Tracking Deer

Tracking Deer

Welcome to Christianity Oasis. This is Tracking Deer from our Sojourn With Luz Leigh Collection. We hope you enjoy this enlightening reading and it helps you on your own be-YOU-tiful Christian walk.

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Sojourn With Luz Leigh

Tracking Deer

Written by Luz Leigh - 29 November 2009

As I stood at the kitchen sink washing the dinner dishes on Thanksgiving Day ... and yeah dinner is eaten at noon time at our house; the evening meal is supper ... I could hear the two men in the living room swapping stories. Although there is a difference of about thirty years in their ages, they share a common love. Both Don and Lane love deer hunting. Each listens quietly as the other tells of sighting that big buck down there by the creek. When his turn comes the other relates about the time there were several bucks in the oat patch, (oats planted for the cattle to graze on), and he shot the wrong one. Laughter rings out. "Wrong one?" asks the younger man. "Yeah, really big one was standing to the side and I didn't notice him until I had already made my shot." More laughter.

These men are not trophy hunters. They bring home the deer, skin and process them. Then their families eat the venison. There is no waste. It has been said that an ant would starve to death if he were depending on any meat left on the bones when Don gets through with a deer. I know, that is stretching the truth a bit, but that's how deer stories are told. Sometimes if the rack is large enough, and scores high, the horns are mounted and displayed on a wall in the home.

A day or so following this conversation, I would be riding on the motorized mule with Lane, his brother and a friend. We were out scouting for deer; not hunting because we had not a gun with us. Sure enough, almost at the same time Larry and I spotted two deer running across an open field, heading to the woods. I wanted to shout out and tell the deer to take their time; we were only window shopping.

Joe drives us deeper into the woods where we see evidence of deer; trees on which male deer had been rubbing their horns. There would be places of bark missing a few feet from ground level. In these parts those are called "scrapes." No one but me noticed it, but I saw an old oak tree that had a knot growing out the side that looked just like the head of a rhinoceros. I mentioned it not because these men were not looking for oddities on trees; they were watching for evidence of deer.

Joe stops the mule so we can check out the deer tracks around a certain tree. Lane asks me if I see the tracks. Well, of course, I see the tracks; couldn't anyone who has hunted, ugh, looked for deer, for almost three months in her life recognize those prints in the sand as deer tracks? To be truthful, I was too busy looking for another rhinoceros head, or maybe a grapevine arch that could be used as part of a ceremony of some sort. "Yeah, I see the tracks."

The morning was a happy experience for me; riding through God's country, hearing nothing but nature's sounds; enjoying the company of good Christian men who love the country more than I do because they were born there and still live there. I am thankful that in Genesis we are told that God created the plants, trees and animals and that "it was good." God is good.

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