The Essence of Life

The Essence of Life

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Some Hunting & Shooting Quotes

Besides hunting and reading, I also enjoy watching classic movies, and once in a while I come across a dialogue or phrase that is relevant to both hunting and shooting. Here you will find four of those instances, and if you haven't watched these movies they are great entertainment.


Marilyn Monroe River of No Return 1 Wall Art, Canvas Prints, Framed Prints,  Wall Peels | Great Big Canvas

"What is important?

To hit the target.

When?

The first shot.

Why?

Because I might not get another."

Dialogue between Matt Calder (played by the laconic Robert Mitchum) and his son Mark Tommy Rettig) in the motion picture River of No Return (1954), just before they save Kay Weston (Marilyn Monroe) and her no good boyfriend Harry Weston (Rory Calhoun) from the rapids.

What do you think was in my mind when my family and I rafted down the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, a.k.a. River of No Return, last year? We didn't find their homestead, but stopped at Buckskin Bill's! But that is another story.


Watch The Snows of Kilimanjaro | Prime Video

"Oh, Harry, have you done any hunting lately?

No, why do you ask?

Too bad. A man should never lose his hand at hunting."

Dialogue between Uncle Bill (Leo G. Carroll) and Harry Street (Gregory Peck) in the motion picture The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), based on Ernest Hemingway's short story.


Amazon.com : Retro Tin Signs Cinema Poster Escanaba in da Moonlight Vintage  Art, Metal Poster, Wall Living Room Decor : Home & Kitchen

"Bring up your gun, put your finger on the trigger, and take a deep breath to steady your nerves..."

Just about every character say this to our beloved hero Reuben Soady (Jeff Daniels) in the classic Michigan's Upper Peninsula deer hunting movie Escanaba in da Moonlight (2001).

There are some many great one-liners in this movie that if probable deserves a post exclusively for them.


Drums Along the Mohawk | Rotten Tomatoes

"I'll never forget the first deer that I shot."

Brigadier General Nicholas Herkimer (Roger Inhof) on being told that his leg must be amputated when he bleeds to death during the surgery in Drums Along the Mohawk (1939).

Friday, December 15, 2023

The Perfect Hunt


 “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist


Sylas and his parents (my daughter and her husband) got to “The (Soon To Be) World Famous Meirelles Deer Camp” Thanksgiving night after I had shot my buck. On Black  Friday morning the ladies went to town while the gentlemen had more pressing priorities, specially sighting in or getting used to rifles, in Sylas case a brand new Ruger American chambered in 350 Legend.


For some reason Sylas was very afraid of the potential recoil from his new rifle and it was a battle, involving tears and whining and other unpleasantries, to have him shoot the very mildly recoiling gun a couple times in order to get ready for the afternoon hunt.


Food and time riding my ATV erased any bad feelings from the morning target shooting session and by 3:30 PM we were leaving the more than comfortable club house with a lot of hunter-orange to provide both legal compliance and an extra measure of safety, even if we were hunting private property from an enclosed elevated blind.


Either by design or accident there is a concealed parking spot just yards from the blind and transporting the gear upstairs was no chore at all. Once we were properly and comfortably installed I loaded Sylas’s rifle and placed it securely against a corner and got my most indispensable piece of gear: a pair of binoculars. I will not even touch my rifle before I have identified a potential target through binoculars and assure that a shot would be safe.


But I digress, this story is about Sylas. No more than a handful of minutes after we arrived, a pair of very young deer, probably buck fawns came out from the wood line just west of us and started browsing the late fall vegetation and Sylas asked if he could shoot one of them. My answer was that he could shoot either of them, but should he? They were very young and small deer that would result in very little, but delicious, venison. Was one of those young deer the trophy he was looking for? Besides, while some people use artificial decoys to attract deer, we could just wait and let those fawns be our live decoys. Their presence would provide confidence for other animals that could potentially come into the clearing.


Nothing reinforces a lesson as well as real life practice. I had barely ended my lecture when I saw a brown shape moving rapidly inside the wood line about a hundred yards away. I told Sylas to pay attention as an animal much larger than the ones in front of us was just inside the woods, although I couldn’t tell wether it was a buck or a doe.


Things started to pick up pace as a buck emerged from the woods and slowly walked straight to the blind! I passed the binoculars to Sylas so he could evaluate the buck and the inevitable question came: “Can I shoot him?”


“Of course you can, but he is a bit far away and facing us. Why don’t you wait a little for him to get closer and turn broadside.” 


From that point on it was like if the buck was being remotely controlled. At 54 yards the buck stopped and turned left, showing his right side to us. At this point I handled Sylas his rifle and he rested it on the window rail. The Leupold VX-R was already turned on and the little red dot provided an accurate reference for the young hunter. “Fufu I can’t take the shot. There is brush in front of the deer and at Hunter Safety they said that it is not safe to shoot an animal behind vegetation.”


