First Hunting Stand in Big Woods (Location Key)

A deer-hunting 'stand' can be a structure, a platform attached to a tree that allows the hunter to wait a dozen or so feet above the ground for his prey to walk past - or the term 'stand' can simply mean a specific place on the ground, usually against a tree, where the hunter waits. In the Yoknapatawpha fictions it usually is the second kind of 'stand' that is meant. In either case, it's a safety precaution: when a group of hunters go into the woods at the same time, as is also the usual case in Faulkner's fictions, each man stays at his 'stand' and knows where the other hunters are. In "A Bear Hunt" the "deer standers" are spaced out into at least three places along the railroad track that runs through the woods; this first stand is occupied by Ike McCaslin (69). The fact that Ike "turns" to Provine, who is sitting "down on a log behind" him, suggests that the stands in this story are simply assigned spots "along the log-line levee" (69).