Ever since my grandfather built the cabin. it’s been traditon to keep a journal.
First in my grandfather’s hand:
– Fall of ’48, “The Raymond, and I came hunting and we all got skunked. No snow and no game.”
– Oct. 29, 1949, “Hunted Byron’s Ranch trails from 1st Crossing. No luck.”
– October, ’53, “The big Fall hunt score. Three shots at one elk.”
Then in my father’s:
– Oct. 26, 1961, “Hunted around the lake, first crossing & beyond, on ridge east of cabin. Also to Alice Creek and to Lewis and Clark Pass vicinity. Saw and got nothing.”
– 11-8-65, “Hunted every day and 0. Johnnie up Fri night & Bill Sat but all skunked. Homeward bound.”
– Oct. 29, ’66, “Johnnie, kids, and I came up to hunt. Got nothing. No snow.”
Then in my own:
– Nov. 11, 1969, “Dad and I came hunting for elk this weekend but no luck.”
Finally in my brother’s:
– November 15, 1972, “Dad and I came up for night to hunt. Tried Sewing Machine Gulch for the first time and it turned out to be good. Got nothing but saw so many fresh deer and elk tracks that our heads almost spun. Not too cold but cold enough.”
Sense any pattern? No, not the huntin’ so much, as the “no luck”. There was ever so much hunting, and ever so little luck. Though you might glean from my brother’s entry that he had a slightly modified idea of hunting luck.
While my own hunting career ended in my teens, one deer and one pronghorn to the good, or was it bad, and my dad has retired from the game, and my grandfather and most of my uncles are gone, the tradition lives on with my brother. I dropped in on the Big Fall Bowhunting Trip to the cabin in early Fall of 1993 …
We boys had these rituals, in the days of my brief hunting career. Like The Music. Hunting Music. Marty Robbins, “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs”, and Jimi Hendrix, “The Cry of Love”. Eight track.
Don’t ask me how this got started. I don’t really remember. All I know is this: Whenever you went huntin’, you had to play Marty Robbins on the way up, and Jimi Hendrix on the way back. You was sure to get your elk. We wore those tapes out.
The reason I say I don’t remember how the ritual started was it only really worked once in a row. And it wasn’t even us. We just heard about it from this other guy’s brother.
Nevertheless I was worried a tad as I drove to the cabin. No Marty Robbins, and no Jimi Hendrix. And no eight track, either. Just the few tapes I’d picked out in Billings. At the moment it was a headbanger band, booming loud and proud out the cheesy cassette deck of the mighty rent-a-Achieva, probably scaring off all the elk and deer in the Rocky Mountains, as I headed north toward the vicinity of the cabin. Would I jinx The Big Hunt without the official Hunting Music?
I pulled into the clearing in front of the cabin just about 5:30 on a Tuesday PM. My brother and his hunting buddies had been there since Friday, but right now there was no one in sight. I got out to stretch, and check out the old place, the hunting lodge my grandfather’d built, when I heard a vehicle coming up the two- ruts-and-seventy-potholes dirt road from the meadow down the creek. A Blazer. My brother’s.
My brother. Excited. “Get in the truck we’re going back down to the meadow we just took a shot at a big bull elk and there was a couple of cows but we missed Jim’s arrow went right over its back and we know they’re still down there come on!”
Uh huh. I paused long enough to gather up my camera, on the off chance that on the very night I happened to be there the 46 year long elk dry spell (well, to be honest, a dry spell punctuated here and there by some blood) might somehow magically come to an end. In my lifetime.
An hour later, my feet were cold, my butt was sore, and I was tired of hiding in the trees, keeping very still and quiet, watching grass grow in the meadow, and straining through the camera’s zoom lens to see what might be lurking in the far treeline across the meadow. Seemed like trees and tree limbs, mostly. The alleged elk somehow had vanished. And, as Fall and Winter come early in the mountains, the grass wasn’t growing very fast, either, so I wasn’t entertained. I whispered to my brother that I was taking a walk, and quiet as an Indian, or at least a Y Indian Guide, snuck off up the hill to the big flat spot above the meadow to see what was shakin’.
What was shakin’ was aspens, a small grove of them on the gentle hillside, brilliant against the dark green of the pines on the ridge further back. The shiny round yellow aspen leaves glittered and rustled in the fading light and gentle evening breeze. As I walked the old logging road that led through them up the hill, the old road I’d walked so many times as a kid, I caught a flash of white ahead, and stopped to watch. The big whitetail buck stopped and turned back to watch me, too. Easy shot. Bad light. It didn’t turn out.
After an hour of walking around, and getting colder, and wondering just how the hell long those guys thought they could still see in the dusk, I heard a horn honk and headed back to the truck. They hadn’t had any luck. Astounding. We took the long way back to the cabin, passing several other likely-looking meadows. No luck. Still astounding. I asked my brother offhandedly if they were bow-hunting for deer as well as elk.
“Hell, yeah! Why do you ask?”
“No reason. Just wondering.”
Back at the cabin I slowly started to suspect just why the guys weren’t having much luck hunting. They’d been there since Friday. This was Tuesday. The cabin has no running water. If you want to bathe you have to haul water in buckets up a hill from the creek, then heat the water on top of the wood burning stove, and finally bathe in this big cattle-trough looking thing. It’s a daunting proposition. Apparently, they’d been daunted. I idly speculated on how many degrees of difference there might be between an elk’s olfactory and mine.
