Last evening my cousin Frank called. Frank lives out in western New York, where it is currently deer season. After I got off the phone with him, I began thinking about my last deer hunt in the Empire State: three years ago, just after Thanksgiving. My better half and I arrived at Frank's house and stayed up until after midnight laughing, joking, and remembering. At four-thirty the next morning, the alarm went off, and I got up. Prior to retiring for the night, the notion of deer hunting held my attention rapt as the quest for the Holy Grail held the imagination of knights errant long ago. In the cold darkness of morning, though, it seemed like a piss-poor reason to drag my ass out of bed at such an ungodly hour.

We enjoyed a hearty breakfast, washed it down with copious amounts of coffee, donned our hunting attire, and stumbled out into the dark to get to our destination. Some fifteen minutes later I found myself in an overgrown orchard, atop a rise that fell away to a small stream downhill and rose again to a stand of evergreens and low brush above. A dilapidated stone wall surrounded the apple trees on three sides.

I found a more-or-less comfortable spot out of the wind and sat down with a tree at my back. For the first few minutes I was vigilant, scanning the crest of the ridge for movement; but then I started to get drowsy. The combination of lack of sleep, being on the wrong side of fifty, and a heavy breakfast began to take its toll. Soon I was in a semi-somnolent stupor.

A low guttural growl snapped me out of my slumber. Abruptly awake and fully alert as I ever get, I looked around, trying to identify the source of the sound. While there are bears in that neck of the woods, they aren't really that much of a concern. Coyotes and coydogs also are known to inhabit that area. I would just as soon not encounter a pack of them.

I shifted my shotgun slightly and listened: only the soft moan of the wind through the treetops. Then I heard the growl again with an awful certainty as to its source: my own midship region, accompanied by a wave of fierce cramping. After so many years of eating cream of wheat, toast, and OJ for breakfast, my gut was no longer accustomed to the heavy repast I'd downed that morning. Bacon, scrambled eggs, sausage, and home fries all cooked in enough bacon grease to lubricate the wheels of mechanized industry for the next millennium had played havoc with my GI system. I was about to shit myself stupid.

Being the careful hunter I am, I put on the safety on my shotgun and propped it against the stone wall. I stood and dropped my outer hunting pants, my jeans, my long johns, and finally my undershorts to a pool of fabric reaching to my knees. I backed over away from my spot under the tree, squatted, and waited for the inevitable.

I didn't wait long. A long liquid burst of diarrhea spewed forth violently. And it kept spewing forth. I was certain that all internal components from the top of my head to my butt were emptying out my ass in an uncontrollable deluge.

Finally, when only a hollow shell was left, the shit quit spraying.

After many years of near misses, I have become accustomed to carrying a small packet of wipes for just such an emergency. I cleaned up, reached down to begin pulling up my drawers, and looked up right into the eye of an enormous buck. HOLY SHIT! This was the biggest whitetail I'd ever seen, and there I was with pants around my knees, gun out of reach, and balls freezing off. Damn.

I gingerly reached over toward the gun while shuffling my feet sideways. I had no more than closed my grip around the barrel when my foot slipped and I sat down hard, my bare ass landing in a steaming pile of my own shit.

That stupid-assed deer was laughing at me -- I swear, he was laughing at me! I'll teach that sonuvabitch! I opened up at him, emptying the shotgun. In the process, I slid down on my back into the pool of shitsauce below. Now I was REALLY pissed. And shit; but hey, what can you do?

I used the rest of the wipes to rearrange the liquishit on my back, butt, and family jewels. In disgust I removed my boots, peeled off the assortment of garments, and cast aside the undershorts that were terminally befouled in feces. I put the rest back on, grabbed my gun, and slunk down to the truck. I drove back to Frank's house (where, mercifully, no one was home), showered, threw my beshat clothing in the washer, and dressed. I was tired, my gut still hurt, my hunting clothes were in the washer, and I was feeling sorry for myself when Frank and his son Ernie came in.

"Where'd you git to?" he asked. I told him I was cold (partial truth) and came back home. He then proceeded to tell me about he and Ernie coming up to the old orchard and finding an enormous eleven-point buck lying dead just down over the ridge toward the creek. The odd thing was that nobody was around. They did find a huge pile of shit and some badly-stained boxers near a tree on the other side of the orchard, but no other sign of who had shot the buck. Frank told Ernie to tag the buck so that it didn't go to waste. They had it outside in the back of the truck.

What to do? Tell them the truth, get the deer, but hear about shitting myself for the rest of my days; or keep my dignity and lose the deer.

Hard call, but I don't want to be known in family lore as Uncle Anomalous who shit himself shooting a deer. Ernie got to keep the buck. He showed everyone HIS buck and basked in the attention while I silently seethed. I'll get the last laugh, however. I cut the little bastard out of my will. That'll fix him.