The Essence of Life

The Essence of Life

Thursday, June 27, 2024

Keeping Up With The New Times!

 


“In our rather stupid time, hunting is belittled and misunderstood, many refusing to see it for the vital vacation from the human condition that it is, or to acknowledge that the hunter does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, he kills in order to have hunted.”

Jose Ortega y Gasset – Meditations on Hunting

 

As a hunter I am a traditionalist at heart. I like to keep things simple while I enjoy time with and within nature, away from the tribulation of “our rather stupid time.” But, if hunt is to continue to be a relevant activity, from ecological, economic, cultural or societal standpoints, then we must continue to recruit new hunters, from all diverse segments of society, and that means that even troglodytes like me must accept certain new-fangled things intruding in our hunting experience.

One of the greatest pleasures that I have is to spend time afield with my grandson Sylas, be it in a deer blind or walking after Hawk while he is using his nose to locate woodcock, grouse or pheasants. But sitting in a blind with a ten-year-old boy presents certain challenges, especially if deer take longer than five minutes to show themselves. For as much as I hate to admit, the solution for quite some time has been to allow him to watch videos or play games using a smart phone or tablet. I know that this may offend certain purists, even more traditionalist than me, after all I mostly use a centerfire rifle for deer and not a long bow, but I would rather have my son hunting with me, even if on occasion he is looking at a phone screen, than not having him hunting with me.

But the unavoidable presence of the smart phone in the blind let me to consider that that new-fangled thing might have more practical uses than just keeping children entertained, to the point that I had a slide about the use of smart phone in the field during the last Hunter Education class that I taught.

So, how could a smart phone be used while hunting:

·       Safety: if coverage is available, you could use your phone to contact family, friends or first responders in case of an emergency. Even without coverage, you could pinpoint the geocoordinates of your hunt blind or tree-stand and share with your loved ones before going hunting so it would be easy to locate you if you get delayed by weather or an accident. Talking about weather, the phone can be used both to check weather forecasts and receive alerts about inclement weather.

Other useful features are compass and GPS (satellite based), navigation apps and a flashlight. Believe it or not, but in a late season archery hunt in Illinois the three flashlights that I had all went dead (maybe due to the very cold weather), and in the end of the day (or beginning of the night!) my phone provided the only light for me to walk out safely.

·       Compliance: Following applicable laws and regulations is as important as proper ethical behavior afield. Of course, the specifics will depend on where you may be hunting, but here in Michigan you can use a smart phone to first download the DNR app, and then you can review regulations specific for you target game and season up to checking legal shooting hours for each day of the season! You can also complete the mandatory Harvest Report for deer even before you drag your quarry out of the woods, and using GPS or any number of apps the hunter can verify that he is outside of the 450 feet safety zone from any dwellings.

·       Entertainment: While my grandson prefers to watch videos or play games, I have a reasonably large and eclectic library on my phone, ranging from classic hunting books to science fiction to literary classics to comedy. I have a friend that likes either music or audio books and my son would probably listen to podcasts. I rather keep my hearing unobstructed and try to listen to any disturbances to the fall leaves that blanket the ground or to the wild music the Canada geese play when flying overhead.

·       Record your experiences: The camera capabilities of most modern smart phones, either for still pictures or movies, are outstanding, and as we move away from the precious written word to the world of multimedia, a lot of people nowadays focus on that. Reactionaries like me take notes and later try to write a blog (similar to this) to relate their experiences. Many anthropologists correlate the development of human language and the need of hunters to communicate, teach young hunters and especially to tell stories and tales about their past experiences. The modern hunter, whether young or old, can also use his story telling abilities, written or pictographic, to recruit new hunters and help perpetuate our unique way of life.

I bet that the younger generation that is much more versed on the use of smart phones than me will be able to come with a myriad of other potential uses for their handheld devices, but we should be smart enough to use modern gadgets to help us recruit, retain and reactivate hunters and have more people enjoying the great outdoors.

