The Reminder

What does it take to be a man?

The two men, clad in camouflage fatigues and high-visibility vests, sat without words under a cold blue November sky on the last day of deer season. Their warm breath rose like puffs from two chimneys. As a white-tailed buck stepped into view, the men somehow drew even quieter, signalling to each other without words. Full antlers—maybe a 20-pointer. A big trophy. 

The younger man, Matthew, held the rifle, and his breath. The crosshairs in the hunting scope aligned with the buck’s heart. As he began to squeeze the trigger, he couldn’t steady his shakes. 

It would be his first kill.

The older man, sporting a bushy moustache and a cowboy hat, whispered, ‘Nice and easy. Just like you practised.’

A week earlier, Matthew had arrived at the hunting lodge, as big as a church. Built of weathered logs and rough-hewn stone, the lodge bore the scars of countless seasons. Perched atop a gentle rise, it commanded a sweeping view of the rugged backdrop of mountains and trees below and Montana’s famous big sky above.

Matthew Leung had grown up in Hong Kong, where space was the ultimate symbol of wealth. No one there owned this much land. In fact, the ranch land was possibly greater than all of Hong Kong’s.

Colt Westfall, the older man, met him in the driveway. Greeted him with a warm, ‘Howdy,’ but did nothing else to help. Matthew carried his own bags into the lodge. He struggled with his two large duffle bags.

‘Don’t reckon you’ll need even half that stuff,’ said Colt.

‘I just wanted to be prepared,’ replied Matthew.

‘In my experience, fear brings gear. Find a place to hide all that, then come find me for dinner in the big room.’

The big room, a cathedral to outdoorsmanship, was a sanctuary of warmth and, in times past, of camaraderie, with walls adorned by the trophies of hunts. Old stories had been told by old men again and again, until no one wanted to hear them anymore.  A fire crackled in the stone hearth. Matthew imagined that once its flickering light must have danced upon the faces of the weathered men, their laughter mingling with the scent of pine and woodsmoke. This afternoon, it was empty, hollow.

High on the wall, trophy heads stared down. They were all impressive specimens, save for the one in prime position above the fireplace. It looked like a cruel joke. Matthew had never been in the home of an actual big game hunter, but knew from movies and TV that these prizes were points of pride. This thing was the opposite. Its head was too small, with one side marred by broken antlers, and the other side sunken and malformed from the bullet to its face. It was so ugly, Matthew had to look away.

Through the floor-to-ceiling window, the mountains loomed large, their peaks turning white from recent high-elevation snows, a reminder that hunting season was drawing to a close. In this remote corner of the world, far from the pressure of modern life, the hunting lodge remained a place connected to old ideals. It was a place where men like Matthew came looking for something they couldn’t easily put into words.

Matthew joined Colt at an old farmhouse table for dinner.

‘How has the season been so far?’ asked Matthew.

Colt pushed a lump of bread into the stew, almost at pains to have to answer the question. He took his time to let the bread soak up some of the gravy, before taking a bite, chewing,  and taking a drink from his bottle of beer.

‘Decent. You’re eating the spoils of a big 230 I shot a month back.’

Colt Westfall, member of the Boone and Crockett Club, held the highest score for a white-tailed buck in Montana, a 275—a measurement of mass, symmetry, and tine length the club had been using since 1949. Matthew knew this from the website where he booked this hunting trip. While the maximum theoretical score was 300, no one before Colt had ever bagged anything bigger than 270.

‘Wow. Can I just say that this venison stew is fantastic. I love the way the gaminess of the meat is balanced by the sweet tanginess of the gravy. What’s the secret? Red wine?’

‘Ketchup.’

Colt let the word hang in the air, watching Matthew’s reaction. He slowed, tasting it differently, unsure if he still thought the same of it. Colt measured every tiny muscle movement on Matthew’s face.

‘So what are you really doin’ here, son?’ asked Colt.

‘Well … I’ve come, I guess, for outdoorsmanship training, like it said on your website.’

‘I know that. That’s what everyone signs up for, but they often come looking for something else. And I’ve seen the way you’ve been eyeballing me since you first set foot on my ranch. There’s something else going on.’

‘No, no. Just curious. Just here to learn. Trying to take it all in. I didn’t mean to cause any offence.’

‘That so?’

‘Absolutely. You say jump, I say how high,’ Matthew replied with a small laugh.

