Time to begin

Rudy moves into position himself, no more talking at this point.  Fern has her directions and they both have the plan so it's time only to focus on the hunt.  Rudy’s gaze is on the deer, in his peripheral vision he can see where Fern is and the moment she runs out he follows along beside her.  Rudyard chooses a gait that’s even with Fern.  It’s like second nature now to keep his body moving in sync with the deer.  If the deer tried to swerve towards he’d move towards it so that it stayed in the middle.  There was no large turning in all of this, just the most subtle of movements.

At one point his bad leg stumbled but he caught himself and continued on.  It was frustrating to not run at feel speed but both of them needed to work up to harder runs.  Eventually, they got back to where Fern and Rudy had started, where the snare had been placed.  This really wasn’t Rudy’s normal manner of hunting but it appeared they would get lucky.  The deer’s hoof landed in the snare and took hold of its back leg.  It cried out for help but of course, no help would come.

Rudy grinned as they caught up to it.  “Hey, it worked.” Rudy grinned at the little way of admitting he hadn’t been all that confident. “Now, show respect to it.  Make the kill fast.  The windpipe is a good spot to bite through.  No reason to make it remain to suffer and terrified.”  If Rudy hadn’t understood it before he did know.  Looking in the scared deer’s face he saw a victim and Rudy wondered if his eyes had looked like that back then.  Yes, let it be out of its misery.  

"Rudyard & Fern"