By Mike Zusman
Hunter S. Thompson said you won’t find reasonable men at the tops of tall mountains. You won’t find them at backwoods dive bars late on weeknights or hunting mountain bucks in the Adirondacks, either.
One November night, I was halfway through a cold Labatt’s and a plate of liver, bacon, and onions, when the whiskey-drinker two barstools over started talking to me.
“I just moved nearby. You from around here?”
He didn’t fit with the usual crowd at this place. Dressed more tacti-cool than camo-and-Carhartt, the dude gave off elder operator vibes.
“I’ve got a camp a few miles away, but I’m from Jersey. What do you do for a living up here?”
Unless you’re a pro athlete, politician, or weatherman, I never saw much point in discussing sports, politics, or the weather. Knowing how a man spends his limited amount of time on Earth says a lot about who he is.
“Just retired this week after 30 years of public service.” He paused, “But I don’t wanna talk about it.”
Seeing as that was exactly what I wanted to talk about, it seemed our conversation might meet an early impasse.
“Look man, you can tell me to piss off, but I’m curious…can you give me a basic idea of what you did for a living?”
He countered quickly with a question of his own.
“Are you a writer?” He threw a glance at my Field Ethos Journal hat on the bar.
“Yeah–”
“What kind of writing? One of my bachelor’s is in Literature. And do you want whiskey?” Two shots of Jameson appeared.
“Mostly hunting and fishing stories. And actually, I just killed my first Adirondack buck today.”
“No shit. How big?” He was surprised.
“170lbs. I’m calling him an eight, but he’s got a broken brow tine.”
“Congrats. That’s no small feat. I grew up hunting in the Blue Line. Odds of success are 1 in 1600. I’ve done the math. How’d you pull it off?”
I went on to explain how my fourth year of solo hunting the ‘dacks with nothing to show for it ended the day before. There were still a few more weeks in the season, but I promised my wife I’d come home to help with the kids. I wouldn’t be back to my camp again until after deer season.
In years past, I could deal with failure, but 2024 began with the death of my father, and life got pretty damn messy after that.
Suburban living offers plenty to distract you from dealing with your shit. This was a convenience for me until September and the start of hunting season. One place where you can’t hide is the lonely silence of a hunt. A broken mind can run away with itself when you’re trying to be still and quiet for days on end.
“Hold up, Mike. We gotta drink this whiskey.” The stranger and I raised glasses, knocked ‘em back.
I continued, describing how quiet times in the woods turned dark and that I knew this wasn’t good. The guilt compounded. My mind found a way to turn something I enjoy most in life, something that’s an absolute privilege to do, into a miserable experience.
Looking back, I can see how one might write off what happened next as a random thought, while another might call it divine intervention.
“But the way things were going,” I explained, “I thought to myself, maybe this is why people embrace faith and religion. Maybe I should start praying, maybe-”
The stranger interrupted.
“Mike, prayer is absolutely what you should do during the quiet times of a hunt.”
“Yeah, well, I must have missed that memo. But once I started, things got better, at least until yesterday.”
Yesterday’s season-closer ended at the truck after dark, with no deer to show for years of effort and unreasonable expense. On the hike out, prayer was out the window. I was giving up. I made a plan to sell the cabin, sell my guns, and give my gear to a buddy. No more chasing Adirondack ghosts. It was time to stay in my reasonable suburban lane.
And I was thirsty. But when I reached for my water bottle, it was gone–must have fallen out in the drainage I was hunting. Recovery would have to wait until spring. I wouldn’t be back until the North Country was buried in snow.
Back at camp, I turned off my 4:30 a.m. alarm and laid down in bed. The plan was to sleep in before making another 300-mile drive home to shuttle kids between soccer and dance.
Rather than dwell on failure and loss, I prayed myself to sleep. I prayed for my wife, my kids, my family and friends, that they may have peace, and that my own strangely non-denominational image of the Lord may love them as much as He loves me.
Suddenly, I was back in the woods. A buck was crashing in fast from my left. I tried raising my rifle but couldn’t. I panicked, sat up in bed, and threw off my blanket. The wild vividness of the dream had me shook. It seemed real. The clock said 4:32 a.m., and the cabin was cold. A front moved in overnight, dropping the temperature well below freezing.
I wasn’t going back to sleep, and leaving my bottle in the woods suddenly felt strangely bothersome.
As long as I was back in the truck by 11:00, I’d make it home. Plenty of time to grab the bottle, but tracking, dressing, and dragging a deer? Not so much.
Still, I wasn’t going back in without my rifle.
Shooting light arrived during the three-mile hike in. Bumping a lone doe along the way, I crept on, eventually reaching the spot.
The bottle was not there.
Confused but grateful to be in the woods for one more beautiful morning, I let a tall pine take all of my weight, the drainage falling away behind me. Before 9:00, a big doe came running up from the left. She stopped briefly to sniff the earth and air before continuing on.
A few minutes later, another deer was running—and grunting—up the drainage. He stopped in the doe’s track, face behind a tree, nose to the ground. I put my red dot on his chest and shot him. He shuddered and took off as I pumped my 760 to chamber a new round. I heard him crash nearby.
“Hell of a story. He in your truck? Can I see him?”
“Yeah, man. Absolutely. But first, can you tell me what it is you did for a living?”
“Alright,” he said. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
He signaled the bartender. “Two more.”
“And what about your wife today? How’d you handle that?”
“She’s not happy, but I’m praying she gets over it soon.”
