Tomorrow the woods around my house will be filled with the sounds of gunshots. It is the first day of serious shooting during “deer season.” All of the loco locals will be out trying their very best to kill Bambi. Some will end up shooting their best friends and neighbors – of course – not on purpose. Nonetheless, I will be keeping my horses in their stalls tomorrow morning in the hopes that some drunken wretched fool will not shoot them.
Observing these vatos carrying out the ritual of preparing the tree stands, the careful placement of salt blocks within easy shooting distance from the tree perch, and other forms of manly nonsense is really weird. The reality is that if they actually lived on the land they’d know EXACTLY the pattern that the deer are following this season. But, the road hunters and the extranjeros know nothing about the land, what it means to take another creature's life or what it means to be a man who kills a deer. Without realizing it, their whole deer hunter act is really an elaborate homoerotic dance in which they try to convince their buddies that they are not girlie men.
It is a sick and sad spectacle – but that is the start of the Thanksgiving holiday here in East Aztlan – los machos shooting Bambi in the woods.
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