"Doe Season"

With the current notoriety of Sarah Palin as a female hunter, the “Doe Season,” a story about a young girl who shoots well on her first hunting trip, seems completely contemporary rather than written by David Michael Kaplan in 1985. Although I realize that Andy in the story and Sarah Palin represent a segment of the population who like to hunt, I cannot personally imagine killing any animals with the exception of when they would be severely injured or ill.

With my bias about not harming animals I could relate to Andy’s horror when they cut the doe open. “Andy was running from them, back to the field and across….” (467) Andy’s upset was shown by her, “crying” (467) and her decision to no longer use the male form of her name (467). However, I don’t believe that sensitivity to protecting animals is solely a female quality. Both genders can be very caring.

Finally, I am not convinced that the sequence where Andy encounters the doe after it was shot is real, but it serves to show how much the animal trusted Andy. Ordinarily, if an animal is hurt, it will run away from humans. In this case, the injured doe stands while Andy examines her, “until her whole hand and more was inside the wound and she had found the doe’s heart, warm and beating.” (466) Animals have an extraordinary sense of which humans to trust. In the end Andy proved she had learned and could be trusted.