Nebraska Whitetail and the Haunted Heart

Nebraska Whitetail and the Haunted Heart

We were hunting on the property of the kind, wizened and indefatigably fascinating Marvin Breigel; a man who has one of the most comprehensive collections of antique buckshot I’ve ever seen (a story in of itself that I will cover one day, God willing). This was a winter whitetail hunt in Nebraska, hosted by Hornady’s Marketing Communications Manager, Seth Swerczek, and his Father, Joe Swerczek, in the southwest of Nebraska, along the Republic River.

I used Seth’s 7mm NEXUS from Gunwerks and bagged my first ever whitetail at about 50 yards. He wasn’t the largest out there, but coming in around 180 pounds with 8 points, we all were pleased. Yours truly, certainly was. 

I almost didn’t catch him. I heard one of the other hunters in our outfit make an attempt. His shot rang out and within moments, I saw three whitetails bolting straight toward my stand. They got past me before I could get a successful lock on any of them. Once readied, heart pounding, hands dithering with adrenaline, I fired off a round just over the first buck’s head. Reload. Aim. Missed again, just over his back. But then, like some miracle on the horizon, the leader must’ve gotten a little cocky. He paused at the horizon’s line. Raised his head high, breath rising out of his nostrils; he stood, statuesque; a proud silhouette. My heart calmed; hands steadied. I hugged the NEXUS into the dip between my shoulder and pecks like on old friend. I exhaled, secured the silhouette in my crosshairs, and squeezed the trigger.

Impact. 

His hind legs kicked the air, and he rocketed off. Was good to have Seth and his father show up seconds after the final shot to help locate the wounded buck. At first, we thought we may have lost him and would have to do some long-distance tracking. Did he make it to the tree line? Was he wandering wounded amid the trees fencing the farm? Did he perish, coming to rest in some unmolested area of the woods where none would find him? 

The anxiety stirred up again.

I laid my rifle on the earth and leapt into a sprint. Scaling boulders and downed trees to access a higher vantage point, praying my aim had been true and my shot had been lethal. 

Just as my hopes were dwindling, and some crippling doubt had broken my spirits, I hopped on a large tree stump and spied about 40 yards east of me a brown hump that lay contrast to the beige plant life. 

“GOT HIM!” I cried. I turned northwest and saw the tension release from Seth and Joe’s bodies. The relaxed posture and a leisurely gait that is left over after learning your target is not out there suffering. 

Seth and Joe came to meet me by my kill. We then filed dressed him. They basked in the moment with your humble narrator. 

After the hide was removed, and the meat quartered, I returned to my motel room and was able to gestate on the new experience, still fresh in my mind and heart. I then recalled a split-second occurrence after I had made my final shot: as I was exiting the deer stand, my boot caught the threshold of the door and I damn-near tumbled out of the stand to the ground. That would have been a drop of about fifteen feet, and Lord knows how that could have turned out. I envisioned what could have been had I fallen. Immediately I thought of the countless hunters who have actually taken that kind of spill in the past; particularly those who were on their own, out hunting to feed themselves, and/or their families. How many have lost limbs, the ability to walk, feed themselves, or even died whilst embarking on such a noble ambition? 

What went through the minds of those individuals who lay wounded in the wilderness as a result of their own carelessness, or some freak happenstance, or some grave miscalculation? How many came out of the wild afterward and had to sit at their supper table, in humble silence with such a great secret as their families ate with carefree relish the very meat of which the procurement of nearly cost them their life—and would’ve left the table cold and bare? What went through the heads of those who lay dying out in the middle of nowhere, unsure of the time, uncertain of what would become of those who rely on them? How can one process the smiles and laughter of their children, the melodic voice of their wives reading a bedtime story, unaware their husband is laying supine in the cold and dark? How difficult must it be for a man to keep such near-tragedies to himself when he comes home, successful in his hunt, grateful to return to the hearth of home, yet changed—ashamed, even, of their narrow encounter with death? The sound of silverware against metal or porcelain plates. The appetizing aroma of a homecooked meal made heartily with the love of a loyal wife. How does a man get through such crippling moments? Whether at the supper table or his final resting place, does he boast and make a speech, or go to bed? 

A man’s inner life is an odyssey homeward. A man’s mind is a map of ever-developing detours. A man’s heart is a haunted house of errors.

What a terrible thing to behold—one’s former self. God arranges not our decisions, but the outcomes of our decisions; makes them all providential. Whatever motivated us to act on our decisions, that is He judges: this haunted house of the heart, where the rattling chains of our errors echo while we lay in our bedrooms, and, eventually, our deathbeds. 

