Bugle Story 03/04/12

 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.

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 [jb1]What do you think PJ?

No Free Lunch

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.”

                                    Lord Polonius, Hamlet, 1602

In an uncommon disclaimer, I must confess to having suckled from the hind teat of government. During my last year of college somebody in the dean’s office let us know about a government loan program that had just become available to the veterinary students. We could borrow a substantial sum, if memory serves it was $1500.00, and they would toss in a $500.00 grant. Free money. I turned it down, for I had enough banked to get me through the rest of the year, and I didn’t want to be in debt when I graduated. Then someone more learned in these matters talked me into taking the offer.

I did what he said, and put the loan into the bank, and then paid back the note when it was due during my first year of employment. And I bought a new stereo with the $500.00 worth of free money from the grant.

Such a deal.

Now, before you drop me into the welfare cheat category, please remember…I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t seek it out. I just opened my hand when it dropped out of the sky. Free money. From the government.

Did it influence me to like my government more? Ah, no. This was in 1972 and we were enmeshed in the Vietnam War, and liking the government was not real high on my list. I suppose there might be some point where I might be bought by my government, but since I like and trust my government far less now than I did back in the 70’s, I don’t think that likely.

I figure that’s the point, you know. The government gives you some money, and that makes you like the government. Some politician makes it easier for you to capture government money, and you like that dude better, and you keep him in office. Buying votes…it’s as old as democracy itself.

The tradeoff is still there. The money comes your way, but now you are obligated, and thus you ship off your freedom in the other direction, and soon enough the government owns more of you, and the people who set up these deals become more deeply entrenched in power.

These days they still give some folks free money. Free food, free housing, free medical. Buy the poor folks’ votes. Free money and medical, and they buy the old folks’ votes.

Remember when the deal was easy credit? The government loosened the rules so anyone could borrow more than they could pay back. Did you notice the housing crash? Back in the 90’s our intrepid president garnered all kinds of voter support by making it crazy easy to borrow money to purchase a house. Expanded the middle class, because home ownership defines whether you made it to middle class, and boy will you love that president. Too bad when it all fell apart.

Twas inevitable, and those bastards knew it. But look who makes out like bandits when they repossess your dream. Think those bankers don’t know a few folks in government? Heck, they buy them lunch every once in a while just to be nice in return.

All those folks protesting in the streets lately finally recognized the trap they were in, but don’t you wonder about the simple greed they harbored when they signed up for that mostly free money, even though they had to know that there was no way the market could support such nonsense forever? They all blame somebody else, but where are the mirrors?

Education loans put some folks out on the streets protesting too. People borrowed unbelievable amounts of money to fund their educations, with no reasonable expectation that they could repay it once they were out and working. A hundred K borrowed for a graduate degree in English lit. A hundred and fifty for a law degree. Even more in my profession, where you can start working for 60K a year if you can find a job, and spend your entire adult life paying off that school loan.

Whatever were we thinking?

I thought the wakeup call had arrived. And then I saw a post on the internet from a student in veterinary medicine that made me kinda shake my head. This person has had a career before, and decided her life’s dream was still possible, so she went back to school and finally made it into veterinary college. She will be 45 when she graduates. And she will owe $350,000. That translates into $3500.00 a month for, oh, forever. I guess she can live on the twelve cents a month left after that, if she is supported by someone else.

Once wise people said that there was no such thing as a free lunch. Well, there ain’t no such thing as free money, either. Maybe, that was the plan all along. Maybe it was designed to crash. Break down the economy. Bust all the big companies and all the small businesses. Call upon the government to save us all. Use government to put folks to work. Force the companies to take government bailout. Put the government in charge of everything. Wave bye-bye to freedom. And leave them folks in charge of it all.

Such a deal.

An Oldie, but another Goodie

The woman was incredulous.

“You went to the desert!?! What did you do for entertainment?”

