Corydon, Ind.

USED to be, every year around deer season, there was a story that got told in my family. A story about my grandfather. Most of the countless times I heard it, we were sitting around on his farm, 100 acres of southern Indiana land that he worked his entire life. The story wasn’t about expensive weaponry, clothes, boots or gadgets. There was no .22 rifle, no 12- or 16-gauge shotgun, no bow. It wasn’t about rejecting the industrial production of meat or reconnecting with the land. It was about the winter of 1981 coming, and a salary of $8,000 a year.

The day it happened, my grandfather was out horseback riding with my aunt, then 17 years old, in an area of wilderness a few miles from the farm known as Isaac’s. He was about 50 years old then, strong and 6 foot, Ward Cleaver hair. They were trotting along the path when my grandfather pulled up and jumped from his horse. Restrained the animal, turned to my aunt and whispered.

“Do not say a thing. Do not move.”

My grandfather glided away into the woods and my aunt sat, stone stiff and worried about being left to attend to both horses, unable to see what had alarmed her father. Minutes later, he re-emerged with a chunk of coconut-barked cedar, roots and all. As he stalked through the woods, my aunt finally saw what had pulled him up: a buck just lying there, paying no mind to what was going on around it.

This was bow season; my grandfather wasn’t carrying a gun. And I can imagine, if you didn’t grow up hearing it, that this story is difficult to believe. But I spent years splitting timber with the man, watching him part one log after the next with a single steady swipe of the ax. I can only imagine the hammering force that he wielded down onto that ruminant mammal’s brain pan. Vibrating his onyx eyes. Chattering his teeth.