November 10, 2024 • 50 mins
Into the woods we go! In this episode, Eric takes a journey through a popular niche genre of men's action-adventure novels - Deer Hunter Horror. Capsule reviews are presented for novels like Shoot, Open Season, Deer Hunt, High Hunt, and more. Also, a contemporary novel is reviewed titled East Indianman by Griff Hosker. Stream on any podcasting platform or at the Paperback Warrior Blog HERE. Be sure to check out the companion video HERE featuring a deep dive into an obscure book store in central Florida with loads of vintage paperbacks and appealing pop-culture.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:19):
Welcome to another exciting episode of the Paperback Warrior podcast.
I'm Eric and I'm your host for this wild and
wooly adventure through vintage paperback books. This podcast directly connects
to the Paperbackwarrior dot com blog, where you can find
hundreds of reviews, as well as the recorded prior episodes
of this very show. Okay, so today's episode is really
(00:42):
really cool and I'm excited about it. I've been planning
something like this for months. So based on the episode's title,
you're probably asking what the heck is deer hunter horror. Well,
today's feature looks at a subgenre of action adventure fiction
that features deer hunters or deer hunting trips. This niche
genre typically features the deer hunters hunting human prey, targeting
(01:05):
each other, or becoming a target by some outrageous lunatic
or clan of people. I'm going over to this neat
little concept and providing reviews of books that I've read
in the past and some new ones that I've most
recently read to prepare for this podcast episode. In addition
to those fun reviews, I'm going to lay a new
historical adventure book on you called East India. Man. It
(01:26):
was just recently published in the author is Griff Hosker.
He's become a phenom of self publishing, and I've been
digging his books of late. So I'm going to review
that book for you. Also, I'm going to read a
short story to you today called The Death Hunter, and
that ties into our feature. That story is by the
always reliable Steve Frazy and it was published in Adventure
magazine in nineteen fifty two. But recently I took a
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trip south to central Florida, just east of Orlando to
scope out a store there called Cliffs. Now. I went
in this store a few years ago, and it's just okay.
I journeyed back to the store in spring of twenty
twenty three and found that it improved some, with a
lot more inventory and a huge wall that had expanded
with more Crime to War inserted to what was otherwise
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just a massive collection of bagged science fiction books. My
wife and I were in town to see a Dragula play,
which was very good, but we had a half day
to kill, so we hit this Cliffs store again. My god,
this place is basically one large room and then one
very narrow room. The first thing you need to know
about Cliffs is that the owner is one of us.
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He loves vintage books, and I believe he thinks of
the store as his own personal collection. The previous two
times I've been in there, the owner was gone. From
what I gathered, the owner of the store travels around
the country to auctions and he buys old stuff. Now,
when I say old stuff, I mean anything pop culture.
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His store is completely stuffed with old toys, lunch boxes,
action figures, beverage glasses, models, and of course, loads and
loads of books. There are so many books here that
the shelving system has been nearly abandoned. There are large
banker boxes of books stacked nearly floor to ceiling in
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the back of the narrow room. The other room has
boxes of books just laying on the floor due to
the shelves overflowing with books. There's one large table or
group of tables that have book boxes on top of them,
and under the table it is completely stuffed with boxes
of books. Now, this store has a robust comic, magazine
and graphic novel inventory on top of fiction books, and
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it also has a lot of nonfiction books. The nonfiction
stuff is about books, music, pop culture, the wild West,
the film industry, and so forth. So it's really a
nerd junkie paradise. Now I have a companion video to
this podcast with photos and videos of my trip to Cliffs.
You have to watch watch this video. You'll find it
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on our YouTube channel today. But just to give you
an idea, there were boxes there of Robert E. Howard paperbacks.
There were hardcover editions of Howard's books as well as
including four or five long boxes filled with Savage sort
of Conan magazines. There's a huge selection of Edgar Reis
Burrough's books in both paperback and hardcover. The Ace Double
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science fiction selection was one massive wall, with all the
books in bags sleeves. There were westerns and murder mysteries
from the early to mid twentieth century by the likes
of False Gold, Medal, Dell, Paperback Library, Graphic, Bantam, Pyramid, Lancer, Balantine,
and Doll, just to name the ones that I remember.
If I was describing this store on social media, I
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could use the hashtags Conan, Morecock, the Spider Doc, Savage,
Night Writer, Ace Doubles, map Backs, Laser sci Fi, l
Queen Doctor Who, James Bond, pulp fiction, gore swamp thing
call the green Hornet and stuff like John McDonald or
(05:10):
Alistair McLane or Ross McDonald or Nick Carter or reck Style.
You get the idea. Displaces a paradise. Watch my video
to see the absolute insanity of cliffs. Okay, how about
we jump from the cliff right into this feature. I've
got a lot to present to you in this feature.
Pack your bags into the big, old scary forest of
(05:32):
today's wild Wild feature. I'm gonna hit some music. Okay.
So today's feature has some distinct parameters that you need
to know and understand before we embark on this paperback journey. So,
deer hunter horror is a term that I'm using to
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describe this niche subgenre of action adventure, and it's just
that it involves deer hunt that experience some sort of horror. Now,
you might be saying to yourself that this genre could
just include things like man hunts through the wilderness, or
it could be those safari type of books that involve
big game hunters stalking savage beast. That isn't what we're
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talking about here. We're also not talking about the most
dangerous game concept of where humans hunt humans in a
remote area for pleasure. That isn't it either. So the
classics of those particular types of genres, the big game
hunter books, the man on the Run, in the forest books,
the battle royale types of stories, we're eliminating those works.
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So in your mind, just remove books like First Blood
or the Story Most Dangerous Game, or even books like
Deliverance or Roque Mail. It doesn't fit this niche. So
you're probably thinking, what in the heck even fits the niche? Then,
So the concept is that deer hunters are involved in
the books and stories of this deer hunter horror subgenre.
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These deer hunters are in the forest and joy the
average hunting trip traditions, that is, mostly groups of people,
predominantly groups of middle aged men, on a hunting trip
and casually searching for deer. They camp in tents, they
drink beer, and they tell fun stories of the good
old days while complaining about their normal nine to five existence.
But in those books and stories, something goes wrong. A
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common situation is where one of the hunters turns on
another hunter and tries to kill them or other members
of the hunting party. Sort of the disgruntold hunter who
has reached some sort of boiling point in his life
that leads to homicide with his fellow hunters. Surprisingly, there
are a lot of novels and stories that have this
as a main plot point. Other examples of deer hunter
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horror can also be the hunters running into danger in
the forest that involves supernatural elements or monsters, or backwoods
redneck lunatics as opposed to just backwoods rednecks, which I've
occasionally been described as in my younger days, or other
murderers that either live in the fourth or just using
the force as a hunting ground to kill deer hunters.
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There are a ton of novels and stories that feature
this sort of thing. It's important to note that deer
hunter horror has to obviously involve deer hunting or hunters.
The easiest way to think of it is if you
took James Dickey's nineteen seventy Deliverance novel and just modified it.
In that book, a group of men are in the
forest on a rafting trip and they stumble across craze
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rednecks that attempt to rape and kill them. Just replace
rafting trip with deer hunting trip and you'll get deer
Hunter horror. It may seem silly to isolate such a
specific thing like this, but as I've read more and
more books through the years, I can clearly see this
as a recurring plot involving deer hunters. Maybe you've seen
it too. Now. Before I dive into reviews of deer
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Hunter Horror books, which is the book of this feature,
I wanted to note that I can't really date when
this sort of genre started, nor can I trace it
back to any particular origin. My guess is that the
centuries of literature all in some sort of element of
this niche. Early novels about skirmishes and wars fought in
the wilderness or at least heavily forested areas, eventually spilled
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into action adventure novels of men hunting animals on land
and in the sea. Of course, Western fiction novels often
feature cowboys or mountain men in the wild, battling other men, animals,
harsh elements, or native people. Hunting in general became popularized
in glossy magazines and boys books in the early twentieth century,
and are still popular to this day, which also meant
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that hunting stories, skirmishes and so forth, were popular to
tell around the campfire or garage. I will say that
the majority of the books I'm discussing were published here
in the nineteen seventies and probably marketed and or influenced
with the timing of James Dickey's Deliverance novel, which, by
the way, was published in nineteen seventy with a successful
film in nineteen seventy two. Now I can remember as
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a kid I went to the same barber shop for
sixteen years. My dad went there and he took me along,
and it was a men's bar barbershop with five men
that cut hair and talk to the room about deer
hunting and fishing. This was an old school Southern barbershop,
and occasionally these hunting stories would get really interesting and
intense when one of the men would complain about how
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another hunter nearly shot him, or how another hunter invaded
his hunting spot and killed a trophy deer right out
from under him. I could sense even back then that
hunting trips could become dangerous when these loud, obnoxious men,
possibly fueled on old Milwaukee beer, got angry with each other.
I even remember on my own hunting trips the shouting
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matches and competitive edge my family and friends had when
it came to stalking and killing some prize buck. Now
I can specifically remember my dad being accused once of
stepping over a fence onto some other hunting club's land.
The argument was so intense that my dad ended up
giving his rifle to another hunter as a show of
good faith that he never meant to intrude on their
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land and just happened to miss the fence that have
to be torn down and half buried in the dirt.
The men gave the gun back to my dad at
the bottom of the mountain, but confessed to him later
that they were going to destroy the gun and beat
the shit out of him before calling it a day.
This is just crazy stuff that can happen on hunting trips.
To this day, I have two uncles that absolutely hate
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each other. They refuse to speak to each other due
to a bear hunting incident decades ago. These are grown
men that are brothers now in their seventies that refuse
to have a relationship with each other over a bear.
It's nuts. So with that being said, let's get down
some specific works of fiction that are clear examples of
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deer hunter horror. The first one is a book I
just recently read titled High Hunt. It was published in
nineteen seventy three and was authored by fantasy writer David Eddings.
This book was one of only two novels Eddings wrote
outside of the fantasy genre. As a side note, Eddings
wrote the book while in prison serving time over child abuse.
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Now High Hunt is written in first person narrative by
Dan Alders. Dan has just been recently discharged from the
army and he's kind of in between the life journeys
from being a soldier to going back to being a
full time college student. In his downtime, he decides to
reconnect with his brother in Washington State. The two have
been estranged for years and never were really close. Now
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Dan visits with his brother and finds him married with
kids living in a trailer court. Dan's brother drinks beer
and works at a pawnshop, and as weeks go by,
the two become close and Dan meets all of his
brother's outlandish friends. This group includes a wealthy guy that
cheats on his wife, there's a Vietnam veteran that is
clearly suffering from PTSD, and this nerdy guy with a
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demanding wife. The book's first half is dedicated to character development.
Dan learns that there are secrets being shared by the
men concerning other men in the little group, like who's
cheating on who with whose wife? And who owes money
to who who? And who works for who and so forth.
There's lots of tight, hidden strings connecting this group. Dan's
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brother decides a hunting trip into the high peaks would
be a great bonding time and a way to kick back,
drink a lot of beer and complain about the old
ball and chain. So the group hire a guide and
they go on a week long hunting trip. Once these
hunters get into the wilderness, far from civilization, unchecked emotions
leads to some animosity between each other. The Vietnam vet
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hints to the nerdy God that he's banging his wife,
So seeds are planted and things begin to spiral out
of control. Eventually, Dan spots the nerdy dude crawling through
the brush and taking a rifle shot at the vet.
