Black and grey realism tattoo on a forearm showing a hunter with a rifle among bare branches above a stag standing in grass.

Hunter and deer on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical forearm tattoo shows a hunter in winter clothing aiming a rifle from among bare tree branches, with a whitetail-style stag with large antlers standing below in tufts of grass. The linework is soft and the shading is detailed, with smooth tonal gradients in the bark, clothing and deer's coat. The piece is entirely in black and grey ink against warm skin, and the composition stacks the two figures along the length of the arm.

Realism Forearm Deer Stag Antler Tree Branches Grass

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The stag had kept to the same hollow for three mornings, and Ada Pell at the Fell Gate Inn swore it was laughing at me. I climbed the ridge each dawn with the snow to my shins, my breath freezing on the wool of my scarf, and each dawn the tracks were already there ahead of me, neat as stitching, leading down toward the back wall of her stables.

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On the fourth morning I lay in the lee of a fallen birch and waited for the light to come up grey over the bracken. The birches stood bare as bones around me. Somewhere below, a dog barked once and went quiet. When the stag stepped out of the grass its antlers were a crooked forest of their own, and it turned its head slowly, as if it had known exactly where I would be lying.

I found the rifle heavier than I remembered. My finger rested on the cold curve of the trigger while the animal lowered its head and pawed at the snow. Then I saw what it was after: a frost-split turnip Ada had left on the wall for it the night before. It was not hungry for my company. It was only hungry, and it had been coming down that path long before I ever thought to climb up after it.

I lowered the barrel and walked back through the drifts with the rifle over my shoulder like a spade. Ada had the kettle on and the lamp lit in the window. She didn't ask. She just looked past me to the ridge, where the stag was moving between the trees, unhurried, as though the morning had never belonged to anyone else.