Dad chose his words wisely, as dad’s are prone to doing: “Nope…it’s my job to carry the spotting scope” “I’ll hike and find someone who can jump our truck…why don’t you go ahead and hunt” “Here’s another scotch” This year I was lucky and drew one of the most coveted Wyoming deer tags. My, Read More
“Can I use those?” I was looking for deer. Everett, my three year old, was looking to score my binoculars… again. I usually have a cheap compact pair on hand for him to use, but we’d accidentally left them at home, along with any chance of peace and quiet. What I’d hoped would be, Read More
You left the house at 4 a.m. By 5 you were hiking through the frozen darkness. 6 found you prepared, your body and your gear positioned just so. The blackness is absolute, the limestone at your back cold and sharp. A favorable wind brings imagined smells to your nose, half-heard noises to your ears, Read More
My attention ebbs and flows. A month ago I had almost no interest in hunting, I was immersed in fishing. There were years where my focus was waterfowl, then it switched to upland birds for the last couple. While introduced early, passions for fishing and bird hunting came later to me. Big game hunting, Read More
The old english proverb states that the “Eyes Are the Window to the Soul”. What can you say about looking into someone’s freezer? A quick inventory of mine revealed a few interesting items: One antelope head, that needs to be skinned and made into a european mount before long. Two flats of raspberries, saved for baking, Read More
They called him Deadeye Dan, although that was before I came along. He was a great shot. Dropping whitetails on the run as they darted between cottonwoods, elk in the fog at three hundred yards. Always just one shot. By the time I was able to tag along on hunts those days were long, Read More
My son was so excited for the first day of hunting season, and the morning was such a blooper reel of false starts, forgotten gear and last minute errands, that I nearly failed to calibrate expectations. We’d left the highway, the state roads, and the graded gravel behind before I thought to check in, Read More
My uncle always said that elk were a staple and everything else was an appetizer. I guess we liked appetizers because as a kid we would always shoot a couple of whitetail does for the freezer. We had tons of them on our family ranch and they tasted delicious. Now, I have almost no access, Read More
There’s a difference between the smell of an animal and the smell of an animal on you. Pronghorn antelope have a goaty, musky, virile stink. When a whiff wafts from an arroyo or the matted secrecy of a day bed, it’ll twist your neck and curl your nose. In such chance encounters the smell, Read More
I can no more explain why I hunt than I can explain why I read. I have reasons – because others must die for me to live, and I’m resolved to do my own killing; because it’s the most sensually vibrant and emotionally complex way I know of to experience the natural world; because, Read More