This is the perfect example of deer hunter horror hunters
turning on hunters. Granted, High Hunt is more of a
literary novel, and why not, we consider a fantastic American novel,
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but it has that deer hunter element gluing the story altogether.
How the hunters behave and respond when one of them
turns on the other with intent. Again, that book is
called High Hunt by David Eddings, and you should read
that book. Another example is The Hunting Shack, a nineteen
seventy nine paperback authored by Gunnard Landers. In this book,
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six average men venture into the wilderness on an annual
deer hunting trip. Like High Hunt, a rivalry exists between
the men on who can kill the biggest deer and
drink the most beer. One of the men in the group,
a guy named Glenn, goes hunting on his own one
early morning and purposely shoots and kills two other hunters. Later,
as the narrative develops, Glenn begins to pick his next target,
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which is one of the men on the hunting trip
with him. The locale for this book is Wisconsin, and
there's plenty of snowstorms and wilderness survival to etch some
other obstacles into this deer hunter hord tale. Again, this
book is called The Hunting Shack from nineteen seventy nine
written by Gennard Landers, and it was great Now author
Clark Howard used deer hunter horror as an an element
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in his nineteen seventy eight paperback titled The Hunters. In
this novel, four men participate in a deer hunting trip
in Nevada every year. In the book's first half, readers
learned that these four men really hate each other, and
each of the four characters has a chip on his shoulder.
One guy is wearing women's panties while dealing with the
fact that his wife is having an affair. Another guy
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is so stressed out that he has bleeding ulcers. Another
guy despises his own wife and is sleeping with a
wife of one of the four men. Another guy is
a pharmaceutical rep that's selling drugs illegally. There are things
going on behind the scenes. As tensions rise through suspicion
and motive, the group begin to turn on each other.
Now in this novel, the deer hunter horror aspect is
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the central portion of the novel. The four end up
leaving the forest later, and the novel's finale features the
men battling over things that happened on the hunting trip. Again.
This was The Hunters from nineteen seventy eight by Clark Howard.
All right, so let's just switch it up just a
little bit here. A book called called snow Blind was
published in twenty twelve. It was authored by horror novelist
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Michael McBride. In this book, college buddies gather for their
annual deer hunting trip into the Colorado Rockies. On the hunt,
one of the men ends up sliding on the rocky
slope and shatters his leg during an intense snowfall. The
men end up having to carry their fallen friend through
the woods until they can find an abandoned cabin. As
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the hunters are trying to figure out what to do,
they see some warnings carved into the house's wooden exterior.
The warnings suggests that there's some sort of creature or
monster in this part of the forest that hunts humans. Soon,
the men find themselves hunted by something in the forest. Now,
McBride does a pretty good job of keeping the enemy
hidden from the reader. The joy of the book is
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trying to determine what it is that is hindering these
poor deer hunters. I especially like the gunplay as the
men try to fire at the creature while trying to
run The bolt faster and faster in their rifle. I
thought this was a really cool detail that some of
these deer hunter horror novels don't necessarily describe bolt action
rifles are cumbersome in a firefight again. This novel is
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called Snowblind, written by Michael McBride and published in twenty twelve.
A sequel to this book also exists titled Sun Blind,
which I've never read. One of the most popular deer
hunter horror novels of all time is Hunter's Blood by
jar Cunningham. The book was released in nineteen seventy seven
by Faucet Gold Medal. In this book, four suburbanites gather
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every year for an annual deer hunting trip in the
different part of the country. This time, it's a four
hundred acre stretch of wilderness in Arkansas that's closed to
the public. But when the group get into the woods
and secure a camp site, they discover piles of animal
heads and intrails. Later, the group shockingly finds a makeshift
camping area that's occupied by these Neanderthal people that gut
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animals in play with bones and skulls. The hunters end
up clashing with these strange and downright tearing forest dwellers. Eventually,
the narrative turns into the hunters themselves being hunted by
these backwoods in bred cannibals. I'd say comparisons could be
made to the nineteen seventy four film Texas Chainsaw Massacre
and nineteen seventy seven's The Hills Have Eyes. The book
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was also adapted into a film that just wasn't very good.
But this novel is an absolute classic, and I encourage
you to read it again. The book is titled Hunter's
Blood by J. Cunningham. The Only Good Indians was published
in twenty twenty and authored by Stephen Graham Jones. In
this book, the time shifts from present to past as
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readers experience four men hunting on their Native American reservation.
The four eventually end up crossing over into a sacred
part of the reservation that's dedicated to the reservation's elders.
They aren't traditionally or legally allowed to hunt there. The
men kill deer, in this case, elk on this sacred
ground and learned that one of the animals was pregnant.
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They bury the introls in the fetus, and then the
book returns to present day. However, what the men did
on the Sacred Ground comes back to haunt them. They
believe the spirit of the Elk is now haunting them
due to their hunt on this restricted area. Now I
haven't read this particular novel, but it does get rave reviews.
I consider it another perfect example of deer hunter horror. Again,
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the book is called The Only Good Indians and it's
by Stephen Graham Jones. Open Season is another book that
I considered deer hunter horror, even though it violates one
of my rules. I'll explain that Open Season began life
as the novel The All Americans by David Osborne. Now,
Osborne wrote the book and the screenplay, and it was
purchased by Columbia Pictures. The title was changed to Open
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Season and the novel was published under that title in
various formats. That movie starred popular actor Peter Fonda. In
other parts of the world, that film is also titled
Recon Game. Now, in the Open Season book, it introduced
this is three college buddies who take an annual trip
into the Wisconsin forest to hunt deer and people. So
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the deal is that these three guys aren't Greg and
Kin take this sabbatical hunting trip to drink beer, kill
deer in other wildlife, and rape a woman. Now here's
the part that's going to violate my rule. These three
men kidnap a man and a woman each year, typically
a couple of lovers, and they take them into the
wilderness to hunt them. So it is the most dangerous game,
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just changed slightly. That part doesn't count for this niche,
but it totally does because while these three men are
out hunting deer as well as the two people they've
captured as targets, another mysterious hunter in the forest is
hunting the hunters. So the niche is that deer hunters
are being targeted and hunted. In the book, the three
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men capture a man and woman who are secretly having
an affair away from the tranquill married life. They leave
their spouses behind for a short vacation into the woods
to do the nasty, but the two are targeted at
a motel by Art, greg and Kin and hauled out
into the Wisconsin wilderness. There, they shackle the man in
the kitchen and then convince the woman to consent to
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have sex with all three men repeatedly. She goes along
with it, thinking that she will just befriend them and
then she can escape when every things get really awful.
She even likes the whole ordeal when she gets going
with the men. But on day two, the three give
each of the victims a twenty minute head start to
run into the wilderness and commence to being chased. The
three men, of course have rifles, and the victims, of
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course have twigs and branches. Totally fair, kind of like
deer hunting. But once the chase ensues, another hunter, unknown
to the reader, begins hunting these three hunters. It's a savage,
violent book at two hundred and sixty seven paperback pages,
and definitely not for the squeamish. There's graphic sex with
faces and heads being shot off, but the book is
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really good at about page one twenty and the pace
never slows down. The narrative is a riveting read and
was just entertaining as heck. Again, this is Open Season
by David Osborne. Another book that fits the niche is
Deer Hunt by Peter Lefcourt. This book was published by
Pyramid in nineteen seventy six. Now, in this book, two
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brothers named Sid and Dave are reaching this high tension
era in their relationship. They live in a small town
in northern Vermont. After their father dies, these thirty something
aged men take over their father's pharmacy. Sid is the
bookkeeper and basically just runs the business. Dave isn't a
hands on kind of guy, and he doesn't really do
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as much with a store, but he's still getting fifty
percent of the prophets. Now. Sid is a fair honest guy.
He's often asked Dave to sell his half of the business,
but Dave refuses. Now Dave and Sid's wife, Cora, dated
right out of high school. However, Cora fell in love
with Sid, and Dave continued to remain single, living by
himself in a remote farmhouse. Now years ago, Sid and
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Dave would take an annual hunting trip into the wilderness
to kill deer, drink beer, and play rummy. However, Dave
stopped going with Sid and now remains as an elusive
weirdo that spends his time reading gun magazines. In this
weird scenario, Dave accuses Sid of stealing money from the
pharmacy cash register, which is really nuts because Sid has
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much easier ways of stealing money because he runs the books,
so This new hunting trip that Sid is about to
embark on this year runs a foul when Dave volunteers
to go with him. Sid gets the feeling that Dave
is wanting to go deer hunting with him so he
can shoot and kill Sid in a revenge plot to
get the pharmacy to himself and to somehow get Coora back. However,
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things get really really strange when Dave outlines a hunting
map with one side labeled as Dave and one side
labeled as Sid. Dave explains that this hunting trip will
be different because Dave and Sid will and kill each other. Now,
Dave despises Sid so much that he declares that he's
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going to be Sid's killer. Whoever wins and kills the
other will explain to the police that it occurred by
mistake while shooting at a deer. Sid of course, thinks
this is all nuts, but Dave warns him that if
he doesn't participate in this hunt, he's going to come
to Sid's house and just kill him in his sleep,
or at least at a time when he least expects it.
Sid can't live with a fear and paranoia that his
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brother is going to murder him. So he agrees to
this Macob deer hunt so he can at least have
a fighting chance and can finally clear his mind from
the stress. Now you're probably thinking, why doesn't he just
go to the police. This small town has one police
officer and he works as the town's electrician. No dice there,
So this book it works as a high tension hunting
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affair that will more than likely result in someone being
shot at or shot and killed. This book was really,
really good. It had a slow building up in the
book's first half to really kind of set the tone
that these brothers aren't bonded by any means. Great book.
Check it out again. Deer Hunt by Peter Lefcourt. The
last book I wanted to mention is Shoot by Douglas Fairbairn.
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It was published in nineteen seventy three and follows a
formula that should be familiar to you. At this point,
four buddies get together to go hunting. This time it's
in the Canadian wilderness. These four men, with the main
character being Rex, stumble into an area that's already being
hunted by another group of men. The two groups of
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hunters clash and shots are fired. One of the rival
hunters is killed, and Rex and his friends quickly scadattle
out of the forest and return home. However, Rex becomes
paranoid that the rival hunters will find and kill him
and his friends. Now, I haven't read this book, but
I have read great things about it. It seems to
fit perfectly into the confines of this deer Hunter horror
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niche I've presented to you today. All right, So that's
really all the books that I I wanted to mention
today and sort of talk through. I hope you've enjoyed
this feature on deer Hunter Horror. If you know of
any books that fit this particular niche, please let me know.
I'm going to keep adding to my list. This is
a fun little hobby of my book collecting finding these
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books that contain deer hunting episodes, if you will. So,
with that, off our table, last thing left here on
our traditional podcast is to review a book. The book
I chose to review for this episode is a brand
new one that was just published. The title is The
India Man. India Man is one word. The author is
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Griff Hosker, and everywhere I look these days, I'm seeing
his name now Hoskar is a retired English teacher who
picked up writing fiction as a hobby in his post retirement.