My wife and I had just returned from a few days spent burrowing as deep into the desert as we could manage. We marveled at the scenery, the colored rock, the sunrise and set, and the scattered silver-gray puffs of plants that looked like they hadn’t done any useful photosynthesis in years. We tried to comprehend the silence and the star show at night, the solitude, and the subtle but persistent hint of danger. We slept in the back of our pick-up, drank water from a jerry can, and cooked simple meals over a camp stove.

Both of us attempted to stretch our finite minds to absorb the infinite scale of the place. Then we returned home exhausted but enthralled and renewed.

My wife’s friend doesn’t do things like this. I admit I rarely understand the activities that excite her, but I don’t remember asking her to explain her passion for these. However she was determined to get some justification from us for the week we had just expended. Why did we go to the desert?

Where do I start?

Let me tell you of a man I met once. Some day you may cross paths with one like him, but don’t be surprised if you are tempted to ignore him. Most everyone does.

He is an odd little man. He keeps to himself.

Like the stray cat that comes to your back door, you cannot just reach out to him or he will cut and run.

You may find he has a wall around him. If by chance he lets you through this wall you will find another, and perhaps a third. Like all walls, their purpose is to keep people away. This man has his reasons for the walls, for the protection they offer, but you probably will not learn of these.

His hands are rough and scarred, and his muscles taunt. He may be as old as he appears, but it is hard to tell. The wrinkles on his face tell their tale, and his eyes have a permanent squint from too many hours spent in the sun.

Look into those eyes and you will know someone lives in there. They speak of time and thought and finally, wisdom. Watch them transform from wary to warm without any other change in his features. From his perch at the periphery of the crowd he pretends to be somewhere else, but those eyes miss nothing.

He may have failed at everything, or he may have simply left success behind to be by himself. Never good at following directions, he can invent anything he needs. You cannot offer to pay him in order to gain some measure of control over him, for he doesn’t want your money.

He doesn’t need you.

But if the time is right and the whiskey good, he just might decide to talk. If you are smart, you will shut up and listen.

You may have to sort through some strange stories, because a lone imagination can wander into some funny places. But be patient and he will begin to teach you some of the workings of man’s mind.

He will know nothing of TV or recent movies, and he mostly reads old books. But since experience comes from things done wrong, he can speak from authority.

Let him talk. If you pay attention you will gain something important that the others always miss. Do not dismiss the man as they do, for he offers insight you cannot find anywhere else.

The Mojave Desert doesn’t need you either.

Most people ignore the desert while passing through at 85 MPH. They are going somewhere else and the desert is not a destination to them; it is just in the way.

Others come to the desert with their toys. They tear around on motorcycles or dune buggies. They gather in large groups, leave the lights on, and make lots of noise. They go into the desert without letting the desert into them.

A few lucky ones crawl away from the crowds and find solitude, darkness, and silence. They find colors and clouds, alien plants and stark beauty. They are not comfortable, for the desert is both too hot and too cold, and it certainly is not soft. But they are spellbound. They shut up and listen… and learn things they cannot learn anywhere else.

Refreshed and infused with new perspective, they can go home to suburbs and cities, to jobs and tedious people.

Perhaps they don’t wish to spend all their time with this odd little man, but they are glad to have met him.

“What did you do for entertainment?”

Sorry, but if you have to ask…

Roll Up Your Sleeves

Somebody was talking about the money it’s going to cost folks to buy small bits of advertising time during the Super Bowl broadcast. This talk happens every year around this time. Hundreds of millions generally watch the game, so if you are pushing beer or soft drinks, or some new computer, you can buy a piece of a minute during one of those interminably long breaks built into the game just for such endeavors, and your advertisement will be seen by most everyone awake that day. The competition for those few commercial opportunities is far more heated than the mere physical carnage we hope to see on the field. And time is money.

It will cost you bazillions of dollars to run your ad, so you happily spend a few bucks to make the best ad ever, and thus often the commercials are a better show than the game itself. All that money attracts innovation, so we can expect to be wowed by new technologies and glitz. The audience will be worked over by some of the best minds in the selling industry.