‘Fine then, have it your way. Meet me in the tackle room, ready to go, at 4:00am, Mr Jumpy. We’ll see just how high you can get tomorrow.’

---

The big buck drew towards Mathew’s left, turning its head slightly, scanning for danger, as if it could sense something was wrong.

As Mathew slowly squeezed the trigger, in that second of forced stillness, he wasn’t thinking about the deer’s heart in the crosshairs, but what was in his own heart. 

What am I doing here? Was this the path to what he had come looking for? He kept gently applying pressure, just as he had been taught. 

‘Squeeze so slowly that when it goes off it surprises you,’ Colt had explained while they were training a few days earlier.

---

The training had been fairly intensive, and it had done little to make Matthew feel more confident. If anything, he felt smaller now than ever before. At 4:30am, Matthew had stumbled through the big room in search of coffee. The mangled deer greeted him on his way to the kitchen, even more horrifying in the predawn darkness. The fire had gone cold. Matthew couldn’t find coffee, and resigned himself to training without his usual comforts.

He found Colt already in the tackle room. Matthew wasn’t sure if Colt even slept, but the older man seemed alert and energised. He greeted Matthew with a big cowboy, ‘Mornin’!’

Colt opened the gun cabinet and selected a rifle.

‘This is a Remington 700, chambered in thirty-ought-six,’ explained Colt, pulling back on the bolt action to examine the chamber. ‘Always check a weapon that you pick up, or when it is handed to you to make sure that it isn’t loaded.’

He handed Matthew the rifle, and Matthew repeated what Colt had just done. The bolt action stuck a bit, and he had to try again with a bit more force to get it open. In the process, the barrel of the gun swung wildly. Colt placed his hand on the barrel, steadying it, pushing it downward and away from himself.

‘And always keep your rifle pointed down and away from people.’

Matthew pushed the bolt action close with a clunk. ‘Oh, sorry.’

‘No need to apologise, son. Just do better,’ said Colt, gathering up a box of .30-06 ammunition, ‘Now follow me out to the range.’

Matthew walked behind Colt, like a child following his father.

Colt loaded the four-round magazine for Matthew and handed it to him.

‘It’s so small,’ said Matthew, ‘I was expecting something bigger like you see in video games.’

‘It ain’t like video games out here, Mr Jumpy. Here you get just four shots, but if you do it right, you should only need one.’

Matthew could feel the pressure of perfection. It felt like his work. It felt like his relationships. Perhaps it was one of the things he’d never escape, even here.  But his lifetime of playing video games had taught him a lot about shooting accuracy. This might be his first time on an actual range—Hong Kong had no guns—but he had ten thousand hours of virtual training.

‘Let’s get your scope dialled in. Just aim at the centre of the target. Fire all four rounds, take your time with each shot. Gently exhale, hold your breath for a second or two as you gently squeeze the trigger. Keep both eyes open, see the target.’

Matthew followed the instructions, and Colt watched through field glasses. As the fourth round went off, Matthew knew all of them had missed, low and to the left. He worried that Colt would maybe fail him, and send him home.

But Colt let out a long whistle.

‘Nice grouping, my boy. Not too bad at all. Let’s just make a small adjustment to the scope.’

Colt fished a quarter out of his pocket, then used it to turn the slotted dials on the side and the top of the scope. And handed Matthew another freshly loaded magazine.

‘Try again.’

Matthew, feeling bolstered by the old man’s words, repeated his grouping. This time all four were in the centre of the target.

‘Yes!’ shouted Mathew.

‘Yeah, yeah. Don’t be getting a big head about it. It’s one thing to be shooting at paper targets on a comfortable range. It’s something else to be shooting in the wild. Trust me: whatever can go wrong, usually does.’

Once again, Matthew watched Colt spring into action, as he gathered up the used targets and spent brass casings. He moved with a surprising degree of athleticism, despite his blue jeans and cowboy boots. Every move he made was done with purpose, and a sense of urgency. But Matthew felt that it didn’t leave much room for anything else—like feelings.

‘Come on, Jumpy. Let’s go in and watch a video. I know that’s something your generation seems to enjoy doing.’

Matthew looked slightly offended, and Colt read his body language instantly. 

‘Ah, cheer up. There will be coffee.’