That hobby has led to over one hundred and fifty
books pinned by Hoskar, with over twenty five series titles
making up that number. He prefers to be self published
and likes the idea that he can control his own
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editing and keep this business in the family. This was
my first read of a Griff Hosker book. Again, This
is the India Man. In the book's prologue, William introduces
himself to the reader in first person narration. He's a
boy without a family or home. His father died and
his mother moved away to live in Java. As a
wharf rat, William embarks on a life of theft and
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robbery to survive. After a successful string of crimes, he
learns that he chose the wrong victim. A notorious pirate
is now after William to recover what was stolen from him.
With no other recourse, William hides on a ship headed
north of the Canary Islands. In these early chapters, William
navigates this large boat and steals food and water from
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the crew and passengers. However, after stealing a crewman's coat,
William is eventually caught and brought before the captain. Generously,
they ask William to earn his own way by becoming
a hard working crewman working with things like sails and ropes.
The experience humbles William, and he eventually begins to see
that his life could exist without criminal elements. After he
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makes a strong defense against pirates, William is asked to
join a regiment of British troops. It's a type of
special forces made up of former prisoners. This special task
force will work for the East India Company. William accepts
the job, and then East Indiaman really rolls into action.
Through the book second half, William adapts to his new
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role as soldier, horseman, and killer as he grows into
a man. He contends with the rigorous chores of rising
through the ranks while in combat with nefarious village leaders,
the enemy French regiments, and a secret mission to liberate
a missionary family from a stronghold, which was particularly exciting. Honestly,
I wasn't sure how it would feel about Hosker's work
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in the fast and furious pace at which he writes
and publishes as novels is a quantity over quality. Thankfully,
East Indiaman is one of the best contemporary novels I've
read this year. The book is expertly written in the
first person perspective and is presented as an epic adventure
in a convenient two hundred pages. Hoskar successfully removes any
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fluff from his writing and just sticks to the basics.
He tells a great story that's engaging while completely developing
a character that adapts as the page's turn. This was
such a treat to read, considering historical fiction can lose
itself in dense details that surround the plot. For validity,
Hoskar includes a list of his references to substantiate the
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story's locale and period, as well as a brief history
of the East India Company. If you like historical fiction
that doesn't pat itself out to like five hundred pages,
get in the meat and potatoes with this two hundred
pager The Indiaman. You'll be glad you did. And folks,
that is it for the traditional podcast episode. Stick around
(29:54):
for a short story reading. If you're going to drop
off here, though, be sure to continue following us at
Paperbackwarrior dot com. Reviews nearly every day, and podcast episode
news and video alerts. Thanks for listening, and we'll see
you back here in two weeks. And for those of
you sticking around, my last order of business today is
reading a short story by Steve Frasy titled The Death Hunter.
(30:16):
It was published in the nineteen fifty two issue of
Adventure Magazine. It ties into our feature on deer hunter
horror and the idea of a deer hunter being hunted himself.
So let's get down the business with the Death Hunter.
During the final moments before the train gathered its slack
to start north, Arnold Davidson held fear out of his voice,
(30:37):
if not his eyes, he asked, And if you find
that he's going to jump the country? What then? Little
ridges of flesh pinched over the fine white lines at
the corners of Stuart Buchanan's gray eyes, and he didn't
meet Davidson's look. I don't know for sure. Davidson raised
one hand as if to drag his friend off the
coach steps, and then he withdrew the hand and let
(30:57):
it fall it aside. The police have cleared Roy's sergeant.
Remember that couplings bang, metal jarred, and the train began
to move. Davidson walked in the cinders beside the steps.
There's really no evidence that he shot McKee. The police
are still Sometimes the law wants too much evidence. Bucannon's
brown face was harsh, one big work. Hard in hand,
(31:20):
gripped the guardrail firmly. His eyes looked past the tiny
station toward Wheatfield's glowing in the sun. The hard cast
of his deadly bitterness lay around him like four walls.
Davidson was running. Don't lose your head, stew Let the
police do their work. Shep McKee carried me down to
the beach and out to the boat at the pee,
(31:40):
Buchannan said tonelessly. Davidson was sprinting hard, I know, but
he stopped running. The coach went past, and Buchannan did
not look back. Part of Davidson's last shout came to him,
I'll get you word if they wind, and the rattle
of steel killed the rest Stewart. Buchannan took his pack
and case rifle and went into the coach where Roy Sargant,
(32:02):
given a clean slate by the police, and the death
of Shepherd McKee was riding north on a hunting trip.
Sergeant was the tall, deep chested man, alone in a
seat near the front of the coach. His skull seemed
too small for the rest of him, an impression heightened
by the way short, dark ringlets of hair lay close
to his head, as if damp with perspiration from flat
(32:23):
black machine gunner eyes. He gave Buchanan a curious glance
as the latter passed. The coach wasn't crowded. Buchannan took
a seat near the rear of the car and tried
to keep his eyes off the back of Sergeant's head.
So Sergeant was going hunting. Davidson had accepted that, even
though he said it was the first time Sergeant had
been known to go after big game. Sergeant was a
(32:44):
great one for birds, though it had been peasants that
day two weeks ago, when Shep McKee had asked him
politely not to hunt the field where the sheep were,
Sergeant made several insulting remarks about farmers who thought they
owned everything that happened to light on their land. He
admitted at the hearing that mcckee had been paid up
to a point until mckey's slow grinned so infuriated sergeant
(33:04):
that he started a fight. Although handicapped by the stiffness
of a broken elbow, McKee had given Sergeant a thumping
and forbidden him to hunt on the farm any longer.
There had been a great deal of shooting on McKee's
land that afternoon, particularly where a six acre pea field
buttered against high willows along a ditch bank. Approximately two
hours after the fight, two hunters had seen Sergeant come
(33:26):
from the willows and run through the pea vines towards
his automobile on the road. They said that they had
heard one shot just before Sergeant burst from cover. They
weren't sure just how close he had been to the
place in the willows, where a few minutes later, another
hunter whose gun showed the head taken a shot that
afternoon found Shep McKee dying from a shotgun charge fired
at close range. Sergeant had quit running by then was
(33:48):
kicking at tangled weeds and long grass along a fence road,
still moving towards his automobile. The man who found m
Key began to shout for help. Sergeant kept moving away,
claiming afterward that the wind and distance had muted the
yelling until he thought it no more than the plea
of a hunter calling to his partner for aid and
finding a downed bird. He said he had run from
the willows in pursuit of a wounded pheasant he had
(34:10):
almost stepped on just two days before. The police had
given Sergeant a clean bill. Now he was running out,
taking the least obvious route under the pretense of going hunting.
What if the police had cleared him after two weeks
of thinking a sneaks own feeling of guilt would lead
him to take a sneak's way out even when he
didn't have to. That would be the final damning bit
of evidence, the mere additional speck that Buchanan needed. He
(34:33):
forced himself to take his eyes from Sergeant's back. He
kept telling himself that he didn't know for sure what
he planned to do, and he knew that he lied.
He knew what he intended to do. All that was
left was how, and he wouldn't be a sneak's way.
He'd face Sergeant manned a man, let him know what
the score was, and give him an honest chance. He'd
do it for Sheep mc keee, whose blackened face had
(34:55):
been blank with pain, whose shattered arm dripped blood into
the sea, while Stuart Buchnnon lay helpless on his shoulder,
and the little boat drifted further away on the dark water.
And then he was looking at sergeant again, and Sergeant
was twisted around in his seat, studying Buchannan curiously. The
dark haired man smiled tentatively, then rose and came down
the aisle, swaying with the train, gripping the backs of seats.
(35:18):
Somewhere behind him, Buchanan heard the conductor talking to a
woman with children. A little child cried pretty. The conductor
laughed and said she likes these brass buttons. Sergeant stopped
at Buchanon's seat and smiled. It was a twisted grimace,
Buchanan thought, twisted and crafty, but he received it dispassionately.
His anger had gone now and the heat of it
had tempered a sharp edge inside him. Sergeant said, I
(35:41):
see you're going up for some of the big stuff.
Bucannan nodded. The sergeant looked like a man with a high,
quick temper and unsteady sort of fellow when the pressure
was on. That would be worth remembering. You've been around
town two or three days, haven't you Sergeant asked with Davidson.
Caution rose in Buchanon. He nodded again, thought I'd seen you,
(36:01):
and I noticed him aout the train a minute ago.
Sergeant glanced at the rifle case in the rack above Buchannon.
Isn't that Davidson's uh huh? I barred it for this trip,
great fellow, Davidson, Sergeant said, we used to hunt birds together.
Every A shadow crossed his face and his thoughts switched abruptly. No,
Bucannon thought, Davidson will never hunt with you again. This
(36:24):
is my first big game, try, Sergeant said. He looked
at Buchannon's big hands, at the steady gray eyes with
the white lines at the corners. How much do you
depend on a guide? Or are they just all racketeers
that depends on the guide? I suppose? Sergeant smiled, You
got a good one lined up. Bucannon shook his head.
I decided to make this trip on the spur of
(36:44):
the moment. Sergeant ducked his head and raised his brows
as he looked out of the window. I've got one,
hired at little Bear. For several moments he watched fields
sweet pass, and then he looked at buchannan, I was
thinking we could throw in together. You're a friend of
Davidson's and all. He left the proposal dangling. He's smarter
than he looks, Buchanan thought. But even if Sergeant had
(37:05):
read the truth in Buchanan's face a few moments before,
or had guessed it from the relationship with Davidson, nothing
was going to help him if he tried to skip
the country. Such a shame. The woman was telling the
conductor to go through that terrible fighting and then be
killed in a hunting accident on his own farm. Sergeant's
face went bleak and hard. He looked warily at Buchanan
(37:27):
and seemed on the verge, and withdrawing quickly sit down.
Buchanan said, let's talk your idea. Over three miles above
the settlement of Little Bear, which sat at the upper
end of Mirror Lake, Buchannon lay on a hillside lashed
with clover, and watched a mother black bear providing fish
for her two cubs, and a little boggy flat below.
Wading up a narrow stream overhung with long brown grass.
(37:48):
The old she bear hurled, shining geysers and gleaming trout
onto the banks snuffling at the water. Her coat agleam
with wet. In the late afternoon, sun shakespored under the banks,
drove the fish ahead into clear water, and blasted them
out with incredibly quick sweeps of her palls. The cups
snarled and pounced and feasted. For three days now, the
cannon had spent his days less than a half mile
(38:09):
from the camp in a clearing at the junction of
the two small streams. Each day had seen the bears
once stripping berry bushes, one afternoon, ripping rotten logs apart
on a hill where new growth was rising above an
old burn, and to day fishing. He had no interest
in killing a harmless black bear, even if there had
been no other thoughts than hunting on his mind. So far,
(38:29):
he hadn't targeted the rifle that lay beside him. From
where he lay, he could watch the trail in a
narrow valley that opened on his right to timber spotted
hills beyond behind him. Higher up, the pines were dense.