I asked him to wait until the buck took a step forward and to make sure to aim at a spot directly up from the front leg and about the middle of the shoulder. Again, like by remote control the buck took that important step forward.


After the shot rang and the buck bolted towards the woods Sylas was positive. “I know I hit! The tail went down and he crunched downwards. Only deer that are hit react like that.” Not a bad observation for a ten year old boy.


During the next several minutes we put away our gear, I took off my bibs and heavier coat and got ready for the tracking job. After making sure that the rifle was ready but safe we climbed down and walked towards the spot the buck stood when shot and put nose to the grind stone looking for that magical first drop of blood eventually spotted by the young hunter himself.


Before moving forward we talked about how, if we lost the trail, coming back to first blood was important and that he should mark it, which he did using his red ear muffs. We slowly charged ahead, found more blood and came to inevitable split of the trail. Did the buck kept going west or turned southwards? We discussed the possibilities and found that ferns on the south side looked disturbed like by a running animal.


At this point I told Sylas that we would maybe look for another yard or two and get back to the blind so we wouldn’t risking jumping the wounded buck. It is always safer to let the animal lay down and get weaker than keeping the adrenaline up and trying to escape. But the lesson was almost pointless; as I raised my eyes, fifteen or twenty yards ahead of us was a very dead nine-pointer buck.


I called Trevor who was hunting in the cornfield across the road to help load the buck and the ATV and before taking any pictures made sure that Sylas placed the letzebissen (last bite) in the bucks mouth. This European tradition places a sprig of vegetation, as both a symbol of respect and gratitude, in the animal’s mouth. Immediately afterwards I removed my hat and shaking his hand said “Weidmanssheil” and explained to him that the proper answer is “Weidmannsdank.” 


While hunting is very different than killing, the finality of the kill is what makes hunting real. Taking a life is a very serious action, and in my view the animal should be commemorated with more formality and respect than a high-five. In our rather convoluted times a bit of tradition and propriety goes a long away to make an hour spent in the woods between grandson and grandfather an even more unforgettable experience.




Wednesday, June 28, 2023

The Haversack

When I was a child a haversack (the name in Portuguese is "embornal") was a very common household possession, especially in the rural environment where I grew up.

 

Everyone of the farm employees had one, almost always white made from discarded and reclaimed flour or sugar cotton sacs and with their initials embroiled by hand, with greater of lesser skill. Every morning around 9:30 the wives or daughters would bring the haversacks with the just cooked lunch and rang them in hooks outside the farm workshop from where they would be taken to fields.

 

That pretty much defined the standard dimension of the haversacks, since hey had to have enough room for a caldron about six inches in diameter, which contained he inevitable rice and beans filling about three quarters of the volume and some sort of meat, pork or chicken being the most common, since almost every family kept at least one capon and several piglets plus a number of chickens, hens, and at least one nice looking rooster.

 

The lid was kept in place by an elastic band, and together with it would go a former soft drink glass bottle filled with very sweet, and soon to be cold, coffee. Those haversacks had a very practical use, but almost everyone of those men also liked to fish, and some to hunt, even if only to provide some free protein for their families, but none had fishing boxes, all they need would fit in another haversack. And why not, since their wives could make them for almost free?

 

My brothers and I had our lunches in haversacks many times, more out of wanting to be part of the environment than for need, but like most of the other children in the farm we used ours to help us in our adventures.

 

So I started to consider what a haversack should be stuffed with to make us feel like children again!

 

First and foremost it should have a pocket knife of any type imaginable. Of course a Swiss Army knife would be the most desirable and useful knife anyone could carry, but they were too expensive and rare for children, and probably we would have to rely on a single blade friction folder, almost certainly with a sheep's foot blade that was handled down by some salesman, most likely chemicals being used o fight a losing battle win the boll weevils that were destroying our cotton, and that my father to his grave would swear where parachuted in Brazil by the CIA, so the big American companies could sell us their chemicals.

 

Next we must have a slingshot, as no self respecting boy at the time would go out in the bush unarmed. Many dangerous mangos and other less desirable fruits would still be haunting the country if we did not have our slingshots to bring them down from their towering heights. O course we could also try our luck at the multiple doves and pigeons that populated our woods or some careless tinamou that decided to prove Darwin wrong.

 

Marbles would be third in line, for they provided both entertainment during long lazy days and also could use as ammunition to the slingshots in case a trophy of enough importance would present itself for such expensive and high performance ammunition.

 

Following these basic staples we have a long list of absolute must haves, at least in the opinion of a professional small boy like me, and I will present the in no particular order.

 

Fishing hooks, sinkers and line that could all be accommodated inside a match box allowed us to try our hands for the "lambaris" (Astyanax sp.) and "traíras" (Hoplias sp.) among other fish that hid themselves in the dark muddy waters of the Córrego do Rosário that bisected our property, and that would come out in the early evening, about the same time that the annoying mosquitos would wake up to make us company and render us misery. A small glass jar with a screw in top that formerly held medicine or food is always useful to carry earth worms, rotting corn or other bait.