The video, shown on a projector screen that rolled down from the ceiling of the big room, was an old How to Field Dress a Kill. It looked like it was shot in the 1950s. Matthew sat alone in the dark, sipping at his strong black coffee as he was shown how to gut and skin a deer. The audio crackled with age.

‘Field dressing at the site of the kill is often preferred when conditions allow for it. This approach minimises the time between the kill and the removal of internal organs, reducing the risk of spoilage and contamination. It's particularly practical in remote or rugged terrain where transporting the whole animal may be challenging …’

The video had originally been on film, grainy and often soft on focus.

‘... lay the deer on its back with its legs spread apart. If possible, elevate the hindquarters slightly higher than the front to aid in drainage. Make the Incision: Using a sharp knife or field dressing tool, make a shallow incision along the midline of the deer's belly from the sternum to the pelvic bone. Take care not to puncture the intestines or stomach …’

Matthew looked at his watch. It wasn’t even 8:00am, and this is how his day was going. He was the sole student beholding this gruesome procedure. He tried to look away, but his eye fell upon the mangled deer head above the fireplace.

He twisted around to look out the windows, and could see the first light of day begin to break behind him.

‘... then remove the organs. Carefully reach into the body cavity and begin removing the internal organs one by one. Start by cutting around the anus to free the rectum, then pull it out gently to expose the pelvic canal. Sever the pelvic bone with a bone saw or knife to open the cavity further ...’

Matthew stared into the blackness of his coffee, as the training video went on for another 30 minutes. ‘What am I doing here?’

When it finally ended, all was quiet in the big room, but Matthew could hear the sound of wood being chopped outside. He investigated and found Colt with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up, swinging an axe. Every strike cleanly knocked a piece of wood into two, almost no matter how big the log was to begin with.

‘I know it’s late in the season, but is it always so quiet this time of year? Is it just you?’

‘Wife passed away a few years back. And it’s too late in the season to afford to keep the help on.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’

Colt set up another log and kept working with strong smooth swings, and guaranteed outcomes. Yet there was always a hint of anger just below the surface. His gaze shifted to Matthew.

‘You finished the video? Learned what you need to know? Hope it didn’t offend any wokeness you got.’

‘I doubt the video is going to be enough for me to field dress a deer on my own the first time. But maybe I can help. And no, I’m not offended or squeamish. I’m here to hunt. I’m here for the whole experience.’

‘Good. You can start helpin’ now. Grab one of those logs—the smaller one to start with,’ said Colt.

Matthew set it up on the chopping block, and then looked surprised as Colt handed him the axe. He should’ve known this would be another lesson. He took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. 

With both hands he pulled the axe up over his head and gave it a swing at the log. It hit, but got stuck halfway through the split.

‘Chopping wood is harder than it looks on YouTube, Jumpy. Try again. It’s about combining the weight and momentum of the axe itself, with the power of your swing.’

Matthew tried again, and the wood split in two. He tried again, and again, and again. He chopped until he was sweating, and breathing hard. He chopped until they had enough firewood for several days. He chopped until he started to feel a bit angry. Slowly, he had begun to find the technique that Colt had tried to explain. But Colt’s words hadn’t done it justice. It was one of those things you just had to get the feel of.

‘That’ll do,’ said Colt. ‘Let’s have some lunch. You start the fire while I get the stew heated up.’

Matthew knew how to start a fire. Sort of. Again, Hong Kong hadn’t been the sort of place where people had fireplaces, but they did go to the country parks and have barbeques over charcoal in fire pits. He started with some kindling and scrunched up newspaper, and it seemed to start quite easily, but then as he added a slightly larger log, the whole room began to fill with smoke. 

Matthew began to cough as he stepped back from the fire, trying to get some air. He looked up as the smoke circled the mangled little deer head. It peered out from the haze like a monster in a movie.

‘Open the damn flue, Jumpy,’ barked Colt, moving swiftly to the fireplace and pulling on a metal lever which Matthew had never noticed before. Colt took his hat and waved it in a vigorous arch across the fire to create a draft. Once the air got moving up the chimney, the fire sprang to life. With the flames, the warm air rose up the flue and carried the smoke with it.

Colt caught Matthew staring at him again. 

‘You gonna tell me what you’re really doing here, besides trying to burn my house down?’

‘How do you always know what to do and how to do it?’

