The Ritual of the Hunt
The deer had to be grazing only fifteen yards away for I could see the tranquility in its eyes. It was a doe; no antlers. With silence and slow, I lifted the butt of Dad’s ancient lever-action rifle to my jawline and held breath while my index finger crept around the grip of the wood and quietly inched toward the trigger guard; trembling. I winked my left eye shut as my right focused into scope, and I could see the beast’s tranquility even clearer now. It wasn’t grazing; it was standing, perusing nature, and it bat lashes as it slowly lowered its slender head toward a solitary leaf on a sapling; nipping it most delicately off the hardwood. The scope revealed the doe’s spiky velvet, an uncommon trait; perfect for my induction ceremony. Dad would be very proud.
I first learned of Counter-Strike within the pages of a PC gaming magazine in Autumn Y2K; it was depicted as a realistic first-person shooter with a focus on multiplayer and teamwork. And although derived from Valve’s Half-Life, it lacked the science fiction aspects that attracted the taped-glasses demographic and appealed more to my audience: southern boys who dreamed of monster trucks and machine guns and mounted deer heads. I wanted Counter-Strike more than anything; especially after my friends at school started playing, but my Dad didn’t see the appeal and wanted me to focus on the three G’s: girls, grades, and guns – and football. But we made a compromise: if I made all B’s in school that year, he would buy me a Dell PC and a copy of Counter-Strike. Needless to say, I studied real hard, and I got those B’s.
As I watched the doe chew leaves from the hardwood, I thought about what Dad told me years ago: “the best way to kill a deer is to shoot ’em while they’re standin’ with one side of their body facin’ ya; that way, ya aim true an’ make every shot count. Ya gotta be quick but silent an’ steady as a rock; that’s the key to bringin’ home the bag, son.” He would say while chewing tobacco as naturally as the doe chewed leaves, “this ‘ere is called a broadside shot an’ it’s the quickest way to kill a deer, son – ya know, they’re still livin’ animals and we don’t want ‘em sufferin’ too bad.”
Counter-Strike is a simple premise wrapped in layers of deep first-person-shooter mechanics; two sides – terrorists and counter-terrorists – firefight across everyday terrain with objectives such as bomb defusal and hostage rescue. The game oozes realism, as each gun is derived from a real world model and handles as one would expect; holding down left-click to rapid-fire – or ‘spraying’ – decreases your accuracy, while firing in short bursts – or ‘tapping’ – keeps your aim steady; holding the ctrl-key to crouch increases precision even further which mirrors the real world firing technique of kneeling with your rear knee placed on the ground and your other leg supporting the elbow of your forward arm. All weapons benefit from these precision mechanics, but the AWP benefits most; the AWP is a sniper rifle that kills in one shot – the drawback being that it requires a reload after being fired.
When I used the AWP – which was always – I pictured my opponent as deer and recalled what Dad told me about the broadside shot, and this advice carried me to Counter-Strike stardom. I became so proficient with the AWP that my friends called me “The AWP King” and I joined local tournaments full of confidence and verve.
Mesmerized – I continued to peer through the looking glass. The doe basked in stray beams piercing the canopy layer, only breaking posture to pluck leaves off the hardwood. My thoughts veered to the ancient rifle that trembled lightly in my hands, passed down from grandfather to father to son in The Ritual of the Hunt. I wondered to myself; did Dad tremble too? Did he hesitate before shooting his first deer? Why was I hesitating at all? To stop the trembling, I took a note from Counter-Strike and held the crtl-key to crouch; my right knee crunched into dry leaves as my left supported my forward arm while I readjusted the ancient rifle. I winked and peered through the looking glass once more, but this time the doe’s magnified eyes were staring back at me.
