Two poachers make a costly mistake when purchasing cover scent.

Commission for  tuxedoedpenguin
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“Got everything we need?”

“Yeah, we need some of that spray…y’know the stuff to cover our scent. We’re out.”

“Oh, yeah, we can run by Cabela’s on the way.” Darrell turns his attention back to the road and turns off the dirt road onto the main road heading towards the town. Soon enough, they arrive at the local Cabela’s outdoor sports store. Darrell parks and gets out, “I’ll be back, it’ll just be a few.”, then heads inside. After a few minutes, he comes back and quickly gets in the car, tossing the bag into the backseat of his pickup. They speed out of the parking lot and head back for the dirt trail leading to the forest.

“You got the scent cover right, not the musk?” Russell says, with a touch of condescension.

“Yeah, yeah, I got the right one. God, make one mistake…” After another hour of aggressive driving down the trails, they finally arrive at the spot they had setup their blind earlier. They take their rifles and bury them under the floor of the blind, just as a patrol car rolls up, lights flashing. “Aw, damnit…alright be cool, I’ll take care of this.”

“Evenin’, boys, I see you got a blind setup here…you boys aren’t thinking of huntin’ deer out here are ya?” The park ranger leers at the two.

“No, of course not, we were, uh, just camping out here.” Darrell says, his face making it clear to anyone how nervous he is.

“In a blind?” The ranger says, clearly not buying it as he takes a walk around, peeking into the blind and kicking dirt around outside of it.

“Y-yeah. We were gonna sleep in there, since we already had it, save money on buying a tent.”

The ranger, not finding anything and looking a bit frustrated that he hadn’t, goes back to his cruiser and sighs. “Alright, well, just remember, deer are out of season so I better not hear or see any getting shot y’hear?”

“Of course, we wouldn’t think of poaching.” Darrell and Russell both smile, hoping the ranger buys it and leaves them alone. The ranger glares at them once more before getting in his car and driving off. Once the cruiser disappears into the horizon, Darrell sighs and digs up the rifles. “Alright, they’re gone, we shouldn’t have to worry about them anymore. Let’s get setup.” And so, Darrell and Russell setup some traps, many of which are illegal even during hunting season, and most of which revolve around luring the deer in with food. After a few hours of trapping the surrounding area, they head back to the blind to rest. Darrell takes out a magazine while Russell heads for the truck.

The rest of the day passes without incident, not finding any deer yet. Darrell stays in the blind, burying both of their rifles again then falling asleep on top of the buried rifles. Russell opts to sleep in the bed of the truck, getting out a sleeping bag. Morning comes, and still no signs of deer. Russell gets out of the truck and goes to wake Darrell up. They make some coffee and hang out in the blind for a while, swapping stories and generally just trying to pass the time. Russell heads back to the truck to take a nap now that the morning had been burned waiting out the deer.

Another couple of hours pass when Darrell hears the sound of eating, and it sounds like it’s coming from one of their traps. Darrell digs up the guns and goes back to the truck to wake Russell up, who’s napping in the bed of the truck. “Wake up you fool, we got some deer!”

“Wha-huh? Oh, right!” Russell gets up and grabs his rifle from the blind, then starts walking towards the direction of the noise with Darrell close behind.

“You got that scent cover with ya, right? You better put some on, we’re gettin’ close.”

“Oh, yeah.” Russell digs into his pocket and pulls out the bottle, then sprays some on Darrell first, then himself. Shortly after spraying it, the both of them start coughing. “Damnit, Darrell, I told you to get the damn scent cover! This is deer musk!”

“Oh, shit, sorry, well, maybe it’ll still work?”

“Maybe we could spray some on the traps and attract even more deer!”

“That’s a good idea!” They both head to each of the traps, being careful not to scare off the deer that’s eating away at one of them, and start spraying the musk on the traps, completely not realizing that bucks are not going to be attracted to musk at all.

After they spray all the traps, Russell accidentally snaps a branch which scares off the deer they were originally going after. Darrell turns around and sees this, and points at Russell.

“Damnit, you went and scared him off!”

“I didn’t do shit! He just ran off on his own!”

“Bullshit, you broke a twig and he ran off!”

“I—” Russell stops, and realizes that he did in fact do this. “Let’s just get back to the blind and wait again…”

They head back to the blind and spend the rest of the second day waiting, with no deer coming around, when finally a realization comes to Russell. “Y’know…we sprayed a bunch of musk on those traps…bucks aren’t gonna wanna come anywhere near that musk, since they’ll think another deer marked it!”

“Aw, shit, you’re right! Damnit, Russell that was your idea, you should have thought of that! Now what are we gonna do? That musk is probably gonna last for days!”