‘It’s just common sense. Somethin’ they just don’t make much of anymore. But that’s not really what you want is it?’

There was something about the way the sun now shone through the big window into the light smoke still hanging silently in the air of the big room; Matthew stepped from the haze and into the light.

‘I don’t want to be so nervous about everything. I want to be smooth and cool, especially around firearms, but just everything. I want to be a man of action,’ he said as the smoke cleared. ‘I want to be a man.’

‘Yeah. Thought so,’ Colt paused for a minute, looking up at the mangled deer head. ‘I tell you this: You’re not going to find what you’re looking for in the wood pile, or the fireplace. You’re not going to find it in a loaded gun. It’s already in you, Jumpy. You just gotta learn to let it out.’

The men went to the table and ate their stew in silence. Throughout the meal, Matthew imagined the night after the hunt, he and Colt celebrating their success, sharing a meal of venison cooked over an open fire. As they sat together under the starry Montana sky, Matthew would reflect on how far he'd come, and would look forward to future hunting adventures with his mentor by his side.

---

Slowly, slowly squeezing the trigger. Tracking the deer to the left. Fighting against the twitches. Holding his breath. Only one old chimney puffing into the air.

The last two days had been spent out in the cold. Colt gave lessons on essential field skills such as tracking deer, reading signs of their presence—like tracks and droppings—and understanding their behaviour. Two days spent scouting for deer in the cold wilderness, observing their trails and trying to predict their movement patterns. But came up empty. Today was the last day of hunting season. Colt seemed to take it all in stride, but Matthew needed this to happen. He needed to be a man, a killer.

And this was his one shot.

The rifle exploded. It kicked into his shoulder and rose up in his hands. The shot echoed through the valley, and up into the Montana mountains. 

Matthew opened his eyes. He had only blinked for a split second, but he had lost track of the target. The deer had bolted.

‘Damn it, Jumpy—you just wounded him. He’s on the run. Come on! We gotta get after him,’ commanded the older man. ‘If he runs too much it will ruin the meat.’

Matthew gave no argument. This was exactly the worst outcome. He had only grazed the buck; now it was bleeding out, and running. He had made a mess of becoming a man. It was just like the story he had heard the night before.

After two fruitless days in the biting November wind, the two men sat before the fire, sipping whisky, warming themselves, and, for Matthew, soothing his disappointment. 

After the second double Scotch, Matthew finally built up the courage to ask, ‘What’s with the little mangled head above the fireplace?’

Colt took a long drink of his whisky, and stared straight into the fire.

‘It was the hunting trip from hell,’ he began. 

‘I was ill prepared for the hunt. I’d gotten cocky, and not taken time to dial in my gear. It was just after I bagged the big 275, and thought myself one of the all-time greatest white-tailed hunters in America. Hell, probably in the known universe.

‘But it’s that sorta overconfidence that can destroy you. You can’t let it get to your head. You gotta keep both feet on the ground. Don’t matter what you’ve done. Only matters what you gonna do next.’

He looked up at the little mangled head.

‘I saw the deer step out from behind a thicket of trees, and I hurried my shot. I didn’t even bother to steady myself. I just flipped the rifle over my shoulder, took a quick look through the scope and pulled the trigger. Yeah, I pulled it. No gentle squeeze, no holding my breath. I was overconfident and in a rush to impress all the guys who had come hunting with me, hoping that my skills would rub off on them.

‘Well, that’s usually when life comes up and kicks you right in the nuts. I only wounded him, and he began to run. We chased him for miles. I emptied all four shots from my magazine, but only grazed him once more. I let emotions—the need to feel big—make things worse.

‘We tracked blood for another two hours before we got close enough. At this point, the guys decided we couldn’t let this thing keep running, so—stupidly—we decided to all just fire away at the poor creature. I reloaded my magazine and put an extra round in the chamber.

‘Hear me when I say this: never let male mob mentality rule the day. It was a horror show. The poor thing must have taken at least a dozen high power rounds, including a couple from my own rifle. It was all machismo over common decency.’

His voice trailed off, and he sipped at his whisky.

Matthew looked again at the mangled head. He saw it differently now.

‘So why did you keep it, and mount it? It’s not even a very impressive size.’

‘Because every time, and I mean every-god-damn-time, I look at it, it humiliates me. It’s a hard reminder of what I don’t want to be, but what I once was. Maybe what I still am. It screams at me to do better.’

