Featuring: Emery Allen. Comprising his famous hunt at the four corners; the doe who was followed by a buck; restraint in the name of future generations; his triumphal shot with a .243. Original passage by Robert J. Elinskas, to which is added seventeen retellings by Dave Mance III.
On 12 November of 1977, Emery Allen was on watch at a place called the four corners. The drive had barely started when a doe came out, followed by a nice sixpointer. Emery brought his rifle up but then watched the buck mount the doe. “Better take care of next year’s fawn crop first,” thought Emery. When the buck finished, and his front feet hit the ground, he dropped him with a single shot from his .243.
-Robert J. Elinskas, from his book Adirondack Camps and Hunts
Gray’s Sporting Journal
The sun was just rising over the East Mountain when the boys started pushing Sugar Hill. Emery Allen was set up at a place called the four corners, a little swale that cut through the grain of the ridge. As the drivers pushed the tangle of huckleberries and chestnut oak, any game in their path had a habit of seeking cover here. At the same time, hunters from below could be pushing deer up from either side. Emery glanced at his watch – noted the time – when a flash of white in the middle distance caught his eye. A doe slunk into view, followed by a nice six-point buck, his cream-colored antlers glowing in the early light. Emery squeezed his safety off and shouldered the rifle. The deer were 30 yards away, quartering towards him and distracted – they did not see him. The doe stiffened and bleated; the buck scent checked her, then rearing onto his hind legs, slumped onto her. Emery put the rifle’s pin site on his shoulder, but then thought: “Better take care of next year’s fawn crop first.” The two deer stood joined – her body rigid, ears back, long neck extended with almost-crane-like grace; his body curled, and, standing on two legs, humanoid, a creature out of Greek legend. The buck thrust forward and the union broke; the doe mule-kicked lightly as she broke free; Emery exhaled, and when the buck’s feet hit the ground, squeezed the trigger.
Journalism
SANTA CLARA – A Brandon man connected with a fine buck Saturday. Emery Allen, 66, of Santa Clara, New York, was hunting with friends from the Deer River Club just north of the Red Tavern Road when the incident occurred. Allen arrived at his stand around 7 a.m., and the deer appeared roughly 10 minutes later. Allen recalls that he paused briefly before firing in deference to an intimate moment the deer were sharing. “Better take care of next year’s fawn crop first,” he thought. Both rifle season, and deer mating season, run through the month of November.
Recipe
1 .243
1 Emery Allen
1 doe
1 six-point buck
Load .243 with bullets, preferably copper, as they’re better for both your health and the environment.
Combine Emery Allen and loaded rifle. Let sit for at least 10 minutes up to 3 hours. (Longer might be fine, but if the Emery gets too chilled it might not set up.) Add the doe first, then the buck. Allow buck to impregnate doe before adding bullet.
Defiantly Sensitive with a Dash of Philosophy
So there’s Emery, watching the draw at the four corners, when out come a buck and a doe. He hadn’t been there 10 minutes – he hadn’t even opened his Thermos of coffee yet – when he’s confronted with a decision about whether or not to take this life. It’s a choice, after all. And these are living, breathing, regal animals – he’s not stomping an ant here. So he’s watching the deer’s breath in the dawn chill, agonizing over what to do, and then the buck mounts the doe, which in an odd way clarified things. We all – human, deer, plant – exist to pass on our genes. That’s our biological purpose. To do that, we need to survive. And for people, that means we need to eat. You trace the word deer back to its Proto-Indo European root and it means breath, life. By taking this buck Emery would participate in a ritual as old as time; by taking this buck Emery would choose life. In these heavy moments hunters can feel at odds with themselves but at peace with everything that’s natural in the world.
Defiantly Insensitive and Unphilosophical
So there’s Emery, watching the draw at the four corners, and out come this buck and doe, and the buck starts putting it to her. Emery lets him finish and then plugs him – rolls him right up.
Faulkner
The bony calcareous soil which had once born trees that took two hundred years to grow but is today a cut-over brake of brier and cane and vine interlocked with a smatter of beech and pinoak and ash, this depleted earth printed with ungulate hooves in heart shapes – deer and moose – along with the unalien shapes of coyote and fisher and unalien men to name them too perhaps, the (themselves) nameless though recorded predecessors who cleared the virgin wood and felled the game: the wild Seneca and then French and then Anglo-Saxon hunters, these uxorious, brawling, turbulent pioneers in their old brave innocent eupeptic time, that time the lineage that both the buck and Emery Allen bore, the latter’s rifle shouldered as the former’s two feet hit the ground, a trigger pulled and another archetypal story written through a bullet’s impersonal malignance; another buck falling – not slumping, or crumbling, but falling as a piece, as a tree falls; another man enthralled in brief unsubstanced glory which inherently of itself cannot last and hence why glory; the future secured as the buck’s seed finds endometrial cover and a brief antenatal peace.
Taciturn New England Farmer
Emery shaut a sixah up’ta the foah coahnahs.
