Doe Season

In the story “Doe Season” I could see myself as Andy many times throughout the story. Although I missed the deer that I was aiming for I knew after that experience I would never enjoy hunting. I went for one more season after that and I made noise in my stand and wished that no deer would come my way. I had fought it hard, to not take on the traditional role of staying home and making food for the hunters and waiting for them to return. But, like Andy, I realized that I was not a hunter.

Andy wasn’t ready to let go of her childhood and special moments with her father. She feels that if she participates in doe season with her father her life will remain as it is. Her father sees her as Andy and Charlie and Mac see her as “half a boy”. You can use her family trip to the ocean as the theme for her outlook on growing up. The ocean scares her, “It was huge and empty, yet always moving. Everything lay hidden” (459). She correlates the ocean with her mother and her mother loved the ocean. She is embarrassed when her mother’s swimsuit top falls off revealing her breasts.

When she realizes she wants nothing to do with the gutting of the deer she runs away and decides that Andy is no longer her name. Her father is calling for her and she can also hear her mother calling for her from the ocean, “Come in, come in, while all around her roared the mocking of the terrible, now inevitable, sea” (467).