Not long ago the selling industry invented a more economical alternative to the 30 or 60 second commercial. Those game time commercials were becoming prohibitively expensive. Some genius came up with notion of selling really small bits of time during the game, time in which a visual image flashes for just seconds, and only costs a few millions, and that flash done right imprints upon the precious fertile mind of the television watcher, and said watcher will remember and certainly buy that cola the next time he hits the store. Brilliant!! It’s economical, and effective, and the more fertilizer packed into the mind, the better this technique works.

I saw a similar visual flash the other day while wandering about in “social media”. It’s election time too, in case you haven’t noticed, and the clever folks who sell politicians are also trying to leave an impression upon fertile minds. So they are planting brief visual images of their product where their audience will not only be watching, but will pass it on to others for free. So when you open your Facebook page and Susie is telling you what she had for breakfast, just below you nay see a tiny photo of our president, tie off and sleeves rolled up and ready for work. He looks just like a model in GQ.

I know about rolling up sleeves. You see, I’ve always been something of a clothes horse, and looking proper is a priority with me.  Ask anyone. Way back in my youth I read that the clever employer will note how you roll up your sleeves. Pay attention here, cause this can be important. 

It turns out that if you roll up your long sleeves to get to work, hoping to vent all that heat you will be generating by hard effort, and keeping those precious sleeves clean for later when you will be lifting a few down at Rudy’s Pub just like in the beer commercial, you have two options. You can roll the sleeves above your elbow, or you can leave them just below.

What, you may ask, is the difference? Well, the expert I listened to suggested that the true hard worker rolled his sleeves above the elbow, and the guy who was just trying to look like he was working, the guy who was actually not gonna work for you, rolled his sleeves just below the elbow. This phony was only styling. He was a poser. 

And yes…he is our president…..if you can believe the photo I saw recently on Facebook.

Now, perhaps this judgment is too harsh. Maybe our president really does wear those casual pants and that wrinkled work shirt with the sleeves rolled up when he is saving the world. I wasn’t there when the photo was taken. Maybe it only looks like it was staged to sell a product. Who knows if this really is only a clever visual image planted upon fertile minds so they won’t think as poorly of this guy as I do.

My problem is I can remember a primary race years ago when the Democrats were fielding a bunch of hopefuls trying to unseat a sitting president. I often voted for Democrats in those days, and so I watched with interest. You recall the story I once told of watching, early in the primary race, a program put on by one of the major TV networks (like the democratic candidate, these folks also were trying to unseat the sitting president, so they were trying to make these guys look good) and they were introducing the candidates one by one to folks like me who didn’t know all the politicians from the other end of the country. My TV wasn’t working well; I had no sound, so I just watched these men trying to look their best.  I watched them talking without being able to hear them, which actually is a good way to watch presidential debates, but that is another story, and there was this guy from Arkansas, and as I watched his smile and his eyes and his lips moving, I came to an instantaneous and unmistakable conclusion. He was lying. This time, I was right.

And I watched another guy, this one tall and good looking and casually dressed in a red plaid flannel shirt, (like a model in GQ), leaning on a farm fence and hanging with the common man, and he looked concerned and friendly and environmental and he didn’t look at all like some phony crook in a three piece suit with a long history of privilege and family corruption behind him, and I was sold on him. And boy…was I wrong.

The real Al Gore was born wearing a three piece suit and grew up in wealth, political influence, and privilege, in exclusive downtown hotels and a mansion back home, and the closest he ever came to that down home environmentally casual red plaid flannel nice guy feet firmly on the good ground common man image he tried to convey was when he stepped in a pile of dog crap with his handmade Italian shoes while getting into the limo. The guy was pure 1%, if you get my drift. And somebody should have been occupying him.

