Taylor’s rifle popped and I hesitated less than a second before firing my own weapon in backup to my partner. “Got him!” Taylor triumphantly cried as a bright red splotch appeared on the target’s chest. My shot had been redundant in case Taylor had missed and it blossomed with a green stain on the dude’s forehead “Yes!” He cried as we approached the downed prey. “Look! Right in the heart! Beat that, Ace!”

The target lie face up, unmoving; mouth and eyes wide open in as if in surprise at having been shot. He looked to be eighteen or nineteen years old, same as Taylor and I “I’m not so sure about that,” I said bending over the body on the ground and opening the shirt to bare his chest. “Look. You hit this old compass that was in his pocket and your shot didn’t even break the skin. Mine was what dropped him.” I pointed to the green pellet imbedded in the forehead, the one from my rifle.

“Fuck!” Taylor vented, “You lucky asshole!” I knew the dude on the ground could her all of this and that he could also see us whenever we crossed his field of vision. He wasn’t dead, just immobilized by the drug in the pellet, and although he was still conscious he wasn’t able to move a single muscle in his body. He couldn’t track us with his eyes nor could he speak. His metabolism was now as slow as that of a cold snake and he could live like that almost indefinitely, dead to the world but still very much alive to himself. It is said that criminals would rather go to jail for a year that face a single day of immobility, and that a year’s sentence, the standard for many crimes, was worse than an eternity in the fires of Hell. The ten minutes of immobility that this dude faced weren’t the worst of his problems. He was out here in the Hunting Grounds for the same reason that Taylor and I were; he wanted kids.

Jefferson, the fifty-first state, was like every other state in the Union in 2052: Grossly overpopulated, so the governor willingly signed the national population control resolution that limited the birthrate. Sex was not discouraged or forbidden; adolescents were welcome to whack away until they sprained their wrists, young people could both court-fuck and sport-fuck, and married couples were encouraged to hook up 3.4 times per week or with whatever frequency they agreed on. Even gay couples could pound each other’s assholes with impunity. The only sex forbidden was rape and child abuse.

All this sex was permissible because all males and females were inoculated at puberty with a drug that guaranteed sterility unless a special antidote was administered. In order to receive the antidote necessary to father a child a man has to prove himself in the Hunting Grounds by capturing the entire scrotum of another hunter. Additional children require additional scrotums and some people return to the Hunting Grounds many times while others refuse to participate and enter into marriages with no possibility of children. Others try and fail and are permanently removed from the breeding pool. The plan works, too. The birthrate and population have plummeted and each new generation is smarter in the ways of the hunter and in better physical condition that were their ancestors.

Despite the apparent barbarity the Hunting Grounds are not lawless wastelands. There are many rules and regulations and the many wardens that enforce these rules have total power within the Hunting Grounds. Hunting hours are limited and a hunter is safe in his camp at night. The weapons are standardized and have a maximum range of about a hundred feet, so careful stalking is necessary.

“Sorry, Dude,” I said to the guy on the ground, knowing he could hear me. He had been out here for the same reason that Taylor and I and he was acutely aware of his fate. I unlaced his boots and pulled them off, then undid his belt and slid his pants and skivvies off to bare his four-inch cock and rather large balls, then slid his legs apart to allow easy access for the task at hand.

“Those should have been mine,” Taylor said, nudging the dude’s balls with the toe of his boot. A tap like that would normally have curled the guy up in a ball, but although it still had to hurt, the dude was powerless to respond.

“Yeah, maybe, but they’re mine now, fair and square,” I said. We had known each other all of our lives and we agreed to hunt as a team. He had spotted the prey and he had led our stalk and he had earned the right to shoot first. It was just rotten luck that his shot had been deflected and that mine hadn’t. My hunt was over as soon as the trophy was removed and as per our agreement he would continue his hunt alone.

Some hunters prop their prey’s heads up so that they witness their unmanning as well as feel the blade, but that seemed like unnecessary cruelty to me, so I just tied the string around his scrotum, pulled it tight, then applied the two tourniquets, one high and one low, as required by the game laws. All hunters must attend a class on humane castration, and I practiced the string and tourniquet part on myself several times. A wipe with the antiseptic swab and a quick slice with the knife and it was over and I held the key to my future in my hand. I could redeem the severed scrotum for a breeding license and then select a mate anytime within the next ten years. I wasn’t yet ready to get married; indeed I hadn’t really even dated that much, but possession of a valid breeding license would open all kinds of doors for me. I was looking forward to shopping around, taking a lot of different models for test-drives, and maybe even an extended trip or two before making my decision.