Hamburger Helper, chili mac flavor. Now that’s eatin’! World championship of cribbage, or at least the first seven rounds. No whiskey. Hey! If my own brother won’t observe the rituals of hunting, then I don’t feel bad about The Music. Luckily, I’d stopped in town for Lucky. Lager that is. The guys cashed it in early. Wimps. You’d think they’d been tramping around in the mountains all day, or something. Panther eyes lantern, bare feet on cold floor, and I dreamt, too ….
BOOM! What th?BOOM! Geez not that crapBOOM! Second Law of Montana malehoodBOOM! half yourBOOM! guns loaded andBOOM! with you at all times. Thankfully, these guys have a perverse fascination for my brother’s .44 magnum hogleg, so they had to stop and reload. Unthankfully, this was a huntin’ trip, so the old half rule automatically changed to three-quarters. Even if it was only bow season. I knew there was plenty more where that came from. I dressed and went out front to see what was up.
What was up was the usual. The poor old stump at the bottom of the hill was taking its lumps for the year.
I’m continually surprised every time I visit and the thing is still there. Of course, this probably never went on with my grandfather and his sons and his brothers, or my dad and his brothers, when they all were younger, because you know men together on hunting trips in those days were so much more responsible and grown-up. So maybe it’s only the last twenty years or so of my brother’s reign that’s the stump’s been shot at. Maybe. Then time for archery practice, and the stump with its burlap bag picture of a bear took a few more. (Where the hell do you get a burlap bag with a picture of a bear, anyhow?) Actually, though, I was impressed. It’s a long shot down to the stump. These guys were pretty good with a bow.
“So where are we hunting today?”
“I thought we’d go up behind the trailhead. (Grandfather) always wrote in the journal about hunting up there.”
Ah yes. The scene of so many previous successful hunts. Sewing Machine Gulch was another about which grandfather wrote. Now, it clicked in my mind that “up behind the trailhead” also meant a hike. Up hills and stuff. It only makes sense. Heck, elk love to hike up hills. I love it less. I tried to appeal to logic.
“Why don’t we try the lake? There’s always elk there.” A fact firmly established in belief, if not actual reality. We’d seen some there once, maybe twice. Not hunting season, of course.
“No, we’re going to the trailhead today. We already decided.”
So much for the car hunt. Hey, at least I tried.
Then it was time for The Garbing.
Now, when I graduated Hunter’s Safety, and when I’d gone rifle hunting, hunters always wore red. The next few years after that they got into the bright fluorescent orange crap. Whatever. The theory always was that other hunters could tell by your bright colors that you weren’t a deer, and then hopefully they wouldn’t shoot you. But deer, and elk, it was alleged, had no sense of color, or fashion, and so the bright colors made no difference when sneaking up on them.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzt! Wrong answer, for bow hunts.
These guys had green camouflage this, and gray camouflage that, even cute little yellowgreen camouflage slip covers for their bows, and you’d swear, had they been in Central America, or maybe Vietnam, you couldn’t have picked them out from the foliage. Remarkable how unlike the jungle Ponderosa and lodgepole pine is, however. And also remarkable the difference between the smell of fresh pine needles and now five day ripe huntin’ boy. I didn’t say a thing, just drank the scene in, upwind, as they strapped on their knives, and quivers, and ammo belts and packs and canteens and pistols (“You never know when we’ll meet up with a bear, or a cat!”), and I suited up in my red White Sox sweatshirt, and camera, ready to face the challenge of the wild and wily elk.
We tramped all over the hills behind the trailhead, and I mean tramped, because three laden huntin’ boys and one out-of- practice city dweller make a heck of a racket pushing through dense woods. After we’d crashed over the hilltops, remarking on the abundance of elk sign, we’d hide in the treelines around meadows, and wait, waiting for the wily elk to appear, but always it seemed like somehow the wind got behind us, so we’d have to move on. I got some good photos, though, of the huntin’ boys, smoking oh-so- odorless home rolled cigarettes while resting on a log, but blending in well with the background, and like that, and I got some good photos of wild mountain scenery, too. ‘Cept that camera, damn thing, I never knew how loud it was – CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! – and they’d give me the dirtiest looks. Gotta watch your noise when you’re with the huntin’ boys!
About 2:00 we found ourselves in a clearing on a semi-wooded hillside, somewhat above a meadow that warranted further attention, and decided to stop and have lunch and rest our legs. We spread out across the hillside and munched in silence. Bologna and cheese on white bread never tasted so good! The day was warm, the sun was bright, the grass on the hill was soft, naught but a gentle breeze, the perfect silence of wilderness, and the hill was just the right angle for you to lay back on and rest just a bit, while still keeping an eye on the meadow if you just squinted the tiniest little bit …
When I woke up I looked at my watch, and then at the huntin’ boys. 4:30 pm, and all three snoozing soundly. I lay back on the grass, and proceeded to savor the hunting. I hummed a little Marty Robbins to myself. How lucky can you get?
Next morning it was time for me to move on in my vacation, move on to other stories. But before I left, my brother got up early and made a fire in the woodburning stove. Naturally, he forgot to put the damper down, and the escaping smoke wisps filled the cabin with their blue haze and sweet burning pine smell. He got out the big flat iron griddle, and whipped up a breakfast of huckleberry pancakes and trout, using huckleberries he’d saved from that summer, and trout from down by Billings, caught the weekend before.
As he cooked, it was my turn again to write in the journal:
– 9/14/93, “Up a couple of days to hunt with bro and friends. Hunted the Sheep Meadow, and behind the trailhead.
No luck.”
Author/Copyright: Tiger, of tigerwhip.com fame Date Written: 09/30/1994