The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan [176]
I grabbed Richard by the shoulder, put my finger to my lips, and pointed ahead. He stopped. “It’s your shot,” he whispered. “Go ahead. Take it.” It is the custom when hunting with companions that the first shot belongs to the person who spotted the animal, perhaps in recognition of the fact that skill in hunting is as much about finding the game as killing it. In fact, in many hunter-gatherer societies, the first portion of meat belongs not to the hunter who kills the animal but to the one to whom it first appeared. These pigs were mine.
One little problem. I had neglected to pump my rifle before we set out on the trail. There was no bullet in the chamber, and to cock my gun now would almost surely alert the pigs to our presence. I could take the chance, but to do so probably meant the pigs would be on the run by the time I was ready to shoot. I explained all this in a whisper to Richard, whose own gun, a fancy new Finnish bolt-action job, could be loaded with little more than a click of the little bolt. I gave him my shot.
Richard got down on one knee and slowly raised his rifle to his shoulder. I braced for the explosion, preparing to pump my gun the moment it came; perhaps I could still get off a shot at one of the others. Richard took his time, aiming carefully, waiting for one of the animals to turn and offer its flank. The pigs had their heads down, eating acorns, utterly oblivious to our presence. Then the woods exploded. I saw a pig stagger and fall back against the embankment, then struggle drunkenly to its feet. I pumped my rifle but it was already too late: The other pigs were gone. Richard fired again at the wounded pig and it crumpled.
The other pigs had run down the path away from us, and we gave chase for a few minutes, but they took off around a bend and we lost them. By the time we returned to the scene Richard’s pig was dead. It was considerably bigger than Jean-Pierre’s poodle, and appeared to have taken a bullet in the butt. I felt a rush of adrenaline; maybe it had surged earlier, but only now did I feel all light-headed and shaky. It hadn’t been my shot, yet I felt I’d been party to something momentous, something that felt like a collision of worlds. The shadowy realm of the pigs had crashed into our brightly lit world, and this emissary of that other nation had crossed over from wild life, become “meat.”
The pig, a sow weighing perhaps a hundred pounds, was too heavy to carry, so we took turns dragging it by its rear leg up the path back toward the cars; I now understood in a way I never had before the expression “dead weight.” Holding the pig by the ankle just above its delicate hoof, I could still feel its warmth beneath the bristly skin, some fading remnant of its formidable energy. It felt wrong to be dragging the body over the rocky ground, and I had to remind myself that the pig, though still warm, felt nothing. By the time we had dragged the carcass all the way back to the cars its skin felt cool to the touch.
Angelo trotted over to see the animal, excited and impressed and eager to hear our story. It’s curious how the hunting story takes shape in the minutes after the shot, as you work through the chaotic simultaneity of that lightning, elusive moment, trying to tease out of the adrenaline fog something linear and comprehensible. Even though we’d both witnessed the event together, Richard and I had taken turns carefully telling each other the story on the long march back, rehearsing our lack of readiness, reviewing the reasons Richard had taken the shot instead of me, trying to nail down the precise distance and number of pigs involved, carefully unpacking the moment and