Sun shines through the leaf roof of the forest onto the little encampment of the 2 snow leopards, father and son. Kjartan lies right next to his son Adrian. The teenager holds the rifle that sits on a bipod while his father looks through binoculars as both watch the clearing. Wind blows slow but steadily into their faces marking the perfect conditions for their hunt. Not often Kjartan finds time to calmly spend time with his son and finally he can also redeem the promise to take him out on a hunt. It is not the first time and won’t be the last time that they have time to do that. All they have to do is now to wait on the prey to appear in front of their sights but for that the dusk has to set in.
So they spent another hour with just chatting over a wide variety of things ranging from normal chit chat over terrible dad jokes to the even more terrible topic of Adrian’s girlfriend. Adrian manages to dodge the unpleasant topic by pulling up their rations.
“We should eat before the sun touches the horizon.” Says Adrian. Kjartan just chuckles and takes his portion. He’ll get more than enough opportunities to question his son about that.
As the lighting slowly turns into a slight gloom Kjartan pulls the camouflage net over them that only the barrel and their optics peek out. Low profile and no smell could indicate their presence to anything that enters the clearing. So they sit and wait. Calmly. Quietly. Patiently.
The silence is broken by rustling coming from a deer that slowly walk in their direction. They both enter hunt mode immediately and quiet down entirely. Only Kjartan whispers into Adrian’s ear.
“Boy. You know what to do. You are ready. Just as we trained.”
Adrian lets out a long and slow breath, trying to slow down his heartbeat as he takes aim. The deer stops head on to them and starts feeding of the grass. He begins to take aim. Center mass, right at the heart. Rifle is zeroed in on the distance. Everything is set.
Adrian breathes slower and slower and when the deer raises its head again he pulls the trigger. A sharp noise disrupts the air as the deer jumps up and then drops to the ground on with a low thud. The hunting hollow point bullet has done its job perfectly. It dumped all its energy in the deer’s heart turning it into red slush as it bestows the deer with a quick and painless death.
Adrian lets out a long and strained breath as his father pats him on the shoulder.
“That was a perfect shot, son. Should give us fresh meat for a while. Pack up our little encampment here while I go and take care of our gift of nature. Never forget to thank the nature for letting us partake in the ecosystem. We will honor the meat that we have claimed. Okay?”
Adrian nods and unloads the rifle before packing everything up. About 15 minutes later everything is stashed into the bags as Kjartan returns to him with the animal on his back. They give each other a short nod before the head back towards the car. By now the dusk has fully set in as the 2 big cats vanishing into the darkness leaving but a small blood spot in the grass. They both know that Laura won’t be too pleased about them being out on the hunt again but hey, fresh meat.