Now I had to learn to shoot. The sound of the rifle was tremendous echoing off the mountainsides. It was late summer and the fireweed was blooming and the huckleberries were ripe. The smell of the gunpowder lingered in my limbic nerves, triggering danger, danger, bravery. Then the summer turned to autumn, and now the hunt was on. The air turned crisp and the birch tree changed from green to golden. Nature was humming and bullets paraded on the flats. I would leave the matriarchal farmer with a glint in my eye knowing the game was waiting. She would always protest, but I had history behind me – when a man is off to hunt, you must leave him alone. She ran to me when I was leaving: don’t go, don’t go. I looked her coldly in the eyes and guided her back to the garden then laughed to myself, as I drove off down the road. I passed the bear then met the man who had dementia right beside his cherry tree. With time, I chose to do my hunt alone.

The witchy matriarch was six-foot tall with piercing, pagan eyes. She was an empath with a hardened character bred from decades of abuse and chronic pain. She spoke the language of the horses, the flowers and the bees, but she doubted me and this would leave me fuming, pacing, slamming doors and acting lawless. I ran power trips like an aristocrat so that I could gain respect and prove this woman wrong.

And so the game, I thought, would be way up high where mankind wouldn’t go. It was a steep hike, miles up the incline of a mountain to a clearcut on the peak. I would see a raven now and then, as I marched upwards, rifle strapped over my shoulder. I waited many days empty-handed, but then the first buck showed up with his proud antlers shining in the sun, trotting down the mountain meadow ready to make acquaintance. The adrenaline hit fast so I trailed him, rushing into the timber, before I reassessed my strategy and headed to my ambush spot. It wasn’t long before he came walking right up to me. Exhilarated, I kneeled into position, but he caught my scent, jumped, and bolted away hurriedly down the cuts back into the timber. I had lost him again. Seriously concerned that I had squandered my only chance, I walked back down the mountain to my car.

There comes those times in life, those certain times, when we must embrace a manic perseverance … a willpower so dedicated that it leads us to walk through harm’s way gladly and trudge forwards unscathed and still highly motivated. I woke up in the middle of the night and trekked back up the mountain to the peak. Bitterly cold, I tramped uphill through the snow determinedly, as a wolf howled and I grit my teeth. In the final stretch before the break of dawn, when there was light to see, I approached my ambush spot and much to my surprise, stumbled right into the buck. He was there feeding overnight. He stared straight at me, startled and curious, and froze into a shaky posture, so I tiptoed even closer, and my only shot was for its neck. Bang. The loud sound echoed through the mountains and he jolted up into the air like he had stepped on a landmine. He sprinted into the timber as fast as his legs would take him. I saw hair on the ground where he had been, but no blood trail. I knew I had missed the shot. I sat there in exhaustion and humiliation. I didn’t know what I would tell them.

I returned to the farmhouse that afternoon to see the married couple bickering away, clearly in a serious dispute. They were not surprised at all to see me empty-handed. I pulled up a chair in their rustic kitchen filled with plants and earthy paintings, just to be treated like the figurehead of irresponsibility. After I told my tale, the man reflected for a steady minute, then looked at me and said he thought I shot the buck. His wife then mimicked his remark, stating, “Always go look for the animal.”

The farmer and I went to look but it had escaped without damage and this led to impatience to get another try due to the fact that the year was wrapping up.

But my optimism came flooding back when I saw fresh tracks in the fresh snow. They couldn’t have been more than a couple hours old. We were in the final days of the season now and I made my ambush by a tall evergreen making sure my wind was right. I waited about half an hour and then a deer walked into sight. He was about sixty yards down the mountain, slightly hidden by a patch of saplings and I looked with strained eyes to see if he had antlers. I was hit with a feeling of radiance. He had little horns on the top of his head. This was a spike buck. I walked slowly towards him, tense to the extreme, manoeuvring to the proper angle to align the perfect shot. I kneeled, took a breath and pulled the trigger. Boom. He sprinted forwards and there was a luminous feeling of an earthly animal member passing on. A flash of red illuminated after the clap of the shot, but when I got to where he was standing, there was no blood-trail. Following his tracks into the timber, I was convinced that I had missed again. Turning the bend and following the hoof tracks — suddenly, in front of me was the dead body of a spike buck slumped in this mountain forest. I had connected through the heart-lung cavity. It felt like I had been told I no longer had to hold up the weight of the sky on my shoulders. There was a profound sensation of deep relief.

Maxwell Adamowski is a Canadian survivalist and woodsman who lived alone for a year in the wilderness performing a series of rite of passage rituals. “The Spike Buck” is one of the first stories in his book, CarQuest.

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