At two hours we are clocking three hundred-something birds. My hand is beginning to fall asleep with alarming regularity, and shooting has become so second nature that my mind is constantly wandering.

I have time to consider whether I might be suffering from the kind of poor circulation that leads to stroke or heart attack, or if I might be on the leading edge of carpal tunnel syndrome. I try to remember whether I put the top back on a glue bottle in my work shed, and ponder what degree of decay the sausage biscuit sitting in my car at the airport will reach by the time I return. I keep shooting: five hundred birds, a good bragging number for a first afternoon’s rusty shooting, are easily within reach. At this rate I will quickly burn through the shell deposit we had to plunk down before the trip (shells and gratuity are the only things not included in the price tag), but with the number of birds coming at you, combined with the adrenaline rush of a ten-year-old, it’s hard not to pull the trigger.

We are spread along the road every two hundred yards or so, and the bird boys are constantly coming by with shells and beer, along with a report on how the other shooters up and down the “front line” are doing. It doesn’t take long before competition breaks out. For us, it usually starts over the second drink in Miami. Betting on who will shoot the highest percentage and the most birds, and who will likely be the dumb ass to pepper his bird boy, is almost obligatory. It’s a natural thing among men, I think: Combine guns, beer, and flying animals, and invariably you end up with money changing hands. It has happened throughout history, and I am certain (and glad to know) it always will.

This is where having a bird boy who is slightly corrupt comes in very handy. The bird boy holds a click counter and keeps track of every bird dropped each hunt; then, at the end of each morning and afternoon, he reports to the head guide how many shells have been used and the number of birds killed. They are sickeningly precise on the shell count (since you are paying for each one you pull the trigger on) and, at the same time, could not give less of a crap how many birds you have killed. It just doesn’t matter to them, but they are well aware that there is a competition and that the more generous they are with the counter, the more likely they are to share in the spoils.

By the end of the afternoon it feels like Muhammad Ali has been beating on my shoulder for four hours straight. It is lightly bruised, and judging from the tenderness extending halfway down my bicep, it is apparent that I am not shouldering my shotgun properly. Damon’s counter sits at five hundred and seventy-one when Dad (who, not yet entirely comfortable in his new retirement skin, takes on the role of CEO of every situation he’s involved in) announces the end of shooting for the day.

We gather, dust-covered and sweaty, back at the vans for the first of several beers before everything is assembled and we head for the lodge. It turns out that my big fat five hundred and seventy-one isn’t near what I had thought it might be compared with the numbers a pair of hot-shooting brothers racked up in what the guides admitted was by far the best shooting spot at this destination.

The ride back is full of fish stories: So-and-so dropped three birds with one shot; someone else shot birds from the hip; and so on. A thirty-minute ride later we are at the lodge, a perfectly male enclave loaded with stuffed animal heads, hunting pictures, and a bar stocked with pure testosterone (somewhere a Hemingway sheds a tear).

Afterglow

Dinner is served precisely one hot shower and two short glasses of bourbon later. The group gathers at the table for more stories over wine and perfectly executed food. Laughter fills the evening even though the jokes have mostly been shared before — usually more than once. We will repeat this same routine for the next three days until everyone’s shoulders, backs, arms, and hands are beaten into complete submission and we are all, without exception, done with shooting for quite a while.

Sleep comes more easily here than it ever does at home. This is exhausting hunting. My ears ring. I am sunburned. My sides ache from laughing. My shoulder feels like ground chuck, and my eyes are sore from squinting and burn from the sweat that has run into them. My mind races back through every shot of the previous hunt. I think back to the massive piles of birds we amassed in the course of one hunt, and part of me feels bad for taking part in the massacre. At times it seems absurd and excessive. And I suppose from a simple and technical standpoint it is just that — “overkill.” But the justification I always come back to is delivered in the stories of the local farmers and how they have watched entire harvests destroyed by the varmints we have come to eradicate, or at least help put in check. It seems like a contrived rationale, I know, but wrestling with the guilt is an exercise I undergo on each of these trips, the result of a Catholic-influenced childhood in New Orleans. After going round and round with this, I feel I have come to grips with my conflict.

A sense of calm washes over me as I drift off to sleep and the guilt begins to lift. It is a sweet relief, particularly when one has extinguished as much life as one can on a single afternoon in Argentina. Compound the mass execution with the irony that you have been slaughtering the “bird of peace” and you wind up with an unusually cruel philosophical gauntlet to run. It will cause me to occasionally consider sitting out a hunt, yet every day the same scenario ensues: I climb the hill with Damon; the doves light from the roost by the millions; and I invariably do my best to take as many as I can. And every night I experience the pleasure of repeating the same mantra: “It’s okay. We are helping stem the tide of pestilence.” Bottom line is, we are providing a service, an invaluable one, tantamount to what the Orkin man does at my house every month — except with a shotgun. The locals could not be gladder to have our assistance in eliminating their pests and securing their livelihood. And, if that isn’t quite enough, I’ve decided that a converse arrangement would be more than acceptable to me: If the Argentines ever fall in love with coming to South Louisiana to help with the nutria rat problem, I’ll be first in line to hold the click counter and cheat for them.