Letter to Mom
Hi Mom,
I hope all is well – I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write. I’ve been crazy busy, but life is good. I’m actually up at deer camp as I write this – it’s a miserable day, snow and rain, and I can’t bring myself to go sit against a tree for hours. It’s been a slow season thus far, though Emery Allen got a nice six-point buck yesterday. Some of the boys were driving the ridge when he shot – my first thought, actually, was that his gun might have misfired. But no, a doe had come out of the woods – I don’t even think she was pushed – followed by a buck, and he shot the buck. He actually held his fire and watched them mate, which is the first I’ve ever heard of that happening. Gotta take care of the next generation, you know?
Feminist Retelling
The doe entered the glen, pursued by a buck. She stood rigid, her tail out, as the buck approached and smelled her, licked her, prodded her. For two months now she’d rebuffed his crude advances. And yet something this morning felt different. She had learned to be cautious at this time of year, but moved by something vague and sure within her she had thrown caution to the wind.
Emery Allen watched the scene through the rifle sight, her breath measured, her shoulders poised. When the buck’s feet hit the ground she pulled the trigger, the gun’s retort ricocheting around the valley. The doe took three bounds then stopped, stomped, snorted. Their eyes met briefly – the history and the future of the world in those dark, expressive eyes – before she gathered her feet beneath her, turned uphill, and ran towards the sky.
Pulled Out Of a 2-year-old
“Who was in the woods?”
“Daddy.”
“No, Emery.”
“Emery.”
“And what did he see?”
“Deer.”
“Yes! A doe deer and a buck deer.”
[Enthusiastically] “Yah!”
“And did Emery shoot the deer?”
[Slightly less enthusiastically] “Yah.”
“Yes, but first he let them mate, so the mommy could have baby deer.”
[Distracted] “Yah.”
“And now we’re eating some of the deer, because we eat what we kill, right? That’s part of being a responsible hunter.”
“I want more milk.”
Alliterative
Eagle-eyed Emery endeavored to end the
enfatuates emphatically erred Eros.
Multiple Choice
Emery Allen was in a place called:
a) The four corners
b) The four horsemen
c) The four aces
A doe came out, followed by a
a) bear
b) fawn
c) 6-pointer
Emery brought his rifle up and thought:
a) “Did I remember to load the gun?”
b) “Shouldn’t I shoot the doe if I want to reduce overall deer numbers in this overbrowsed forest?”
c) “Better take care of next year’s fawn crop first.”
He dropped the deer with a single shot from his:
a) .243
b) .30-30
c) .308
answers: a, c, c, a
Limerick
From a stand in a hickory tree
A doe and a buck he did see
A gunshot was heard
Some meat was procured
A tip of the hat to Emery.
Called by the New York Yankees’ Radio Announcers
John Sterling: . . . That Deer is Down! Emery Allen, Raptor’s talon! Emery: He’s on the board! And the camp now has a six-point buck.
Suzyn Waldman: And sometimes it’s that easy, John. Seven a.m. The drive has barely started. Out comes a doe, followed by a buck. They procreate! And then Emery pulls the trigger.
John Sterling: You know Suzyn, you look at the statistics – and you know how I feel about statistics – Emery Allen hasn’t killed a buck in eight years. He hasn’t killed a six-point buck since 1963. And yet here it is, first day of the season, 10 minutes into the hunt, and the buck’s down. You just can’t predict deer hunting.
Homage to Dad
Emery brought his rifle up but then watched the buck mount the doe. “Better take care of next year’s fawn crop first,” he said to himself, remembering, then, his own father, following him out to the deer stand on coal black mornings all those years ago. Dad would have been 90 this year. There had been plenty that was difficult: fathers and sons jostling for position as they’re wont to do, jostling for purchase in a life that can be hard and unforgiving. But in this moment he remembered his father’s grace, the sacrifices made on his behalf, the love – gruff and guarded, sure, but clarion and pure. He remembered his father falling asleep on the deer stand, exhausted after a 60-hour workweek; later the smile on his rough face as he savored their first deer together – the smell of his wool hunting coat as they embraced. The buck’s feet hit the ground and Emery centered the scope on its front shoulder, the black cross shimmering through moist eyes. “Dad,” he said under his breath, a word he hadn’t spoken in 12 years, one of those blunt, one-syllable words that, like “God” and “Love,” has the power to remake and renew. The gun barked and the buck fell.
Story Told in Tracks
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Surprise Ending
On 12 November of 1977, Emery Allen was on watch at a place called the four corners. The drive had barely started when a doe came out, followed by a nice six-pointer. Emery brought his rifle up but then watched the buck mount the doe. “Better take care of next year’s fawn crop first,” thought Emery. When the buck finished, and his front feet hit the ground, he dropped him with a single shot from his .243. Emery looked up at the sky with glassy eyes, a thin stream of blood running from the corner of his mouth. “It’s fair,” he thought, then everything went dark.
Dave Mance III is the editor of Northern Woodlands.
The Resilient Forest Series, Part 2
For generations, white-tailed deer have held a deep and complicated place in our northern culture. From a traditional deer camp in the Adirondacks to how to read a shed antler: a pastiche.
- How Many Deer is Too Many?
- Deer on the Northern Edge
- Deer Camp: A Photo Essay
- A Close Look at an Antler
- A Deer Story, Retold
Our special thanks go to the Emily Landecker Foundation, the Dorr Foundation, the Davis Conservation Foundation, the Larsen Fund, Melinda Richmond, and the Samuel P. Hunt Foundation for their support of this work.
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