Racoon Hunting

I do not have the memory that some do, more often flashes, images, clip shots, waves, feelings. They come on the outbreath.
When I walk in a pinewood, my father appears; his scent, his hunting jacket, red and black, strength, eyebrows. It was he who introduced me to the woods, and he showed me how to know and love them, just as you come to love anything. Following trails laid out in a small thick book, we hiked to peaks, and descended into cathedrals of dark space splashed with colorful mushrooms and smells of fir boughs. We camped, sleeping on beds of sweet-scented needles by brooks and by fires, and camp light.
Vermont mountains steeped in tradition. The way they drape the deer on the car hood, its eyes rolled back, tongue hanging out. Men in red striped wool, posing, proud.
But what about killing. “Don’t you feel bad?”
I remember a photo of him and my grandfather, a tow-headed boy, bobcat held by the scruff of the neck, spotted fur, as long as he was. There was a bounty then, $25. Mostly gone now. They built a deer camp, rough sawn wood, plank shelves, cots, wood tables and chairs. Sleeping bags stored in steel drums, kerosene lamps.
“We didn’t own the land but got a lease from the ski company, for 99 years” he said.
In the end, he stopped hunting. “We played cards and drank whiskey, and “Any time in the woods was just to sit and watch, to sit and watch.” He said.
There was a lake with wide meadows, oaks and maples. The watch raven called out a warning. At the end of the meadow grew a great pine. He told me this was a “wolf tree” left to grow to mark the corner of land, a silent witness to some old agreement, neighbors made one day, on this spot.
He said “The people who lived here before, before European settlers arrived did not believe that you could own the land. The land, they believed, owned itself.”
“Is that why we can just come here even though it is not our land?” I asked.
He said, “Let’s walk along”.
I didn’t know the things I would come to love when I grew up, like walking in the woods; its silent presence. Deer, wild turkey with purple black cloaks sliding away into birch groves. Some days I’ll pull over, it’s random, and stop. Just to leave behind my busy steps, mind full of nonsense.
I begin to notice. Reach out and touch a tree’s deeply ribbed bark, alive with other living things. Its branches arching, sheltering, squirrel squeal and chatter. Great birds push off heaving branches, feathered wings plowing through the air. A woodpecker hammers and it’s deafening.
You are not the same person leaving, as the one that entered. Whatever questions you came with, have been sorted out, and are either answered, or shelved, due to lack of information, or importance, or relevance.
One day we brought a rifle, Dad and I, a smaller, classic, 22 of oiled wood and steel. He took me out to the wolf tree. I was 11 years old. I had never hunted before, but this would be my first lesson. Carry the 22 barrels down, step with care and watch for twigs that snap in the stillness. Circle the edge of the meadow so the Raven doesn’t see. I don’t know how he knew that there was a raccoon up there, but there was, and he told me to shoot it. I remember taking aim where he told me and pulling the trigger and hearing the sound of a bullet sharply striking the tree. The next bullet hit something that grunted. There were many shots, until with a great crashing of branches the racoon was at my feet. It was huge, on its back, blood spurting from an angry mouth head jerking back and forth.
He said, “It takes quite a bit to kill a raccoon, they don’t die easily.”
Mind you, we lived in an upper-class suburb of Boston and had walked across the street from our modern home onto the land holdings of an estate with a reservoir. This was not the Vermont woods.
I still have memories of that moment, the kill, followed by ritual. We carried the animal out of the woods, and across the wide meadow, to our house, to the picnic table out back. With a big knife, he showed me how to butcher, to run the knife along the inner skin, to scrape away the fat. The hairs were long and course, not soft as you might imagine, and they reminded me of the color of tree bark when the hide was tacked to the wall of the shed.
The meat was brought inside and arranged in a roast in a pan and sprinkled with salt.
I think that there were some words between my mother and father when she returned home from errands. The meat tasted like lamb. He had said “Take a bite for God’s sake”
This week, I came upon my grandmother’s cookbook. She was a very good cook, known for her fresh bread, her apple pies, and her pickles, which were always in abundance in a cupboard in our kitchen. I sat at the end of the day, thinking about my grandmother, and our time together, and her influence upon all of us. I opened to a page in the cookbook with a clipping “Sportsman Digest” it said, raccoon recipe, “Tells how to roast coon meat so it won’t be greasy” was the headline.
No deer? Meat too expensive? Try coon, a recipe by Margaret Bennett, Greensboro Bend.
Remove the heavy fat for it will ruin the flavor. Remove the small kernels on each side, in the small of the back and under each front leg. Parboil until the remaining fat is melted, then remove the meat and put in another pan and season. Roast until it is done and baste with fruit juice.
“See if you don’t enjoy it, it is good eating.”
They say that an animal goes off when it knows that it is dying, it finds that special place that feels safe and familiar to lie down and let go and return. Humans try to make sense of life, why you come, and how you go. Maybe hunting is, in addition to gathering food, an effort to make sense of the line between life and death by taking it into your own hands and looking it in the eye. This is what death looks like, or maybe this is what life looks like, here then gone.
Dad left us the day after Thanksgiving and hiked to his deer camp in Vermont then lay down at the front door, and never got up again. Heart attack, age 47, leaving eight children behind. I was sixteen by then and he was in his woods.