Published in Bugle again! Unseemly bragging here. Please forgive my unabashed enthusiasm.
I signed up for a wilderness elk hunt having never hunted anything
by Robert Hallstrom
We broke out of black timber into an Idaho mountain meadow dotted with a few grazing horses. Low-angle sunlight lent color and cast long shadows. White canvas tents lined up in a rough ‘L’ at the edge of the meadow, with a hitch rail in front of the largest one and a dead tree flag pole to one side, Old Glory hanging limp near the top. I could hear the splash and babble of the creek behind the camp. The tree-clad mountainside rose almost vertically beyond that. And tendrils of smoke wafted up from stovepipes before hanging lazily over the tents, as if reluctant to leave. It was so perfect I had to ask myself if this was actually happening.
The scene was just like the pictures in Grandpa’s magazines. This was what an elk camp should look like. I’d waited a long time to see one in the flesh, and it was time to call it home for a few days.
Reaching the hitch rail, my guide Rick easily hopped off his horse. I didn’t show quite as much style. I reminded myself that any dismount from a horse you can walk away from is a good landing, so I settled for that and wobbled around to the off side to snatch my rifle from the scabbard. My gear waited in the last tent. I fluffed out my sleeping bag to let it air, then headed for the cook tent where I’d been told there’d be coffee.
The cook tent was a large affair. It had to be to accommodate six hunters, their guides, and the wranglers who led pack trains in and out of camp. Kathy, the camp cook, had two propane stoves upon which to work her magic, rows of pack boxes crammed with food and gear stacked along one wall, and a woodstove blazing away by the door to tame the chill of mountain autumn. Two big black coffeepots lived on the edge of the woodstove, and when Kathy’s dinner was prepared, she plopped onto a seat next to the stove with a cup of coffee.
The mice moved into the cook tent in early September, shortly after my outfitter set up camp in their meadow. They lived in the stack of firewood that stood ready to feed the hungry stove, busily scurrying about, time to time poking their heads out of the gaps between the ends of the logs to twitch their whiskers at us.
I sat with two guides and one of the wranglers watching the mice. October was winding down and the next day these men would begin breaking down camp. Everything, save the poles holding up the tents, was packed in on horses and would soon need to be packed out.
I sensed they didn’t quite know what to make of me after my inauspicious first day’s hunt. Many hunters booked these hunts, and I assumed most knew what they were doing. I wondered if these guys ever had to cope with one who knew as little about this endeavor as I did. Undoubtedly they’d been told I failed to take the shot at a bull Rick put me on earlier that afternoon. Legal elk don’t grow on trees. Rick had done his job and I clearly hadn’t done mine. But they made small talk with me while we all watched the mice alternately poking their heads out of the holes lined up in that woodpile.
Everyone laughed when I thanked them for providing the mice for my entertainment, the Selway equivalent of Hollywood Squares. That helped to break the ice. When I didn’t blame Rick for my screw-up, well, that helped, too. Over a background of stream noise, while a battery-powered radio struggled to deliver some music through the static, and the fire hissed and popped in the stove, we laughed and talked into the night. On this level at least, they welcomed me in.
The term hunter hardly applied to me. I signed up for a wilderness elk hunt having never hunted anything. Heck, for most of my life I hadn’t even known anyone who hunted.
I grew up watching Bambi, and from that learned that hunters were vicious slobs. My mother felt that any hunting, subsistence or trophy, was despicable. Mom never was one to hide her feelings, so I heard about this early and often. If she had discovered that I used a friend’s pellet rifle to clear pigeons from the roof of the barn down the road, I would have been skinned.
I firmed my opinions against hunting with information gleaned from mainstream media and a circle of friends who parroted an anti-gun and anti-hunting mantra. I lived in Berkeley for a decade after college, surrounded by the greatest distortion of reality in this hemisphere. And I trained as a veterinarian, pledging my life to the relief of animal suffering. Hunting and shooting were anathema to me, and I argued long and loudly against both. I was the last person on earth you’d expect to meet in elk camp.
However, people who actually mature, rather than simply age, can learn to look at the complex issues of life from more than one direction. Experience eventually taught me that when I was absolutely, positively certain about some things, I was often wrong.
