My Wordless Wednesday offering came from the National Geographic picture of the day from Tuesday.  There is just something about that image of the deer being summoned to the light....

When I was young, Grandpop Hughes and my father were both hunters and they would go out every deer season.  Grandpop hated that the woods filled with hunters who didn't seem to understand just how to really stalk game or knew how to find a deer that they had wounded and failed to finish off.  I remember the last time that they went out -- I was in my early teens -- Grandpop bagged his buck, but said he was done with hunting.  Literally, the guns were cleaned and mounted on wall racks and there they stayed.  He finally told us why some time later -- they had found a fawn crying in the woods, nuzzling a doe someone had shot illegally and left to die a long painful death.  Grandpop had to kill both of them.  Said the sound of that little fawn crying was the most heartbreaking sound he had ever heard and that both of them just looked at him with those big eyes.  Killing them and putting them out of their pain was the right thing to do, but neither he nor my father ever wanted to go hunting again.