My father and Tim backed water and put the canoe into a little cove, where we sat holding our breaths and watching the deer. Soon they were joined by several others, including one big buck whose horns were at least two feet over and in front of his head. They looked odd, as if moss were dropping from them.

My father whispered: “He’s just coming out of velvet. He’s been rubbing his horns on trees to take off the skin.”

“He’s beautiful,” I whispered.

“There hasn’t been much hunting around here,” my father said. “A buck will reach his full growth of horns in three or four years if he isn’t bothered. Then he’ll start to fall off until, when he’s an old gray-head, he may be just a spike-horn again like the first-year stags.”

“Do the does always have twins?” I asked.

“More often than not,” my father said. “Those fawns over there were born just a couple of months ago. It’s too bad, but they’ll never make it through to spring if I’m right about this winter.”

“It doesn’t seem fair. They’ve just been born.”

“Nature is cruel,” he said. “The bucks will wear themselves out, running around servicing the does during rut. Bucks die first, because they’re weak and frazzled. A doe will try to help her young, but when the browse gets low, the fawns won’t be able to reach up far enough. There’s no nourishment in bark, and they’ll go next. Funny as it seems, it’s the weak female does that usually survive the winter—although not many of them will make it this year either.”

He reached for his rifle, then drew back.

I said, “You weren’t going to shoot one of them, were you?”

“Yes, Lizzy,” he said sternly. “I was. Later in the trip, if the weather cools, I will. You’ve got to be hard in your heart. Not one in ten over there will live past March. Better they should fill our bellies than rot under the snow.”

“But,” I asked, “how will you know that you aren’t shooting the one in ten that would have lived?”

My point was a telling one, for he didn’t answer.

We watched the deer as they drank and then slowly moved up the bank. I don’t believe, despite their vaunted reputation for keen senses, that any one of them was aware of our presence. It’s too bad that in those days we didn’t have Super 8 movie cameras with all their lenses and gadgets for capturing forever what happened long ago. I know that your eyes would soften and your breath would catch if you were able to see those lovely brown creatures sipping delicately at the refreshing edge of the stream, their lustrous black eyes roving the hills and ravines in search of danger. Near Albany, I have often taken friends to certain glens and dells I know where deer can be seen, although these days we need ten-power field glasses to see their faces. There must be a primitive reaction to deer within people, unknowing and unsquared with their “civilization,” just as there is to the sea. I suppose the difference is between the people today and those of 1921. Then we could love the deer and enjoy watching them, and still put them into the pot and enjoy their meat, while folks today choke on wild meat.