Laurie Jamais, Heather Smith and Heather Bernard, were frequently found hanging out together and were known collectively as Laurie and the two Heathers. They had hunted together for the past two years, ever since they had won their first license in the county lottery. Heather Bernard was blond, large boned, and tall at almost 6 feet, taller than many jacks. She blushed with little provocation - to her repeated embarrassment - and her pale white skin flared a bright crimson. Heather Smith was slight, dark, and walked with a dancer's grace. She stood just 5 feet tall. They were unlikely friends, but Heather Smith's intensity complemented Heather Bernard's mild, benign manner. Laurie herself was somewhere between Heather Smith and Heather Bernard. Her wit and charisma made her something more than ordinary.

This year, Laurie's sister, Martha and her friends Diane Ephore and Demetria or Demie Aron were hunting for the first time. The six young women had spent a fair part of the summer practicing their archery and many hours discussing hunting strategies. For a while they considered forming themselves into mixed team with both novices and veterans. However, Martha had wanted to hunt with her friends and Laurie was confident of Martha's archery and their safety. Demi was solid. She opted for a complex bow, which required more skill and practice than the cross bow that most carried. Diane burned with enthusiasm and Laurie often wondered if her flames might not blind her judgment, but she was all right too. Their mother insisted that they arrange to hunt the same sector on the same day, even if they wouldn't hunt together. Laurie cautioned her younger sister that hunting was quite different than target shooting.

All waited for the sounding of the second horn, starting the second day of the Hunt - the day of their permits. "This year, I really want a bull this year," Heather S. insisted, hands on her hips, fingering the small leather purse that hung from her belt. "We can only take one pronger, so we'll throw back anything less for your sister and her friends and everyone else. I really want rings this year. A pair of rings!" Despite her petite size, determination made her quite believable.

"Well," said Laurie wearing a necklace, identical to her friends's, made from the teeth of their two prior prongers. "We've never done better than a chicken jack. Last year, remember, I shot the first pronger we flushed. I winged the bugger rather, and Heather B. finally brought him down."

"It was pretty thrilling at the time, if you remember. We really didn't get a good look at him until we had him. Up close, he looked a lot less scary than I had imagined," offered Heather Bernard. Her small, quiet voice belied her size.

"You guys made me wash out his intestines." Heather Smith stuck out her tongue and made a rude noise. "I'm all for charcuterie. If we're to be up to our elbows in ick, guys, let's catch one big enough to make Heather B sweat some when she carries him out." The horn finally sounded and the hunters entered the field.

Once males had been the Lords of Creation. They had ruled the world for millennia but they had betrayed their trust and nearly destroyed humankind with their institutionalized destructiveness. Some said that civilization itself was women's response to male strength and enthusiasm for violence. Ultimately, civilization itself stood on the brink of chaos and women finally banded together and found their deep-rooted strength. In the aftermath of the Revolution, they discovered that a simple reduction in male numbers had finally ended war and markedly diminished violent crime. No one could deny the benefits that came to all with the end of war and violent crime. The end of the half-century standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Cold War, brought decades of prosperity. This new peace dividend was greater and more durable. The challenge for the new order was to restrain male numbers in the face of the male birth fraction and women's vast sentimentality. Males might recover their lost numbers in a generation. However, allies were readily found among the women who had picked up the reins of power, long held by men, and had quickly come to enjoy their new prerogatives.

An annual Hunt was established. Starting in the summer of his nineteenth year, each male had to survive three annual Hunts. Just as untold generations of males had shipped off to war with much bravado, now males shipped off to their "national service." For each Hunt, a male was released in a designated preserve for three days. Each day's hunting began at 7 AM and continued until late afternoon. The precise rules were tweaked from time to time to control the harvest. Males had an opportunity to study their sectors before each hunt and were hunted in the same sector all three years. The males trained the rest of the year and provided low cost menial labor and other more special services. No more than one male in ten survived three Hunts.

Before the Revolution, women had comprised ten percent of all hunters and perhaps twenty percent in Western States. Now the ranks of hunters grew with women who loved the out of doors and thrill of the chase but had been repelled by the unpleasant details of the slaughter of graceful wild creatures. Males or jacks as they came to be called evoked much less sympathy.