 

It is hard to overstate the importance of twine or cord or even some steel wire. They are essential to make an "arapuca" a very effective trap to catch birds and other small animals.

 

There is no reason not to carry as small container of .177" air gun pellets, even if your father, like mine, did not allow you to have an air gun. You could always come across another kid that had one, but had no pellets, and the priceless gift of half a dozen pellets of so would surely grant you access to that coveted gun. But I can't complain about my father for as much as he was afraid of air guns, he would allow me to carry a small bore shotgun, so in my haversack I always had a small handful of .310" rimfire shotshell made by CBC. The older version had glass wads that let us see the No. 11 shot while the newer ammunition was crimped.

 

Matches or a Bic lighter are critical to start our fires so we can cook our fish or the rare birds we hunted with our mortal slingshots. The frying pans were made from discarded cooking oil cans and were generally good for a single meal. More cans could be found when necessary. Of course the pocket knife was used to make he fry pan and then become the cooking utensil.

 

The haversack should also carry a small and inexpensive flashlight. Nowadays we have reliable and bright LED hand torches that cost next to nothing, but to us professional small boys (and I freely steel once more the expression from Robert Ruark) nothing is better than and old and barely functional flashlight, with worn out batteries that barely light the old bulb, and that before the night is over will have to be boiled or frozen to give us a couple more lumens that reflected from the eyes of a timid alligator someplace in the lagoon.


Being the nerd that I always was my haversack was also home o a magnifying glass, mostly used to burn black holes in mango leaves, and a small notebook and pencil, that of course was sharpened by the inseparable pocket knife.

 

A whistle is very useful if you are lost, or even if you just like to annoy people and disturb their early afternoon nap, and any child will soon find out how ease it is to lose it when overused or misused.

 

A very important item is a magnetic compass, especially if it is inexpensive and not too reliable, as it provides us a good reason to get lost for as long as we desire.

 

A good haversack can carry many other essentials, but it cannot transport or contain the most essential and necessary "items" for a us, professional small boys, adventure spirit and imagination.

 

Just get away from this computer screen and go explore your own backyard! You will discover a world that you thought was lost.

Wednesday, June 29, 2022

The Frontier...and White Meat

 

Adversaries...not enemies.

The day I lost my mother, exactly one month after I had lost my sister to an inglorious battle against cancer, I started looking for a different but challenging hunt in the very near future. With all the COVID-19 restrictions in place the hunt had to be in a place that I could drive to.

 

After some internet searching, email’s exchanges, and a couple phone calls, I booked a seven-day mountain lion hunt with Great Plains Outfitters, to be carried out of what we found out to be a great lodge near Hyattville, Wyoming, in the first half of January 2021.

 

During the last three months of 2020 I hunted, mostly with friends, woodcock and grouse, pheasants, whitetail deer, mallards and geese, in our home state of Michigan, as well as South Dakota and the Nebraska/Wyoming border. Considering the time that I spent hunting, plus the amount of work that I could not avoiding doing, brought me to Christmas without having planned my trip, beyond the original decision to drive the fifteen hundred or so miles that separated us from my hunt.

 

During the holidays I either convinced or coerced my wife to come along, and started planning a good old fashioned road trip. In order to avoid the always chaotic Chicago transit we drove north from Traverse City and crossed the Mackinac Bridge under less than perfect weather before turning west on US-2. Due to the Michigan lockdown, we could not stop at one of my all-time favorite breakfast restaurants, Drifters in Escanaba. But in another hour or so we crossed into Wisconsin and stopped at the first restaurant we saw, La Cabaña.

 

Our next stop was a hotel in Albert Lea, Minnesota, another lockdown state, so for dinner we had a picnic at the hotel room from the contents of our cooler. Venison jerk, devilled eggs, cheeses and cold cuts, dark chocolate and of course some heavenly brown liquor. All things considered, not a bad meal.

 

Our stop in South Dakota was literally a breath of fresh air! No mask restrictions, restaurants open, and a wonderful sunset over Rapid City. The next day we visited Mount Rushmore and Custer State Park, where we saw bison, pronghorn antelope, whitetail and mule deer. When we came to Wind Cave National Park, we saw our first prairie dogs and eventually a lonely badger on its way to have a good time on a prairie dog town, depending on perspectives of course.

 

On the second Friday of the year, we drove over icy roads and under a heavy cloud cover to Devil’s Tower National Park. We braved the weather and hiked around the fantastic rock formation from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and took our fair share of sliding and falling on the ice-covered trails. The fresh snow allowed us to identify a multitude of tracks, deer, rabbit and squirrel, fox, coyote and maybe wolf, and a rather fresh black bear going straight into the boulders at the base of the tower. Eventually we came across a whitetail doe and a couple of yearlings, as tame as park deer will ever be.

