal throne tied onto the trunk, I’ve got quivering legs. My fear is intensified by the knowledge that old spruces are brittle, and this one is waving gently in a fairly stiff breeze.
A few hundred yards away, traffic and voices from the local shopping mall can be heard. Dogs from a nearby neighborhood bark. I’m observing the city deer hunt in Duluth, and one of the designated tracts is located on twelve acres near Miller Creek, sandwiched between the mall and a residential neighborhood. The hunters use bows and arrows, and special licenses include provisions to ensure that only deer are shot; that they are cleanly shot and killed, and not just wounded; and, finally, that their numbers within city limits are substantially reduced. (This means prioritizing the hunting of does over bucks, which are far more prized among deer hunters.)
Duluth is plagued by deer, apparently. This year alone, I’ve nearly hit three of them driving city streets, and that experience is common. My neighbor used to walk at five a.m. every day, and he routinely saw deer strolling right down Superior Street. Part of the problem is that Duluth has a lot of deer habitat. The city was originally supposed to be the new Chicago, so it was laid out with borders ranging far into the surrounding woods. Of course, Duluth never quite reached Chicago’s size, and in fact, it’s lost one-fifth of its human population over the last several decades. For the past two years, the city has called on bow hunters to stem the overpopulation of deer.
The ungulates probably don’t outnumber the primates in the city, but no one really knows how many deer there are. The only numbers are those that come from the hunters. Last year, hunters took twenty-two deer per square mile of hunted land within the city. According to the DNR, that statistic likely represents about one-third of the deer living in those areas, which matches up with another statistic suggesting that about one-third of any deer population needs to be killed (by wolves or coyotes or hunters) in order to remain stable and not overwhelm its own food supply. Which means there are quite possibly fifty to seventy deer per square mile of woods in Duluth.
This seems crazy, because when you walk those woods, you seldom see deer. They’re there, though—watching and hearing and smelling you. As I rambled the woods with Phillip Lockett, head of the Arrowhead Bowhunters Alliance, he noted that when people walk at a constant speed through the forest, the deer stand still, watch them go by, then proceed with their business. If you stand quietly for an hour or so, however—or better yet, climb a tree and sit still—you will see them.
During the three hours I spent up in the spruce, I saw four deer—and realized that had I not been looking out for them, I wouldn’t have been able to maintain such concentrated stillness and attention.
Bow hunters, bound by this attentiveness, are generally guys who really enjoy perching twenty or thirty feet up a tree, on a platform not much bigger than their boot soles, sitting stock-still and watching the forest. While not necessarily possessed by bloodlust, they do want to get their deer. After all, it’s an ancient instinct, hunting, and much of its appeal stems from the fact that it seems to open ranges of perception and emotion that are otherwise inaccessible. Bow hunters tend to be thoughtful, even meditative, and in love with the environment in which they spend so much time. (Deer season for bow hunters is three months long, and to be successful, hunters should be well acquainted with their stretch of woods in all seasons.)
Oftentimes, bow hunters return with tales of marvels. Lockett recounted the time two owls swooped together right in front of him, in close combat in the canopy of the tree he was sitting in. He told of hawks perched on a limb of the tree harboring his stand; they did a double-take, then flew off. There were stories of watching pine martens chase squirrels and hearing grouse move through the woods, making as much noise as any buck.
The strange juxtaposition of the wild and the urban—a man in green clothing pulling his prey, as big as himself and felled by a bow, out of some trees and onto a city street—is a thing that somehow pleases me. There is an essential honesty in this, the presence of some cold and merciful eye, and, ultimately, a recognition of the basic rules of life, which are not of our making but are what we must live by.
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