So anyway, I was looking at this tiny flash photo of our president, staged to look like he is just an average guy you might buy a beer for in a college town hamburger joynt, and what’s not to like? And alongside the photo is this brief synopsis of his rags to riches American Dream life, and who wouldn’t conclude that the guy is REALLY working hard to help folks, if that evil bunch over there would simply get out of the way. The folks selling him will tell you he deserves four more years to try to make things right again.

Choked me up. Really, it did. Wow, what a guy!

Couldn’t help contrasting my life of privilege with his struggle. You’ve all heard the story of how his poor single mom did her best to rear him, and then the wonderful grandmother took over, and then there was college and Harvard law school and then all those socially responsible jobs helping out the poor before public demand sent the man into politics. And then, all by himself, he made president. It’s heartwarming. No wonder he has to roll up his sleeves. One more roll up his arm to above the elbow and he’ll get that right, too.

Now me, I had it easy. Two parents. They stayed married and both worked to provide for their kids. I had it made. Poor Barack…his daddy left pretty much without a word, off to try to start revolutions, preaching hate for America, and planting babies. His mommy apparently couldn’t care for the boy, so grandma took over. By all accounts Grandma was very good to him. There was that exclusive expensive prep school, but that is good for a boy. And Grandma, the wealthy bank executive could afford it. I went to Cary Grove Community High School, and it was very good for me, too. It was free, so yeah, I had it made. 

Barack had to go to that expensive private university, Columbia. Good school, but boy is it expensive. I had it easy, going to a state university on scholarship. I went on to further education, while Barack headed to the jungles of Chicago, organizing the community, working to help the common man, and in the process herding hundreds into voting for the corruption and fraud that is the entrenched Illinois crime, I’m sorry, political party that runs the place. He made lots of useful friends working to line up those folks. These friends are helping him out to this day.

Barack later did well in Harvard Law School. He is a bright guy. Somehow he found a way to pay for this, one of the most expensive schools in the history of the world. Maybe his friends helped. Welcomed back to Northern Illinois, he landed jobs and handled responsibilities easily. Shows the value of good friends. I headed west to practice my profession, and Barack made more friends by being helpful himself. I made an easy living by showing up every day, buying my tract home and putting a few bucks away for retirement. Barack struggled on, but managed to acquire a small fortune and his mansion in a neighborhood of good wealthy friends. 

 At the urging of and with the support of his friends, Barack entered politics, and thrived there. Being the great guy he is, he rewarded his friends with power jobs and plain old power. And with this power he set out to save the world. Which brings me to the other tiny photo lower on that same Facebook page.

Nothing tugs on your heartstrings like the photos of those wet starving puppies and kittens that the fund raisers down at the Human Society of the US put up on TV. That’s guaranteed money, and they rake in millions from the kind people who see those photos. The HSUS people are little more than good business people. They take all that money from folks who see those pathetic photos and want to save animals, and they save the money, giving oh just a little to themselves to keep them in mansions too. Don’t hardly spend a dime on actual animals, but what of that?

Somebody must have been watching this success, for now you can find pictures of sick people on Facebook, and they tug on your heartstrings too, and you will stand in line to help Barack’s friends provide free health care for all of these people. They deserve it. It’s a basic human right. And we can afford it. Just give Barack’s government the money and they will make it right.

Probably, somebody will put up a tiny photo of a hungry person next, hoping for food for life, and some guy who’d like a nice house, and don’t forget the lady who’d like free clothes. These are basic human rights too. I suppose we should get the government to provide these, too. It’s worked well before, in nice countries we all remember. Barack’s friends are all for this. Seems likely he is too. 

And like when he community organized folks to vote for the corrupt machine in Chitown, he’ll be luring the voters with free this and that to keep voting his own machine into power.

Sure, it’s expensive and the government can’t afford it now, but remember…all those folks from privilege out there? Barack says they have all the money. Barack wants it. And so do his friends. And in the end, this is  how he will put those friends in charge of all of us.

Four more years.

The Bison Shoot 1/22/12

So, just how do you justify shooting a bison inside of a fence?