 

From Devil’s Tower we made a quick refueling stop at the hamlet of Hulett and then proceeded in a mostly northwest route to Cody, where we spent the weekend at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, and what a fantastic time that was. My initial motivation and goal was to visit the new Cody Firearms Museum, but the over five-thousand-gun exhibit was overshadowed by the beauty of the Draper Natural History Museum with its display of the high plains and Rocky Mountain wildlife, the deeply emotional Plains Indian Museum, the breath taking Whitney Western Art Museum and for someone that grew up watching cowboy movies, either fighting bad guys or not so bad Indians, the Buffalo Bill Museum.

 

Maria was deeply impacted by the somber tones and sad history that still plagues the Plain Indians, but I must confess that when I came across Theodore Roosevelt’s saddle from when he was a cattle rancher in Medora tears came to my eyes.

 

Eventually on Sunday afternoon we took to the road again towards Hyattville and the beginning of our hunt. We always elected to drive with daylight, so we could not only gorge our eyes with the beautiful western landscapes, but keep a sharp hunter’s eye (or in our case four) towards pronghorn, mule deer or whitetail, plus the eventual bald or golden eagles.

 

As the sun was setting we arrived at the lodge, where outfitter Dirk Jenkins greeted me with a most appropriate “I presume you are Rodrigo” and Nate Lopez, our guide to be, started unloading our gear with the same energy he would repeatedly demonstrate during the week long hunt. Shortly after we met Andrew Ward from North Carolina, also there to hunt mountain lion, and a gentleman from the very first moment.

 

Next morning, we started to get acquainted with the mountain lion hunting routine: wake up at four AM, get ready and grab the gear, have the breakfast and pack the lunch prepared by Jen, and get in the truck before five, with the hounds already eager for the chase.

 

The goal was to reach tracking snow, that was completely missing at the 4,500 feet elevation of the lodge, but once we gained a thousand feet or so there was plenty of snow, but little or no fresh powder that would show a track like words in a book. Most of the snow was hardened and crusted by the sun almost always present over the western deep blue sky. And then we are forced to remember that more than anything we hunt according to the weather, and there is really nothing anything that anyone can do about it.

 

Morning after morning we would climb the Big Rocky National Forest trails as high as 7,500 feet. Nate’s eyes were constantly searching the snow for round tracks with four well defined toes without sign of claws or nails. From a distance mountain lion and moose tracks can be deceivingly similar, especially on a hard crust.

 

Not having seen fresh tracks up the mountain we would come down and drive by the lodge and through a sleepy Hyattville and scout a couple different canyons before reaching Ten Sleep. Tacking Highway 16 we would continue to look for tracks, and be thankful for the almost absent vehicles, with stops at the Wigwam Rearing Station and the Ten Sleep Fish Hatchery where we always found tracks of a pair of mountain lions in the process of getting engaged. Eventually we would head south to what became my favorite place, the South Fork of the Otter Creek range, with its snow covered plateau ranging from 5,500 to 6,000 feet in elevation, scared by ravines that could conceal a whole army, let alone a solitary mountain lion, leading to deep canyons where the pine and cedars disguised the broken terrain underneath them. Deer and pronghorn abounded, providing a potential banquet for the enterprising predator.

 

Houndsmen are a different breed. They live for their hounds and for the chase. What is important is the intricate detective work of finding a somewhat fresh trail, releasing the dogs and following every moment of the chase, and once in a while tree their prey, be it mountain lion, bear or whatever they set their mind upon. They love their hounds and those hounds, fit endurance runners, also live for the chase, maybe even more than their masters.

 

The chase can be dull or exciting, and there is always a dangerous undertone to it, coming from their prey, the wild terrain or the ever changing weather conditions. But despite the danger, or because of it, hounds and houndsmen are always entranced by the chase. And just like the bird hunter’s heart and hopes ride on the nose of a pointing dog, the houndsmen rejoice on the baying of their hounds.

 

At first it may be disheartening for the inexperienced hunter to hear the houndsmen talk about a track. This track is two days old, or four days old, or from a small lion or a female. What they know that we had not learned yet is that a lion may only move a half mile on a day, and what nobody knows is whether that same animal just killed a deer soon after making those tracks and may be gorging itself on the kill for several days. Or that a young female may come into heat and attract a male from another canyon that is out of reach of trucks and even of snow machines.

 

On Wednesday, Nate and Braden released six hounds on a four-day old track. Braden with his long slender legs, and the energy and drive of the young and dumb (as opposed to us, old and frail) followed the dogs, while Nate, Maria and I enjoyed the relative comfort of the truck cabin and verbally abused each other to different degrees of inappropriateness.

 

When Nate defined that a lion was treed he braved the deep snow with his truck to get us as close as possible to the tree. All hounds have GPS collars and if they are not moving, they have treed something, and the collars can sense if the hounds are barking, and they are properly trained to only bark at bay.

