Size Does Matter

Boy One:  "Y'all hear about my seven pointer? Got him last night."

Boy Two:  "Boy, that ain't nothing. I got an eight last week with a 25 inch spread."

Boy One:  "How much did it weigh?"

Boy Two:  "Had to be dang near a buck fifty."

Translation please?

This is a conversation that my brother and his buddies have just about every waking moment from late autumn through mid-winter. And it probably sounds closer to Greek than English for a person who lives outside of the South.  

What they are talking about is deer hunting, and talk about it they do: all the time. A point is a projecting piece of the deer's antlers that is at least an inch long. The spread is the distance between the two main beams of the antlers (from the inside edges). As for a deer weighing a "buck fifty," I honestly have no idea where that saying comes from, but it just means a hundred and fifty pounds. The wider the spread, the higher the points, and the heavier the buck, the older and more dominant the buck is assumed to be.

So, hunters sit for hours upon hours in the woods, braving the winter elements, for just the chance at bringing down a buck. Even though I was raised in the south, I still have trouble understanding the logic of this. Sure, the meat tastes good, but the time investment way outweighs the results in my opinion. However, from what I can collect from my brother's conversations, the size of the buck a man kills is directly proportionate to his own measure of manliness. You see, the bigger the buck is, the more manly the buck. Therefore, the more manly the buck you kill, the more of a man you are. 

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