“Do not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time you shall reap a harvest if you do not give up.” -Galatians 6:9

Our errors in judgement have unfathomable repercussions. The Ancient Greeks had a term, hamartia. Although in the dramatic/literary sense, this word is understood as the tragic and fatal flaw – “moral flaw” – leading to the downfall of a hero/heroine, it literally means “to miss the mark”, “to err;” however, it also means “to sin.” In the most fundamental sense, at the root of Western philosophy (and more pointedly, the Christian faith, the Good News which St. John broadcast to the world through the Greek language—for he wrote his gospel using their lexicon), inaccuracy is synonymous with evil. Evil, in its essence, is a distortion of what is True. It is a deformation of what is Beautiful. Four out of the Ten Commandments, the first three and the ninth, are explicitly about not distorting the Truth of God. Hence why Satan, the Evil One, is considered the great seducer and cunning liar. He functions on inaccuracy. From false aesthetics to logical fallacies, to careless judgement. The angel Satan/Lucifer was the most powerful creature ever created, belonging to, and overseeing, the Seraphim which were the highest-ranking angels. Lucifer/Satan became intoxicated with all his power, drunk enough on it that he saw himself as the creator of his greatness; he was of the delusion that he was God. And the moment he convinced himself of this, he and a third of the angels fell with him from Grace and Good. The fall from Good was produced by the prideful and delusional inaccuracy of Lucifer/Satan. Accuracy is Good, a form of Love. It’s no wonder Cupid is an archer.

Accuracy is a tacit and default cognitive orientation in the West (all mankind as a whole, I suppose). It’s an ancient conceit. Goes back to the beginnings of philosophy in Greek culture (a culture that, while having stern critiques of, I hold a deep appreciation for). Aristotle spoke of accuracy when employing the motif of archery in his writings. And even Homer himself understood this concept intuitively, for one of his most famous characters, Odysseus, was, among many other rather duplicitous things (for instance, a soothsayer), a keen archer. When Odysseus returns home to Ithaca in disguise after 20 years away at war, including his long journey back, to find men occupying the halls of his home, drinking his wine, eating his food, trying to seduce his wife and take his kingdom, what does he do to demonstrate to his wife, Penelope, that he is who he says he is? He strings a bow and plucks an arrow through hoops. Revealing himself to be true, as accurate as possible. All his secrets and various identities, all his ghostly errors sheeted in the chambers of his haunted heart, are set aside. He becomes the heroic figure not by blinding some gargantuan cyclops, but by returning home to establish order and care for his family. 

As Odysseus was sailing home, one of the many challenges that befell him was to get by Scylla and Charybdis. The answer to this predicament? Accuracy: aim through the middle of the two unpleasant alternatives—Circe tells Odysseus to sail “closer” to Scylla than Charybdis, but still go between the two. His aim is accurate; therefore he survives. This is a True insight into reality that, prior to Christ, the Hellenics simply didn’t grok explicitly. This is because they didn’t have the example set yet—Christ had yet to Incarnate Himself into history. The example to aim for was set in every act of Christ while He was here in human history; these acts redeemed not just the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” worldview of the Hellenics, but mankind, human nature, and nature itself. When Christ was crucified, it was done so between two thieves (in this context Scylla and Charybdis <but you can name any two evils, laziness/carelessness, gossip/lying, theft/murder…>) and the “way” is through the middle. When Christ was birthed into the world, three wisemen followed a star, accurately assessing the correct trajectory, to greet Him and Mary, the Theotokos.

For world history, the ancient Greeks were a fascinating and impressive culture. It is no wonder their civilization is known to historians as “the Greek miracle;” however, they were fundamentally wrong in their thinking. The Greeks, too, fell victim to error and delusional inaccuracies; they were a prideful people who valued intellect and self foremost. They thought in dialectics, or the belief that the universe was composed of “oppositions.” Whereas Christ showed us that nothing is in “opposition,” but, rather, all – including evil – are subservient to one Good. It is in this sense that the Greeks ultimately missed the mark. They and so many other traditions before and since see Good and Evil as two co-equal forces ever battling it out for the win. But that is inaccurate, a grave error. For Good, the Good of God, through Christ, in the Holy Spirit, is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent. Evil (i.e. error), because God granted freewill and holds true to that covenant, is allowed and thus serves the Good — much to the chagrin of its originator. All the Evil One’s efforts to distort the Good, outmaneuver Good, didn’t, doesn’t and won’t succeed. Providence will prevail because the Good is the fundamental principle in the Person of The Father, who created all of existence by working through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The aim all along, before the fall, was that through Christ’s Incarnation, begotten from the Father before all ages, from Whom the Holy Spirit proceedeth, would the creature He created be redeemed and be brought in to higher ranking than all of the angels. This is why the Evil One hates mankind and labors in inaccuracies, functions through fallacies, distractions and misperceptions to damn him; he aims to deviate man from the goal of salvation and everlasting life— the true hearth of our home in heaven; he labors to make man commit the sin of missing the mark, keeping you from the love of your True Home. The Good prevails in the end. 

As I sat in my motel room, traversing the countless detours of my own mind and considering all those anonymous and famous men in history who ventured out into the wild, risking everything, and at times losing everything, to provide for themselves and their families, I wonder: whether or not they ever returned home to those they held dearest in this life—did they quell the rattling passions of their haunted heart to judge themselves with a fair and humble sternness as they breathed in the calm air of a homemade supper, or their last breath? 

“There is a time for making speeches, and a time for going to bed.”