For our first local tournament, we faced a team composed of kids from our middle school. The winners of the tournament would win brand new gaming PCs. It was hosted at a local LAN Gaming Center called the Arena; a dark warehouse overflowing with computers jam-packed with the most popular computer games of 2001. The ambiance was shadow and fluorescent, like that of a jellyfish in the darkest recesses of the oceans. The Arena was the natural habitat of stoners, outcasts, and those who played Everquest and Doom; a place where both hardcore nerds and potential school shooters mingled freely as there was a surprising amount of overlap in their interests. My team pushed through this unholy union and started discussing strategies for the upcoming digital gunfights when the opposing team walked in; their leader was wheelchair-bound with thick glasses, greasy hair, and a band-tee for a group I had never heard of. My teammate Ryan – an older boy who had been held back several grades and expelled for attacking other students at least twice – pointed at the kid in the wheelchair and called him the f-slur of the homosexual variety and we laughed like a wicked pack of hyenas gyred around a human baby. An Arena employee heard this slur-slinging and gave us a warning, but we shrugged it off because we talked like this all the time – it made us feel superior when someone got offended.
*ancient violence consumes the LAN tournament
The tournament was not going well. The other team seemed to read our minds; we would go B and they would go A; we would go A and they would go B; we would try to camp at spawn but they would flashbang us into confusion and clean up in the aftermath; we would try to rush early but they would anticipate this and trap us in a pincer formation. And to top it off, the disabled boy was far more skilled with the AWP than I – his trigger finger was always seconds faster than mine. We lost the tournament and we were embarrassed, but we masked this embarrassment with the foulest language possible. We slung slurs like bullets at a drunken bar fight in a Wild West saloon.
The slur-slinging culminated in whirlwind-heat-and-flash as Ryan stood up and accused the disabled boy of cheating. I turned to face the altercation, but before I could do anything, Ryan grabbed the disabled boy by his long hair and was screaming slurs at him. Ryan then pulled the disabled boy’s hair with such force that it tornadoed him onto the floor and left a clump of bloody mess in Ryan’s clenched fist. He then started kicking the disabled boy in the gut, “this is what you get for cheating, you gimp fa—!” he shouted on repeat.
Horrified, I leapt in and grabbed Ryan from behind, but he was much stronger than myself and pushed me to the floor. Four Arena employees then jumped in and dragged Ryan off the disabled boy, who was moaning meekly between invocations of “mom” gurgled in spittle and hemoglobin.
The police were called, and an ambulance showed up just as the disabled boy’s mom arrived to pick up her mangled son. There was an exodus as the boy was wheeled out on a stretcher, mumbling incoherently. I watched as the mom hurried to her son’s side with tears swelling in her eyes. She turned to Ryan, who was being escorted by two police officers, and instead of screaming obscenities at him, she started to sob uncontrollably. I knew then that, even though Ryan had attacked the boy, I was just as much at fault as he was. I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but I had dehumanized that boy into a stretcher.
The doe was unmoving, as if stunned by the glare of an ancient violence. I lifted my vision to catch a glimpse of her beyond the glass, but there was no illusion; she stared in confusion, as if asking a single question – “why?” I shifted my vision to the glass once more, expanding her forehead into a perfect target just when two small fawns emerged from the nearby brush. The fawns obscured my view as they nuzzled into their mother, but the doe remained resolute in her questioning. The fawns, noticing their mother’s focus, turned to me, and then they too stood resolute – questioning my ancient violence.
I thought to myself: “Three heads to hang on the wall. Dad would be proud.” But as I looked into the eyes of the fawn, I remembered the boy at the Arena. And as I looked at the doe, I remembered the mother sobbing. I remembered the violence, and just as I remembered this ancient violence, the fawns nuzzled their mother’s velvet head and she nuzzled back, and then they turned with a skip and trotted slowly into the wood, as if there was nothing to be afraid of – as if I was one with nature itself.
My finger eased off the ancient trigger of the ancient rifle, and I slung the ancient violence over my shoulder as I walked back to camp.
(Originally published 4/8/2024)