Seventeen-year old William Faulkner, future Nobel laureate in literature, embarks on the annual family deer hunt with his drunken, dissolute father, Murry, and overbearing grandfather, John Wesley. When Reelfoot, a decades-old bear that is the subject of much local lore, makes an unexpected appearance, Faulkner decides to hunt this legendary creature in an act that will prove his manhood once and for all.

But he has also been scribbling verse and, encouraged by his friend Phil Stone, secretly aspires to be a writer, a profession maligned by his grandfather. As the hunt proceeds, Faulkner resists John Wesley's attempts to mold him in the mythical family image and seeks to connect with his father through their mutual love of the wilderness.

Meanwhile, the family closes in on Reelfoot, and Murry attempts to sabotage the hunt in desperate reverence for the bear. In a final confrontation, Faulkner himself must decide whether or not to sacrifice Reelfoot, whom he's come to see as the spirit of the woods and the symbol of his father's stymied dreams, in order to gain his own freedom.