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and everything alive seem to become concentrated. There is a silence in the sky and the ground, and there is a grand expectation in this silence.
    I was hunting with a .32 Winchester lever-action, a rifle fine for deer but not moose, and easy to carry and handle. I never used a scope back then, believing it was poor sportsmanship. Now I am wise enough to know it is far more a case of poor eyesight, and I can miss with a scope as easily as anyone else. In fact, the finest shots don’t seem to aim as much as point. I realize a lot of people have said this over the years. When the sharpshooter Mr. Boa came to the Miramichi to hunt moose in the 1890s he was able to pick matchsticks off a target board with his pistol without even seeming to look.
    The day was cool, and the large leaves had fallen from most of the trees, but it hadn’t snowed as yet. That made for difficult travel even on the small roadways. The two hardest things to manoeuvre around silently are crispy leaves and gravel. The small roadway behind the camp was gravel, and off on either side were leaves a foot or so deep. You could be heard for a mile as you walked up that hill to survey the stream on the far side. In fact I cursed every step I took. Finally, at the halfway point up the hill, in among those poplars, I made my decision. It was now 3:30 in the afternoon. I could see seventy-five or a hundred yards through the opening between those trees, to the top of the hill. I knew deer would at times come along the top of the ridge before moving down toward the other side. I was in a blazing orange jacket, which I know is both needed and ridiculous. I had wanted to get nearer to the stream where my sound, if not my smell, would be muted.
    But I decided to wait where I was. I would be as silent as I could. In fact, in later years I have found myself standing or sitting silently for four to five hours at a time, without much movement at all, in order to get a shot at a deer.
    The day cooled and, moment by moment, became more silent. No longer was there a knocking from the woodpecker, or the call of birds. The wind seemed to die too. The crowns of trees stopped their swaying. It became very still, and I heard someone just off to the side of me. I thought it was my friend, though I hadn’t heard his truck. I turned and saw a spike horn buck walking up the hill, fifty yards away. I was surprised at how noisy it was. I had to bring my rifle around and aim and fire, in a single motion. It jumped sideways and fell backwards, tumbling. At first I simply assumed I had missed it. I am sure I was lucky to have been able to down it with a single shot. It was a good size for a spike horn. I spent the rest of the daylight dressing it and hauling it out to the camp, afraid that I had completely botched the job. Later I was to learn that I had not.
    I am certain, as I am when fly fishing, that much of the so-called “expertise” of hunting or fishing has nothing to do with the person. It is something beyond our control. For instance, if I had continued on up the hill, as I had initially intended to do, I doubt I would have seen this animal. If my friend had been conscientious enough to have come for me as he’d said he would, I would have been in a half-ton truck the day before, on my way out and back to university. That is, there were a thousand reasons not to be where I was that long-ago November afternoon, and yet I was where I was, just as that young buck was. And I suppose hisstory, in its own way, was the same. If it had gone to the right, along the road, and then up the hill farther along, as it might have done half the fall, it wouldn’t have been seen.
    I hung it, took off my bloodied clothes and sat in my sweatpants inside at the table, and ate supper. It grew dark outside.
    Far into the night, at about 10:30, I heard my friend’s truck approach, and finally saw the lights. (It is strange: in the woods alone, it is easy enough to hear a friend coming and think it