This bird, leaking warmth into my hand, cannothide itself. But its weight, the tactile substance of its soft feathersand bony bill, strikes me as a mystery equally bottomless and off-balancing. As Al drops two more woodcocks and a pair of grouse, missing a singlecunning grouse that refused to fly, the thunking reality of all these interruptedascensions chips away at the wonder of a bird in the hand. Whatever yourrespectful intentions, a shot bird still flops cruelly to the ground. Most people whoeat meat pay someone else to kill food for them.
Hunters pay to kill.
It's the latter that hasshot up lately. At the mouthof the Mississippi in the Gulf of Mexico, researchers have been watchingrunoff pesticides and fertilizers from heartland farms liquidate the oceanlife over an area the size of New Jersey. Part of the dead zone bears myname. Whatever you eat, because you eat, something else doesn't. The hunterdoesn't try to elude responsibility for human appetite and its consequences.