Rattlesnake and Deer
It was a beautiful afternoon in September in Monticello, Arkansas where I was going to college to become a forester. Archery season for deer had recently opened up and I had a 60-pound (draw strength) long bow made of wood with a leather hand grip and a homemade string that had been given to me by a family friend when he became unable to pull it any longer. I had a few arrows and had practiced enough to be reasonably sure that I could hit a deer in the kill zone under the right targeting situation. Peggy and I were low on groceries, again, so I thought that it was prudent for me to see if I could find a deer to harvest. And I was tired of studying and thought that a short archery hunt would be a good diversion even if I wasn’t successful. So, I got the bow and 3 or 4 arrows and started walking to an old field not far from our home.
There was a grown over fence surrounding this field and the deer had beaten a path to the fence where they just jumped over it and continued on the other side. Directly underneath the fence was a tangle of vegetation including some black berry bushes with stickers and a few eastern red cedar, pine and hardwood saplings. The fence was all broken down but had been a three or four-strand barbed wire fence. The vegetation on either side of the deer trail had served to tighten the top strand to the point where I could not just step over it so I took my bow and placing the hand hold of the bow on the wire and my hands beside the barbed wire I successfully pressed down enough for me to step across, but it was tight and barely beneath my groin when I stepped over with my right leg.
As soon as my foot hit the ground, the unmistakable buzzing rattle of a rattlesnake started. I was in an untenable position. I couldn’t see the snake, I couldn’t jump because my legs were too far apart and I couldn’t turn loose of the bow with either hand because the barbed wire was tight enough so that doing that would cause the bow to slip resulting on one end hitting the ground somewhere around the snake. This was almost certain to result in a strike. In addition, the real fear of a rusted barbed wire tearing into my groin with enough force to penetrate the skin was not something that I wanted to experience. So, I waited until the snake stopped rattling and slowly tried to move my right foot closer to the fence to get into a position where I could jump. But when I did the snake started rattling again.
I am not sure how long this continued, me waiting for the snake to calm down then moving ever so slightly, and very slowly, until it started rattling again. After a while the evening sun had gotten to the exact spot where it was shining almost directly into my eyes and there was enough heat in it, along with the stress of a very unhappy rattlesnake between my feet and a rusty barbed wire waiting to stab my groin, to cause me to start sweating rather profusely. The sweat was running down my face and into my eyes causing them to burn and water effectively reducing my vision to almost nothing. It was about this time that I began to question my decision to go deer hunting that evening to begin with. The idea of staying back home studying calculus looked more and more like it would have been the smarter thing to have done. But here I was, sweating, eyes burning from sweat, vision failing from excessive watering, arms aching from holding the fence away from my groin, with an upset rattler somewhere below me. And no way that I could figure out how to extricate myself from this situation without getting bit. So, I kept slowly, oh so slowly moving one foot then the other waiting for the snake to calm down between each move.
As I said, I had no idea how long this continued. To me it seemed like hours, but in reality, it could not have been more than 30 minutes or an hour at most. Finally, I was able to see through sweat stained eyes the last six or so inches of a rather large rattlesnake crawling off. As soon as the last part of the snake was no longer visible, I got into a position where I could immediately jump and avoid being bitten by the snake and from being entangled in the brush along the fence and on either side of the deer trail. And I jumped! Don’t know exactly how but one second, I was standing straddling an old run down barbed wire fence and the next second I was a good five feet away. I have had a few of these situations working in the woods in the south. The last timber stand improvement inspection trip I made before moving to Alaska was a case in point. As we were walking, I stepped over a small branch and my foot landed on what I initially thought was another small branch. Only this time I felt the unmistakable roll of a snake. And I found myself, somehow, standing five feet or so away from the spot I was the second before.
But back to the story at hand. I decided not to push things on this hunt, after all the hunting season had just recently opened so I started home. I didn’t waste time trying to be quiet, nor did I notch an arrow onto my bow. My mind had already shifted away from the hunt and back to the studying that I needed to do before Peggy got home from work. As I broke through the ecotone surrounding my back yard and looked at the trailer, I saw three deer all standing within 10-15 feet of my back door. As I looked at the deer, I berated myself for not having notched an arrow nor having taken time to hunt on the way home. It was about that time that the deer saw me and froze. I reached for an arrow, and they bolted. The hunt was over. I didn’t kill a deer, but I didn’t get bitten by a rattlesnake either. All was good and calculus and the other course material was waiting.