In 1954, nearly a million hunters took to the northern woods for the opening day of the Pennsylvania deer season. Each of them with hopes of bagging a big buck. All, that is, but one.
Inch by inch, the afternoon sun steadily dissolves, casting an orange and pink haze over the sparsely populated landscape of rural Pennsylvania. From the front window of a seedy boarding house, Curt Sloan peers through the unclean glass panes, then disappears back again into the lightless room. Inside, he paces the dusty hardwood floors, moving with the nervous stride of a high-strung animal sensing danger. His pacing interrupted by the occasional glance to the door, then out of the window again. At last, a little before nightfall, the doorbell sounds. He rudely greets the delivery man, draws the shade, and places the mail-order package on the table beside a half empty bottle of bourbon and an upturned glass. Completely exhausted, he sits down, lights a cigarette, leans his head back and closes his eyes, praying all the while that the liquor would finally be too much for him and he’d nod off.
Gradually the cigarette he is holding burns down to his thick fingers rousing him from a few minutes of much-needed slumber. He thumps, tosses it into an ashtray and picks up the unopened parcel. The postmark reads Abercrombie & Fitch, Madison Avenue and Fifth Street, New York. He peels back the brown paper wrappings and opens the lid of the box. Eagerly he takes out a heavy woolen garment, holding it in front of him. A wide smile grows across his face as he studies the red and black plaid coat.
“Perfect,” he says aloud, thinking of the day to come–the opening day of deer season and the countless hordes of hunters that will pepper the northern countryside in a spectacle of crimson red and blaze orange.
Yes, he affirms his thoughts, casting his gaze across the hardwood floor, past a pair of heavy-laced boots to the Winchester Model 94 leaning upright in the corner. Just perfect—for MURDER.
Curt lights another cigarette, freshens the glass, blows himseIf a smoke ring and watches it curl up and then disappear. Alone, all alone in life, he thinks and chuckles. Thoughtfully, he twists the glass in his hand, staring deeply into his drink, recalling his past and the person he despises most in the world, the one he holds responsible for his misfortune-his old pal, Sean Regan.
Curt is a hard man; he came up the hard way. He was born Curtis McKay Sloan, grandson to Irish immigrants. His ginger hair came from his father; ill temper from his mother. His father was a delinquent; his mother even worse. Abandoned at an early age, it was inevitable he would eventually succumb to his breeding. The only family he had ever truly known was the Regans.
He and classmate, Sean Regan, were as close as brothers and thick as thieves. Rarely was one seen without the other. They picked fights, stole cigarettes, drank beer and chased skirts. Sean was the type who could fall down the sewer and come up with bottles of perfume in both hands. Curt was not, and regularly served as the scapegoat for their mischievous endeavors. Nevertheless, Sean’s father was very fond of the rough-and-tumble Curt. Blood may be thicker than water, but there was no mistaking that Curt was Mr. Regan’s favorite.
He often took the boys hunting up in the highlands. Curt was a natural— a dead-eye with a gun—and immediately took to the ways of the woods. Sean just tagged along. Still, he and Curt roamed through those hills like Indians. They knew every track and trail in the forest. On opening day of hunting season, the three always hunted from the same timbered hillside. Both boys had bagged their first bucks from this stand, and it became a place of great sentimentality after the early death of Sean’s father. Invariably, each ensuing deer opener Sean would insist the two of them pay homage to his father and hunt together from the spot which held so many tender memories. Sean usually kicked back, enjoying a reminiscent smoke while Curt would eventually wander off, hunting alone. After graduation, they took over the Regan accounting firm under the title of Regan & Sloan.
Eventually, each began to go his own way. Sean settled down, got married, joined the church and cleaned up his act. Curt did not. He knocked around aimlessly, rappelling even deeper into the devious. In addition to managing the firm’s clientele, he began keeping books on the ponies and the boxing matches, and it wasn’t long before he ran into trouble with the dice. Curt had thrown every cent he had to the wolves and when that was lost, he let it ride without a nickel’s worth of credit. Sean had helped bail him out on numerous occasions, but this time he would have no part in it.
Curt was in deep. He was down on his luck and it was about to get worse. His debtors were leaning hard and with no gag to avoid payoff, he turned to the office kitty. The books were soon audited, and an inquest made. Curt was the prime suspect, but without a witness for the prosecution it seemed he might get off. Then Sean testified against his old friend.
The sentence sent Curt away for 20 years on racketeering and embezzlement. In his warped imagination, Curt was bound by the unshakable conviction that he’d been double-crossed and played the patsy. He could tolerate the torture of prison, but his longtime friend’s betrayal would indelibly weigh on his mind.
A six-by-eight cell can eat a man’s soul; Curt’s greatest conduit to the outside world was through his devouring hatred of Sean. With more than a mild discontent for his situation, he vowed he’d turn the tables and settle the score. Ultimately, countless hours of outlandish scheming gave way to a brilliant conception bordering on madness. It would be all too easy, he imagined, aside from the sea, the forest is the best place to kill a man, and he x-ed off the days on his calendar until his release. That time came sooner than expected when his sentence was reduced for good behavior.
Presently he sits in the ratty room of a rundown boarding house, with the bourbon, the loneliness, and the anger that has been raking his insides for 15 years. It’s getting late and he’s tired, more tired than he can ever remember. He sets the alarm and turns in.
Only a few hours pass, his anxiety waking him long before the clanging alarm. A sense of numbness is over him as he grabs his mackinaw and rifle and steps out into the damp darkness toward the car.