Darrell and Russell continue arguing, ignoring the foreign feeling of hair rapidly growing around their body. Short, fuzzy, brown hairs grow in all up and down their arms, then spread around to their chest and back. Russell points accusingly at Darrell for getting the wrong thing and notices that his fingers are darkening to black, rather quickly. This puts a rapid halt to the arguing as both of their fingers and toes begin to merge together. “What the fuck is happening to my hands? What the hell did you buy?”

“I swear, it was, well I thought it was normal scent cover!” By now, all of their fingers and toes had merged together to form black, cloven hooves, bordered by short, brown fur covering both of their arms. Darrell and Russell both take off their shirts to find their bodies covered in the fur, and Russell looks back to see patterns of white spots on his back. Darrell tries to pick up the bottle to read the label but finds it hard, and they realize their shoes are feeling rather loose as their feet had compressed into simple hooves. They soon find it rather difficult to stand on their hooves, and their backs pop, sending them to all fours.

“Aack!” Russell shouts as he falls forward, thankfully landing on his hooves. Both of their arms and legs begin to grow thinner, while their hips and shoulders seem to bulk up with muscle. Soon, they shift and reform to accommodate their new stance, and allow them to walk on four legs. Their arms move inward and end up in front, while their hips crunch to form hind quarters. Their entire bodies are covered with fur now as pressure forms in their foreheads and tailbones.

Darrell looks back while Russell turns his attention to his forehead. Their jeans practically fall off as a small, fluffy tail pushes its way out from their tailbones. Meanwhile, two bumps form on their foreheads, which slowly start to grow longer. Now that they’re fully on four legs, Darrell tries to run off down the trail back where they came from, but stumbles in his clothing and falls forward. “Son of a—” his sentence is cutoff by a loud grunting noise, followed by a few more.

Some grunting comes from Russell, sounding more and more panicked and rapid as it goes on. Russell kicks his clothes off and runs up to Darrell, who is just now getting back on his hooves. By now, the small lumps have grown long, and several smaller lumps are appearing on them, and soon the hard growths are branching out. They both look up as their faces stretch forward, jaws growing longer and forming a short muzzle. Their noses flatten against their face and grow wider, soon taking up much of the end of their muzzle.

The antlers have now grown long and intricate, and if they could really see them, they might be impressed with how large their antlers have gotten. The changes finish as their eyes turn a deep brown, and their teeth flatten out. They stand in the midst of their clothes, guns on the ground laying next to the pile of clothing and the blind. Russell grunts at Darrell, hoping maybe Darrell somehow understands but there’s no response. He just looks in the direction of one of the traps they setup, and motions towards it with his head. They slowly walk off towards one of the traps and start nibbling away at the food, hoping, and praying that no other poachers come around anytime soon.

Many days pass and Russell and Darrell quickly learn to scavenge for their food, after they finish off the rest of the food in the traps. They seem to have settled into their lives as wild deer pretty well, mostly due to their lives depending on it. Thankfully, no other poachers came by, though park rangers did come by later that night to find a pile of clothes and a couple of weapons. After an extensive search, they didn’t find anything and just assumed that a couple of people had gotten drunk, stripped down, and ran off later. Over the next few weeks, more search parties came and went. Russell and Darrell made a few attempts early on to communicate with the search parties to tell them that they were supposed to be human, but the search teams just thought that they were just regular deer that had gone crazy and were starting to approach humans.

Just before hunting season rolled around, the government voted to put a hold on it, while they implemented a conservation program which built upon earlier holds on hunting seasons for deer. Due to poaching, and general overhunting, the population had dwindled to dangerous levels and the government decided to take drastic measures. They sent a team of scientists into the forest and started picking out and tagging deer to be brought into a conservation program. These ear tags had GPS trackers, and killing a deer with an ear tag carried much stiffer penalties than traditional poaching laws. Luckily for Russell and Darrell, they were selected. Having overheard what was going on, they eagerly approached the scientists and presented their ears, ready to be tagged.

“You uh…you seein’ this? It’s like they want to be tagged…I’ve never seen this before!” One of the scientists says to another. The lead scientists shrugs her shoulders.

“Eh, you’re probably just imagining things. At least they’re not fighting like some of them. Just tag them and move on.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right…” The scientist tags both Russell and Darrell and they run back off into the forest, ready to continue their lives under protection from the government.

Many years pass, and they’ve outlived most of the deer that were young when they originally came to the forest. The scientists reviewing the data see this, realizing that they’re living much longer than deer normally do and keep closer and closer track on both of them. After a few more years, they decide to intervene and relocate Darrell and Russell to a nature preserve so they can be studied closely, without risk of being poached. And so, they live out the rest of their lives in a cushy nature preserve, being studied by many different companies, wondering how these two deer can live so long.