Martha, Demi, and Diane drew a path on their map. First, they followed the fence on the western border of the sector, hoping to flush a jack who had hoped to secure his back by hiding near the fence. In some places, they found a clear path next to the fence. In others, dense brush impeded their progress.

Jacks try to survive by hiding. Some jacks - older, braver, wiser - slip away when they first see hunters. They risk that their movement might give away their positions or that they might stumble into another hunter's sights. Others - often chicken jacks - either flee prematurely and run right into a nearby hunter or wait too long until their discovery seems inevitable and only then dash for safety. These are almost always spotted, sometimes taken directly, and sometimes chased down. Jacks are not as swift as white tail deer.

"Look at this!" Diane exclaimed and pointed out the place where the rain had washed out an opening under the fence, one barely large enough for a medium sized jack to crawl through. Demi pulled a brightly colored ribbon from her pocket and tied it to the fence to mark the place for the wardens. Diane look out at the underbrush across the road and saw nothing even with her infra red glasses. Then Martha looked herself. It was very suspicious but they all looked and no one saw anything.

Then they walked further along the fence, making their way slowly through the dense brush and saw nothing. Then, Demi gestured for everyone's attention. She had seen something in a clump of brush to her left. The women spread out and moved in stealthily. Suddenly, a shape hurtled out from concealment. It was only a white tailed deer and this was not the deer season.

Franciose Barthes watched her sixteen year old granddaughter, Charlotte, open the trunk and remove their gear. For a moment, she thought that she was watching Emanuela, her daughter, and remembered herself twenty-some years earlier. She smiled at her recollections and wondered how much was accurate and how much the pretty paper in which people wrap their fondest memories.

"Grammy, you brought my bow!" Charlotte looked up and grimaced. "I told you and Mom that I wouldn't hunt. I just don't believe in it. You guys just never listen to me. I don't want to kill anything. I don't even eat red meat!" Her long brown hair was braided in a thick French braid and tucked up under her cap. She wore a leather vest over a long sleeved shirt and blue jeans with soft leather boots that brushed her mid calf. She looked very much like an out-of-doors woman, even if her heart wasn't in the object of the Hunt.

"Take it, dear. You may need it to protect your old Grammy."

"If we weren't going in the woods today, we wouldn't need any protection."

Franciose Barthes smiled. She usually took time off from her practice and hunted with her oldest daughter. Every year, the family gathered afterwards to enjoy the bounty. Some years when she came back empty handed, Franciose always found a willing acquaintance with an extra half-haunch in her cooler. When called upon and able, Franciose repaid the favor gladly to the same acquaintance or to another.

When she was small, Charli ran wild with her cousins and hunted imaginary jacks in the park down the block. She too had savored the delicious aromas wafting from the kitchen with the rest of the family and shared in the annual feast enthusiastically.

However, she had always had a fondness for small, helpless animals, like most little girls, but beginning in the year when she had had her first period, she had out and out refused to eat red meat. Charli had weakened some time later and was known to eat some chicken or fish, but never red meat. Now, in the blooming radicalism of youth, she was even questioning the Hunt.

Franciose had grown up after the Revolution and but she could recall her mother's tales of the bad old days. Each year, she looked forward to the Hunt and was glad that she could afford the time and a permit. She had enjoyed hunting with her friends and then with Mani, her daughter, when she was old enough. Males or jacks had slain women, children, and each other for millenia without cause. She had never thought of males as helpless, cuddly creatures. She was glad to do her part to control the varmints. This year, however, Mani just couldn't get away from work and asked Charli to go with her Grammy.

Charli finally agreed to go along, but only for the walk in the woods. She had been an expert archer in school. However, she stated and restated her non-negotiable, unshakable, unequivocal refusal actually to kill anything. She even threatened to shout a warning should she by chance see Grammy try to kill her jack!

Mani, her mother, listened to her patiently and thought, more than once, about inquiring of the origin of the prized, expensive, finely worked leather vest and boots that her daughter loved to wear. Somehow, she chose not too. Wisdom would come in its own time.

