Afternoon of a Roebuck

Decked out in his fanciest uniform, bloated Hermann Goering was a crashing symphony in green, armed with a spear. Playing Germany's clown prince of the hunt, Reichsjaegermeister Goering used to lay down his obsolete weapon, take up a rifle and waddle to a platform erected in the forest. There, he would wait for his beaters to maneuver deer within near-pointblank range. Out among the trees, deep-throated horns would toot calls signaling each stage of the hunt (the sighting of a stag, the shot, the finding of the carcass). Because he sometimes killed half a dozen stags at a single sitting, trigger-happy Hermann was privately referred to by hunters as "the Reich's Slaughter Master."

Goering and his theatrics are gone, but the traditions and rituals of Germany's "noblest" sport have survived. Last week, at the height of the Blattzeit (roe deer mating season), hundreds of hunters trod through West Germany's deer country. Few could afford Goering's "hoch" style of shooting, but those who could manage it wore the hunter's minimum dress--green knickers, brown or green suede jacket, cravat, stylish hat, rubber-soled stalking shoes.

Besides such fancy guns as hand-tooled Mannlichers, the hunters carried brass horns and other noisemakers for luring a stag to his death. The most effective device, the bleater, is a small rubber squeezer, ball-shaped and equipped with stops. Properly manipulated, the bleater emits a "pia" like the cry of a newborn roe; it also trills a realistic "fiep," simulating the call of a doe in rut. The bleater instruction sheet suggests that the hunter render the fiep with "trembling hands," then promptly swing his gun to his shoulder and brace himself for the charge of a romantic roebuck.

One West German hunter who sounded his fiep and got his buck last week began the typical solemn ritual. While the stag was breathing his last, the hunters stood by in respectful silence. When the stag died, the hunters bared their heads and bowed low toward the carcass. Then the hunt master cut an oak twig and passed it, balanced on his knife blade, to the man who had made the kill. The hunter lightly brushed the twig across the animal's wound. Finally, he got a leaf and placed it between the stag's lips to symbolize the fiep-deluded deer's last meal. Leaving the animal to be picked up later, the party moved on, bleaters ready, guns cocked.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.