Doug Fine: Author, Journalist, Adventurer, Goat-Herder

As one of my goals on the Funky Butte Ranch is to become something like food independent, I thought that one deer would provide my protein all winter. They say your blood type determines whether you come from agricultural or hunter-gatherer stock, but my choice had less to do with my genetics than my inexperience with firearms. In fact, a small but vicious scar bore witness to my near-fatal attempts at becoming a self-sufficient carnivore.

After I registered for the state deer hunt lottery, I started conspiring with local gun nuts, otherwise known as much of the male population of southern New Mexico. Four months, one bloody concussion and three hunting trips later, I had a bagged a grand total of one desert hare. This while churning upwards of 100 gallons of gasoline and perhaps an equal number of rifle bullet casings and shotgun shells.

Having never fired a rifle before, I knew I had to do some prep work before deer season opened in November. My first outing was a gun training session with my friend Ant at the Grant County Shooting Range on a sunny afternoon back in October. I’d messed around with a shotgun in Alaska, but I didn’t even know how to load the kind of rifle necessary for bringing down a mule deer. Ant, in agreeing to loan me his 30.07 (whatever that meant), insisted on a safety session amidst the Rush Limbaugh listeners at the range. I was all for it. I even bought the orange cap.

“It kicks like a mule,” Ant warned as we unpacked the weapon from its case.

Great. We can put probes on Mars but we can’t develop a firearm that doesn’t dislocate the shoulder? Ant shared this information after I ran to and from Wal-Mart to return (without being questioned) the incorrect caliber bullets I had initially bought for the session. When it comes to guns and ammunition, New Mexico doesn’t have a five-minute waiting period, let alone a five-day one. Children here who have never heard of Lexington and Concord can recite every word of the Second Amendment. When East Coast Democrats begin to grasp this, they might start getting some votes in the West. It’s not about handguns and crime around here. It’s about meat and antlers. And beer.

At the range, Sadie hid under the LOVEsubee driver’s seat while Ant and I popped off at paper cutouts of liberals, terrorists and environmentalists. As I aimed, Ant adjusted my hands, shoulders and feet until I was roughly in the shape of a bowline knot, and warned me about something called “Scope Eye.” This had to do with the bad things that happen to people who don’t brace the rifle butt fully while keeping their face far enough from the magnified eyepiece through which they’re aiming.

I learned that day primarily that firing a rifle is about a lot more than pulling a trigger. There were scopes to calibrate, official shooting positions to adjust, ear pieces to insert, backgrounds to check for safety, bullets to load into chambers, and prayers to utter. I counted 54 things to remember before each shot, more even than a diesel pre-start ritual. With Ant there to stop me every time I nearly did something fatal, I wound up plugging a solid 30% of my targets that day. But it was all too much information to process, so I decided to have one more practice session back at the FBR a week later, after the swelling in my shoulder went down.

I set up a small plant pot on the property line fence about 150 yards away, across the planting area I had just stuffed with alfalfa seeds. Then I tromped back up to my clothesline. I loaded the scary device. I aimed. I remembered about 27 of Ant’s safety tips.

50% ain’t bad. But I was nervous. Something was nagging at me. Not a good feeling with a gun in your hands. Still, I overcame a strong Darwinian hesitancy, contorted myself into a formal firing position called, appropriately enough, “Modified Jackass,” and pulled the trigger.

When I came to, I felt conflicting emotions. On the one hand, from the pain throbbing in my temple, forehead and nose I recognized that I was definitely alive. So that was a relief. Continued life is generally my goal. On the other hand, thick scarlet globules of blood were dripping at one-second intervals from above my right eye and in fact the whole right side of my face and head was a circle of pain. The first sensation, that of relief, won out. In fact, it was buoyed when I saw that I had hit my target — the plant pot was half gone. I staggered inside, where I stemmed and treated the wound — a classic case of Scope Eye — with aloe.

“Yeesh,” I said to the scary fellow staring horrified at me in the mirror. “Even NFL quarterbacks give it up after four or five concussions.” Between goat wrestling, solar roof work and general clumsiness, I’d suffered at least half a dozen head injuries and Tetanus-risking punctures since implementing my simple rural life. But this one was by far the most serious. I carry the scar to this day.

* * * * *

The lesson painfully learned (gun thing to remember #28: brace rifle against shoulder to blunt recoil), deer season arrived, and Sadie and I tramped around New Mexico for four pleasant days, not seeing anything larger than a rabbit. It wasn’t until I returned home and nearly drove on top of three legal bucks on the last stretch road to the ranch– any of which would have been perfectly fine for me to shoot before new rules restricted my legal hunting area — that I learned from my friend Joey that a) having a dog with me on my hunt ensured no deer in its right mind would be within a mile of me and b) having a dog with me on my hunt was illegal.

Live and learn. On the bright side, I might have been the only hunter in New Mexico history to have his laptop complete with wireless Internet with him as he aimed for dinner, and so I sent a lot of colorful emails to friends about sunsets and the poetry of subsistence from my homemade deer blind. I had made sushi from jarred Alaskan salmon for the trip, so Sadie and I ate quite splendidly as well. As we dined, we listened to NPR.

Joey, hearing this pathetic tale, took pity on me and twice took me out hunting birds with him during the winter. He told me he’d spent several years subsisting on quail, dove and dessert hare. It seemed like a good way to start, though I had some qualms about shooting the universal symbol for peace. But I needn’t have worried. The grand tally at the end of the two day-long trips looked like this:

Joey: 11 quail, 16 doves, 5 hare.
DF: 1 worm-ridden hare.

I’m not sure if this was a simple matter of marksmanship, the fact that Timmy had something like 55 years hunting experience under his belt, or my ambivalence about blasting innocent doves to kingdom come. Regardless, the lesson was that I wasn’t going to fill my larder via hunting. Not my first year. I’m considering taking some bowhunting lessons, which seems like a more sustainable method than gunpowder and lead.

For now, though, my protein was going to have to come from chicken eggs, and whatever I can barter, first with the eggs, and then, once the Chivas give birth next spring, with my high end goat ice cream. And for the rest of my diet, agriculture will have to keep me away from Wal-Mart’s attractively-priced Chilean produce section.

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