Franci pursued a structural strategy with some success. At the beginning of the Hunt, there were about 16 jacks to the square mile. However, the likelihood of finding a jack in a particular place was not completely random. Jacks naturally sought the best places to hide. Jacks knew about the infra-red binoculars now and the older, smarter ones carefully chose hiding places where they could not be found by a casual surveillance. However, these hiding places often had a limited field of view, and they might be approached without detection, if one were careful enough.

Some hunters looked for high ground or climbed trees to improve their vantage point. Franci knew that the number of really good hiding places was limited and a substantial percentage would certainly conceal a jack, often a fine bull. She would simply identify those places where a jack might reasonably choose to hide and be invisible to hunters scanning their surroundings, even with their infrared binoculars. Franci and her daughter would then move in stealthily and flush the supposed jack from hiding.

Franci and Charli spent most of the day walking quietly through the woods. Although they didn't talk much, Franci sensed that Charli enjoyed being with her as much as she enjoyed the company of her granddaughter. This day, as usual, there were many more potential hiding places than jacks. They approached each place as if it concealed a jack. With each stalk, Franci felt a moment's exhileration followed by disappointment when no jack was flushed. At first, Charli was noticibly relieved when they failed to flush a jack. With time, though, she got into the game that she had played when she was younger, as the stalking seemed all in play. Franci saw flashes of Charli's childhood exuberance behind her serious, adult façade. Proceeding deeper and deeper into the preserve, they could no longer see or hear other hunters. Tired and hungry, in a sort of pleasant way, they stopped for lunch and an hour's quiet chat.

Suddenly, shouting shattered the stillness. Martha, Diane, and Demi ran forward toward the commotion without caution, high-stepping through the thick brush. In a little hollow, just over the next rise, they saw a pair of hunters dancing around a pale figure lying crumpled on the ground. Charging through the brush, Demi's cap flew off and she stopped to retrieve it while Martha and Diane ran ahead.

Kim and Amanda, also on their very first hunt, had taken a jack. One quarrel had pierced his shoulder and a second had pierced his thigh just above the knee. When Marthe and Diane arrrived, Amanda was straightening the carcass for some photos. Kim just couldn't wait and snapped picture after picture.

"Who shot the birdie?" Diane asked, catching her breath. A birdie was a jack in his first year - a chicken jack.

"Amanda, got him first. My first shot went wide but she hit him in the shoulder there. We chased him a couple of hundred yards," Kim paused to catch her breath. "and then I shot him there." Kim said panting and pointing to his leg. "He fell like a stone, though," she concluded, then wrinkled her nose in a show of disappointment at her failure to to hit a more critical site.

"When I first saw him, somehow, I thought he was bigger," Amanda commented, still breathless herself from all of the excitement.

"Congratulations! And don't be too hard on yourself! It's a good kill," Demie allowed when she retrieved her hat and finally joined them. "I bet they always look bigger when they're charging you. This is the first pronger we've seen today!"

"You guys make it all seem easy," said Martha.

"It's still early today and you've got plenty of time. Excuse me, while I attend to some messy business." Kim unrolled the oil cloth and began to lay out her tools. "Somehow, he doesn't look very threatening now."

"He's breathing - really!" Martha said, trying to remain calm. "He's not dead!

"You're kidding!" Kim retorted. "That's some damned sick joke!"

"Look, he's breathing, " Marthe insisted. "Really, he is!"

Suddenly, the jack opened his eyes and then it was Kim's turn to scream.

The wounded jack rolled quickly to the his side and grabbed for her knife. Somehow, Diane had anticipated what would happen from the instant he had opened his eyes. It all happened so fast. She dropped to the ground and grabbed his wrist with both her hands, just as he began to move. Weakened by blood loss and unable to use his wounded arm for much, the jack could not free his one good hand from her strong two handed grip. He tried to throw her off and get his feet under him and stand. He got a knee under him, but Diane held his wrist to the ground with all her strength. Kim cursed briefly but quickly regained her wits. She jumped to her feet and turn-kicked him in the head. The jack fell back to the ground, blood streaming from his mouth and nose.

"Kim, you peed in your pants!" Martha laughed. The evidence was plain to see.

