The first hunt

At a Glance

• Central figures: A boy with no name yet, son of a Bhil headman; his uncle Kalu, the best bowman in the settlement; and the hiran - a spotted deer that had been seen near the river for three days.
• Setting: A Bhil settlement in the Aravalli foothills, western Rajasthan, in the dry season before the rains; the story belongs to the oral tradition of the Bhil people, told by elders to boys approaching their first hunt.
• The turn: The boy releases his arrow at the deer but strikes a rock instead, and the deer escapes; Kalu does not shoot, forcing the boy to track the animal alone into the hills.
• The outcome: The boy follows the deer for a full day and night and kills it at dawn with a single arrow through the neck; he carries it back to the settlement on his shoulders, and his father names him.
• The legacy: Among the Bhil, a boy’s first kill with the bow is the act that earns him his adult name and his right to sit with the men at council; the bow itself - not a sword, not a spear - marks the Bhil as a people, and the first hunt is when a boy proves he belongs to it.

The deer had been drinking at the river three mornings running. Kalu saw it first, crouched in the tamarind shade with his bow across his knees, and said nothing until the third morning. Then he walked to his brother’s house and spoke to the boy.

“Get your bow. We go now, before the sun is high.”

The boy was twelve. He had practiced on gourds and on the clay pots his mother set on the wall. He had killed squirrels and once a hare. But he had not killed a deer, and until he killed a deer he had no name - only the word his mother called him, which was a child’s word and did not count among men.

The Tamarind Shade

Kalu led him down the dry ravine to the riverbank where the water still ran thin over stones. The season had been poor. Dust covered the leaves of the ber bushes, and the cattle in the settlement were already showing ribs. A deer meant meat for a week, and the hide could be traded at the market in Udaipur for salt and tobacco.

They waited in the tamarind shade. Kalu sat perfectly still with his bow strung but resting on the ground. The boy tried to sit still and could not. He shifted his weight. He scratched his ankle where a thorn had caught it. Kalu looked at him once, and the boy stopped moving.

The deer came when the sun was two hands above the hills. It came from the east, picking its way through the scrub with its head low, and the boy saw the white spots on its flanks and the small rack of antlers - a young buck, two years maybe, not yet full-grown. It walked to the river and put its muzzle down.

Kalu did not move. The boy understood that the shot was his.

He raised the bow. Drew the string to his ear. The bamboo shaft sat steady against his knuckle. He breathed out through his teeth the way Kalu had taught him and released.

The arrow struck the flat rock three feet to the left of the deer’s shoulder. The sound of it - bamboo cracking on stone - sent the buck springing sideways. Two bounds and it was in the scrub. Three bounds and it was gone.

The Rock

The boy stood with the bow still raised and the string humming against his wrist. The shame came before the anger. He looked at Kalu. Kalu had not drawn his own bow. Had not even shifted his grip.

“Why didn’t you shoot?”

Kalu picked up the broken arrow. Examined the point, which was chipped but not ruined. Handed it back.

“It is not my deer.”

“But we lost it.”

“You lost it. Go find it.”

The boy stared at him. The deer was already deep in the hill scrub, moving fast, putting distance between itself and the river. Tracking it meant climbing into the Aravalli folds where the ground was rocky and the prints hard to read. It meant carrying water and sleeping in the open and listening for leopards.

Kalu sat back down in the tamarind shade and closed his eyes. He was not coming.

Into the Aravallis

The boy filled his gourd at the river and started climbing. He found the deer’s tracks in a patch of soft earth between two rocks - the sharp hoofprints close together where it had been running. Farther on, the prints spread apart. The deer was slowing. He followed.

By midday the sun was directly overhead and the rocks burned under his feet. He lost the tracks on a ledge of bare stone and spent an hour circling until he found them again on the far side, where the deer had come down into a narrow valley with a trickle of water at the bottom. He drank from the trickle and refilled the gourd and kept walking.

The landscape changed as he climbed. The scrub gave way to dry grass between boulders. He saw a cobra sunning on a flat stone and went wide around it. He saw kites circling overhead. He saw the scat of a wild dog pack and checked his quiver - four arrows left, counting the chipped one.

By late afternoon, the tracks told him the deer had stopped running. The prints were evenly spaced now, the stride of an animal walking. It was feeding. He could smell the wild thyme that grew in the upper valleys and knew the deer was eating it.

He did not stop when the sun went down. The moon was three-quarters full and the tracks showed white against the dark ground. He walked slowly, testing each footfall for loose stone that would crack and carry sound. Twice he heard movement ahead and froze. Once it was a porcupine crashing through undergrowth. Once it was nothing - wind, or his own blood loud in his ears.

The Kill at Dawn

He found the deer just before first light, lying in a hollow between two boulders with its legs folded under it. It was sleeping. The white spots on its flanks rose and fell with its breath.

The boy knelt. He nocked the chipped arrow - it was the one he had missed with, and something in him wanted it to be the one that hit. He drew the string. The distance was short, maybe fifteen paces. He could see the pulse in the deer’s neck.

He did not breathe out this time. He held the breath inside and let the arrow go at the top of the stillness.

The shaft went through the neck below the jaw. The deer surged up, took two steps, and fell. The boy watched it die. He did not look away. When it stopped moving he walked to it and put his hand on its side and felt the last heat leaving.

He gutted it there with his belt knife, the way Kalu had shown him on smaller animals. He slung the carcass across his shoulders - heavier than he expected, the legs hanging past his elbows - and started the long walk down.

The Name

He came into the settlement at midday, the deer across his back, blood drying brown on his shirt. His mother saw him first and called out, and his father came from the house and stood in the path.

The boy set the deer down at his father’s feet. The whole weight of it hit the ground at once.

His father looked at the deer. Looked at the arrow still in its neck - the chipped point, the cracked shaft. Looked at his son’s face, which was burnt and scratched and very tired.

He spoke the name. The boy’s name - his real name, the one that would follow him into the council circle and into marriage and into the songs that Bhil men sing at the fire when the hunting is done. The name belonged to his grandfather’s grandfather, and now it was his.

Kalu was sitting in the tamarind shade. He did not get up. He smiled once, briefly, and closed his eyes again.