On the opposite slope, a rocky spine rose almost sheer
and bare diji. The guide from Little Bear and Sergeant
always went up valley. It was unlikely Bucannon thought that
(38:51):
sergeant would make go wide detour around this Vanash point
to reach Little Bear and Mirror Lake, where there was
an amphibian for hire. It was very unlikely, since Buchanan
had given Djrie fifty dollars to prevent that sort of move,
telling the quiet, sharp eyed little guide that sergeant must
not be allowed to stray because he was a rank
novus out on its first wood strip. Not Thatddri hadn't
known from that moment he had met the two men
(39:13):
at the station fifteen miles from Little Bearditri had taken
the money and nodded his quick black eyes, shooting questions
that he didn't ask the guide. It was no Foolddri
had taken the money and nodded, his quick black eyes,
shooting questions that he didn't ask The guide was no fool.
He'd brought in two men, and he'd go out with
two men. Or know the reason why, Not that Buchannan
(39:34):
intended to conceal his actions when the time came, but
he wanted no interference. He watched the black Bear explode
another fish from the water. She went ashore to eat it,
beating the cubs away. Buchannon's thoughts came back to Sergeant.
So far, Sergeant had given no indication that he knew
what lay in Buchanan's mind. But he must have wondered
why he had a hunting partner who always went alone
(39:55):
and after the others had left. Suppose Sergeant hadn't intended
to leave the country at all. A Cannon considered that thought.
It had crept up on him several times in the
last three days, and each time he beat it back
with the fact that he had seen a glimpse of
an unusually large number of big notes and Sergeant's wallet
when they were buying supplies WITHDDRI. No man out hunting
would be likely to carry a huge sum of money
(40:16):
with him. Oh, Sergeant intended to run away, sure enough?
It was playing a crafty waiting game. It might require
a little pressure to flush him out, a slight forcing
of the issue, but he'd break sooner or later. The
old bear stopped fishing. She sat up in the water,
stiffing the air, looking up valley. Then she scrambled from
the stream and began to move quickly towards the forest.
(40:38):
One cup followed, the others loitered, snuffing in the dead grass.
Where fish had been. He was still there five minutes later,
when Deitrie and Sergeant passed on a trail a hundred
yards from him. They saw him and Sergeant started to
raise his gun. Didrie said no, no, with his head
in one hand. Sergeant lowered the rifle and the two
men went on. When they were out of sight in
(40:59):
the trees, buck Cannon followed. He scared the cub from
the stream, and it ran to the edge of the timber,
where it climbed five or six feet to the crotch
of a small tree, clinging there as if in complete safety.
While I watched Buchanan go. Sergeant was sullen in camp
that evening. After supper. He complained, there's no game here.
Three days of tramping and we see one cub bear.
(41:20):
He looked at Ditre. What did you do pick an
easy place to get to? There's game here, Ddri said quietly.
It takes patience. It is not like the old days.
Game here patience. Sergeant turned away in disgust for the
time and money this has cost so far. We should
have been overrun by game. Deitri shrugged. If you wish,
(41:41):
we can try another place. I like it here myself.
Bulcanon said, I don't want to move right now. He
looked at sergeant. But you two could go back to
the lake and try the country west of there for
a few days if you want to, that is, he
watched sergeant narrowly. Some of the temper went from Sergeant's
face after a while. Who he said, No use to
(42:01):
split up, even if you don't take much interest in hunting.
We could all move or stay together. Maybe Dtree's right,
Maybe we've just had a bad run of luck here,
he knows. Buchanan thought the decision will have to be
pushed on him. When Sergeant was at the stream getting
a drink, Buchanan said to Ddri, you heard on the
radio about the man killed two weeks ago south of here.
(42:23):
Dedri took his pipe from his mouth. I heard ask
about it. After a while. Ddre nodded slowly, his eyes unreadable,
washing through the drift of smoke and curling flametips. Buchanan
saw Sergeant's expression turn from quick defense to bleakness when
the guide asked, did he ever find out who killed
the farmer down where you fellows live? His eyes dark
(42:46):
hollows in the firelight, his lips twisted his teeth, gleaming whitely.
Sergeant raised his head to look squarely at Buchanan. The
police haven't found out yet, he said, One day they will,
or the men who caused that accident will confess. His
voice was low and toneless, as one being either from
bitter resignation or desperate hope. The silent trees behind them,
(43:09):
the play of firelight on their faces, the night in
wilderness about them, all that made dissembling almost impossible. Buchanan
thought then too. The flat, dull tone of Sergeant's voice
gave strength to the thought that he had spoken from
hope instead of fear. Dedree's black eyes watched bucchanan quietly.
Sergeant dropped his gaze to stare into the fire. Some
(43:30):
time later, Sergeant said, maybe, after all, if we have
no luck tomorrow, I'll go with Dree west of the lake.
Bucannon's gray eyes were cold and unwavering as he looked
across the flames at the dark ringlets on Sergeant's lower head.
He was half smiling when he said, try it, sergeant,
if you think the move is worthwhile. In the furry
hours of darkness, while he lay awake in his sleeping bag.
(43:52):
Doubt came once more to Stuart Buchanan. Over and over
he fought to keep alive the picture of Sergeant running
through the sear and fallen peava, but the vision of
an key dying in the willows by the ditch did
not come. He always saw mc keee staggering on the
surf with a wounded man on one great broad shoulder.
Sometimes the little boat rose and fell and drifted farther
and further away on the dark water, but mc keee
(44:15):
kept struggling toward it. Sergeant was not sleeping well either.
Bucannon saw the blossoming of matches and the glow of cigarettes,
one after another, and once he roused from a doze
to see Sergeant standing by a rebuilt fire, looking toward
the blackness of the forest. They were quite late in
starting up valley the next morning. Bucnnon gave the other
to their customary lead and then headed for his observation point.
(44:38):
He heard a lone shot from somewhere ahead. When he
came from timber to a clearing, he saw Diitre and
Sergeant several hundred yards above him on the clover hill side.
They yelled and waved their arms, but their words did
not come distinctly. Moments later, against a rotting log, he
found a dead cup, still warm and bleeding. It was
probably the independent little fellow that had stayed by the
creek the day before when its brother and its mother
(45:00):
fled into the trees, he thought bitterly. He picked it
up and stared savagely at the two upon the great hill.
Ddri would not have allowed this if he could have
prevented it, that miserable, murderous sergeant. For a breath of time,
his anger blinded him to his danger, and then he
realized why the pair had been shouting. He was still
holding the cob. When he turned to look at the
timber ahead. The old she bear came from it. She
(45:23):
saw him and stopped. She reared and sniffed. Then she
dropped on all four feet and faced him with her
head lowered between the bulge of shoulders. In the instant
left to him for decision, his brain churned with a thought,
I didn't do this. He wanted to shout it at
the bear to make her understand, and the same reason
that prompted the wish told him brutally that he had
to run or kill. He dropped the cub and raised
(45:45):
his rifle. Pinched at the corners, his eyes looked down
the cold steel tube. The black bear did not move.
He lowered the rifle, stepped backward over the log, and
began to retreat slowly. Step by step, he moved back,
realizing that the wind was in his face. The bear
and might not have scended the blood of her dead
cub yet. And then she charged, bellowing. Buchannon went back
(46:06):
one more step. His right foot dropped into a stump
rotted hole. He fell, twisting himself to light on hands
and knees. The sharp, flat blast of rifles came from
the hill. He heard the enraged clamoring of the bear.
Resting on one knee, he swung his rifle around. The
bear's charge had carried her past the dead cub, and
then she had gone back. She was snuffling at her offspring.
(46:27):
Now she cuffed it gently and whined plaintively. Leaf molds
splashed around her from bullets off the hill. She sprang
to slash at the movements with her fore paws, snarling
and biting where the missiles had struck. Buchannon rose and
backed into the timber. The firing from the hill stopped.
A few minutes later, the she bear shambled in the
direction from which she had come, her second cub joining
(46:48):
her at the edge of the forest. Why didn't you
shoot at the very first, Sergeant asked, when the three
men met on the hill side. There's been enough killing.
Buchanan frowned at himself thoughts of killing. He said, he
felt like one whose head is suddenly clear after a
long fever. I wanted to yell at that bear to
make her understand some way that I hadn't harmed her cub.
(47:10):
It was an idiot's trick I did to kill that cub,
Sergeant said, Ddrie made me go up the hill to
get in the clear. We tried to warn you. B
Cannon didn't seem to hear. I almost cried out to
her to understand. But there I was, with all the
guilt forced on me. There I stood accused of murder,
and every indication pointed to mine. He stopped suddenly and
(47:31):
gave Sergeant an odd look. I know, Sergeant said, bitterly,
I know exactly how you felt. He stared into the
clover at his feet. Davidson must have told you what
they said about mc key and me. His mouth was
twisted and his eyes were bleak when he raised his
head to look across the valley. I know how you felt,
but that was only a bear you had to face
(47:52):
for the first time. Buchan had read right the expression
on Sergeant's face bleakness, the aftermath of defiance that tries
to high despair. Sergeant had not killed McKee. Buchannan knew
it with far more a sureness than he had felt
in holding sergeant guilty. He knew one thing more Sergeant
had never known. The evil coiled and pulsing in Buchannon's mind.
(48:13):
Dedre's intelligent black eyes were studying in Buchanan. You want
to hunt with us now, the guide asked gently. Dedri
had known Thitrie had guessed correctly. Maybe tomorrow, Buchanan said,
right now, I'm gonna make camp before noon. Arnold Davison
walked in the camp. He glanced at the three sleeping
bags and gave Buchanan a quick, worried look. He's hunting
(48:34):
with the guide, Buchanan said. Davidson slipped his pack and
sat down on it quickly, as if his joints were
loose and his muscles jerking with fatigue. They told me
a little bear where your guide generally took his parties.
He lit a cigarette and studied Buchanan's face. A moment,
you're yourself again, I see. I'm glad Stu. The man
who accidentally shot McKee gave himself up three days ago.
(48:57):
Sergeant said he might David and stared around a fire
at night. You could read a man's face, Buckchannon said.
Last night I knew Sergeant wasn't guilty, but I didn'tmit
it until today. He told Davidson about the bear and
watched his friend's face turn white. You hadn't tried the rifle,
Davidson asked. Buckannon shook his head. I'd fixed the firing pin,
(49:20):
so wouldn't shoot before I lent it to you. It
was childish, I know, but it was all I could
think of to try and stop you. The Good Lord
takes care of everything, including bears and madmen, Bucannon said simply.
Davidson stood up. He wasn't tired down. He hadn't been
physically tired. When he dropped limply on his pack, he smiled.
I bought a replacement. While we're here, we may as
(49:40):
well stay awhile and hunt. So there you have it,
The Death Hunter by Steve Frazy. It was hard for
me to really kind of put this one in the
deer Hunter horror niche but in the story they didn't
really say what they were hunting. It could have been deer, elk,
could have been mule deer, could have been bear. Maybe
they were just out shooting game and general. So I
(50:01):
kind of put it into this episode thinking it maybe
fits a little bit. Hope it did. Hope you enjoyed
the story. I always like Steve Frazy's writing, and I
really like that story and how the guilt kind of
looks at it. You can kind of look at guilt
from two different directions, which was really neat. But anyway,
I hope you enjoyed this episode and stick around. In
two more weeks, I'll have another episode up, which may
(50:22):
be the final one for this year as we get
into the December holidays. I'll probably come back again in
January with more episodes, but we've got one more left
in the tank in two weeks, so stick around for
that and again follow us on Facebook, be sure to
subscribe on YouTube, and we'll catch you next time. Enjoy
whatever it is you're doing
Welcome to another exciting episode of the Paperback Warrior podcast.