"He scared the bleeding shit out of me." Kim said with some relief. She was angry and beyond angry. "I just glad I didn't shit on myself too. She squatted down and shook her head at the jack's ruined face. His jaw was set at an odd angle, his nose was broken or rather shattered and a deep gash in the side of his head bled copiously. Several teeth were obviously missing.

Amanda finally stopped laughing and looked around for the lost teeth in the scrub finding, only a few.

"I guess, it doesn't matter now," Kim concluded. She pushed the jack's chin back with the heel of her left hand and neatly cut his throat. "Ugly as he is, his head would never have made much of a trophy."

Laurie, and the two Heathers moved slowly through the brush. The goal was to see a jack before he saw them. They moved in a line about 50 meters apart, 10 meters at a time. Then they stopped, looked and waited. Laurie searched the brush with her infra-red glasses, but a jack in hiding had the advantage. He could devote his full attention to watching for hunters. If he saw them before they saw him, he could just slip cautiously away. Laurie's best hope was that other hunters might flush a jack who would then blunder into them. If she saw him before he saw her, then she had a chance. She saw nothing here. Few jacks would hide this close to the staging area.

Suddenly though, Heather Smith was shouting. A jack burst out of the woods right in front of them. Laurie smiled at her apparent good fortune so early in the day. At first, he did not seem to see them. Her friends spread out quickly and quietly so that each would have a clear field of fire. The women flipped the safeties of their crossbows off and nocked bolts at the ready.

This was the thrill of the hunt. The women closed quickly. The jack ran across their path, fleeing from something desperately and not at all aware of this new danger.

Suddenly, he saw them. Rather than fleeing in a different direction and seeking safety in distance, he rushed straight at Laurie. A moving target was hard to hit and one moving directly at you was the hardest. This jack had smarts as well as courage. He must have surmised that if the first shots missed, he had a chance as the crossbows took some time to reload and the women might not shoot at all, if there was a risk that a companion was in the line of fire. Streaking for the woods, he might present a better target or blunder into yet another party of hunters. It was very unlikely that a second party of hunters would follow close behind this one.

He charged and shouted incoherently. He waved his makeshift club wildly, a two foot length of a heavy twisted tree branch, trying to rattle them. Laurie quickly overcame her surprise and fear and held her ground. She was not much given to panic. The jack halted in his tracks and she confronted him resolutely with the lowered point of the bolt that rested on the stock of her cross bow. She was angry that he had actually frightened her, angry at him and angry at herself.

"Too scrawny! Laurie, he's too scrawny. Let him go!" Heather Smith shouted, much too loudly for her petite frame but completely in character. No one her heard her before they saw her guessed her size correctly. "I wanna bull. Throw this birdie back!"

The chicken jack stopped, confused. He looked briefly to the left and to the right but the lethal point of the crossbow bolt had fully captured his attention. He held out his club but the crossbow had the clear advantage of reach. He approached Laurie warily, intently looking for an escape.

Laurie manuevered the lethal point skillfully as she engaged him in a deadly dance. He turned and feinted and tried to slip behind the razor-sharp point. She bit her lip in concentration and held the crossbow with both hands. She backed away slowly trying to keep the point always between the jack and herself. Still, she did not press the ready trigger.

"He's attacking me - he won't count!" Laurie shouted. "Let me take him. It'll be easy! Come on!" Hunters worked in teams and carried whistles for safety, should a wounded or simply crazed jack try to turn the tables and make the hunters themselves the prey. True jack attacks were very rare, however. Jacks had been warned repeatedly that an attack always drew pursuit and the culprits might be killed without restriction. They did not count against the day's bag limit. The conventional definition of an 'attack' was quite broad and included almost any sort of confrontation short of abject cowering or desperate flight. Few jacks had the opportunity to tell their side of the story. Generally, by the time an allegedly crazed jack first runs into a warden, he is lying dead in the back of a 4x4 or draped over the hood of a car and unable to make much of a case for himself.

"Let him go," Heather Smith hollered. "It's still early!

