hunts buck

  He was working back toward camp and had decided that he should start trying to hit rabbits when he saw the deer.
  It was a buck with only one antler. Brian guessed the other one had gotten knocked off or had never grown. But the buck was good-sized for all that — nowhere near a moose, but large for a deer — and Brian studied the layout carefully.
  Brian was on a small rise and the deer was slightly below, standing on the edge of a round frozen pond about fifty yards away — much too far for a shot. The deer was in snow up to its belly, biting the tops off small red willows, eating them slowly, but its ears swiveled constantly and Brian knew he could move no closer directly without being heard.
  But down and to his left as he faced the deer there was a shallow depression that angled toward the buck — not quite a ditch yet deep enough to hide everything but his head as he moved and Brian, carefully raising and moving his snowshoes forward, slowly, a step at a time, only just clearing the snow, moved down the depression.
  He watched the deer, only lifted his foot to move when the deer had its head down to bite a willow, a step, another step, slowly, so slowly, and in what seemed hours he’d moved sideways and fifteen yards closer.
  Thirty-five yards. Still too far — twice too far.
  Wait, another step while the deer ate, another wait, holding his breath, two steps, one, half a step…
  Twenty yards.
  Eighteen, sixteen, fifteen.
  Fifteen long paces.
  He had learned how to hunt, how to wait for the exact right moment and not waste his shot, and he eased his hand out of the mitten, let it hang on its cord, put his fingers to the string where the arrow lay and waited, frozen motionless.
  The deer looked right at him, stared at him, then looked down, back up, stamped its right foot, looked at him again and, finally satisfied, turned to take another bite of willow.
  It would not get better.
  Brian raised the bow carefully, drew, looked to where the arrow would go, where he wanted it to be, and released.
  There was a slight thrum of the string and the arrow leaped away from the bow. The deer heard the sound, had time to start to turn its head, and then the arrow disappeared into its side just to the rear of the shoulder.
  Nothing happened.
  Brian still stood, holding his breath, the bow still out in front of him.
  The deer stood, staring at him, seeing him now, feeling the pain of the arrow that had gone into the top of its heart, but still staring and then settling, down on its front end slowly — as slowly as Brian had walked — then down with its back end and the head curving over to the back until the one antler rested on its shoulder and it died that way, looking back and up at the sky.
  Forever, Brian thought. It took forever. With the moose there had been violence, the charge, his killing lance, but this…
  This was a kind of murder.
  I should have missed, he thought, still standing with the bow out in front of him. I should have raised my hand and the arrow would have gone up a bit and I would have missed, should have missed.
  In hunting terms it was a perfect kill, and it made Brian feel perfectly awful. The deer had been eating, just eating, and hadn’t known he was there and the arrow had taken it…
  He shook his head. He had done what he had to do and it was finished; he had taken meat and it would be wrong now to waste it.