Dr Bob

As a child, I learned how to fly fish on manmade ponds which were built by a rich guy thirty-five years earlier. I attempted to catch trout with my fly rod, and those few I did manage to hook went home to become dinner for my family. The wooden box at the head of the last pond where the creek flowed in had a wide door on top you swung up out of the way, and inside sat a baby scale to weigh the trout and the record book where you recorded your catch, number and weight, for the homeowners’ association. I don’t remember how much they charged for a pound of fish, but Mom got the bill at the end of the month. From time to time she suggested that I don’t catch so many fish, onna count of what they charged for a pound of fish.

This wasn’t on the Big Horn River in Montana, or some untrammeled creek in Colorado mountains. It was instead in Northern Illinois, not exactly a hotbed of fly-fishing for trout in the 1960’s when I was there, or the 20’s when the ponds went in. The rich guy built the kind of estate I might consider if I won the lottery. The Roaring Twenties let a few folks get this wealthy, without ever even winning the lottery. Don’t know how this guy made his bucks, but he built a mansion with them, in the center of 360 acres of hills and forest overlooking the Fox River, and it was a nice place. A series of springs fed a creek that ran through the center of the property, and a sequence of rock dams along the stream left him with 13 small ponds and the larger one in which I caught those fish. They were still there when the estate became a subdivision and we moved in.

This rich guy built his own hatchery to supply trout for the ponds, and years later as I grew up on that property, I caught hatchery raised fish. And I suppose the money I cost Mom went to the expense of running that hatchery. Without the hatchery and the ponds, there would have been no fly-fishing for trout in my youth in Northern Illinois.

A farm prospered a short distance to the north and west of our family home. Descendants of the first Hallstroms worked that farm, my father’s two uncles and an aunt. Beulah raised the chickens and gathered the eggs. Herb and Cliff farmed the fields, planting feed corn during the times I remember, and fattening a few steers. I recall some sows popping out pigs, too. Somehow I doubt those three ever harbored the notion that dinner magically appeared plastic wrapped in a refrigerated compartment set strategically to the rear of a chain store.

We miss Clyde. He was that gray cat who presided over our backyard for those many years. Clyde hammered the gopher population, munching down on those voracious rodents. Our landscaping plants thanked him, for dead gophers don’t kill plants by eating all their roots. Without Clyde guarding the farm, the squirrels and gophers ate more from our garden than we did last year.

We want to eat more from our garden, as much as possible. Our own vegetables are not only handy, but they are as fresh as we want them to be. They taste much better, and you certainly can argue that they are better for us than that engineered synthetic rubber in the chain store that is shipped in from who knows where.

We have to compete with the rodents for the fruits of our garden, and I expect to win. That’s just life. And death.

Reality involves competition. Clyde ate gophers. We want to eat zucchini and green beans from our garden. So do the rodents. I’ll be fencing off and covering the garden this year to keep out as many as I can. And I will kill as many gophers and squirrels as I can. Nothing personal. No blood lust here. It’s simply competition.

We eat red meat and the occasional fish. There, I’ve said it. This can start an argument. There are many arguments I could address. I cannot resolve the rift between big government folks and the individual rights/responsibility folks. I won’t solve the abortion debate. I don’t step between the Mac people and the PC folks. I’ll stop here because of how long this paragraph could get.

This tale is not about the morals or merits of being an omnivore. We eat red meat and the occasion fish. The discussion starts here with this as a given. I’m not going into any of that other.

I wanted to explore here how we wish to go about this. We want to do with our meat as we wish to do with our garden. We want to take the responsibility of obtaining our own meat and fish, and thus improve the quality, freshness, and arguably, the health benefits from this. This is why we may someday feed a steer on our retirement property each year. I’m sure Cliff and Herb would appreciate this. And this is why I hunt and why I will fish when I no longer must work, and thus have the time.