I'm Eric and I'm your host for this wild and
wooly adventure through vintage paperback books. This podcast directly connects
to the Paperbackwarrior dot com blog, where you can find
hundreds of reviews, as well as the recorded prior episodes
of this very show. Okay, so today's episode is really
(00:42):
really cool and I'm excited about it. I've been planning
something like this for months. So based on the episode's title,
you're probably asking what the heck is deer hunter horror. Well,
today's feature looks at a subgenre of action adventure fiction
that features deer hunters or deer hunting trips. This niche
genre typically features the deer hunters hunting human prey, targeting
(01:05):
each other, or becoming a target by some outrageous lunatic
or clan of people. I'm going over to this neat
little concept and providing reviews of books that I've read
in the past and some new ones that I've most
recently read to prepare for this podcast episode. In addition
to those fun reviews, I'm going to lay a new
historical adventure book on you called East India. Man. It
(01:26):
was just recently published in the author is Griff Hosker.
He's become a phenom of self publishing, and I've been
digging his books of late. So I'm going to review
that book for you. Also, I'm going to read a
short story to you today called The Death Hunter, and
that ties into our feature. That story is by the
always reliable Steve Frazy and it was published in Adventure
magazine in nineteen fifty two. But recently I took a
(01:50):
trip south to central Florida, just east of Orlando to
scope out a store there called Cliffs. Now. I went
in this store a few years ago, and it's just okay.
I journeyed back to the store in spring of twenty
twenty three and found that it improved some, with a
lot more inventory and a huge wall that had expanded
with more Crime to War inserted to what was otherwise
(02:13):
just a massive collection of bagged science fiction books. My
wife and I were in town to see a Dragula play,
which was very good, but we had a half day
to kill, so we hit this Cliffs store again. My god,
this place is basically one large room and then one
very narrow room. The first thing you need to know
about Cliffs is that the owner is one of us.
(02:36):
He loves vintage books, and I believe he thinks of
the store as his own personal collection. The previous two
times I've been in there, the owner was gone. From
what I gathered, the owner of the store travels around
the country to auctions and he buys old stuff. Now,
when I say old stuff, I mean anything pop culture.
(02:56):
His store is completely stuffed with old toys, lunch boxes,
action figures, beverage glasses, models, and of course, loads and
loads of books. There are so many books here that
the shelving system has been nearly abandoned. There are large
banker boxes of books stacked nearly floor to ceiling in
(03:17):
the back of the narrow room. The other room has
boxes of books just laying on the floor due to
the shelves overflowing with books. There's one large table or
group of tables that have book boxes on top of them,
and under the table it is completely stuffed with boxes
of books. Now, this store has a robust comic, magazine
and graphic novel inventory on top of fiction books, and
(03:40):
it also has a lot of nonfiction books. The nonfiction
stuff is about books, music, pop culture, the wild West,
the film industry, and so forth. So it's really a
nerd junkie paradise. Now I have a companion video to
this podcast with photos and videos of my trip to Cliffs.
You have to watch watch this video. You'll find it
(04:01):
on our YouTube channel today. But just to give you
an idea, there were boxes there of Robert E. Howard paperbacks.
There were hardcover editions of Howard's books as well as
including four or five long boxes filled with Savage sort
of Conan magazines. There's a huge selection of Edgar Reis
Burrough's books in both paperback and hardcover. The Ace Double
(04:24):
science fiction selection was one massive wall, with all the
books in bags sleeves. There were westerns and murder mysteries
from the early to mid twentieth century by the likes
of False Gold, Medal, Dell, Paperback Library, Graphic, Bantam, Pyramid, Lancer, Balantine,
and Doll, just to name the ones that I remember.
If I was describing this store on social media, I
(04:47):
could use the hashtags Conan, Morecock, the Spider Doc, Savage,
Night Writer, Ace Doubles, map Backs, Laser sci Fi, l
Queen Doctor Who, James Bond, pulp fiction, gore swamp thing
call the green Hornet and stuff like John McDonald or
(05:10):
Alistair McLane or Ross McDonald or Nick Carter or reck Style.
You get the idea. Displaces a paradise. Watch my video
to see the absolute insanity of cliffs. Okay, how about
we jump from the cliff right into this feature. I've
got a lot to present to you in this feature.
Pack your bags into the big, old scary forest of
(05:32):
today's wild Wild feature. I'm gonna hit some music. Okay.
So today's feature has some distinct parameters that you need
to know and understand before we embark on this paperback journey. So,
deer hunter horror is a term that I'm using to
(05:53):
describe this niche subgenre of action adventure, and it's just
that it involves deer hunt that experience some sort of horror. Now,
you might be saying to yourself that this genre could
just include things like man hunts through the wilderness, or
it could be those safari type of books that involve
big game hunters stalking savage beast. That isn't what we're
(06:14):
talking about here. We're also not talking about the most
dangerous game concept of where humans hunt humans in a
remote area for pleasure. That isn't it either. So the
classics of those particular types of genres, the big game
hunter books, the man on the Run, in the forest books,
the battle royale types of stories, we're eliminating those works.
(06:35):
So in your mind, just remove books like First Blood
or the Story Most Dangerous Game, or even books like
Deliverance or Roque Mail. It doesn't fit this niche. So
you're probably thinking, what in the heck even fits the niche? Then,
So the concept is that deer hunters are involved in
the books and stories of this deer hunter horror subgenre.
(06:58):
These deer hunters are in the forest and joy the
average hunting trip traditions, that is, mostly groups of people,
predominantly groups of middle aged men, on a hunting trip
and casually searching for deer. They camp in tents, they
drink beer, and they tell fun stories of the good
old days while complaining about their normal nine to five existence.
But in those books and stories, something goes wrong. A
(07:21):
common situation is where one of the hunters turns on
another hunter and tries to kill them or other members
of the hunting party. Sort of the disgruntold hunter who
has reached some sort of boiling point in his life
that leads to homicide with his fellow hunters. Surprisingly, there
are a lot of novels and stories that have this
as a main plot point. Other examples of deer hunter
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horror can also be the hunters running into danger in
the forest that involves supernatural elements or monsters, or backwoods
redneck lunatics as opposed to just backwoods rednecks, which I've
occasionally been described as in my younger days, or other
murderers that either live in the fourth or just using
the force as a hunting ground to kill deer hunters.
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There are a ton of novels and stories that feature
this sort of thing. It's important to note that deer
hunter horror has to obviously involve deer hunting or hunters.
The easiest way to think of it is if you
took James Dickey's nineteen seventy Deliverance novel and just modified it.
In that book, a group of men are in the
forest on a rafting trip and they stumble across craze
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rednecks that attempt to rape and kill them. Just replace
rafting trip with deer hunting trip and you'll get deer
Hunter horror. It may seem silly to isolate such a
specific thing like this, but as I've read more and
more books through the years, I can clearly see this
as a recurring plot involving deer hunters. Maybe you've seen
it too. Now. Before I dive into reviews of deer
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Hunter Horror books, which is the book of this feature,
I wanted to note that I can't really date when
this sort of genre started, nor can I trace it
back to any particular origin. My guess is that the
centuries of literature all in some sort of element of
this niche. Early novels about skirmishes and wars fought in
the wilderness or at least heavily forested areas, eventually spilled
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into action adventure novels of men hunting animals on land
and in the sea. Of course, Western fiction novels often
feature cowboys or mountain men in the wild, battling other men, animals,
harsh elements, or native people. Hunting in general became popularized
in glossy magazines and boys books in the early twentieth century,
and are still popular to this day, which also meant
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that hunting stories, skirmishes and so forth, were popular to
tell around the campfire or garage. I will say that
the majority of the books I'm discussing were published here
in the nineteen seventies and probably marketed and or influenced
with the timing of James Dickey's Deliverance novel, which, by
the way, was published in nineteen seventy with a successful
film in nineteen seventy two. Now I can remember as
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a kid I went to the same barber shop for
sixteen years. My dad went there and he took me along,
and it was a men's bar barbershop with five men
that cut hair and talk to the room about deer
hunting and fishing. This was an old school Southern barbershop,
and occasionally these hunting stories would get really interesting and
intense when one of the men would complain about how
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another hunter nearly shot him, or how another hunter invaded
his hunting spot and killed a trophy deer right out
from under him. I could sense even back then that
hunting trips could become dangerous when these loud, obnoxious men,
possibly fueled on old Milwaukee beer, got angry with each other.
I even remember on my own hunting trips the shouting
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matches and competitive edge my family and friends had when
it came to stalking and killing some prize buck. Now
I can specifically remember my dad being accused once of
stepping over a fence onto some other hunting club's land.
The argument was so intense that my dad ended up
giving his rifle to another hunter as a show of
good faith that he never meant to intrude on their
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land and just happened to miss the fence that have
to be torn down and half buried in the dirt.
The men gave the gun back to my dad at
the bottom of the mountain, but confessed to him later
that they were going to destroy the gun and beat
the shit out of him before calling it a day.
This is just crazy stuff that can happen on hunting trips.
To this day, I have two uncles that absolutely hate
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each other. They refuse to speak to each other due
to a bear hunting incident decades ago. These are grown
men that are brothers now in their seventies that refuse
to have a relationship with each other over a bear.
It's nuts. So with that being said, let's get down
some specific works of fiction that are clear examples of
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deer hunter horror. The first one is a book I
just recently read titled High Hunt. It was published in
nineteen seventy three and was authored by fantasy writer David Eddings.
This book was one of only two novels Eddings wrote
outside of the fantasy genre. As a side note, Eddings
wrote the book while in prison serving time over child abuse.
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Now High Hunt is written in first person narrative by
Dan Alders. Dan has just been recently discharged from the
army and he's kind of in between the life journeys
from being a soldier to going back to being a
full time college student. In his downtime, he decides to
reconnect with his brother in Washington State. The two have
been estranged for years and never were really close. Now
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Dan visits with his brother and finds him married with
kids living in a trailer court. Dan's brother drinks beer
and works at a pawnshop, and as weeks go by,
the two become close and Dan meets all of his
brother's outlandish friends. This group includes a wealthy guy that
cheats on his wife, there's a Vietnam veteran that is
clearly suffering from PTSD, and this nerdy guy with a
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demanding wife. The book's first half is dedicated to character development.
Dan learns that there are secrets being shared by the
men concerning other men in the little group, like who's
cheating on who with whose wife? And who owes money
to who who? And who works for who and so forth.
There's lots of tight, hidden strings connecting this group. Dan's
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brother decides a hunting trip into the high peaks would
be a great bonding time and a way to kick back,
drink a lot of beer and complain about the old
ball and chain. So the group hire a guide and
they go on a week long hunting trip. Once these
hunters get into the wilderness, far from civilization, unchecked emotions
leads to some animosity between each other. The Vietnam vet
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hints to the nerdy God that he's banging his wife,
So seeds are planted and things begin to spiral out
of control. Eventually, Dan spots the nerdy dude crawling through
the brush and taking a rifle shot at the vet.