Still wary of Laurie and otherwise occupied with Heather Smith, he could do little when Heather Bernard crashed against his knees and tackled him. He fell heavily to the ground. Big Heather the Feather fell atop him and Heather Smith scambled to secure her grip on his club.

The jack lay stunned for an instant, then he rose slowly, and unsteadily to his knees simply carrying two Heathers with him. Laurie dropped her bow and rushed in. The jack grunted and tried to regain his feet. "He's just a baby jack!" Heather Smith called, grasping a length of rope. "I thought we wanted a bull this year."

After a substantial struggle, the jack was subdued. His face was twisted in terror but he could do little. He was bent backwards like a bow and tied wrists to ankles. The jack threw himself this way and that but he was tied securely.

Heather Bernard and Laurie whooped in triumph. They disentangled themselves with difficulty and brushed the leaves, dirt, and grass from their disheveled clothes and hair. In disgust, Heather Bernard spat a mouthful of something that she could not readily identify and wished rather not to think about.

Heather Bernard reached into her kit and found the chain bracelet that she had brought. On its tag was a metal shield with her name and phone number. She locked it around the jack's ankle in such a way that he would not be able to remove it. "If you survive, look us up." she said with a curious smile. The jack began to understand that he somehow might survive this particular encounter. Heather Smith somewhere found a black permanent marker and playfully outlined on his subdued body the butchers' cuts that lay in his future should he be taken. She marked a personal claim to his left loin. Then she released him.

This year there seemed be to a male hunter, a male who had survived three Hunts himself and earned near full citizenship. Now he returned with his sister and her friend to try the sport from the other end. The two women carried bows, but the lean, medium height male carried only a heavy knife. He wore jeans and an orange sweat shirt. No one would mistake him for a naked jack. The three rings in left ear, jangled softly when he walked.

Ashley first spotted the jack with her infra-red and pointed him out to Mike and Sarah. The two women circled around while Mike counted to twenty, and charged. The jack never expected such a direct assault and in his confusion, simply waited too long. Finally, he turned and ran but Mike quickly overtook him. He simply grabbed the jack, who was actually smaller than he, and wrestled him to the ground. Mike trapped the poor creature's arms against his sides. Sarah grabbed his head by the hair and waited for Ashley to get ready. Ashley would not squandor her opportunity. After all, she had drawn the short straw. She slipped in between the jacks flailing legs and grasped his genitals in both hands. In position, Ashley grinned and nodded to Sarah. Sarah brought her heavy knife down with a strong, precise stoke, under the back of the jack's skull, severing his spinal cord. The jack bucked and writhed violently, then went limp. Mike held on with all of his considerable strength.

Ashley gasped aloud when she felt the cock jump in her grasp as it stood erect, freed from higher nervous control, then she felt the balls actually twitched palpably, and her hand filled with semen in his agonal reaction. At the second last, she jumped back to avoid the excrement dribbling out his rectum as he died. Quick as she was, she succeeded fully, laughing with her good fortune.

"Whew!" Ashley could say no more for quite a while but she was smiled broadly.

Mike washed and gutted the carcass. Ashley and Sarah licked Ashley's hand clean while the two sat on the ground and watched. "At least he died happy!" Mike looked up from his work and quipped. "Last year, this could have been me!"

"When you get done with your work, Mike, you can make me happy too - after you wash up," Ashley suggested. Sometimes, it was good to have a male around.

Martha, Demi, and Diane couldn't help but talking about Kimmie and Amanda. From time to time, one cautioned the others to silence, but the talkling and laughing continued for a long time. As noisy as they were, they spotted no more jacks. Their voices gave them away and likely any number of jacks slipped away unseen. After a time, they settle down and returned to hunting more seriously. However, they had lost much time.

Although much more is said about successes than failures, not every party brought home the bacon. Actually, more than one -half of parties failed and failures were certainly more common among novice hunters. The permits limited to allow no more than 16 parties of 2-4 women per square mile of hunting ground on any one day and the maximum was one jack per party.

Diane thought that she saw something. The women closed and found no jack. However, they did find a trail rations wrapper, the kind that was distributed to jacks. This suggested that a jack had been there not long before.