---

The two men breathed hard, their breath like plumes from steam trains, as they pursued the wounded buck through the trees, and up the valley. Matthew Leung had flown more than seven thousand miles to be here for this one chance.

Colt led the charge. Matthew stopped for a second to catch his breath; he had brought a lot of unnecessary gear with him, in a big backpack, which was slowing him down.

‘C’mon, my boy. We got a duty to finish,’ said Colt. ‘We gotta make it clean. It’s your responsibility. No quitting on me.’

‘Yeah, I’ve got this, grandpa,’ replied Matthew, beginning to run again.

Matthew had run over the hills in Hong Kong for years. It was a way for him to get away from his troubles for a while, a way to run from responsibilities. Now he found himself running towards his problem. He looked at Colt. Bounding ahead, the man seemed possessed, manic—but euphoric, like a cat in pursuit of a mouse. 

‘When we catch up to him, if you aren’t up to taking the shot,’ called Colt back at Mathew, ‘I’ll finish him for you.’

Matthew just scowled at Colt. He picked up his pace. He couldn’t let the old man get to the deer before him. As he watched Colt scramble up a big rock for a better view, Matthew no longer saw a heroic cowboy. Colt pulled out his rifle and looked through the scope. For a second, Matthew thought he was going to take the shot.

Matthew dropped his backpack, sprinted up to the big rock, and, scrambling up, knocked Colt off balance. Colt tumbled to the ground. What Matthew saw was just a man, flawed like the rest. And like the rest he was trying to do better, but struggling not to keep repeating his same mistakes.

Colt was about to tear Matthew a new one, but Matthew, catching sight of the deer, signalled Colt to be quiet. The old hunter’s reflexes overcame his immediate need to even the score, and he bit his tongue.

The deer had slowed, in a distant clearing. It would be a long shot, and Matthew was breathing hard. He chambered a round, then wrapped the strap tight around his arm. Dropping to one knee, he steadied himself. His only thought was about the deer, about putting it out of its misery.

With a calm squeeze, the shot rang out. The deer dropped to the ground. It would be the last real bullet that Matthew would ever fire.

The men walked quickly to the kill. Colt seemed to have already forgotten about being knocked to the ground. As they stood over the deer, he patted Matthew on the shoulder.

‘Well done, my boy, well done.’

Matthew, looking at the beautiful creature lying dead before him, didn’t want or need the praise. He felt guilt—like a punch to the gut. He felt like he had let out a bit of that manliness Colt said he had inside him, and he hated it. This was not a feeling he ever wanted to feel again.  His only small comfort was that he didn’t let himself, or anyone else, make it worse.

‘Time for your first practical lesson in field dressing,’ smiled Colt, pulling out his razor-sharp buck knife and beginning to cut. Matthew, as promised, helped, but it made him feel sick the entire time. He didn’t want the trophy. He wasn’t going to need the reminder.

When they were finished, Matthew insisted they cook and eat some of the deer meat, right there, next to the kill. 

‘It’s getting late, my boy. We should start carrying this back.’

But Matthew ignored him, and started building a fire, which he lit with just one match.

‘Look, it don’t really matter which piece you cook up, it’s been running for a while, the meat won’t be good,’ argued Colt in vain. 

Matthew picked up the heart, rinsed it, trimmed it, and diced it into small pieces. He skewered these on a stick, then roasted them over the fire. He let them sizzle and char.

He offered Colt a taste, but the old man pulled back.

‘That’s going to be rank, son. It’s full of adrenaline and stress hormones,’ Colt tried to explain. ‘Let’s go home and I’ll heat you up some of my stew.’

Matthew shrugged and pulled off a piece.

‘I want to remember what this sort of manliness tastes like,’ he said, popping it in his mouth.

‘Yeah. How is it?’ asked Colt, his big moustache curling back.

Burnt, biliary, beyond bad. The sort of thing that you’d only eat in an apocalypse. 

‘Terrible,’ Matthew replied, taking another big bite. ‘Needs ketchup.’

---

Jay Oatway came to Hong Kong in 1997, to write about the Handover, and worked in magazines for years before becoming an early influencer in the social media marketing space. With this background, Jay’s blend of science fiction, fantasy, suspense, and social commentary often explores the friction of technology on the human condition, delving into the complexities of modern life in the digital age.