hunters

Saturday November 03, 2018

Dave Bonta November 3, 2018 0

Oak leaves that turned brown just a few days ago already rattle instead of rustling. A hunter in gray camouflage emerges from the woods.

Dave Bonta December 9, 2017

A great silence punctuated only by an occasional gun shot. A squirrel digs up a black walnut from beside the porch and bounds off with it.

Dave Bonta November 27, 2017 1

Bright sun, cold wind. The blaze-orange vests of two hunters walking up the road: a father and his daughter who’s just shot her first deer.

Dave Bonta November 9, 2017

Cloudy and cold. The quiet tapping of a downy woodpecker. A deer hunter appears, his bloody quarry sliding behind him on the fallen leaves.

Dave Bonta February 18, 2017

‪Unseasonably warm. The sun catches on glass disinterred by frost heaving. From the valley, the cheerful pops of a semi-automatic rifle.‬

Dave Bonta December 11, 2016

The morning after the end of deer season and an inch and a half of new snow covers the evidence—the gut piles, the trails of blood and hair.

Dave Bonta December 10, 2016 1

The sun is a bright nipple in milk-white clouds. On the ground, a new, thin fur—what deer hunters like to call a good tracking snow.

Dave Bonta November 28, 2016

A pileated woodpecker trepanning an oak to extract its harmful inhabitants the ants. Distant shots from deer hunters at a similar task.

Dave Bonta March 12, 2016

Bright sun. From the valley, four gunshots in quick succession, followed by silence. A phoebe circles the house singing, as if sizing me up.

Dave Bonta November 30, 2015 1

This isn’t how Hollywood would’ve scripted the deer season opener: flat light with no hint of shadow. Shots don’t ring out—they merely thud.