I’m not at all sure how many more years I will be able to hunt for elk. Long our favorite meat, for years I have willingly spent the time and money for the chance to bring home this food. But the mountains are growing taller, and my legs shorter, every year. Someday I will no longer be up to the task. Throwing hay over the fence to our steer frankly would be much easier.

We have considered buying a buffalo calf and feeding it up to eating size instead. We very much enjoy the meat from a bison. But keeping bison behind a fence is much more interesting than an Angus steer. Might not be up to that challenge, either.

Which brings me to my recent bison “hunt”….

Elk hunting is a sacred endeavor to me. Took me years of internal debate before I decided to try this. Twas a difficult decision. But from this I have learned the truth of what the native hunters always knew. Without being spiritually ready to pass the test, you don’t see any elk. When you have earned them, you do. You can believe this or not, but without hunting elk you cannot know.

A hunt for Bison would be much the same, but truly wild bison wander few places in this country. Politics and bad science have put the much needed bison hunt north of Yellowstone Park on hold. A few hunts can be had on reservation land if your checkbook is big enough. Custer State Park in South Dakota holds a small hunt to manage their bison population. And I will be looking into this one.

A lottery is held for the few tags permitting a bison hunt in the Henry Mountains in Utah. This would be a true wild buffalo hunt. But winning this lottery is as likely as winning the one that would set me up on a wooded estate, and it is every bit as physically challenging as an elk hunt.

However, many ranches raise bison instead of beef cattle for the growing market of folks who wish to eat bison meat. I can buy one of these animals, and I can assume the responsibility for the act that turns a living animal into the freezer wrapped protein we will consume for the next year. So I chose a bison shoot to fill the freezer this winter.

Hatchery produced fish from an artificial pond rather than a wild river. An Angus steer raised on our own land. A bison harvested from a ranch, a fenced-in piece of its native prairie. Not the same perhaps, as bringing home the meat from a wild elk living high on the mountain. But this is not 1830 and I’m not Jeremiah Johnson. It’s not the same as that plastic wrapped mystery in the store, either. All things considered, this does in fact, work for me.

Jan 8, 2012

Hi all

Just back from a bison "hunt". I don't actually refer to this effort as a hunt, for I knew in advance where the bison might be. More a bison shoot. The ethics of which I shall address someday.

Brilliant sunlight bored into my eyes. This far up the map, the sun hangs lower in the sky than I am accustomed. And it lends less warmth. The wind arrived unimpeded by that five strand barbed wire fence, a few miles north and out of sight on the other side of the low ridge. Not one tree stood in the way. By local standard, it wasn’t much of a wind that day. Just enough to qualify for what they call a chill factor on the TV weather. It found its way past my collar, right there at the back of my neck. By local standard, it wasn’t cold either. Somewhere in the high teens. Shoulda been below zero this time of year. They are having a mild winter so far, but that will change.  Still, my hands stiffened faster than they used to.

South Dakota prairie grassland extended to the four horizons under a seamless, intensely blue sky. Last summer had been remarkable. More than enough rain, at all the right times, and warmth that didn’t cook everything to death. Everything grew beyond reason. The old folks just nodded, and said, “Don’t get used to it.” Next year, this could be a brown wasteland. But for now the bison stood knee deep in grass in January, and they weren’t complaining. 

A small herd of bison cows and calves fed in front of us. Behind them, on the slope rising to the north, six bulls lounged in the sun. They were built for a Dakota winter. Their ancestors thrived here for millennia despite four foot snows and wind fresh from the Arctic, bringing with it sub-zero temperatures. They are large enough to hang onto their heat. Their coats grow dense this time of year. And they can plow aside the snow with their huge heads, finding grass for their calves and themselves. They no doubt enjoyed this mild weather, but I’m sure the old cows just nodded and said, “Don’t get used to it.”