 

In order to hunt a mountain lion, which may be the quintessential American animal, present from Patagonia to Canada, I chose what I believe is the quintessential American rifle, a lever action in 30-30 WCF. Instead of a Winchester 94 I used a 1980’s vintage Marlin 336, and the reason was that the Marlin is much easier to scope than the Winchester. And at my age, a scope is the only responsible way to shoot a rifle. Fifty plus eyes don’t see small iron sights well under challenging light conditions.

 

But before I loaded my rifle I checked if my hiking boots were properly laced and if my snow gathers were secure. You can hunt mountain lions without a rifle, but not without boots and gaiters.

 

On the first half a mile we gained around two hundred feet in elevation, and on the last quarter mile we lost three or four hundred, walking sideways like a crab, and grabbing on branches, tree trunks or rocks to get to the edge of the deep canyon where the pack of hounds bayed at a young female lion crouched on the branches of a rather tall cedar. Nate and Braden were disappointed that we had treed a young female, but seeing our first wild cougar, panther or catamount, whichever way you decided to call a Puma concolor was a prize in itself.

 

It also was the perfect example of how selective hunting with hounds can be. First, it is all but impossible to hunt mountain lion without hounds. They are shy, secretive animals that not only enjoy but thrive in solitude, and unless there is really fresh snow I don’t know of a person that can effectively track one of them. Different than leopard, mountain lion won’t eat carrion or come to bait. They only eat what they kill, while it is fresh. So they kill about a deer per week, and spend two or three days on the repast and then sleep it away. They may or may not come to a game call, or you may just happen upon one when hunting another animal, but in either case the hunter will have little time to assess age and sex before taking a shot. That is not the case when the hounds have treed a cat.

 

The image of that lite yet powerful animal against the blue sky will forever be with me. After a lot of pictures, we started back to the truck, and during the next half hour Wyoming gave us a little demonstration of how the humor of the great plains can change, from the already mentioned beautiful blue sky to a snow blizzard with sixty miles per hour wind and slit petering our faces. This is a tough country, and one must be always prepared to deal with the unexpected, or risk not making it.

 

Back at the lodge, Dirk thanked me for not shooting the young female, saying that it holds the future of the species in all the liters she may have in the future. Two days later, also in the Otter Creed range, we treed another female, larger than the first, again under blue skies, but in single digit temperatures. Will I continue to have the strength to be a selective hunter?

 

During the next two days everybody hunted with renewed energy, even Jen, Dirk’s wife and the lodge cook, would take a truck loaded with hounds and drive the most difficult mountain trails trying to cross fresh tracks. But the lack of fresh tracking snow put a damper on the efforts. We released the hounds on different tracks, but lions travel some of the most difficult country one can imagine, and even the most willing hound can only climb so much. Nate started waking up even earlier, so we would have a couple hours of scouting before our normal five AM departure.

 

Sunday would be our last day. There were new hunters scheduled to arrive on Monday, so extending the trip was out of question. As we had seen the freshest tracks around the fish hatchery we decided to start our day there, but as soon as Nate found tracks from the previous night it was obvious that the mountain lion had crossed Highway 16, possibly heading to Bureau of Land Management land. Nate wanted to release the hounds there and take the risk with the traffic, but I told him that although I really wanted a lion, I could not accept to endanger his dogs in that manner. So, we once again drove to the Otter Creek range.

 

It was another beautiful sunny day and the temperature quickly climbed to the mid-twenties. Once we waded Otter Creek we let the dogs out for their morning stretch, like we had been doing every day, and continue on the dirty roads that were becoming more and more familiar to us. We saw the same old tracks, complained that the pronghorn had moved away, ate our lunch in the truck, continue to pester each other and watched the clock move ahead, with every second conspiring against the odds of us ever getting a cat.

 

Around one PM we crossed Otter Creek for the last time, but instead of turning north towards Ten Sleep and the lodge, Nate took the opposite direction and not a quarter mile down the road we crossed the tracks of female with a kitten. We let the hounds out and they were soon gone, but hit a large bare spot were the sun had melted all the snow, and returned after losing the scent in less than half an hour. And the clock kept ticking.

 

During the week I was always amazed at the number of deer that we saw; whitetail in the draws, mule deer up high, antelope were they could see far away, and the whole time Nate would tease me for only looking out for deer and not having my eyes down on the road looking for tracks. Well, some miles than the road we see this beautiful whitetail buck, with a heavy tall rack, not very wide, a good eight-pointer, maybe a ten. He crossed the road right to left, and went into a ravine, and in another quarter mile or so recrossed the road once again and dove inside a bushy draw doing what big whitetails do best, bend our minds with false hopes before they vanish forever.

 

We kept on driving and I kept on the lookout for better deer, and Nate kept chastising me for not looking down for tracks, but a few minutes from the last sight of that big buck an apparition shocked me. A large tan body over the white snow. Not thirty yards from the passenger side of the truck a mountain lion stared straight into my soul!

 

Immediately I told Nate to stop the truck as the mountain lion was right there. He thought that was joking while the big cat sneaked under some lonely pines. Now the binoculars that had only seen deer and hounds on some bare canyon sides were scanning a large powerful predator immersed in the shadows.