Martha increased their pace so that they would complete the path that they had marked out on the map that morning. She checked landmarks and trail signs carefully. However, with more attention devoted to hiking, they were more noisy and less able to survey their surroundings. Odds were increased that a jack might see them and slip away before they even knew that he had been there. They knew that jacks were in the woods. However, the women saw none themselves, much to their disappointment. They didn't have a good shot for all their hunting--all day.

Laurie and the two Heathers walked through the woods slowly. Pausing every minute or so, they stopped, looked and listened. Hours went by with no more sightings. They saw several parties of hunters, but no jacks. They stopped for a quick cold lunch and then returned to the hunt. They had until 6 PM.

Suddenly, they heard noise on their left. A party of hunters had flushed a jack and he was running their way, crashing through the brush, mindful only of the band of women in dogged pursuit behind him. Even though they had been scouring the woods for hours, looking for a jack, actually finding one--even their second for the day--was always still visceral shock. He ran from the first party, oblivious to everything else. He held a fair sized rock in his right hand and a tree branch in his left as a makeshift weapon. He dashed over the rough ground, abandoning concealment. He showed no apparent wound that might represent a prior claim and confound ownership later.

He finally saw them. He bellowed his defiance and charged. Heather Smith notched a square tipped bolt and aimed along his straight course as he ran parallel to their path. Only Laurie had a clear shot. The others were afraid to shoot for fear of hitting one another or the other party of hunters running behind him. Bellowing and brandishing a thick branch that served as his a makeshift club he charged, bobbing and weaving--just like the chicken jack earlier in the day. Laurie had only a second to shoot before he was upon her. He was much larger than she and either rage or fear twisted his visage into a terrifying mask but she stood her ground resolutely, raised her bow, and aimed. As she squeezed the trigger, the jack threw his rock in her general direction and distracted her just enough so that the bolt missed and went wide. Laurie jumped out of his way, barely avoiding his flailing club, as he burst past her and dived into a thicket, oblivious to the thick branches and thorns tearing at his bare skin. Suddenly, his shouts of triumph died and he fell heavily into the brush.

When Heather Smith on the far right had seen that she had no clear shot from where she stood, she turned and raced in the same direction as the jack, nimbly negotiating the broken ground. The jack was slowed a bit by his efforts to evade Laurie's shot and Heather had gained a crucial step on him. When he rushed past Laurie, Heather had a clear shot for an instant before he would be hidden in the dense thicket and she took it. Laurie had missed; Heather Smith had not.

Laid out supine, the jack looked somewhat smaller than he had even moments earlier, although he had respectable size. Laurie knelt next to him, carefully avoiding the bloody liquid that oozed from around the arrow protruding from his chest. She pulled up his chin sharply and slit his throat. "Here's our buck! He sure has an ugly face, but he does have a rings or at least one ring." She quipped as she stood and stretched. For luck, she licked away the spot of blood that had touched her finger. "He sure is ugly!"

Heather Smith came over beaming in triumph. "That's if you care at all what their faces look like," she replied. Heather was simply fascinated by male genitals in all their variety, large or small, thick or thin, and at rest or aroused. As usual, the jacks were all quite different from one another, though all were hirsute compared to the House jacks who were kept depiliatated for reasons of hygiene and aesthetics. The buck jack's black pubic hair ran up to his navel. Lifting his fat sex with her foot, she was impressed also by the size of his plump scrotal sac. She squatted down to examine him more carefully; the testes were heavy in her hands as she planned her trophy; a traditional gore, a diamond-shaped swatch with its long axis between his navel and anus and its short axis between the inside of his thighs. She wondered how his cock would look mounted. He was certainly thick, but should he be long or short, straight or curved. She liked the yearning appeal of an upward curve. Taxidermists could do wonders. She had her buck, perhaps not a bull, a third year jack, but a buck, a second year jack. She was certainly pleased that Heather Bernard was there to help her carry him back.

The party of hunter who had flushed the jack arrived on the scene. They were disappointed that someone else had made the kill and hopeful that their luck might still improve though the day was growing short.

