A Hunting Accident
It is late October in far eastern Oklahoma. The leaves begin to change their hue to a bright orange that matches the burning sun in the evenings. The temperature drops steadily as the leaves fall. There is a crisp bite to the air as the wind switches to blowing from the north. Deer hunting season is just beginning, and this is the favorite time of the year for locals such as Leroy Hughes. Leroy is old, his vision is fading, and he rarely ventures out of the comfort of his home in the middle of the dense forest near the ghost town of Peoria, Oklahoma. His one exception is to hunt.
On the morning of October 27, Leroy sets his alarm for four thirty in the morning. This will give him ample time to put on his camo, strap up his boots, and clean his gun before heading out to his favorite deer stand near the small creek running through the woods near his house. When he walks outside, his visibility is extremely low due to the dense fog that will not burn off until the sun rises in the later morning hours. With poor vision and a dense fog, he hopes that he will be able to hit his target if he is so lucky as to cross paths with a deer.
Leroy makes his way to the stand and sets up for a long morning. He enjoys relaxing and listening to the beautiful cacophony of birds chirping, squirrels cracking acorns, and the howls of a distant coyote. Shortly after sunrise, Leroy hears a crunching of the leaves. The sound is approaching his stand from the dried-up creek bed. Leroy slowly grips his rifle. Heart beating, palms sweating despite the cool northern wind, Leroy anticipates the sight of the deer approaching him from beyond the trees. The fog is still so dense that Leroy can only make out the dark figure of the animal as it creeps out from the trees. With great excitement, Leroy steadies his rifle and fires. The dark figure drops in its tracks.
Elated, Leroy slowly begins to climb down from his tree and make the three quarters of a mile trek to claim his trophy. As he walks, he daydreams about the size of his kill. He will have enough venison to last well throughout the winter. Although the fog was too dense to make out details, perhaps his prize even has an enormous rack of antlers. The anticipation is almost too much to bear.
Leroy inches closer and closer. Suddenly, his heart sinks and his stomach ties in a knot. Leroy is overwhelmed with grief. A cold sweat builds on his forehead and his heart races. Laying on the ground in a pool of its own blood is no prized whitetail buck. Laying on the ground is no prized trophy that Leroy will be able to proudly display on his wall. Laying on the ground is the dead body of a fellow hunter wearing a dark brown camouflage.
Author's Note: I crafted this story from an excerpt of Kincaid's Mahabharata.This section is where Krishna is meditating in the forest. While he is meditating, a hunter in the forest believes that he is a deer and shoots him. This stood out to me because I am from rural Oklahoma and deer hunting is a favorite hobby of many people in the fall. During the hunter safety course, it is discussed how relatively easy it is to mistake people in the forest for animals and accidentally shoot them. This is why wearing hunter's orange is such a big requirement while hunting to provide an indicator to other hunters in the forest. My story is the story of an old man with poor vision hunting in a dense fog. He mistakenly shoots another hunter in the forest. This is similar to what happened in the Mahabharata reading for this week. I wanted to take a similar plot element of a mistaken identity leading to an accident. I also wanted to make this into a setting that most people from rural Oklahoma can relate to, or at least envision. I would hope that nobody has actually experienced an incident such as this.