Section 1
- "The Boy," who we later realize is young Isaac McCaslin, and Sam Fathers are in the forest in November.
- Suddenly, the boy sees the buck they've been looking for. Sam tells him to shoot.
- Next thing he remembers is running and standing over the buck, which doesn't look dead.
- Sam Fathers tells Isaac to cut the buck's throat. He does, and Sam Fathers wipes the buck's blood across Isaac's face as a rite of initiation.
- The rest of the hunting party shows up with the dogs: Tennie's Jim, Boon Hogganbeck, Walter Ewell, Major de Spain, General Compson and Isaac's sixteen year older second cousin McCaslin Edmonds.
- We learn that Sam's seventy years old and that he's half Chickasaw and half black.
- Sam's father was Ikemotubbe, a.k.a. Doom, a Chickasaw chief who'd run away to New Orleans in his youth and had returned with a quadroon (one quarter black) slave woman.
- When the woman got pregnant with Sam, Doom married her off to one of the slave men he'd inherited and sold them both to Carothers McCaslin.
- Doom must have missed the co-parenting classes.
- That was seventy years before the present action of the story.
- Growing up, Isaac has seen Sam and the rest of the men in the hunting party leave for camp every November.
- Every year, Isaac keeps counting down to the year he'll be old enough to go with them.
- Isaac reflects on how Sam has only done "white man's work,"
- Even though he lives with the black men, they see him as different because of his Chickasaw chief's blood.
- Isaac thinks about how Sam taught him everything about the woods and about hunting.
- Sam's also told him many stories about Native Americans, which become part of Isaac's understanding of the world. The two are very close.
- Sam had told Isaac that next fall he'd be able to go hunting for bear as well.
- November came at last. The hunting party, with the usual characters and now Isaac as well, went to the camp. Sam was waiting there for them.
- Two weeks later, back at the plantation, Isaac was full of memories of the big woods.
- He thought about what it'll be like when they go back to the woods the following November.
- Sam had told him that once he killed a big animal, he'd be a real man.
Section 2
- We now return to the moment at the beginning of the story when Isaac kills his first buck and Sam Fathers marks his face with blood.
- They break camp that afternoon and head back to the plantation.
- Isaac rides in the wagon with Sam, the black men and the hunting trophies.
- Suddenly Sam reins back the wagon and they all hear the sound of a buck breaking cover. They all reach for their guns, but it escapes.
- Boon, Walter, Sam and Isaac mount their horses. The rest of them stay by the road.
- Isaac's beside himself with excitement. They all find their positions and start to wait.
- Isaac feels changed by the morning's experience. He contemplates what it means to have been marked by Sam.
- Suddenly, they hear Walter's rifle. Walter never misses his mark, so they think Walter must have shot the deer.
- Sam tells Isaac to wait. Isaac feels despondent.
- And then suddenly, Isaac sees a big buck coming from the direction of the shot.
- It sees them and continues to walk serenely by.
- When the buck passes by them, Sam raises his arm and greets the buck, saying: "Oleh, Chief. Grandfather" (4.2.26).
- When they go over to Walter, they see that he has killed a much smaller buck. Walter swears there was another, bigger buck there that he couldn't see.
- So what did Isaac and Sam see? Just a big buck, or the spirit of the wilderness? The spirit of the chief?
Section 3
- They get back to the side of the road where the others are waiting.
- Walter says that he got a small buck, but no one saw the big one.
- Isaac and McCaslin stay at Major de Spain's that night, since it's late and far from home.
- Isaac and McCaslin retire to their room, and Isaac tells McCaslin what he saw.
- Then McCaslin confides he saw the buck, too, when Sam took him into the woods after he killed his first deer.