The Twelve Point by Ron Koppelberger

The Twelve Point

by Ron Koppelberger

The native scrub concealed the extraordinary footprints in wild disguises of wheat, overgrown ragweed and briar thorn. The suggestion of life, the answer to the hunters question, a scented scuttle in the imagined dances of does and dreaming dramas in buck snort bustle.

The hunter waited at the edge of the overgrown harvest wheat and saffron glowing bloom. The buck was an elusive twelve point rare and nearly trackless. He had spent a week in primal existence, in a hunters wash. Cold tins of tuna and mustard cans of warm soda and Victoria Springs water were his sources of inspiration. The campfires had given him an ashen smokey scent and he decided to use a liberal dousing of skunk scent to cover the odor. He had slept in god’s sylvan wood dreaming dreams of freedom and silent supplication unto the nature of primal man. He was encouraged by the hunt and verified alive by the soul of the chase. He was at ease in contradiction to the stuffy office job he usually submitted to.

The hunt had been an adventure in spectral illusion and evanescent soul, a diamond in the debt of life. The buck wandered closer to his position. Crouched in a hunters stance, rifle aimed dead center of the animals front shoulder, he inhaled gently as he had been taught. A shoot to the heart of his pointed quarry, a dead on respect for cause and affect overwhelmed him for a moment. He paused, the old buck was magnificent, refined in a parade of noble reserve, the ancestor of fine lines and real beauty.

He hesitated thinking about the previous week, it had been liberating, a necessary expression of freedom. Freedom from the bond of predictable tethers.
He lowered the rifle and sighed in commune with the buck. Unspoiled, the tabloo was a summons to the synchronicity of man and beast. The hunter smiled at ease and in reverence.