Heather Bernard looked at the jack and snorted. Heather Smith had her buck and she, of course, had to carry him back to camp. As tall as Heather Bernard was, he was just about her height and surely weighed more than she before they hog dressed him. She used the water from her canteen to wash the blood from his throat. Others might have been content to loop a rope around each of his ankles and and drag him back to the staging area. Heather Bernard was not. However, the carcass had to be gutted and cooled before they could return to the staging area. Heat spoiled the meat. They had several hours to kill.

Heather Bernard started a fire, while Laurie looked for a likely stick to serve as a skewer. Heather Smith did the honors and removed the testes from the scrotum and freed them from their attachments. She washed them thoroughly and halved them neatly, cutting through the tough membrane. Soon they were roasting over Heather Bernard's fire. Laurie had packed a bottle of wine to celebrate their triumph and this seemed as likely a time as any.

"Let's get him out of here," Heather Bernard said with resignation. The carcass had cooled sufficiently. She draped him over her shoulder while Laurie and Heather Smith lowered the carcass that had been hanging by his ankles. If she could balance the load, she could minimize the strain on her back

Heather stood up straight, not uncomfortably, with the heavy jack draped limply over her strong right shoulder. She looped her right arm over his back and held his muscular buttock to steady her burden. His head hung at the level of her buttock. She was glad that Heather and Veronica helped, but she suspected that she might even have been able to shoulder him herself.

"Fine ass," Heather Smith quipped as she looked up after she tied off the bags that held his liver, heart, kidneys, and genitals.

Heather Bernard grinned and patted his ass. He has a nice ass, she thought to herself. He's an outstanding specimen, almost like one of those farm reared jacks. He should dress out at over fifty kilos and fill a freezer.

Laurie and the two Heathers headed back to the staging area. The jack's limp carcass swayed as Heather Bernard walked, his face bumping into her butt more than once.

Franci and Charli resumed their stroll. The forest canopy arched grandly over their heads and gave the early afternoon landscape a twilight appearance. Only the calls of birds, raucus or melodic, broke the austere silence. To Franci's surprise, Charli was first to point out a depression to their right. A jack might truly hide there and be invisible to anyone not looking specifically down its slope, whether or not they had infra-red glasses.

On her belly, Franci crept up first. Charli held back and was amused to see her Grammy move so spryly with an energy and agility that Charli did not at-all associate at all with grandmothers. Franci peered over the brim then eased herself down. She slid back down a meter, then rolled over and waved to Charli. She had seen a jack! She pulled two arrows from her quiver.

Franci, placed an arrow up the slope behind her and nocked a second arrow. She turned back onto her belly and shimmied back up to the crest. With difficulty, she pulled back and rose silently to her knees.

Charli wanted to see. She really didn't want to kill anything; she just wanted to see. Her curiosity surprised even herself but the excitement was undeniably contagious and her curiosity grew irresistably. She was both fascinated and repelled by the spectacle that promised to unfold before her. She was a little frightened too, because who might know what a desperate jack might do. She had been raised on stories of male violence. As quietly as she could, she circled around to the right, trying to get some sort of line of sight. She saw the jack at the same instant that he saw her grandmother. He leaped, just as the first arrow ripped through the space that he had just occupied. He was up and running as Grammie reached for her second arrow, pulled, and took a second shot as he dodged past of her. Charli's Grammie shouted a most un-grandmotherly curse that shattered the silence and made Charli blush, a habit that she had believed that she thought that she had long outgrown.

When Charli looked back on the day, she swore that she couldn't even remember taking the arrow from her quiver or nocking arrow on her bowstring. She couldn't specifically remember drawing back on the bow. Quite by chance the jack's headlong dash had taken him right to where Charli was standing. Charli didn't even remember releasing the arrow. He was running toward her and she reacted simply by instinct solely to protect herself, totally without volition, she reasoned at the time with some conviction.

How do you know for sure, her friends asked, when they congratulated her on her jack. She told them that she only fired in self-defense. She might even have been raped, if she hadn't.

However, some time afterwards, she decided that she wasn't really sure herself that he had even seen her, let alone that he had attacked her. Eventually, she admitted to herself that perhaps the poor bugger was only seeking to escape and survive this nightmare, most likely, not trying to attack her at all.