This is the perfect example of deer hunter horror hunters
turning on hunters. Granted, High Hunt is more of a
literary novel, and why not, we consider a fantastic American novel,
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but it has that deer hunter element gluing the story altogether.
How the hunters behave and respond when one of them
turns on the other with intent. Again, that book is
called High Hunt by David Eddings, and you should read
that book. Another example is The Hunting Shack, a nineteen
seventy nine paperback authored by Gunnard Landers. In this book,
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six average men venture into the wilderness on an annual
deer hunting trip. Like High Hunt, a rivalry exists between
the men on who can kill the biggest deer and
drink the most beer. One of the men in the group,
a guy named Glenn, goes hunting on his own one
early morning and purposely shoots and kills two other hunters. Later,
as the narrative develops, Glenn begins to pick his next target,
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which is one of the men on the hunting trip
with him. The locale for this book is Wisconsin, and
there's plenty of snowstorms and wilderness survival to etch some
other obstacles into this deer hunter hord tale. Again, this
book is called The Hunting Shack from nineteen seventy nine
written by Gennard Landers, and it was great Now author
Clark Howard used deer hunter horror as an an element
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in his nineteen seventy eight paperback titled The Hunters. In
this novel, four men participate in a deer hunting trip
in Nevada every year. In the book's first half, readers
learned that these four men really hate each other, and
each of the four characters has a chip on his shoulder.
One guy is wearing women's panties while dealing with the
fact that his wife is having an affair. Another guy
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is so stressed out that he has bleeding ulcers. Another
guy despises his own wife and is sleeping with a
wife of one of the four men. Another guy is
a pharmaceutical rep that's selling drugs illegally. There are things
going on behind the scenes. As tensions rise through suspicion
and motive, the group begin to turn on each other.
Now in this novel, the deer hunter horror aspect is
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the central portion of the novel. The four end up
leaving the forest later, and the novel's finale features the
men battling over things that happened on the hunting trip. Again.
This was The Hunters from nineteen seventy eight by Clark Howard.
All right, so let's just switch it up just a
little bit here. A book called called snow Blind was
published in twenty twelve. It was authored by horror novelist
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Michael McBride. In this book, college buddies gather for their
annual deer hunting trip into the Colorado Rockies. On the hunt,
one of the men ends up sliding on the rocky
slope and shatters his leg during an intense snowfall. The
men end up having to carry their fallen friend through
the woods until they can find an abandoned cabin. As
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the hunters are trying to figure out what to do,
they see some warnings carved into the house's wooden exterior.
The warnings suggests that there's some sort of creature or
monster in this part of the forest that hunts humans. Soon,
the men find themselves hunted by something in the forest. Now,
McBride does a pretty good job of keeping the enemy
hidden from the reader. The joy of the book is
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trying to determine what it is that is hindering these
poor deer hunters. I especially like the gunplay as the
men try to fire at the creature while trying to
run The bolt faster and faster in their rifle. I
thought this was a really cool detail that some of
these deer hunter horror novels don't necessarily describe bolt action
rifles are cumbersome in a firefight again. This novel is
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called Snowblind, written by Michael McBride and published in twenty twelve.
A sequel to this book also exists titled Sun Blind,
which I've never read. One of the most popular deer
hunter horror novels of all time is Hunter's Blood by
jar Cunningham. The book was released in nineteen seventy seven
by Faucet Gold Medal. In this book, four suburbanites gather
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every year for an annual deer hunting trip in the
different part of the country. This time, it's a four
hundred acre stretch of wilderness in Arkansas that's closed to
the public. But when the group get into the woods
and secure a camp site, they discover piles of animal
heads and intrails. Later, the group shockingly finds a makeshift
camping area that's occupied by these Neanderthal people that gut
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animals in play with bones and skulls. The hunters end
up clashing with these strange and downright tearing forest dwellers. Eventually,
the narrative turns into the hunters themselves being hunted by
these backwoods in bred cannibals. I'd say comparisons could be
made to the nineteen seventy four film Texas Chainsaw Massacre
and nineteen seventy seven's The Hills Have Eyes. The book
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was also adapted into a film that just wasn't very good.
But this novel is an absolute classic, and I encourage
you to read it again. The book is titled Hunter's
Blood by J. Cunningham. The Only Good Indians was published
in twenty twenty and authored by Stephen Graham Jones. In
this book, the time shifts from present to past as
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readers experience four men hunting on their Native American reservation.
The four eventually end up crossing over into a sacred
part of the reservation that's dedicated to the reservation's elders.
They aren't traditionally or legally allowed to hunt there. The
men kill deer, in this case, elk on this sacred
ground and learned that one of the animals was pregnant.
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They bury the introls in the fetus, and then the
book returns to present day. However, what the men did
on the Sacred Ground comes back to haunt them. They
believe the spirit of the Elk is now haunting them
due to their hunt on this restricted area. Now I
haven't read this particular novel, but it does get rave reviews.
I consider it another perfect example of deer hunter horror. Again,
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the book is called The Only Good Indians and it's
by Stephen Graham Jones. Open Season is another book that
I considered deer hunter horror, even though it violates one
of my rules. I'll explain that Open Season began life
as the novel The All Americans by David Osborne. Now,
Osborne wrote the book and the screenplay, and it was
purchased by Columbia Pictures. The title was changed to Open
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Season and the novel was published under that title in
various formats. That movie starred popular actor Peter Fonda. In
other parts of the world, that film is also titled
Recon Game. Now, in the Open Season book, it introduced
this is three college buddies who take an annual trip
into the Wisconsin forest to hunt deer and people. So
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the deal is that these three guys aren't Greg and
Kin take this sabbatical hunting trip to drink beer, kill
deer in other wildlife, and rape a woman. Now here's
the part that's going to violate my rule. These three
men kidnap a man and a woman each year, typically
a couple of lovers, and they take them into the
wilderness to hunt them. So it is the most dangerous game,
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just changed slightly. That part doesn't count for this niche,
but it totally does because while these three men are
out hunting deer as well as the two people they've
captured as targets, another mysterious hunter in the forest is
hunting the hunters. So the niche is that deer hunters
are being targeted and hunted. In the book, the three
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men capture a man and woman who are secretly having
an affair away from the tranquill married life. They leave
their spouses behind for a short vacation into the woods
to do the nasty, but the two are targeted at
a motel by Art, greg and Kin and hauled out
into the Wisconsin wilderness. There, they shackle the man in
the kitchen and then convince the woman to consent to
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have sex with all three men repeatedly. She goes along
with it, thinking that she will just befriend them and
then she can escape when every things get really awful.
She even likes the whole ordeal when she gets going
with the men. But on day two, the three give
each of the victims a twenty minute head start to
run into the wilderness and commence to being chased. The
three men, of course have rifles, and the victims, of
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course have twigs and branches. Totally fair, kind of like
deer hunting. But once the chase ensues, another hunter, unknown
to the reader, begins hunting these three hunters. It's a savage,
violent book at two hundred and sixty seven paperback pages,
and definitely not for the squeamish. There's graphic sex with
faces and heads being shot off, but the book is
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really good at about page one twenty and the pace
never slows down. The narrative is a riveting read and
was just entertaining as heck. Again, this is Open Season
by David Osborne. Another book that fits the niche is
Deer Hunt by Peter Lefcourt. This book was published by
Pyramid in nineteen seventy six. Now, in this book, two
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brothers named Sid and Dave are reaching this high tension
era in their relationship. They live in a small town
in northern Vermont. After their father dies, these thirty something
aged men take over their father's pharmacy. Sid is the
bookkeeper and basically just runs the business. Dave isn't a
hands on kind of guy, and he doesn't really do
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as much with a store, but he's still getting fifty
percent of the prophets. Now. Sid is a fair honest guy.
He's often asked Dave to sell his half of the business,
but Dave refuses. Now Dave and Sid's wife, Cora, dated
right out of high school. However, Cora fell in love
with Sid, and Dave continued to remain single, living by
himself in a remote farmhouse. Now years ago, Sid and
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Dave would take an annual hunting trip into the wilderness
to kill deer, drink beer, and play rummy. However, Dave
stopped going with Sid and now remains as an elusive
weirdo that spends his time reading gun magazines. In this
weird scenario, Dave accuses Sid of stealing money from the
pharmacy cash register, which is really nuts because Sid has
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much easier ways of stealing money because he runs the books,
so This new hunting trip that Sid is about to
embark on this year runs a foul when Dave volunteers
to go with him. Sid gets the feeling that Dave
is wanting to go deer hunting with him so he
can shoot and kill Sid in a revenge plot to
get the pharmacy to himself and to somehow get Coora back. However,
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things get really really strange when Dave outlines a hunting
map with one side labeled as Dave and one side
labeled as Sid. Dave explains that this hunting trip will
be different because Dave and Sid will and kill each other. Now,
Dave despises Sid so much that he declares that he's
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going to be Sid's killer. Whoever wins and kills the
other will explain to the police that it occurred by
mistake while shooting at a deer. Sid of course, thinks
this is all nuts, but Dave warns him that if
he doesn't participate in this hunt, he's going to come
to Sid's house and just kill him in his sleep,
or at least at a time when he least expects it.
Sid can't live with a fear and paranoia that his
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brother is going to murder him. So he agrees to
this Macob deer hunt so he can at least have
a fighting chance and can finally clear his mind from
the stress. Now you're probably thinking, why doesn't he just
go to the police. This small town has one police
officer and he works as the town's electrician. No dice there,
So this book it works as a high tension hunting
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affair that will more than likely result in someone being
shot at or shot and killed. This book was really,
really good. It had a slow building up in the
book's first half to really kind of set the tone
that these brothers aren't bonded by any means. Great book.
Check it out again. Deer Hunt by Peter Lefcourt. The
last book I wanted to mention is Shoot by Douglas Fairbairn.
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It was published in nineteen seventy three and follows a
formula that should be familiar to you. At this point,
four buddies get together to go hunting. This time it's
in the Canadian wilderness. These four men, with the main
character being Rex, stumble into an area that's already being
hunted by another group of men. The two groups of
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hunters clash and shots are fired. One of the rival
hunters is killed, and Rex and his friends quickly scadattle
out of the forest and return home. However, Rex becomes
paranoid that the rival hunters will find and kill him
and his friends. Now, I haven't read this book, but
I have read great things about it. It seems to
fit perfectly into the confines of this deer Hunter horror
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niche I've presented to you today. All right, So that's
really all the books that I I wanted to mention
today and sort of talk through. I hope you've enjoyed
this feature on deer Hunter Horror. If you know of
any books that fit this particular niche, please let me know.
I'm going to keep adding to my list. This is
a fun little hobby of my book collecting finding these
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books that contain deer hunting episodes, if you will. So,
with that, off our table, last thing left here on
our traditional podcast is to review a book. The book
I chose to review for this episode is a brand
new one that was just published. The title is The
India Man. India Man is one word. The author is
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Griff Hosker, and everywhere I look these days, I'm seeing
his name now Hoskar is a retired English teacher who
picked up writing fiction as a hobby in his post retirement.