For most of my adult life I let only one barber cut my hair. If he was busy, I waited. Men gathered in Louie’s shop, some for his services and others just to talk. I kept quiet while I sat, because I quickly realized that in this company I rarely held the majority opinion. From these discussions, I learned a little about cars, probably nothing useful about women, and a great deal about other things.
Some of these men spoke of a war I had opposed, a war they had attended and I had not. And they talked about guns and hunting. None of these men appeared to be sociopaths or vicious slobs. I actually listened to their side of the arguments, and they began to make sense. I also read the hunting magazines that littered the place. And I grew curious.
Grandpa had been a fisherman. He subscribed to magazines featuring hunting stories as well as fishing, and as a child I read about western big game hunts. And I soon recalled those stories.
My father had been a marksman before Mom made him sell his rifle. So despite the grief he caught at home, he made sure I had the opportunity to shoot at Boy Scout camp. And sitting in that barbershop I remembered that, well, shooting had been fun.
I set out to learn more, and soon an acquaintance took me to the range. It was still fun. I bought a .22 target pistol and was soon hooked. I spent countless relaxing hours punching holes in paper, and in the process talked with more hunters.
I don’t remember when I first considered becoming a hunter, but I know at that point I remained conflicted. I felt I should hunt only if my family was going hungry, but still the idea intrigued me. My internal debate lasted several years before I realized that I could not truly pass judgment except by my own experience. It was time to find out.
Killing pigeons hadn’t taught me much. I enjoyed the challenge, but hated the guilt that came when I picked up those limp bodies that I had erased for no good reason. My lesson had to be more meaningful, and so I chose to try an elk hunt. This would not only present a physical, but also an emotional challenge.
I knew elk hunts were difficult. Elk are large animals, but despite their size, they are stealthy creatures that inhabit the most spectacular and inaccessible wild country in North America.
To me, elk also are beautiful, and my brief encounters with them were some of my more treasured memories. In my youth I had driven a thousand miles on more than one occasion to watch a bull bugle against a backdrop of Wyoming mountains, his breath a frozen cloud as he stood silhouetted by the dawn. I admired this animal, but now I needed to meet the side of me that could also hunt him.
I wanted to experience that hunt I read about as a child: of hunters on horseback, and tent camps set in high mountain splendor. Perhaps this was a romantic anachronism, but I made up my mind to try. Life intervened, and it was three years later before I could take the test. I didn’t stop thinking about it, but my dreams and fantasies had to suffice.
I was 49 when I went to Idaho in October. I camped near the edge of the wilderness and spent time walking the hills, trying to adjust to the altitude, but also hoping to shift the workings inside my head into a new mode of thinking. I was hiking a forest trail when the bugle of a nearby bull jolted me. My eyes bored into the dark woods to find him, but I failed. Early the next morning, as my camp stove struggled to turn nearly frozen water into coffee, I watched a tree stump in the nearby meadow morph into a moose in the flat light of pre-dawn. She wandered through wisps of ground fog to a nearby pond, where pretending to be a hunter, I stalked her just for fun.
That afternoon I met with my outfitter. I discovered that no one else had booked this last week of the season, and I was to be the only hunter in camp. So much for wondering what I could learn from a group of experienced hunters, and if I might fit in.
The following morning found us at a ridge top trailhead where a string of packhorses patiently waited. They headed down the muddy trail under a leaden sky, while Rick and I hoofed it through the trees. We were going to hunt our way down to camp. That feeling in my gut before a final exam in school was nothing like this.
It’s different walking through the woods when you carry a rifle. It’s harder still when everything is wet and slippery. Hours of tripping and stumbling passed while I slowly learned the ropes. And yeah, I was supposed to be watching for elk in the process. I was traversing a snot-slick log over a stream when Rick spotted a five-point bull in its bed, only 20 yards ahead. He waved me forward and urged me to shoot. I had zero time to react. I raised the rifle, looking for a shoulder through the scope, but saw nothing but black. I hadn’t removed the scope covers. While I fumbled, the bull decided he had had enough and exploded from his bed. Only his scent remained.
I felt like an idiot, my worst fears realized as I let this simple opportunity run away. Rick tried to reassure me, but we both knew I might not get another chance. I had wasted my dream hunt. I finished the descent of the ridge, my mood as dreary as the day.
