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Show I quit hunting when I killed Bambi's mom the editor's column By MARC HADDOCK J It would probably be called the "Bambi Symdrome," this affliction I confront every fall as hunters don their vests and caps of bright orange or-ange and head for the hills. I don't know how many people are afflicted with it. Probably not very many, especially in Utah. I haven't always been. But I am now. So you'll understand if you don't see me tramping around the hills decked out in hunter's orange and carrying one of those deer-killers we call a rifle. I used to hunt. Where I grew up, hunting was as much, if not more, a way of life as it is in Utah (after all, it was just across the border in Idaho). And I have no objections to others doing the hunting. I just can't bear the thought of me doing it. And it's not that I don't enjoy nature. But I like my nature in quiet doses not continually interrupted by sporadic blasts of death. I think I can probably trace the origin of my malady back to that day in 1966 when I killed Bambi's mother at least I'm pretty sure that's when it started. I'd been hunting for two years -- ever since I qualified for a hunting license. But I hadn't killed anything any-thing bigger than rabbits, a few of ! which I had vaporized with the oversized rifle my father had entrusted en-trusted to me. (But then I was young, and not too smart. I liked to hear loud things, and was exhilarated exhila-rated by the sense of power the big gun gave me.) I was probably driven to the hills by peer pressure as much as ' anything else. I didn't like venison, so I wasn't killing for the meat. After all, my father owned a grocery gro-cery store and was the butcher we always had all the meat we needed. But everybody went, so I main canyon road - quite far from our destination. And there was Bambi and his mother way out in the open - almost 100 yards from the safety of the trees. And much closer than that to the road. My friend slammed on the brakes and frantically pulled over to the side of the road. We both jumped out of the Scout, our guns in hand. He took rapid aim and fired at the stationary targets. He missed and both deer leaped for the trees. They ran fast, but it was too far. I fired a booming shot, aiming directly for the doe's head. I was a good shot at stationary targets, tar-gets, but this deal of moving things threw me, and I blasted a hole the size of a grapefruit in the doe's flank. The concussion slammed the doe to the ground. Bambi ran into the trees and disappeared to safety. My friend was busy congratulating me. I was merely stunned, and at that moment mo-ment I realized that this was something some-thing I had never really wanted to do. "C'mon," my friend said, tugging tug-ging at my sleeve. "Let's go get it." It wasn't far up the mild slope, and when we reached the deer, she wa still alive, but very damaged. She stared at me with brown eyes the size of half dollars as she lay there shuddering, terrified and helpless. "What do we do?" I asked. I had been hunting a number of times, but I had never before witnessed a kill. "You slit its throat!" The "Stupid" "Stu-pid" was there, if only by implication. implica-tion. "You mean I gotta cut its throat open?" I was incredulous. "Of course. What do you think the knife is for." I had forgotten I even carried a knife. I certainly had never used it, an d I wasn't even sure it was sharp. I took the blade out, held the deer's head and tried to figure out how to go about slitting the animal's throat. In the end, I couldn't do it. Shooting Shoot-ing was easy. You were far away. It was like killing by remote control -- just pull the trigger and part of the animal blows up. But this business busi-ness of slitting the doe's throat, this was personal. I had to touch the doe and I could feel the blade ripping through skin, muscle, tendons ten-dons and cartilage. I got about half way and turned the knife over to my friend who was more experienced experi-enced in these things -- and who had fewer qualms about it. He finished the job, and I was relieved to see the animal die rather than suffer. He cleaned the animal and we made plans to split the venison. I muddled through helping help-ing where I could. We took the carcass car-cass down the slope to the Scout and brought it home. A lot of people acted like I had done something great, having bagged my first deer. On the other hand, I felt like I had violated something that didn't deserve it, and in the process I felt violated myself. But I told no one until now. And I went hunting again, one time about three years later. But my heart wasn't in it, and if I had found a prospective target, I either would not have fired or I would have missed on purpose. As it was, I didn't have to shoot at all. Now I don't condemn anyone who hunts, either for the sport for the meat -- as long as they do it in a sportsmanlike manner. But I'll stay home this season, and every season. Because I don't want to take the chance of killing Bambi's father, too or anyone else's. did, too. The opening day, at least for those two years, found me out with my father and two others, another adult and someone else my age. We young ones always had the task of going to the top of the ridge and working our way down to flush out the game to the adults, waiting patiently below. I don't think my father had any more love for hunting than I did, but he thought it was a way to spend a little time with me something some-thing he did too seldom, and he knew it. After opening day, most of my hunting was done with friends. The day I killed Bambi's mother, a friend and I were driving up the canyon after school in his Scout. We were 15. I wasn't paying any particular attention to the hills. I was just enjoying the ride, but my friend was more attentive. "There one is!" he shouted. I was astonished. We were still on the |