Kentucky Game Warden Luke Ryder is an alcoholic, and his boss intends to fire him. On the first day of muzzle-loader hunting season someone shoots a Latino man dead on a farm's food plot.Why did the murdered man, a Louisville gangster, come to the remote holler? Who slew him? County Sheriff Jim Pike, Ryder's only friend, asks him to help find the answers. Ryder believes solving this crime may save his job. And Pike offers to hire him as a deputy, if he can quit drinking.