Harris’s hunted deer

Harris’s hunted deer recur as animals caught in the human meanings attached to hunting: a childhood encounter associated with anger and blame, and mounted remains that Bud Harris valued as records of remembered effort. Together, the episodes connect the animal to inherited violence, personal memory, and the difference between a trophy and a memento.

A childhood encounter

When Billy Poe was seven, he accompanied his father, Virgil Poe, and Hiram Poe in a deer blind. After falling asleep, Billy woke to find deer in front of the blind and called attention to them. The animals were startled and fled, including a large twelve-point buck, and Hiram missed his shot.

Billy later heard Virgil defend him as a child on his first hunting trip. Hiram, however, had been angry with him. The memory surfaces as Billy reflects that Hiram had got what was coming and that he was not sorry he was gone. The deer’s appearance is incidental to the hunt, but the missed shot becomes part of Billy’s recollection of Hiram’s hostility toward him.

Harris’s mounted deer

Bud Harris kept several hunting reminders in his office, among them mounted deer. One was a small spike buck whose mounting had embarrassed the taxidermist. Harris remembered carrying it out of the woods after walking four miles in to hunt on the final day of the season, then making the four-mile return with the animal.

The mounted deer belonged to a collection that also included an elk and a moose, but Harris distinguished these objects from trophies: each recalled an experience he liked to revisit. The small spike’s modest size did not diminish its importance to him; its value lay in the effort and memory attached to it.

Hunting and memory

The two episodes give the deer contrasting places in the characters’ memories. For Billy, the deer in the blind mark a formative moment of blame within a family history of violence. For Harris, a hunted deer becomes a durable reminder of an outing he remembered fondly. In both cases, the animal is bound to a human story, but the resulting recollections differ: one preserves an old grievance, while the other preserves a time that, in retrospect, turned out better than expected.