“Are you going to, uh, you know?” Taylor asked. Part of the tradition of the hunt for many people is to add insult to the prey’s injuries and debase him in a most humiliating manner while he is still immobilized. This is probably the only time that rape is permitted and some consider it to be a ritual. Taylor and I have discussed it many times and he always said that after the shot he’d open the guy’s mouth and take him down the throat, and then after the castration, when the drug was just wearing off, he’d take him again from behind. That’s the kind of guy Taylor is but I’m not wired that way.

“No,” I answered, “be my guest.”

“I guess I’ll wait,” Taylor conceded, “I guess that would be kind of like sloppy seconds or something.” The bulge forming in his pants telegraphed his enthusiasm, and I was surprised that he refused my offer.

A deep thunder-like boom announced the official end of hunting hours, so I placed the dude’s scrotum in the special container and shouldered my daypak. Hunting hours were over and I was safe and could take my time going back to camp. I heard the pop of a rifle and almost simultaneously felt the bee sting on my neck, and then my legs gave way and I was on the ground.

“Sorry Ace, but you know how it is,” Taylor said, tugging off my boots. I felt him fumbling with my belt, and then the cool air on my crotch as he pulled my pants free. “What do you think?” he asked, removing the dude’s scrotum from my pack and placing it in his own. “A girl and a boy? Or maybe two boys, brothers, that I can teach how to hunt.” Instead of waiting for an answer he dropped between my legs and went to work with his string and tourniquets. Once done, he stood directly over me and dropped his pants and skivvies to free his erection. Taylor used to tease me about being dinky, as he called it, but I’d seen the other guys naked in the shower room and he was the aberrant one. His hose had been huge even as a young adolescent and now it looked like his balls had finally caught up.

He bent down and removed a huge hunting knife from the sheath on his belt. It was the same knife his dad had used to harvest the trophy that allowed his birth, he had told me, and he intended to use it himself when the time came instead of the scalpel in the harvest kit. But he had something else in mind first. “Remember what it tastes like?” He asked, forcing my mouth wide open. I remembered. We grew up together and he’d gotten his hair six months before me. We used to hang out after school in my room, and he’d often drop his pants and show me what ‘real men were capable of doing,’ and he conned me into trying my hand at it, so as to speak, and so I leaned about masturbation six months before I was capable of doing it to myself. He also convinced me that I’d never get hair if I didn’t prime the pump, as he put it, and I finally agreed to accept his contribution. I hated both Taylor and myself for it afterwards, but a fine dusting of hair had soon appeared on my crotch so I eventually got over it.

He squatted down over me and carefully introduced his meat into my mouth, then dropped all the way down and began humping me. His cock completely filled my throat and his balls bounced off of my open eyes with every downstroke, and I could feel the edge of his knife against the tender skin between the tourniquet bands. He had told me often enough how he’d hump his prey’s mouth and then slice his bag right after he came. He had his hand on my balls and was stretching them away from my body, and just when it felt as if they might pop clesr off, his cum suddenly my throat and I steeled myself for the bite of his knife, but when his balls cleared my eyes a bright blue flower suddenly blossomed on his left ass-cheek. Only wardens have blue ammunition.

He slumped down on top of me and the next thing I saw was a hand grasp his balls, and then he was out of my throat and off of me. “Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, Son,” the warden said as he swabbed my arm and injected a drug to speed up the dispersal of the immobilizer. “I was across the canyon watching through my scope when he shot you and I got here as soon as I could. Just in the nick of time.”

As soon as my hands worked again I unwrapped the bands from my scrotum and felt the warm tingle as the circulation returned to my balls. “Thanks,” was all I could say between trying to retch his taste out of my mouth.

“You know what the penalty is for cheating in the Hunting Grounds, don’t you?” The warden was looking Taylor right in the face. “The trophy rightfully belongs to you, Son.” I put the same bands I’d just removed from myself onto Taylor and with the warden’s blessings I used Taylor’s own knife to nut him.

“I don’t go along with what some guys do next,” the warden said as Taylor was starting to regain some movement. “But I’d have to say that you’d be justified in upholding the tradition.” He then strode out of sight into the woods.

Every guy dreams of having a large family, and every girl dreams of marrying a guy who can have a large family. One girl in particular comes to mind: She used to be engaged to Taylor, back when he promised her a family. She wouldn’t have given me a second glance back then, but now she’s hot to trot. Maybe I’ll let Taylor watch us. He already knows what my cock tastes and feels like; it’s only fair that he should also see it properly utilized too.