Content Warning: The Chapter 17 Summary includes child death.

May is fawning season, and Jody begs his mother to keep one as a pet, but she asserts that they barely have enough food for themselves. Penny takes Jody hunting the next day to trade a deer in Volusia on their way to visit Grandma Hutto. Jody proudly carries Penny’s old gun and his new raccoon knapsack, and is happy that Julia is well enough to tag along. Penny uses hoof prints to explain how to track a deer and tell a doe from a buck. They see bear tracks and bear scratches on the trees. Two bear cubs are swinging in the trees, and Jody begs to catch one and keep it as a pet, but Penny says Ora will never allow it. Penny says his family was too poor to have pets when he was young, but Jody counters that a bear cub would hunt its own food. The former retorts, “Yes—offen your Ma’s chickens” (109).

Jody hides in the foliage and waits for a fawn, while Penny tracks what he thinks is a pair of large bucks. The former sees a fawn crying for its mother and watches it nurse, but the doe smells him and runs away, leaving her baby.