good shooting

  In camp he set the rifle aside — it might have some use later as a tool — and picked up the bow.
  He had come to depend too much on the rifle and for a moment the bow and handful of arrows felt unfamiliar to his hands. Before he was away from the camp he stopped and shot several times into a dirt hummock. The first shot went wide by two feet and he shook his head.
  Focus, he thought, bring it back.
  On the second shot he looked at the target, into the target, drew and held it for half a second — focusing all the while on the dirt hump — and when he released the arrow with a soft thrum he almost didn’t need to watch it fly into the center of the lump. He knew where the arrow would go, knew before he released it, knew almost before he drew it back.
  From my brain, he thought, from my brain through my arm into the bow and through the string to the arrow it must all be one, and it is all one.
  Three more times he shot and the arrows drove into the center of the hummock and then he was satisfied.
  He left the camp again, put the sleeve quiver made from his old windbreaker on his right shoulder and walked slowly, watching, listening until he saw the curve of the back of a rabbit near a small clump of hazel brush.
  It was too far for a shot and he quickly averted his eyes and froze for a moment before moving closer. He’d learned much from the woods, from mistakes, and one thing he’d come to know was that game spooked if it “felt” that it was known. It was always better to look away, move sideways instead of directly toward it, and he worked now to the left, letting the brush cover his movement until he was no more than fifteen feet away from the rabbit.
  He drew the bow, aimed for the center of the rabbit and released when he felt the arrow would fly right.
  It took the rabbit almost exactly in the center of its chest and drove through cleanly, killing it almost instantly.
  They were not all this clean, the kills, and he was grateful. He had not grown accustomed to killing in spite of how much of it he had done.