On Why I Don’t Hunt
by Emily Allison
Queens University of Charlotte
Emily Allison is a sophomore at Queens University of Charlotte, studying Creative Writing and Professional Writing and Rhetoric. You can find her poetry and nonfiction in Interlochen Review, Signet, the YoungArts Anthology, Havik Magazine, and the Panorama Journal of Travel. Her Instagram is @emilyanneallison.
Did you know I’ve seen my dad break a duck’s neck?
He held it out, made sure my little brother was watching. A swift turn and fast pull, done simultaneously. It splintered, and then it was done. A second splinter, louder than the first, as my brother did the same. I watched him wrench the neck harder, more aggressively, without the right angle. He struggled for a second, only succeeding halfway through the neck bone. The duck’s wings flapped hurriedly, and my brother almost dropped it. My dad waited, seeing how he would continue, and let him finish it off. Two redheads, limp on their laps. A noise louder than any gun I’d ever shot.
It’s called a cervical dislocation. “Humane” is the word used to describe it, the swift dislocation of the spinal column from the skull. You grip the duck’s head between your first two fingers and place your thumb under its bill. Pull the head back at a ninety-degree angle, other hand suspending the legs upward. It’s quick and easy, I swear.
A few tips:
Do not use the word “kill.” Only use “euthanize” or “dispatch.”
Do not drown the duck.
Do not suffocate the duck.
Do not windmill the duck.
Do not perform rib compression on the duck.
Do not hit the duck’s head against an object.
My sister turned away as the ducks were killed euthanized. They had been hers, the two she’d shot that morning. Hunting seemed okay at five o’clock, when you’re too bleary to realize what you’ve done. It always hits you later, when you see the bruise from the gun’s kickback on your shoulder, or when you’re eating your bowl of cereal. They were two beautiful redheads: males, from their steep foreheads, russet feathers, black chests, and mottled gray bodies. The bill my brother held was a deep blue-gray with a thin black tip, like a Marilyn beauty mark.
When I was young and not strong enough to hold a gun, I assumed the role of the photographer. In a wetland duck blind, or a forest deer blind, I was handed a shitty waterproof camera and told to shoot. A hunter in my own regard, for the photos my aunt and mom would like the best. I learned how to capture the innocence of my family while they held rifles bigger than themselves. Eventually, I’d look just like them, rifle pressing my training bra strap into my skin. But in that moment, my scope remained the camera lens.
The clicking of my camera mirrored the clicking of the bullets. Point, shoot. Point, shoot. Click, click, click. On paper, we were the same
Until we weren’t. Until I followed the eye of the rifle to the deer spilling blood on the frozen ground, sputtering, moaning intelligibly. I would pull my face back from the camera, strain forward, sort through the bleating and attempt to find some reconciliation of what my dad/uncle/brother/cousin/grandpa had done. I’d watch a black drum pitch itself against the boat deck, eyes wide and mouth panting, suffocating with a fishhook protruding from its throat. I’d watch the flapping of duck wings as it drowned, water turning bloodred and feathers caught sharply on the oyster bed. I’d watch the heave of a deer’s body, its final breath exhaled as the sun began to rise.
I can still feel the blood slick on my skin. I see it in my mother’s black honey Clinique lipstick. I see it in the red paint I made hand turkeys with in elementary school. I see it poured over ice in the first dirty Shirley Temple I ever drank, then spilled on the carpet of Madison Montgomery’s apartment. I see it in the red clay my grandma spins on her pottery wheel, turning it into a dinner plate. I see it in my brother’s bright skin moments after he was born.
Does God look away? I was thirteen the first time I watched my nine-year-old brother beat a fish against the dock, letting blunt force stop its heart. He’d been asking me how the tide worked only moments prior, youthful curiosity beaming across his face as I explained. His innocence shattered with every shrike against the wood. In some disgusting rapture, I couldn’t look away.
From then on, bile rose thick in my back of my mouth. I finally told my parents I wouldn’t hold a gun again. I wouldn’t fish, either. I wouldn’t go out to the blinds anymore, and I wouldn’t take the photos.
Maybe I should call this essay “On Why I Cry”; “On Watching Death”; “On Holding a Gun and Pointing It at a Living Thing That Breathes Just Like You and Knowing You Have To Kill Dispatch It.”
Today, I watch my brother snap duck’s necks. I watch him pose the head of a deer, holding it by the antlers, turning it so you can’t see the blood in the picture my dad takes. I watch him skin the fur off a rabbit, take a video to send to his buddies, blood and grime caked thick under his nails. I watch him flay open a redfish, pull out its insides with his bare hands, blow the bladder into a balloon for our cousins to play with. He does it with ease, and he does not hesitate.
I watch it, and despite everything, my brain takes photographs. It colors them bright, holds onto the tiny details, fills in the gaps and reminds me of all the deaths I’m accountable for. How many times I’ve posed for pictures just like that, smiling. How many ducks I’ve held between my first two fingers, pulled upwards, and snapped.
1. What do you want readers to take away from your writing?
If I could have readers take away anything from my essay, I hope it is the feeling of processing. The choice to step away from hunting and fishing of any kind was hard for both myself and my family, and at times, it felt like I was stepping away from a big part of my identity as a Texan. Being from such a hunting, gun-positive family, I had no idea how to go about processing not only that step away from how I was raised, but also the reckoning with all of the deaths I'd been accountable for. My essay eventually became my way of processing and fighting with that reality—I only hope my readers can see that, and be influenced to process their own lost identities. It isn't an easy task, and I'm far from being "over it," but I hope the growth I experienced internally can be felt externally by any reader who I'm privileged to have stumble over my work.
2. Are there any writers who have influenced your creative process?
So, so, so many! John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy, Ann Patchett, and Sally Rooney are my biggest inspirations by far. I always hope to draw from the distinct sense of place of Steinbeck and McCarthy, with the blunt and simplistic style of Patchett and Rooney to back it up. But I'm a conglomerate of every writer I've ever read. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where my own style bloomed from—but these are the writers I come back to over and over and over again.
3. What creative elements do you bring into your nonfiction, if any?
I always aim for honesty—it’s the biggest part of my creative process. It isn’t easy, but I’ve learned to be okay with painting myself in unflattering lights and revealing facets of myself that aren’t all glitter and sparkles. I also aim to bring the blunt, straightforward language that I often speak with on the day-to-day; I try to be sparse with my descriptions, creating an intentional balance of reflection, exposition, interior, and exterior.
4. Why did you choose nonfiction as the vehicle for your ideas (as opposed to fiction, poetry, etc.)? Is there a mindset that influences your work?
It’s hard to decide what genre I want to write something in; sometimes, I write the same story in multiple genres before it reveals which one is most effective for storytelling. Other times, I just go with my gut. For "On Why I Don’t Hunt," nonfiction came to my head first, and ended up being the genre I stuck with. It’s a roll of the dice, honestly.
5. Were there any challenges you faced in writing your story?
The biggest challenge I found with this particular essay was trying to keep the gore/violence at bay without flattening the truth of what I see daily. Hunting and fishing aren’t pretty, but I didn’t want to push away a reader that was sensitive to gore—even in my own reading, I don’t love it, especially regarding animals. It came down to a precarious balance that I fought with for a while, but eventually it ended up where it is now. I hope any reader doesn’t get too upset by it—though truly, that’s the reality of it. That blatant truth was a hard thing to portray delicately.