The taunt was delivered by a teenaged hunter with a Georgia twang, and the word "kill" was pronounced almost - but not entirely - like "keel."
"You'd better watch it. You're gonna mess up one of these days yourself, and you'll have to eat those words," replied his daddy.
The boy was not impressed by his father's warning. Fifteen-year-olds rarely are. His father had shot a perfectly legal young buck deer with his bow.... the only problem being that the deer, while antlerless, had been a buck rather than a doe. Hunters on this piece of land preferred to take does and leave the young bucks to mature, and they do so whenever possible.
The taunting continued. It was part of the boy's raising, and part of hunt-camp etiquette - often, harassment is a legitimate way of expressing affection among us men, as well as a way of letting someone know what you thought of their actions in a good-natured way.
It's all done in good fun, but sometimes folks can get carried away - especially those who haven't had much experience eating their words. He was a very likeable young man, but like all young folks, he had a lot to learn.
The boy continually rode his father about the young buck. "At least I ain't ever shot one," he'd say - over and over. He never dreamed that his words would turn around and bite him on the butt.
Then, come muzzleloader season, almost first thing, the young fellow shot a button buck. He was miserable about it, but he hadn't yet learned enough about eating words to recognize their foul flavor and to avoid putting too many out there for possible later consumption. "That's the first time I've ever screwed up. It won't happen again," he insisted.
A few weeks later, he shot a very young doe. Ideally, doe deer are allowed to grow up and hopefully breed at least once before they are shot. They are killed for management reasons, and for the meat.
It goes without saying that a very young doe has considerably less meat on its bones than an older one. The boy had screwed up again. His father, and others, warned him again about running his mouth. He took no heed. He was fifteen, and therefore invincible - or nearly so.
"At least I ain't ever missed a deer," he said.
Soon thereafter, on Thanksgiving weekend, he missed a doe.
"Well... I ain't ever had to track one anyway. All the deer I shoot fall dead right there."
The following afternoon, I was hunting down in a thickly overgrown creek bottom, near a food plot that constituted the only clearing down there. As the sun fell and dusk settled in, I heard a doe blowing to beat the band, farther down that same bottom. She was really ticked about something.
Within minutes, I heard a rifle shot. A very loud rifle shot. Coming from the direction of the blowing. I turned on my two-way radio to see who had fired. It was the young fellow who'd taken the shot, and he had hit a doe - the same doe that I had heard blowing. The deer had run off, but he had found blood. I told him I would come and help him track it.
(Continued)