Bison and mankind have shared this land since the glaciers melted away a few years ago. Primitive man stumbled in after crossing the Bering Land Bridge, and found the bison here, shortly after the mastodons, saber toothed cats, and giant bears went away.  Or maybe after the mankind hunters killed them off. When the White folks showed up, the Sioux and assorted other native tribes wandered the land, dependent upon the bison for sustenance. Several groups of natives predated the Sioux, each supplanted by the next, more ambitious or talented or nastier tribe. The Sioux were doing well when the Europeans arrived, but they couldn’t compete. Not with those evil nasty Europeans. Evil nasty nasty Europeans. Shame on them!!

There….we’ve gotten that politically correct self-recrimination thing out of the way.  Don’t want anyone to think that success should pass without an appropriate amount of blame and guilt.  

We spent some time with the descendants of those White conquerors.  They’ve put in enough time here so’s you can assess how they are doing. First off, they’ve set down roots. Deep ones. Like the cottonwoods that survive the climate there. Deep roots come in handy when times turn tough. The people here are inseparable from the land. They know they cannot live without it, and that they must not only care for the land, but also give thanks for it. And they don’t wish to leave this place, even though other places might carry more glamour, or simply an easier life.

The folks with whom we stayed are a might different from most around our home. They tend toward quiet, and modest. And they go about all that needs doing without protest or complaint. Work for them starts with the dawn, and stops when they can’t see anymore. Their faith comes easily to them, kinda like breathing and eating. They simply do it and live it every day. The sun comes up in the east, and their faith is there to greet it. And they plug in the truck each night so it will start in the morning, regardless where the thermometer ends up, cause ya still gotta do your part, too.

The animals need care. Morning and night the people go out and break the ice so the calves can get water. Most years, the grass is thin by now, so they roll out the hay for the herd to eat.  See a coyote stalking the sheep? Get rid of it. That’s why the rifle lives in the truck. Loaded.  For the coyotes. They can trust their neighbors, so the front door isn’t locked. 

When we were ready to leave, and the truck was packed, they gifted us with something precious to them. And this gift tells much. We left with a photo of their family, four generations, twenty-three people from 92 years to 2 months of age. Precious.

I was taken with the similarities, with how much the folks living on the prairie of Dakota these days resemble the Sioux and their predecessors. 

The land and the weather and the bison defined the Sioux. These things defined the Sioux because they provided the sustenance needed by the Sioux, and also the challenges the people met to survive. And the faith that sustained the Sioux derived from these conditions. 

 Not much has changed. The weather and the land still define the place. The animals may be mostly Angus or Hereford now, but the bison are starting to come back. They still do well there. And the faith of the people blends into this land, too.

Historians like to say that when the Sioux killed a bison, the only thing they wasted was the grunt. They feasted upon the meat, and preserved what they could of the rest. They tanned the hides to build their shelter and provide their clothing. Bison horns served as spoons and cups. Various innards could be used to carry water or cook food. And bones could be turned into weapons, needles, and toys for the children. So when they felt the need, they used it all. Certainly, the bison filled many a need for the Sioux.

The historians conveniently overlook those times when the Sioux killed a few dozen too many bison, and they took the tongues and left the rest for the magpies and coyotes. But ya must do this to make the Sioux look good, and thus make their conquerors look bad. I don’t think the Sioux were perfect, but I don’t feel the need to condemn those folks who took over after them, either. The earth abides, and the people adapt, regardless who the people may be.

For my part…I chose from the herd that morning a bison cow with no calf, which meant that she would have gone to the butcher soon out of economic reality. My rifle was chambered in 45/70, an obsolescent cartridge once popular with buffalo hunters. She was quickly dispatched, and then loaded onto the flatbed pickup. The meat cutter turned her into nearly 300 pounds of meat. And we are having the hide tanned for a robe, and the skull cleaned and bleached. We didn’t save the bladder to carry water, nor the rumen to cook in, for we have other things that fill those needs. So I suppose we weren’t as frugal as the Sioux. But somehow, I don’t suppose the Sioux would prefer a rumen if they were also offered a microwave.