 

I asked Maria for my rifle, but the lion started to make its “exit, stage right”, climbing over the ridge to get lost in one of the endless canyons that surrounded us. Although it was past way past 2 PM, the unofficial deadline to release hounds, the cat was too close and the trail too fresh and the hunt too far gone, so Nate promptly released Lilly, Lady and Zeek.

 

And the hounds treed that lion in a quarter mile, and then things started going really strange. While we were getting ready to move to the baying two of the collar signals disappeared. As I loaded my Marlin, Nate told Maria that although she had been with us for all the hunt, this time she would have to stay in the truck. What was going on?

 

I am not going to tire you with the details of how tired I became climbing several hundred feet with snow at times sometimes almost as deep as my gaiters, or asking myself what a Michigander that lives in a nice home at exactly 620 feet of elevation is doing crossing a ridge at almost six thousand?

 

When we got there, the mountain lion was on a cedar branch, hanging over a canyon with at least three hundred feet of emptiness under it, and only Lilly was any place to be seen, bravely keeping the cat at bay.

 

Nate asked me to keep an eye on the lion while he went looking for the other hounds. He came back empty handed and with a broken heart, but while he was gone I heard one of the hounds struggling into the bushes somewhere down the canyon steep walls.

 

Enough was enough! Nate just said that as the lion had killed his hounds I had to kill that lion, but that if I just killed it on the branch it also would fall down the canyon and he didn’t think that he would be able to retrieve it. I had to shoot the cat on the back of the lungs, so after jumping forward we would be able to tree it again, with brave Miss Lilly doing the hard work all by herself.

 

And so I did, and like a whirlwind the cat was gone with Lilly literally at its tail. And it treed again, one hundred seventy-five yards as the crow flies, and one hundred and fifty feet down another canyon. Do you know how long an overweight middle aged sedentary hunter takes to make that distance in Wyoming?

 

Eventually we got to the tree with Lilly looking around, but no sign of the lion. We looked and looked at the cedars, and over my right shoulder, not ten feet away, the cat was hidden among the endless branches. Nate told me that there was a small four-inch square gap right on the lion’s chest, and told me that a confident rifleman could make the shot. I already had another 30-30 in the chamber and the Leupold scope at the 1X setting, and shot when the center dot was on that square.

 

Initially there was no immediate reaction, but suddenly everything became blurry. As I worked the lever to reload the rifle the lion jumped over me, not attacking, but trying to make an escape. Being the bird hunter that I am, I just swung the Marlin like a shotgun, and shot it like a woodcock that departs the wrong way. In the process I slip over a rock, lost my balance and landed on my back, while the lion landed maybe three feet from my head.

 

Memory and emotion can fool us at times like that. Maybe the cat and I locked eyes, maybe not. But it continued to try to escape to the right, going around a little spruce, while I regained my footing, chambered another round and went the other way. When the lion saw me around the tree it reversed direction and shot it one last time. I had one cartridge left, but it didn’t matter, the mountain lion was dead twenty yards away.


There was no rejoicing over the taking of what ended being a very large lioness. The loss of Lady and Zeek weighted too heavy on us, but especially on Nate (Zeek was found alive on the next day, but we didn’t know that at the time), the lioness had been too valiant and noble.

 

We dragged the lioness body out of the canyon and then Nate packed it down to the truck, while a most beautiful sunset marked the end of what may have been my greatest hunt ever.

 

We met the whole crew, Dirk and Jen and Braden and Andrew, at the Sleepy Coyote in Ten Sleep, but the evening had somber tones as there is no celebration for a pyrrhic victory.


Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Feathers in February

Judd, the Author and Lynden: tired, but happy

February can be a challenging month, especially living in northern Michigan. Snow and low temperatures tend to make outdoors activities besides ice fishing and snow sports improbable, if not impossible. But a road trip may completely change the landscape...literary!

On Sunday, 17th, we start early in the morning with my truck navigation systems strongly disagreeing from my sense of direction. The only positive thing is that in the first hour of the trip, between Mesick and Cadillac, we saw a beautiful male coyote in full winter fur almost at  the side of the road. A beautiful view of an accomplished predator!

I will not bother you with details, but at one point I also turned my phone navigation app on, and since it took us to our destination well ahead of the truck system we decide to follow that one. I kept both systems on just to follow the disagreements. What a fight! (Anything for entertainment on a ten hours plus trip.)

Eventually we arrived at Upland Addiction (www.kentuckywingshooting.com) fine lodge, in Marion, western Kentucky, late in the afternoon. Dinner was MacDonald's since restaurants in the Bible Belt don't open on Sundays, as explained by Judd, young entrepreneur and our guide for the next two days.

Before I forget I should mention that Lynden and I bought this hunting trip on the Traverse City Ruffed Grouse Society banquet last September, and we scheduled it around a trade show that we had to attend in Indianapolis. The good news was that the logistics were perfect, the not so good ones was that we might have run away from snow to drenched in rain: Kentucky was having some of the worst floods in the past decade!

