Dad taught me to shoot a gun. I started with a 20 gauge shot gun and quickly advanced to a 12 gauge shot gun. Mom sewed me my own custom shooting vest. I remember it had greens and blues and flowers with a sueded shoulder patch. It was the coolest thing ever!
Tonight I pack as we prepare to join friends, Seth & Alden, to ride into the backcountry and see their new hunting camp. These new outfitters in Cody got the camp late so finding hunters - for this year - was tough. We got an invitation and bit hard!! Heck yeah, we'll come hunt with you!
The ride in is reported to be about 3 1/2 hours. Not much different that the ride into Mike's old camp. We will haul our two mules over with us, guns, gear, some dinners, and hibiscus margarita mix.
Memories of hunting. Walking down the yellow-grassed field to the south from my childhood home in Illinois, sun angled to the south, yellow light coloring the scene in front of me. Shot gun in hand, yellow lab Precious out in front, smelling for pheasants. We never brought one home, but oh, do I remember our hunting walks.
A goose hunt in Nebraska. Sitting in a blind, dug below the ground, looking up to a rectangle of sky, hearing geese honking out there somewhere. I shot the shot gun and had no idea it was an automatic shotgun. This was quite a surprise and I was embarrassed yet laughed out loud at my ignorance. White geese overhead.
My first deer. Shot in the timber down below Chuck's house. A single slug shot and off she ran. I was horrified. How could I miss? It was a good shot. With my head hanging, I drug myself up the hill in the direction I came. And there, in the middle of the harvested soybean field, there she lay - my deer! Exaltation!
I shot my first elk in Jackson on the Elk Refuge. An enormous herd of elk came stringing up the hillside and through the gully just below me. Like my deer, I shot and off ran my elk. I was again horrified. A hunter, nearby, asked me if I was going to go get my elk! There it was, just below the hill. A nice tender young calf. I cooked one of its loins on a small Weber charcoal grill that afternoon. On the deck of my AFrame, the property which 20 years later would buy our 83 acre farm.
Mike and I ride two hours to a hill overlooking a valley. A cow elk runs below us. I shoot and she drops. We walk our mules down the steep hill, gut and quarter this fine elk. Load her on our mules and begin the climb out of the valley, the two plus hour walk out of the back country. The snow is deep. Mike leads, walking, cutting the trail through foot deep snow. I slog along behind him and his mule. We stop to break. He comments, "we may be getting too old for this." That was at least four years ago.
There are many who dislike the thought of hunting. They eat their store bought, cellophane wrapped artificially colored meat - once a living animal - and pontificate on their thought-up vices regarding hunting. They have never known the golden grasses in the afternoon light, the dog and friend running aside, the ride into the wilderness, the howl of a wolf, the foot prints of a grizzly bear on the trail below one's mount, the silence of a dark night and the wonder of the galaxy above, the wind through drying aspen leaves, the taste of clean mountain spring water, the roar of a hot fire in a canvas tent, the sound of a fuel lantern heating up, the satisfaction of a day spent hunting.
How lucky are we to hunt. How lucky are we.
