Fall had arrived. The weather had suddenly shifted from sunny and eighty, to cold, wet, windy, and barely making forty, just in time for me to embark on a pronghorn hunt with an organization called Outdoor Buddies (CF was at least good for some things, such as getting special accommodations to help me hunt North America's fastest land animal). No matter what they believe in, hunters have always described hunting as an overtly spiritual experience. There's just something about being a participant in nature like every other living thing; actively participating in the great circle of life. Life feeds life. When a prey animal dies, it feeds the predator. When the predator dies, it feeds the ground. Most prey animals eat the ground. When one thing dies, it allows another thing to live. Cliche, I know. But, it's true.
I knew the spirituality of hunting very well, for I'd hunted before for wild turkey and pronghorn. This hunt, at least to me, would be routine and no different from the others. But, that doesn't mean it was no big deal. Hunting has always been a religious and sacred activity, even for atheist me. I harvested my first turkey right as I was losing my Christian faith at that private Christian school, and I'd gone pronghorn hunting as a sick and bitter atheist just months later. Both hunting trips brought me away from the chaos of life in a civilized society, as well as away from the mountains of medicine and massive machinery I relied on to stay barely alive. Leaving all that bullshit behind for a weekend or so made me feel like a million bucks, even when I was actively dying of Pseudomonas during my first pronghorn hunt.
As non-religious I was at the time, out on those wide open plains hunting for pronghorn number two, relatively healthy and well, I felt like I was close and connected to my Creator. Standing atop great plateaus, I could see the whole world. My hunting guide and I watched for the bouncing, white butts of the pronghorn below from our flat, grassy perches. We saw lots and lots of pronghorn, and I even got close enough to a few to try for a shot. But, during the first day of the hunt, none of the animals I had in the crosshairs of my .243 were in the right position for me to fire upon.
During the hunt, I was followed around by plenty of curious pronghorn bucks, who during the rut only had one thing on their mind. One even got so close to me, that my hunting guide ended up pulling me closer to his side and putting himself between me and the buck, worrying the reddish brown creature might get a little too... well... comfortable. Since I had a doe tag, I couldn't shoot him. But, if I had a tag for a buck, that cocky son of a bitch would've been sirloins on the grill that evening!
As the day wore on, the weather deteriorated very quickly, especially during the last hour or so of daylight. A strong cold front was pushing through from the northwest, bringing with it strong, frigid winds and a potential for heavy, wet snow. I was no longer enjoying my time spent outside when the pronghorn began to huddle in hidden hollows and valleys on the Great Plains, and I was still stuck on plateau tops with my hunting guide, fighting to stay warm in the thirty mile per hour winds and below-freezing temperatures. My hunting guide didn't seem to notice me suffering until a particularly strong gust of wind made me brush up against the leeside of him, sheltering myself from the cold. Shivering and a little disappointed about ending the hunt empty-handed, I carefully followed my guide down the steep side of the plateau, where his truck sat parked and idling. Just before the sun sank below the horizon, we called it a day, and vowed to return at the butt crack of dawn the next day, continuing the hunt.
The next morning, at around eight, I downed a large pronghorn doe after finding her grazing by some railroad tracks along with a few other lone does. I shot her just perfectly, and she died instantly. When I reached her laying still and bloodied in the stubby grass, I knelt down by her and placed a hand on her warm, wiry fur. There, I said a quick though intimate prayer, thanking no God in particular for providing me with an elderly game animal who would feed me for months, as well as thanking the doe herself in case her spirit was nearby and could understand what I was saying.
Yet, I still considered myself an atheist. Possibly even an anti-theist.
