It is the best part of year. Yes, autumn. Yes, football season. And yes, deer season- the Redneck High Holy days. This means my almost annual column about deer hunting. For the squeamish among you, fear not- no deer have (yet) been harmed. I could apologize for my predictability both in the deer stand and in this space, but an apology implies a promise not to repeat the behavior. I can make no such promises.
When parsing through my missives in this space over the past eighteen years I notice that deer hunting is one of the most repeated topics. It should come as no surprise that PETA’s Hunter of the Year for 2010 and 2017 would think about hunting a lot. Unfortunately, thinking about and mastering are not the same things.
Deer season has been important since my teen years. In the rural community where I grew up, the halls of the high school were largely empty that week as students and teachers alike went to hunt the woods or their back yards. It was my favorite week of the year because I knew I wouldn’t get stuffed into my locker by bullies, one way or another.
The school administrators didn’t bother to take attendance as the number of “sick” days was high. The season coincided with a short Thanksgiving week down there, so hunting absences didn’t upset folks much. Hunting absences at the Thanksgiving dinner table were a different story.
I have already been trekking to my cabin in the woods to fight the Talibambi, those evil destroyers of Buicks, Fords, and my wife’s Hosta plants. She doesn’t understand why I can’t just shoot the ones in our yard instead of driving an hour away. I’ve tried to explain that the deer are less pesky than zoning laws but she is not persuaded.
The cabin may only be an hour from our suburban home, but it feels like a different world. My bride doesn’t share my affection for the place. We’d owned it five years before she ventured there even though she co-signed the mortgage. She always thought that her second home would be on a beach and is unamused when I remind her that you can see a pond from the cabin porch so technically she does have beachfront property.
I tell my wife that “if it is brown, it is going down” when I go hunting although deer usually win the day. Nothing brown has been shot down on my farm this year and I don’t mind. I’ve seen only does accompanied by yearling fawns and I refuse to shoot a doe in front of her youngster. I blame Walt Disney. Besides, if I shoot a deer, how could I keep going to the woods to hunt?
A bad day in the deer stand is better than most good days in the office. In fact, my Zoom background is a picture from inside my favorite stand. Seeing it on my computer screen either makes me happy or annoys me that I am not in it.
Drinking my coffee in the quiet darkness while listening to the sounds of the forest around me is close to perfection. I’ve seen coyotes, bald eagles, and bobcats out there and the thrill is always the same. Squirrels visit regularly to pester me. I can’t reveal their nicknames in this space, but one of them is a pretty good neighbor and another’s paws are good enough to be hands, if you know what I mean.
What does any of this have to do with the practice of law, Gentle Reader? For starters, sitting in a deer stand means hours of tedium in hopes of a reward. The payoff requires hard work before and after. Ditto for my law office.
I am pretty selective about the game I will harvest. Animals that are too small get a pass. Even some of the larger ones go free if I notice them late enough in the day that the hassle of extracting and processing them outweighs my desire to so do.
New cases are the same. Prospective problems loom large when a new client calls. However, a client with a good story that tugs my heart strings has often made me take a case that lawyers with better judgment would avoid.
In both hunting and litigation, I am tenacious. Last year I knicked a deer during archery season and tracked him for two days. I’ve sat for 12 hours in the deer stand, once during a snow storm that my dog refused to leave the couch and venture into.
Similarly, I have tried cases where my hourly rate, if I could bear to keep track, would be near minimum wage. Usually it was because my opponent told me “no.” For trial lawyers, a denial letter triggers the same fight reaction as an encroaching buck during the mating season. Tenacity isn’t always a good thing.
Litigators are different from trial lawyers, and hunting is different from killing. While I had great law practice mentors, my hunting skills are largely self-taught and my teacher is lousy. I learn new things regularly in both.
Once again, I have strained the hunting-as-lawyering metaphor to near the breaking point. As I will likely do again. Truth be told, sometimes hunting is just code for drinking my coffee in peace. Same for a day in the office.
©2021 With All Due Respect. Spencer Farris is the founding partner of The S.E. Farris Law Firm in St Louis, Missouri. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals did not sponsor this column. Comments or criticisms about this column may be sent directly to me via email at farris@farrislaw.net.