But the forecast for Monday was dry, overcast and cool with several days of rain to follow, so Judd asked if we would mind cramming two hunts in one day. Better that then spending an afternoon reading and no more birds the next day. In the end, Tuesday morning was fair weather and we packed more bird hunting there.

What I have to tell you is that Judd knows his business. Due to the flooding we concentrate our hunting to his family farm, moving from different meadows that we divided by wooded hedges and always ended in water, at least during the floods. Judd ran three different pointing dogs for the three half-day hunts. 

First was the thirteen years old setter Bonnie, and she was a class act. I wish to have the drive she has when I am that age (in dog years!) What a sweet old lady! After Bonnie we had Queen, a strong willed German shorthair, as if any other shorthairs were not. Queen ranged a bit farther than Bonnie, and behaved differently, but produced just as well. On the Tuesday hunt we had old Jack, and English Pointer. Bigger ranging, working the wind, and suddenly freezing, holding birds for as long as we would take to be there, or maybe until hell freezes over. Jack reminds me why English Pointers are in the world: to hunt birds, period!

Besides each of the pointers Judd ran little Lady. An English Spaniel with a heart and desire to hunt bigger than her tiny body; she was the flusher and a fantastic retriever. When she didn't make to a bird before the long legged pointers, she would gently snatch the birds from the larger dogs' mouth! In the water she might believe that she was a Chesapeake Bay retriever. Once Judd could give her the bearings, she was out in the water and never failed to bring a bird back.

It is very hard to describe all the action that comes from a single quail cove rising, with birds buzzing front, right, left or towards you, let alone tell the limitless rises that we had. Let's just say that it started well, as in the first cove a dropped one bird from with the bottom barrel of my Beretta 28 gauge shotgun, and immediately after that another bird fell to the top barrel.

At the end of the third hunt we had a number of birds that was almost obscene, except for the fact that quail tastes so good!

With heavy legs and light hearts we bid farewell to Judd and his father with hopes of coming back next season We drove then to Indianapolis for a trade show and on the Friday I continued to Portage, Michigan, in order to make peace with my grandson. From the lodge I had called Sylas and told him that I was "bird hunting" and his only reply was "But without me!"

In order to remediate the diplomatic incident I called Rolling Hills Hunting Preserve in Marcellus, Michigan, about a half an hour from my daughters home, and scheduled a pheasant hunt for Saturday afternoon. Around 11:30 AM our friends Mike and Jordan met Sylas and I at my daughter's home and we departed to Rolling Hills.

When we got to the club house we were asked if we would be three hunters, and Sylas immediately corrected Bob saying that we were FOUR HUNTERS!

Let's just say that we had a well timed hunt: Mike shot the first bird, Jordan the second and then it was Sylas and my turn. We kept rotating the points and I backed up a couple flushes, but not many. At one point the birds became heavy and we went back to the truck to drop them and take a rest. Sylas wanted to warn up as well. Of we went again and we shot the last bird just before the rain started. It would turn into drenching rain by midnight and a full day high wind storm.

The pheasant became a good stroganoff served with white rice and helped down by a couple good bottles of Italian wine. And diplomatic relations were fully restored!

The Gang: Jordan, Mike, the proud grandfather and Sylas

Sunday, February 10, 2019

Things You Can Do In Paradise

Things you can do in paradise!

I am absolutely in love with our home country in lower northern Michigan. Within one hour or so of Traverse City there is fantastic fishing and bird hunting (at least most years), very good deer hunting, water-fowling, predator hunting that I have not done yet, marvelous landscapes and pristine waters, not to mention great people.

But sometimes I must go further north, especially around the third week of September, when small game season opens in Ontario, so that besides hunting bear and fishing I can also shoot grouse and at least try my luck on the most elusive of creatures, the true and only king of the northern latitudes - the timber wolf.

While sunrises over old clearcuts are breathtaking, I almost never have the pleasure of watching sunsets since that is the most critical time to be waiting for bear at a bait site, the shadows taking over the shapes, trees growing darker and closer together and silence engulfing everything. Although I've shot bear at early hours, the hunter that leaves the wood before full darkness is handicapping his chances.

Grouse are plentiful, both spruce and ruffed, but tamer then the ones around us and must be motivated to go airborne. With the local wolf population being what it is, it is just not practical (or safe) to use bird dogs, so we count on friends or acquaintances to flush the grouse. It can be quite sporting in its own way, especially with a small bore shotgun.

The waters reflect the skies, at day or night, and the mirror like surface is only shattered by the fight of a walleye or the strike of a northern pike. Sometimes it is only disrupted by the wake of a swimming beaver or otter.

When driving, blacktop or logging roads, we are always scanning ahead; moose may appear from anywhere, and they are BIG, even the smaller ones. Nowadays tags are almost impossible to obtain, or at least very, very difficult; and while I can't pursue them, the natives can, either the four or two legged types.

