THE HUNTERS AND THE HUNTED
Of Birds and Beau The Thrill of the Chase
By Tracey L. Compton
I’M ONE OF THOSE girlfriends. I admit it. I’m capable of metamorphosis when confronted with a new boyfriend’s hobbies. It’s not that I don’t have anything in common with these men or that I don’t have hobbies of my own. I’m just a curious woman, open to new experiences, or so I say. This approach has taken me to some pretty unusual places, but none as far from my moral scope and comfort level as hunting. A skilled hunter of bargains on shoes and expensive handbags, hunting with guns and camo was never a part of my vocabulary growing up on a tidy cul-de-sac in suburban Seattle. My image of a hunter was always a white man, redneck or not, and always country. Although, my mother is quick to remind me
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Misadventures Issue 5
that my grandfather hunted for rabbits and squirrels in the Midwest. Regardless, I approached the sport with some trepidation. And yet there I was traipsing behind my latest flame on a cold winter day duck hunting in Eastern Washington. We shared a love of the outdoors; this is true. But for me, to go hunting was bridging a mighty, wide gap. This pastime was very much a part of my boyfriend’s vocabulary growing up in the wilds of Minnesota, where deer hunting is an annual celebration. Being a recent transplant to Seattle, he was still interested in exploring the city and the hunter in him was not apparent to me at first. We started out going hiking, then we went camping. I slowly became aware of his proclivity
for the sport when he went on solo treks into the wilderness to go scouting for the perfect hunting perches. Somewhere in between being curious and wanting to spend time together, I lost my way and decided I’d be up for a hunting adventure. I told myself that we were just being very rustic and hunting down our own Duck à l’Orange. And that’s exactly what I planned to tell any of my friends, should they discover our weekend activities. My embarrassment at being involved with this non-PC ritual was only one aspect of my fear. The other was stepping out into the hunting fields as a black woman behind my white boyfriend without a bulletproof vest. Kevlar, he explained to me, highly amused, was not a part of the