The road is deserted as Curt leaves the boarding house carport and heads out into the silence of the night. He rides with the windows cracked; the crisp, clean air feels good on his face. The red and yellow neon sign of an all-night diner flashes on-and-on, matching Curt’s frenzied pulse. He’s famished and considers stopping. Ham and eggs with coffee would sure h it the spot, he considers, but drives on. Ahead in the high beams, the vertical silhouettes of the trees click off one by one. It’s as if he has driven all night when he finally arrives at the edge of the familiar haunt of his past. He steers the car off the asphalt and kills the motor.
Sean would be coming in later by way of the adjacent road, making his way to the traditional spot where he and his father and Curt had hunted so many deer openers before. Curt was sure of it— Dead Sure.
A thousand stars hang low in the blackness of a crystal-clear night, casting just enough light for Curt to find his way. The woods are the same as he remembered, but aren’t. He ambles noiselessly through the bushes and around trees, then scales up the steep, brambly bank of a rocky crag, where he positions himself at the top of the ridge. Below him, a picturesque valley lies asleep in the moonlight. At daybreak, the rising sun will be at his back, illuminating the opposite hillside and Sean Regan.
He brushes the sticks and leaves from beneath him and settles into his post. The air is cool with the suggestion of winter. Not long now, he thinks. But it is. Two lengthy hours pass. The tension within him grows more and more unbearable. Over and over again he strains his eyes into the darkness, peering frantically for the source of each and every little noise. Once, in the delicate silence, he was certain he heard footsteps—nothing. It’s cold and he had gotten there early, too early. The heat from his body has been sucked into his head by his fevered mind and he hunches his broad shoulders against the bitter wind cutting into him.
Easy pal, he thinks to himself, some things can’t, be hurried. He fondles the cold blued-steel sides of the rifle. It has been quite a while since he last shot anything. Once a gun had felt comforting, like an extension of his own body, but now seems foreign. At any rate, the magazine holds eight rounds and he figures he can make good with one of them. Curt waits.
He spies the lit e mbers of a cigarette long before he hears the rustling of dry leaves. The glowing orange spec floats through the blackness before halting on the opposite slope. The scent of smoke left behind on the pathway lingers on the breeze toward Curt.
It’s you all right, he thinks, I could follow you wearing a blindfold.
As the dingy gray of dawn begins to creep through the forest, death is electric in the air and Curt Sloan sits on a powder keg of emotion. He struggles to control the raging fire within him as the dark silhouette of a man against the milky light of morning begins to develop the faint details of Sean Regan.
”I’ve got you now … fink,” Curt whispers as he shoulders the Model 94. He gazes down the sights glad and kill hungry, his face wrenched in twisted madness. He lowers his aim from Sean’s head to his chest. With no hesitation his finger teases the hard edge of the trigger, when suddenly, his peripheral vision detects a blur of brown.
Curt pauses. BANG! A loud shot rings out, exploding the morning silence, and instantly a heavy-racked buck skids to a death thrash, kicking sideways in the valley floor below. But the shot hadn’t come from Curt. In spite of himself, his obsession has made him careless; another hunter has taken a stand nearby. A kaleidoscope of thoughts and actions race through his mind and he hurriedly reshoulders the rifle. Even better, he reasons, I’ll be to Canada before they ever realize it wasn’t an accident.
But before he can redraw a bead on Sean , a youthful, exuberant voice cries out. “Dad, I got him! I got him! He’s a big one!”
From the opposite hillside Sean shouts back, “I see him son, you got him!”
Curt is paralyzed. He watches with a blank stare; his bloodshot eyes tell the story. His hands grow sweaty. The rifle feels as heavy as a barbell and he lowers the muzzle. A sickening pain rises up from his stomach, bursting in his brain like a shell. He feels as if he himself has been shot. He can hardly breath. The vulgarity of what he had almost done disgusts him. It’s like looking through a dirty window into a filthy room.
In the valley below the lifeless body of a big buck lies peacefully waiting to be claimed by father and son. Curt inconspicuously withdraws, melting into the thick, damp cover. He takes in a long, deep breath. His face is flushed and glistening with perspiration; he takes out a handkerchief and blots the back of his neck. He is ashamed, but more than mere shame; he is left with a mindfulness of humanity.
And he laughs. He doesn’t care that he laughs, and he laughs until he sobs. In the background he hears the jubilant chatter of Sean and his son. It takes some time for him to compose himself. There will be no thrilling race to the border. No sensational headline for him on tomorrow’s front page. No sweet revenge. He slips away to the winding path leading out to the car. I’m hungry, he thinks to himself, I could sure go for some ham and eggs with coffee.
A superb collection of stories that captures the very soul of hunting. For hunters, listening to the accounts of kindred spirits recalling the drama and action that go with good days afield ranks among life’s most pleasurable activities. Here, then, are some of the best hunting tales ever written, stories that sweep from charging lions in the African bush to mountain goats in the mountain crags of the Rockies; from the gallant bird dogs of the Southern pinelands to the great Western hunts of Theodore Roosevelt. Great American Hunting Stories captures the very soul of hunting. With contributions from: Theodore Roosevelt, Nash Buckingham, Archibald Rutledge, Zane Grey, Lieutenant Townsend Whelen, Harold McCracken, Irvin S. Cobb, Edwin Main Post, Horace Kephart, Francis Parkman ,William T. Hornaday, Sc.D, Rex Beach, and more. Shop Now