Friday, June 21, 2024

 

Syncerus Caffer Caffer

This week I received back from taxidermy the European mount for the Cape Buffalo that I shot in South Africa in August 2022. I included the rifle in the photo for scale. The little Mauser is 45" long, and the horns measured 45-6/8" on the outside spread. These massive horns are a testimony to the power and beauty of the Cape Buffalo and will help me remember that hunt as long as I live

You can watch the hunt for this buffalo at the Hampel's Gun Co. YouTube channel and come to our shop to see it by yourself.

Monday, April 8, 2024

Casual Encounteurs

 

Loop Lake Road - Algoma National Forest

Between 2010 and 2019, and prior to its untimely demise due to Covid and related issues, I went bear hunting at Halfway Haven five times and learned to admire, enjoy and love the dark and almost impenetrable pine forests, placid lakes, logging roads in a constant state of disrepair, and the abundant wildlife and fisheries.

I caught walleye and pike, shot ruffled and spruce grouse for the camp pot, and had my fair share of success with black bears, not only for the trophies but also for their fantastic meat. But some of the most cherished memories come from casual encounters.

In 2019 I took some friends from Brazil hunting and they wanted to go after both the ever present black bears as well as timber wolves that moved in the area following the mighty moose and seriously impacting bear hunting, but that is a different story.

Since my friends refused to drive for fear of getting lost (in the single road that was led to camp) I had to drop them at their assigned baits and pick them up at night. I also had to babysit them to make sure that they had their gear going in and coming out.

A certain night when I came to pick up Alceu, who was sitting for wolf, I noticed that he had left his electronic game call behind. As I had no idea of the plans for the following day I just told him to load up his gear and wait for me in the truck and took the narrow trail to retried the equipment. It was pitch black dark, except for the bright northern stars, and I relied only on my headlight. The moment I touched the call that was hanging from a tree three wolves started howling around me. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I was uncertain how a can of bear spray would perform against the apex predators of the north woods. That is one of the most primeval feelings I ever felt.

Not wanting to find out how many other puppies were around I made a tactical retreat to the safe and comfort of my truck!

In the previous year, I spent two weeks, instead of the normal seven days, at camp. More time to do what I like best: not much at all! Since I am constantly reminded that God doesn’t count days spent hunting, fishing or exploring wild places against our allotment, I guess that I don’t do much at all. Anyhow…

On the day before we were supposed to drive home, and having fished and hunted to my heart’s content, I took an afternoon to visit Steve and Gale at their beautiful trapper’s cabin out of Much Lake Road. Jeff, our guide turned friend, asked me to stop at a couple baits on the way back in order to get his game cameras, saving him time the following day.

Towards late afternoon I bid goodbye to the nice couple and went on my mission. At the first stop I had a long walk on a soft sandy road, crisscrossed by wolf tracks, and carried a 257 Weatherby just in case. Except for ravens and crows, and maybe a bald eagle I saw nothing.

At the second stop, my walk would be much shorter but almost entirely in the timber. Being a bit tired and wanting to make a fast retrieval I took nothing. As I made the last bend of the trail before the bait barrel I came face to face to a beautiful black bear, that probably was just as surprised as I was.

We both froze and the story takes two paths! The boring one is that I started backing up until we couldn’t see each other, went back to the truck, got a gun and came back to find nothing and picked up the camera and went back to the lodge. The other path is to give a bit more detail to our casual encounter!

When the bear and I came face to face we carefully examined each other. Could we have met before? And then we apparently came to the same conclusion! Both of us being proper gentlemen, and not having being properly introduced, we decided not to engage in any conversation. Such is the burden of civilization.

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 on 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 hang them in hooks outside the farm workshop from where they would be taken to the 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 the 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 to 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 for 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 over shot 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 the 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 Peter Hathaway Capstik) 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 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.