That hobby has led to over one hundred and fifty
books pinned by Hoskar, with over twenty five series titles
making up that number. He prefers to be self published
and likes the idea that he can control his own
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editing and keep this business in the family. This was
my first read of a Griff Hosker book. Again, This
is the India Man. In the book's prologue, William introduces
himself to the reader in first person narration. He's a
boy without a family or home. His father died and
his mother moved away to live in Java. As a
wharf rat, William embarks on a life of theft and
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robbery to survive. After a successful string of crimes, he
learns that he chose the wrong victim. A notorious pirate
is now after William to recover what was stolen from him.
With no other recourse, William hides on a ship headed
north of the Canary Islands. In these early chapters, William
navigates this large boat and steals food and water from
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the crew and passengers. However, after stealing a crewman's coat,
William is eventually caught and brought before the captain. Generously,
they ask William to earn his own way by becoming
a hard working crewman working with things like sails and ropes.
The experience humbles William, and he eventually begins to see
that his life could exist without criminal elements. After he
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makes a strong defense against pirates, William is asked to
join a regiment of British troops. It's a type of
special forces made up of former prisoners. This special task
force will work for the East India Company. William accepts
the job, and then East Indiaman really rolls into action.
Through the book second half, William adapts to his new
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role as soldier, horseman, and killer as he grows into
a man. He contends with the rigorous chores of rising
through the ranks while in combat with nefarious village leaders,
the enemy French regiments, and a secret mission to liberate
a missionary family from a stronghold, which was particularly exciting. Honestly,
I wasn't sure how it would feel about Hosker's work
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in the fast and furious pace at which he writes
and publishes as novels is a quantity over quality. Thankfully,
East Indiaman is one of the best contemporary novels I've
read this year. The book is expertly written in the
first person perspective and is presented as an epic adventure
in a convenient two hundred pages. Hoskar successfully removes any
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fluff from his writing and just sticks to the basics.
He tells a great story that's engaging while completely developing
a character that adapts as the page's turn. This was
such a treat to read, considering historical fiction can lose
itself in dense details that surround the plot. For validity,
Hoskar includes a list of his references to substantiate the
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story's locale and period, as well as a brief history
of the East India Company. If you like historical fiction
that doesn't pat itself out to like five hundred pages,
get in the meat and potatoes with this two hundred
pager The Indiaman. You'll be glad you did. And folks,
that is it for the traditional podcast episode. Stick around
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for a short story reading. If you're going to drop
off here, though, be sure to continue following us at
Paperbackwarrior dot com. Reviews nearly every day, and podcast episode
news and video alerts. Thanks for listening, and we'll see
you back here in two weeks. And for those of
you sticking around, my last order of business today is
reading a short story by Steve Frasy titled The Death Hunter.
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It was published in the nineteen fifty two issue of
Adventure Magazine. It ties into our feature on deer hunter
horror and the idea of a deer hunter being hunted himself.
So let's get down the business with the Death Hunter.
During the final moments before the train gathered its slack
to start north, Arnold Davidson held fear out of his voice,
(30:37):
if not his eyes, he asked, And if you find
that he's going to jump the country? What then? Little
ridges of flesh pinched over the fine white lines at
the corners of Stuart Buchanan's gray eyes, and he didn't
meet Davidson's look. I don't know for sure. Davidson raised
one hand as if to drag his friend off the
coach steps, and then he withdrew the hand and let
(30:57):
it fall it aside. The police have cleared Roy's sergeant.
Remember that couplings bang, metal jarred, and the train began
to move. Davidson walked in the cinders beside the steps.
There's really no evidence that he shot McKee. The police
are still Sometimes the law wants too much evidence. Bucannon's
brown face was harsh, one big work. Hard in hand,
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gripped the guardrail firmly. His eyes looked past the tiny
station toward Wheatfield's glowing in the sun. The hard cast
of his deadly bitterness lay around him like four walls.
Davidson was running. Don't lose your head, stew Let the
police do their work. Shep McKee carried me down to
the beach and out to the boat at the pee,
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Buchannan said tonelessly. Davidson was sprinting hard, I know, but
he stopped running. The coach went past, and Buchannan did
not look back. Part of Davidson's last shout came to him,
I'll get you word if they wind, and the rattle
of steel killed the rest Stewart. Buchannan took his pack
and case rifle and went into the coach where Roy Sargant,
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given a clean slate by the police, and the death
of Shepherd McKee was riding north on a hunting trip.
Sergeant was the tall, deep chested man, alone in a
seat near the front of the coach. His skull seemed
too small for the rest of him, an impression heightened
by the way short, dark ringlets of hair lay close
to his head, as if damp with perspiration from flat
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black machine gunner eyes. He gave Buchanan a curious glance
as the latter passed. The coach wasn't crowded. Buchannan took
a seat near the rear of the car and tried
to keep his eyes off the back of Sergeant's head.
So Sergeant was going hunting. Davidson had accepted that, even
though he said it was the first time Sergeant had
been known to go after big game. Sergeant was a
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great one for birds, though it had been peasants that
day two weeks ago, when Shep McKee had asked him
politely not to hunt the field where the sheep were,
Sergeant made several insulting remarks about farmers who thought they
owned everything that happened to light on their land. He
admitted at the hearing that mcckee had been paid up
to a point until mckey's slow grinned so infuriated sergeant
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that he started a fight. Although handicapped by the stiffness
of a broken elbow, McKee had given Sergeant a thumping
and forbidden him to hunt on the farm any longer.
There had been a great deal of shooting on McKee's
land that afternoon, particularly where a six acre pea field
buttered against high willows along a ditch bank. Approximately two
hours after the fight, two hunters had seen Sergeant come
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from the willows and run through the pea vines towards
his automobile on the road. They said that they had
heard one shot just before Sergeant burst from cover. They
weren't sure just how close he had been to the
place in the willows, where a few minutes later, another
hunter whose gun showed the head taken a shot that
afternoon found Shep McKee dying from a shotgun charge fired
at close range. Sergeant had quit running by then was
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kicking at tangled weeds and long grass along a fence road,
still moving towards his automobile. The man who found m
Key began to shout for help. Sergeant kept moving away,
claiming afterward that the wind and distance had muted the
yelling until he thought it no more than the plea
of a hunter calling to his partner for aid and
finding a downed bird. He said he had run from
the willows in pursuit of a wounded pheasant he had
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almost stepped on just two days before. The police had
given Sergeant a clean bill. Now he was running out,
taking the least obvious route under the pretense of going hunting.
What if the police had cleared him after two weeks
of thinking a sneaks own feeling of guilt would lead
him to take a sneak's way out even when he
didn't have to. That would be the final damning bit
of evidence, the mere additional speck that Buchanan needed. He
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forced himself to take his eyes from Sergeant's back. He
kept telling himself that he didn't know for sure what
he planned to do, and he knew that he lied.
He knew what he intended to do. All that was
left was how, and he wouldn't be a sneak's way.
He'd face Sergeant manned a man, let him know what
the score was, and give him an honest chance. He'd
do it for Sheep mc keee, whose blackened face had
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been blank with pain, whose shattered arm dripped blood into
the sea, while Stuart Buchnnon lay helpless on his shoulder,
and the little boat drifted further away on the dark water.
And then he was looking at sergeant again, and Sergeant
was twisted around in his seat, studying Buchannan curiously. The
dark haired man smiled tentatively, then rose and came down
the aisle, swaying with the train, gripping the backs of seats.
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Somewhere behind him, Buchanan heard the conductor talking to a
woman with children. A little child cried pretty. The conductor
laughed and said she likes these brass buttons. Sergeant stopped
at Buchanon's seat and smiled. It was a twisted grimace,
Buchanan thought, twisted and crafty, but he received it dispassionately.
His anger had gone now and the heat of it
had tempered a sharp edge inside him. Sergeant said, I
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see you're going up for some of the big stuff.
Bucannan nodded. The sergeant looked like a man with a high,
quick temper and unsteady sort of fellow when the pressure
was on. That would be worth remembering. You've been around
town two or three days, haven't you Sergeant asked with Davidson.
Caution rose in Buchanon. He nodded again, thought I'd seen you,
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and I noticed him aout the train a minute ago.
Sergeant glanced at the rifle case in the rack above Buchannon.
Isn't that Davidson's uh huh? I barred it for this trip,
great fellow, Davidson, Sergeant said, we used to hunt birds together.
Every A shadow crossed his face and his thoughts switched abruptly. No,
Bucannon thought, Davidson will never hunt with you again. This
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is my first big game, try, Sergeant said. He looked
at Buchannon's big hands, at the steady gray eyes with
the white lines at the corners. How much do you
depend on a guide? Or are they just all racketeers
that depends on the guide? I suppose? Sergeant smiled, You
got a good one lined up. Bucannon shook his head.
I decided to make this trip on the spur of
(36:44):
the moment. Sergeant ducked his head and raised his brows
as he looked out of the window. I've got one,
hired at little Bear. For several moments he watched fields
sweet pass, and then he looked at buchannan, I was
thinking we could throw in together. You're a friend of
Davidson's and all. He left the proposal dangling. He's smarter
than he looks, Buchanan thought. But even if Sergeant had
(37:05):
read the truth in Buchanan's face a few moments before,
or had guessed it from the relationship with Davidson, nothing
was going to help him if he tried to skip
the country. Such a shame. The woman was telling the
conductor to go through that terrible fighting and then be
killed in a hunting accident on his own farm. Sergeant's
face went bleak and hard. He looked warily at Buchanan
(37:27):
and seemed on the verge, and withdrawing quickly sit down.
Buchanan said, let's talk your idea. Over three miles above
the settlement of Little Bear, which sat at the upper
end of Mirror Lake, Buchannon lay on a hillside lashed
with clover, and watched a mother black bear providing fish
for her two cubs, and a little boggy flat below.
Wading up a narrow stream overhung with long brown grass.
(37:48):
The old she bear hurled, shining geysers and gleaming trout
onto the banks snuffling at the water. Her coat agleam
with wet. In the late afternoon, sun shakespored under the banks,
drove the fish ahead into clear water, and blasted them
out with incredibly quick sweeps of her palls. The cups
snarled and pounced and feasted. For three days now, the
cannon had spent his days less than a half mile
(38:09):
from the camp in a clearing at the junction of
the two small streams. Each day had seen the bears
once stripping berry bushes, one afternoon, ripping rotten logs apart
on a hill where new growth was rising above an
old burn, and to day fishing. He had no interest
in killing a harmless black bear, even if there had
been no other thoughts than hunting on his mind. So far,
(38:29):
he hadn't targeted the rifle that lay beside him. From
where he lay, he could watch the trail in a
narrow valley that opened on his right to timber spotted
hills beyond behind him. Higher up, the pines were dense.
On the opposite slope, a rocky spine rose almost sheer
and bare diji. The guide from Little Bear and Sergeant
always went up valley. It was unlikely Bucannon thought that
(38:51):
sergeant would make go wide detour around this Vanash point
to reach Little Bear and Mirror Lake, where there was
an amphibian for hire. It was very unlikely, since Buchanan
had given Djrie fifty dollars to prevent that sort of move,
telling the quiet, sharp eyed little guide that sergeant must
not be allowed to stray because he was a rank
novus out on its first wood strip. Not Thatddri hadn't
known from that moment he had met the two men
(39:13):
at the station fifteen miles from Little Bearditri had taken
the money and nodded his quick black eyes, shooting questions
that he didn't ask the guide. It was no Foolddri
had taken the money and nodded, his quick black eyes,
shooting questions that he didn't ask The guide was no fool.