We struck a trail going up-canyon that paralleled the stream, and not long after found the two horses the wranglers had left tied to a tree. A mile or two in the saddle brought us to that doorway into the meadow, and my first hunt camp. And yeah, that helped, and I did pinch myself.
We were well up a wooded ridge as morning two broke. An hour earlier, I stumbled out to my horse, invisible in the frosty dark, and blindly followed Rick up a trail. I fervently hoped the horse could see better than me. Leaving our mounts tied near the creek, we slogged up the ridge to a point where we could glass into two canyons.
I was supposed to be watching for elk, but it was hard not to be distracted by the spectacular mountain scenery as it played hide and seek through the clouds. At times we were engulfed in a gray blanket, then later we were above the clouds looking down upon white cotton, granite peaks poking up like islands in a surreal sea. Frosted by the mist, trees high above us glittered in the sun.
Later, near a dry pond littered with weathered elk tracks and droppings, a pika chirped his objections from the talus as we passed. That’s when my left ankle exploded. I don’t know if I slipped on that clump of wet bear grass or if my warranty simply expired, but I heard a pop and felt searing pain as the tendon tore loose. And I was on the ground.
Rick carried my rifle and I leaned on a stout branch for the long hobble back to the horses. The last couple hundred yards was a humiliating slide down a steep slope on my butt. Fatigue, pain, disappointment collided in my head until I turned a corner and finally smelled the horses. For the second time in two days, I thought the hunt was over.
Day three found me sitting alone, back to a tree, facing a forest clearing and hoping an elk would drop into my lap. None did. My ears twitched at every forest sound. An eagle soared past on familiar thermals. I found that I could blend in, compelled by a bum leg to slow down and experience the place.
The hunt camp was quickly disappearing into pack boxes. Rick and I rode up to a spike camp 2,000 feet higher the next day, and we hunted on foot through an area of salt lick and pocket meadows. A light snow fell, and we followed tracks that led to two cows, but they quickly melded into a snow shower and disappeared. Rick was shaking down the country for me, but you cannot find bulls if they are not there.
I could barely walk, had botched my chance for a bull, and yet I felt at peace with this effort. I relaxed as I smelled the air, sensed the breeze and wandered through the dark forest. I walked slowly and saw more.
I’d accepted that I probably wouldn’t bring an elk home, so a late start the next morning didn’t stress me. The pressure was off. Rick tended to some business and sent me up the trail to the pocket meadows alone. I hobbled the half mile on three inches of fresh snow in the faint light before dawn. The trees were snow blanketed, the air still and the quiet pervasive.
I thought I was paying attention, but I stumbled into a small group of cow elk, quarter-ton animals moving like ghosts through the trees. They crossed a small opening in single file. Five passed. Then a head emerged from behind a tree, this one with antlers.
My carefully concocted plan for this hunt called for a period of soul searching before I pulled the trigger on my first game animal, but I forgot that part as the bull emerged into the opening. I had only seconds before he would disappear. A certain detachment took over, the hours of rifle practice paid off. After the bull fell I tried to unload my rifle, my fumbling fingers dropping cartridges into the snow.
I stood trembling beside a fine bull elk. An old raven flew over and discretely reminded me to give thanks. When Rick caught up, we tackled the arduous task of quartering the bull. I tried to help, but since I knew nothing about field dressing elk, there was little for me to contribute besides hold this or that. This made time for celebration to fade and sadness arrive. I was relieved to discover that I am not a man who kills without conscience.
Now, when I look up at that antlered head on the wall, and the light is dim like it was that morning, the memories return. When we give thanks before we feast on venison I brought home, I have no regrets.
I learned that hunting is far more than simply killing an elk. Hunting is anticipation and disappointment, exhilaration and sadness, hard work and satisfaction. It is autumn in country so beautiful it truly defies description. It is new friends who become old friends and the gratifying feeling when experienced woodsmen tell you they would hunt with you again.
Subsequent hunts have taught me more. I’m a better man for this knowledge and experience. I don’t feel at all like a vicious slob. I’m glad I finally figured that one out.
Born and schooled in the Midwest, Robert Hallstrom has lived and worked his adult life in California. He swears he was born a century too late.
