the buck stops ... here

He sighted. Aimed, carefully. Fired. The buck dropped to its front forelegs, pitched further forward, nosed into the mud, toppled. It happened in slow motion. It always did. And perhaps that was part of the attraction -- watching the life bleed away. The animal was still breathing, struggling to, when he arrived at its side. Its eyes were glassed over, growing cloudy. He moved away, at an angle, so the dying eye couldn’t find him. He didn’t like being spotted, even by dying animals, and he’d made a career outside the hunting range by being invisible. He sat on a thick root to the left of the carcass, pushed back on the bill of his cap and lit a cigarette. It was still barely dawn. Only half the sky was lit, and, then, only a deep purple. He was almost admiring it when the first shot hit him, toppling him forward, not unlike the buck, severing his spinal cord. He felt strangely separate from his body, almost benumbed, but he still could hear, and the wheezing of the buck now blended almost synchronously with his own final gasps and the muted squish of approaching footsteps.