He'd brought in two men, and he'd go out with
two men. Or know the reason why, Not that Buchannan
(39:34):
intended to conceal his actions when the time came, but
he wanted no interference. He watched the black Bear explode
another fish from the water. She went ashore to eat it,
beating the cubs away. Buchannon's thoughts came back to Sergeant.
So far, Sergeant had given no indication that he knew
what lay in Buchanan's mind. But he must have wondered
why he had a hunting partner who always went alone
(39:55):
and after the others had left. Suppose Sergeant hadn't intended
to leave the country at all. A Cannon considered that thought.
It had crept up on him several times in the
last three days, and each time he beat it back
with the fact that he had seen a glimpse of
an unusually large number of big notes and Sergeant's wallet
when they were buying supplies WITHDDRI. No man out hunting
would be likely to carry a huge sum of money
(40:16):
with him. Oh, Sergeant intended to run away, sure enough?
It was playing a crafty waiting game. It might require
a little pressure to flush him out, a slight forcing
of the issue, but he'd break sooner or later. The
old bear stopped fishing. She sat up in the water,
stiffing the air, looking up valley. Then she scrambled from
the stream and began to move quickly towards the forest.
(40:38):
One cup followed, the others loitered, snuffing in the dead grass.
Where fish had been. He was still there five minutes later,
when Deitrie and Sergeant passed on a trail a hundred
yards from him. They saw him and Sergeant started to
raise his gun. Didrie said no, no, with his head
in one hand. Sergeant lowered the rifle and the two
men went on. When they were out of sight in
(40:59):
the trees, buck Cannon followed. He scared the cub from
the stream, and it ran to the edge of the timber,
where it climbed five or six feet to the crotch
of a small tree, clinging there as if in complete safety.
While I watched Buchanan go. Sergeant was sullen in camp
that evening. After supper. He complained, there's no game here.
Three days of tramping and we see one cub bear.
(41:20):
He looked at Ditre. What did you do pick an
easy place to get to? There's game here, Ddri said quietly.
It takes patience. It is not like the old days.
Game here patience. Sergeant turned away in disgust for the
time and money this has cost so far. We should
have been overrun by game. Deitri shrugged. If you wish,
(41:41):
we can try another place. I like it here myself.
Bulcanon said, I don't want to move right now. He
looked at sergeant. But you two could go back to
the lake and try the country west of there for
a few days if you want to, that is, he
watched sergeant narrowly. Some of the temper went from Sergeant's
face after a while. Who he said, No use to
(42:01):
split up, even if you don't take much interest in hunting.
We could all move or stay together. Maybe Dtree's right,
Maybe we've just had a bad run of luck here,
he knows. Buchanan thought the decision will have to be
pushed on him. When Sergeant was at the stream getting
a drink, Buchanan said to Ddri, you heard on the
radio about the man killed two weeks ago south of here.
(42:23):
Dedri took his pipe from his mouth. I heard ask
about it. After a while. Ddre nodded slowly, his eyes unreadable,
washing through the drift of smoke and curling flametips. Buchanan
saw Sergeant's expression turn from quick defense to bleakness when
the guide asked, did he ever find out who killed
the farmer down where you fellows live? His eyes dark
(42:46):
hollows in the firelight, his lips twisted his teeth, gleaming whitely.
Sergeant raised his head to look squarely at Buchanan. The
police haven't found out yet, he said, One day they will,
or the men who caused that accident will confess. His
voice was low and toneless, as one being either from
bitter resignation or desperate hope. The silent trees behind them,
(43:09):
the play of firelight on their faces, the night in
wilderness about them, all that made dissembling almost impossible. Buchanan
thought then too. The flat, dull tone of Sergeant's voice
gave strength to the thought that he had spoken from
hope instead of fear. Dedree's black eyes watched bucchanan quietly.
Sergeant dropped his gaze to stare into the fire. Some
(43:30):
time later, Sergeant said, maybe, after all, if we have
no luck tomorrow, I'll go with Dree west of the lake.
Bucannon's gray eyes were cold and unwavering as he looked
across the flames at the dark ringlets on Sergeant's lower head.
He was half smiling when he said, try it, sergeant,
if you think the move is worthwhile. In the furry
hours of darkness, while he lay awake in his sleeping bag.
(43:52):
Doubt came once more to Stuart Buchanan. Over and over
he fought to keep alive the picture of Sergeant running
through the sear and fallen peava, but the vision of
an key dying in the willows by the ditch did
not come. He always saw mc keee staggering on the
surf with a wounded man on one great broad shoulder.
Sometimes the little boat rose and fell and drifted farther
and further away on the dark water, but mc keee
(44:15):
kept struggling toward it. Sergeant was not sleeping well either.
Bucannon saw the blossoming of matches and the glow of cigarettes,
one after another, and once he roused from a doze
to see Sergeant standing by a rebuilt fire, looking toward
the blackness of the forest. They were quite late in
starting up valley the next morning. Bucnnon gave the other
to their customary lead and then headed for his observation point.
(44:38):
He heard a lone shot from somewhere ahead. When he
came from timber to a clearing, he saw Diitre and
Sergeant several hundred yards above him on the clover hill side.
They yelled and waved their arms, but their words did
not come distinctly. Moments later, against a rotting log, he
found a dead cup, still warm and bleeding. It was
probably the independent little fellow that had stayed by the
creek the day before when its brother and its mother
(45:00):
fled into the trees, he thought bitterly. He picked it
up and stared savagely at the two upon the great hill.
Ddri would not have allowed this if he could have
prevented it, that miserable, murderous sergeant. For a breath of time,
his anger blinded him to his danger, and then he
realized why the pair had been shouting. He was still
holding the cob. When he turned to look at the
timber ahead. The old she bear came from it. She
(45:23):
saw him and stopped. She reared and sniffed. Then she
dropped on all four feet and faced him with her
head lowered between the bulge of shoulders. In the instant
left to him for decision, his brain churned with a thought,
I didn't do this. He wanted to shout it at
the bear to make her understand, and the same reason
that prompted the wish told him brutally that he had
to run or kill. He dropped the cub and raised
(45:45):
his rifle. Pinched at the corners, his eyes looked down
the cold steel tube. The black bear did not move.
He lowered the rifle, stepped backward over the log, and
began to retreat slowly. Step by step, he moved back,
realizing that the wind was in his face. The bear
and might not have scended the blood of her dead
cub yet. And then she charged, bellowing. Buchannon went back
(46:06):
one more step. His right foot dropped into a stump
rotted hole. He fell, twisting himself to light on hands
and knees. The sharp, flat blast of rifles came from
the hill. He heard the enraged clamoring of the bear.
Resting on one knee, he swung his rifle around. The
bear's charge had carried her past the dead cub, and
then she had gone back. She was snuffling at her offspring.
(46:27):
Now she cuffed it gently and whined plaintively. Leaf molds
splashed around her from bullets off the hill. She sprang
to slash at the movements with her fore paws, snarling
and biting where the missiles had struck. Buchannon rose and
backed into the timber. The firing from the hill stopped.
A few minutes later, the she bear shambled in the
direction from which she had come, her second cub joining
(46:48):
her at the edge of the forest. Why didn't you
shoot at the very first, Sergeant asked, when the three
men met on the hill side. There's been enough killing.
Buchanan frowned at himself thoughts of killing. He said, he
felt like one whose head is suddenly clear after a
long fever. I wanted to yell at that bear to
make her understand some way that I hadn't harmed her cub.
(47:10):
It was an idiot's trick I did to kill that cub,
Sergeant said, Ddrie made me go up the hill to
get in the clear. We tried to warn you. B
Cannon didn't seem to hear. I almost cried out to
her to understand. But there I was, with all the
guilt forced on me. There I stood accused of murder,
and every indication pointed to mine. He stopped suddenly and
(47:31):
gave Sergeant an odd look. I know, Sergeant said, bitterly,
I know exactly how you felt. He stared into the
clover at his feet. Davidson must have told you what
they said about mc key and me. His mouth was
twisted and his eyes were bleak when he raised his
head to look across the valley. I know how you felt,
but that was only a bear you had to face
(47:52):
for the first time. Buchan had read right the expression
on Sergeant's face bleakness, the aftermath of defiance that tries
to high despair. Sergeant had not killed McKee. Buchannan knew
it with far more a sureness than he had felt
in holding sergeant guilty. He knew one thing more Sergeant
had never known. The evil coiled and pulsing in Buchannon's mind.
(48:13):
Dedre's intelligent black eyes were studying in Buchanan. You want
to hunt with us now, the guide asked gently. Dedri
had known Thitrie had guessed correctly. Maybe tomorrow, Buchanan said,
right now, I'm gonna make camp before noon. Arnold Davison
walked in the camp. He glanced at the three sleeping
bags and gave Buchanan a quick, worried look. He's hunting
(48:34):
with the guide, Buchanan said. Davidson slipped his pack and
sat down on it quickly, as if his joints were
loose and his muscles jerking with fatigue. They told me
a little bear where your guide generally took his parties.
He lit a cigarette and studied Buchanan's face. A moment,
you're yourself again, I see. I'm glad Stu. The man
who accidentally shot McKee gave himself up three days ago.
(48:57):
Sergeant said he might David and stared around a fire
at night. You could read a man's face, Buckchannon said.
Last night I knew Sergeant wasn't guilty, but I didn'tmit
it until today. He told Davidson about the bear and
watched his friend's face turn white. You hadn't tried the rifle,
Davidson asked. Buckannon shook his head. I'd fixed the firing pin,
(49:20):
so wouldn't shoot before I lent it to you. It
was childish, I know, but it was all I could
think of to try and stop you. The Good Lord
takes care of everything, including bears and madmen, Bucannon said simply.
Davidson stood up. He wasn't tired down. He hadn't been
physically tired. When he dropped limply on his pack, he smiled.
I bought a replacement. While we're here, we may as
(49:40):
well stay awhile and hunt. So there you have it,
The Death Hunter by Steve Frazy. It was hard for
me to really kind of put this one in the
deer Hunter horror niche but in the story they didn't
really say what they were hunting. It could have been deer, elk,
could have been mule deer, could have been bear. Maybe
they were just out shooting game and general. So I
(50:01):
kind of put it into this episode thinking it maybe
fits a little bit. Hope it did. Hope you enjoyed
the story. I always like Steve Frazy's writing, and I
really like that story and how the guilt kind of
looks at it. You can kind of look at guilt
from two different directions, which was really neat. But anyway,
I hope you enjoyed this episode and stick around. In
two more weeks, I'll have another episode up, which may
(50:22):
be the final one for this year as we get
into the December holidays. I'll probably come back again in
January with more episodes, but we've got one more left
in the tank in two weeks, so stick around for
that and again follow us on Facebook, be sure to
subscribe on YouTube, and we'll catch you next time. Enjoy
whatever it is you're doing
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