And during a cold cloudless night, a warm and friendly fire makes the stars glow brighter, and if you really let Ontario into your soul you will be able to see yourself among the stars, Orion pursuing Ursa Major!

Sunday, November 18, 2018

Final Comments On The Modern Sporting Rifle

A small 10-point fell to the “modern 30-30”

Earlier this year I started a little personal project aimed to proof the worse of the so called Modern Sporting Rifle, which is generally an incarnation in one disguise or another of the AR-15 platform, as a legitimate deer hunting rifle. I won’t repeat all the points discussed in the previous blog, but I would like to report on the completed experiment.

After a mostly unfruitful archery season, that is if you measure success exclusively by the weight of your game bag, Opening Day happened upon us. For the glorious Fifteenth I took my Winchester 71 in 348 Winchester to my blind, but must confess that I struggled with taking a “longer” shot using the aperture sights which, although precise, provide no magnification or light gathering capability. Being of middle age clarity of the target is achieved through optics, not effort or good intentions.

So, on the sixteenth I listened to the voice of reason and brought my WW-15 (an AR-15 with different letters) in 7,62x39 and topped with an excellent Leupold VX-R with a 30mm tube which helps with light gathering, especially for early and late hours when deer are most active.

I can tell you that this was an enlightening experience. The short overall length, even with the stock fully extended, makes it very handy in the confines of a blind. The detachable magazine and positive bolt hold open makes it convenient to load, and especially unload, the rifle making it safe and secure while climbing ladders, entering or exiting blinds or vehicles, etc., and to handle it in the blind and pointing the barrel out of the windows with minimal muzzle movement.

Well, I passed several does, fawns and illegal spikes and fork horns during the sixteenth, and after working at the gun shop on Saturday morning I went back to my vigil in the early afternoon. After reading a couple more chapters from Robert Ruark’s “The Old Man and the Boy” I heard munching on the bait pile, still legal until January 1st, 2019. A little button buck was delighting himself with carrots and I delighted myself in watching him through my binoculars for almost half an hour. The wind was on my face and he never suspected anything. I can only hope that he will get smarter and eventually become a trophy buck.

Around 4:00 PM a shape came out of the woods and into the logging road straight ahead of my blind. I saw it had antlers, but small. Would him be a legal buck? Around my neck of the woods there is the occasional trophy buck, but I measure my trophies by their epicurean qualities, and a young deer is juicy and tender. I used my binoculars to assess the antlers and counted at least five to a side, a lot of points for a very compact rack.

As the young buck came straight at me I exchanged the binoculars for the little rifle, rested it on the blind window and for the first time in the season set my cross hairs on a deer. At about 50 yards, the buck started to consider his options, veered to the left and then to the right and presented a clear broadside shot. And when I touched the trigger I heard the worst sound in the world: CLICK!

Now, I had put several boxes of ammo through the little AR without a single hick-up, and now, at the moment of truth I have just a CLICK!


As the deer went into the trees, as to circle the bait pile, I worked the bolt, ejected the round in the chamber and fed another one. I positioned the crosshair in the place the deer was likely to emerge from the bush, and an eternity of seconds later, there he was, broadside again. I can't remember if he was heading east or west, put little 125 grain bullet hit the mark just behind the shoulder, and the soon to be venison took of running in the direction he came from. As he passed the logging road at a dead run I connected again, with a second shot and just as I lost sight of him I heard him crash.


I unloaded the rifle, first the magazine was out and then the chamber was emptied, locked the bolt open, pocketed only the items I needed to tag the buck, shouldered the rifle and climbed down from my blind. Reloading was done in a second: magazine in, bolt released, safety engaged. Then I walked the logging road until I cut fresh tracks and found the blood spoor. Tracking blood in fresh snow is easy and in no time I came upon the deer.


I took some pictures, tagged it and went back to my blind to wait for dark when my friend Del that was hunting at another part of the property to come and help me. Why drag a deer alone and risk injury and physical exertion when it is so much easier to do that with help?

The final question is: could I have not just used a lever action 30-30 instead of the AR? The simple answer is yes, but the more complex one is that overall the AR is a more convenient rifle. It is safer by being easier to load and unload, having a bolt open device and positive safety, it is generally easier to scope than most lever action rifles, definitely it has a better trigger (which for me is very important) and great ergonomics (including a stock that allows for different lengths of pull, which is important for smaller framed hunters or shooters), and the semiautomatic action allows for a precise quick follow-up shot. Also, the 7,62x39 ammo proved to be more than adequate for deer in the relative close ranges of the north woods.


My conclusion from this not too scientific experiment (a single date point does not constitute a proper experiment) is that there is definitively a place for the Modern Sporting Rifle in hunting. This doesn't mean that you will not see me going back to more classical firearms like a little double 7x57R stalking rifle that I am eyeing, but it just shows that even a conservative hunter like me must accept that firearms design continues to evolve.