All-in-all, though, it was a great shot, an undeniably great shot. She had stood her ground resolutely when she had more than adequate reason to panic, she concluded with some self satisfaction. He was only a jack and it was the Hunt. She had a permit and every right to take him.

Well, she had had little time to think and now it didn't matter. The next thing that she knew, the jack was lying at her feet. She simply couldn't believe it. He looked like an oversized, discarded doll, lying in a heap, arms and limbs all askew. She should have run or been ill but she was fascinated by this large, crumpled figure at her feet. Grammie was smiling and waving as she ran toward her.

The jack was twitching and moaning softly. We have to finish him," Grammie suggested, softly. "It's cruel to let him suffer."

When Grammie gutted him, Charli thought of her Biology class. It was really more interesting than she had thought that it would be.

Amanda Rogers and the other wardens checked in the harvest and kept score. Calling by walkie-talkie, the wardens reported from each gate at Red Lake Reservoir. Amanda tallied each kill and marked the site on her large map. Amanda enjoyed comparing this week's map to last week's map and to the maps from previous seasons. The success of the program depended on regulating the harvest. The target was a take of about 55%. That would assure that only about 8% of males survived three hunts.

Some seasons when the take was too heavy, the hunt was stopped early. Some weeks, when hunters somehow failed to make their quotas, Amanda or one of her colleagues, would pick up her rifle and help the cause. This year, the harvest was very slow. Heather Bernard brought in a fine jack. Franci Barthes and her granddaughter dragged in a fine bull--literally. He was too heavy to carry so they looped a rope around each of his ankles and dragged out of the brush. However, many so-called hunters became tired and discouraged after just a couple of hours in the field and simply went home. Some hunters walked around the woods all day and still didn't see a single jack. All the fanciest sporting wardrobe, the best hiking shoes, and the finest archery equipment couldn't make up for a lack of woods sense--or maybe just a lack of sense of any kind.

Caitlin was the best shot. Michelle drew the short straws and got to take out the Hummer today. They went over the map and picked the areas where they would search.

Amanda stayed back at her station, checked permits, and registered carcasses as they were brought in. In between, she had filled a large 50 gallon drum with water and set it to boil. Allison went into town for onions, bay leaf and wine vinegar.

Just as Michelle and Caitlin returned, three novices--Demi, Marthe, and Diane emerged from the woods and checked in with the Ranger. They had nothing to show for their day except for their complaints. They whined interminably. about their undeserved lack of success With heart-felt relief, Amanda broke away with from them when she saw the Hummer return. She went over to help the wardens.

The three followed after Amanda, still complaining. They didn't seem to know what else to do. In the back of the 4x4 lay four jacks. Michelle and Caitlin obviously knew what to do! Caitlin shoved the carcasses off of the back of the vehicle, one after the next with little ceremony. The four lay piled in a heap, all tangled up. The young women quickly stopped yammering. They stood quietly, awestruck. Caitlin jumped out while Michelle went to park. Allison came over to help.

Amanda asked Diane to help her drag one jack off the pile. The two dragged a good sized jack out and hung him from a metal tripod. Like the others, he had been killed cleanly with a single head. Amanda sawed of his head. Once decapitated, the carcass hardly looked human. With no wasted motion, she skinned him and then halved the carcass, sawing him in halves along his spine. The spine and neck went into the soup right away while the rest of the carcass was quartered and disjointed. Amanda dumped the large joints of meat into the drum and added salt, bay leaf, onions, and vinegar. Demi and Martha helped too. They brought more wood for the fire.

Soon parts of all four jacks were cooking--chunks of their flesh all mixed together - while the Rangers showed the young women how to scape and salt jack hides. Curiously, one hide was marked up with some sort of permanent marker. For flavor, Amanda tossed in a small handful of cloves. Parts were refrigerated to take home.

After about an hour, Caitlin fished out the chunks of meat which were cut into fist sized pieces and seared over a wood fire on sharpened sticks. "The boiling assures tenderness and removes any excess fat." Caitlin explained as she brushed large amounts of barbecue sauce on her chunk of meat.

Demi, Diane, and Marthe did the same. The result was delicious.