I was an elite road cyclist and expert/elite mountain bike racer from Colorado where I competed throughout for almost twenty-five years while holding down a high-level engineering career. This is not an easy thing to do, particularly over such a lengthy period. After sixteen years in the foothills of the Front Range (about seventy five minutes from Denver) but working closer to home, in Golden, I made my home in Durango for the last fourteen years of my thirty years in Colorado. While living in such a hugely competitive state for mountain athletes, with Durango being considered the “Mountain Biking Capitol of the World” (it may still be), I was compelled to continue racing and did well enough into my mid- forties to win (or place top five) in the few events I entered during my years in that much less populated part of the state. Towards the end, I was racing in just one or two events per year.
Being an accomplished elk hunter, both rifle and archery, and learning how to shoot and be safe around firearms by the age of seven, I have always been a “pro-gun” individual, but I have also lived and spent much of my time in rural, if not remote places, so I never felt the urge to “carry” while out riding. But that all changed in 2011 when I was forced to leave my adopted home state and move to Houston, if I had any chance of remaining gainfully employed in the oil and gas industry. It was a rough deal because I had hoped to stay in Southwest Colorado to retire, spending my “Golden Years” hunting and fly-fishing to my heart’s content. My wife and I made the reluctant move to the Houston area where she had already secured a solid position with BP at their US headquarters in Westlake, thirty minutes west of Houston. I found enough consulting work to get by at a time when I had two major back surgeries to coincide with the horrible (for me) move. I had to give up all my mountain activities but, after I healed from the surgeries, I continued to run and ride and enter a road racing event every now and then here in Texas.
Before I could even wrap my head around such a move, I was riding through some pretty rough areas of Houston, still in significant pain, to get to some halfway decent roads without getting hit, and I was set upon twice by small bands of the “criminal element” in a car moving in quickly from my left and they’d push me to the side of the road (as if they were well practiced in their craft) under some bridge or another. But I never rode with anything of value except for thirty bucks and the bike I was on.
During each of the two instances, I was able to “talk my way out” by first handing them the thirty and then stepping off the bike, showing absolutely no fear while making it known that I wasn’t going to make things easy for them. Standing six-four and weighing (at the time) between 185 and 190, (I’m not your typically diminutive rider and know how to defend myself), I somehow wriggled my way out of some bad circumstances based mostly on the “luck of the draw”. I had a gun pointed my way each time but no one with the gumption to pull the trigger and, like I said, I had nothing of value except for that thirty bucks and expensive bike. Fortunately, none of these “would be muggers” had the need or desire to attempt to take that from me.
From then on, I simply racked my bike and drove the fifteen or twenty minutes to reach those country roads, where I could safely park (though I did have my truck broken into once) and take off riding from there. After a couple of years, we were able to move to a nicer part of Texas, well away from the Houston area (a city I’d spent time in and learned earlier in life to abhor). Fortune had smiled upon as my wife scored a very good job in San Antonio, not far from her hometown where many of her friends and relatives still lived. We found some property and a wonderful new home in a very rural area, roughly fifty-five minutes from her new job. But she continued her “lucky streak, and, when combined with a strong work ethic and commensurate capabilities, she was given the opportunity to work from home for the last six or seven years. I managed to find a few sporadic consulting opportunities working from home and formally retired just over a year later, several years earlier than I had planned. Let’s just say that retirement has been tighter than I’d ever thought it would be, but the upside was that I would now be riding in some of the best cycling country Central Texas and the Hill Country had to offer, and again the need for carrying while I was riding went away as quickly as it had come.
Had this story gone differently and I’d been forced to remain in Houston, I could picture myself happily walking into a gun store, of which there were many, so I could have easily found what I’d have been looking for. After doing a bit of research, with all the options available today, I’d likely go with a Walther PDP 9 mm, as pictured below, with its 4-inch barrel. There are several important reasons I’d choose this make and model above everything else available in the veritable smorgasbord of handguns on the market today:
-It has the muzzle energy (“stopping power”) of a 9 mm; -The four-inch barrel is a better choice for a 9 mm than anything shorter; -The gun is relatively lightweight, but not too much so; -It is Walther built and of Walther quality; -It has good capacity for a compact at 10 rounds +1 -It is uber-thin and very streamlined with no major protuberances to get snagged on polyester jersey material; -It’s a great looking gun and is well proportioned; -Great sights and plentiful accessory options.
Last, (IMO), it is priced very reasonably when comparing build, features, and deadly capability.
Of key importance is that it would serve two important purposes. Its primary function would be as a personal/home defense weapon that had “concealed carry” capabilities for my wife. I would simply borrow it if out riding and would knowingly be passing through the kinds of places I described. Again, had I been forced to remain in the Houston area, this is the compact handgun that I would choose. I have huge hands and would have difficulty fiddling with anything smaller. For me, subcompacts and miniguns are out of the question.
My beloved Australian Kelpie, “Kelpy”, as named by my then six year-old daughter. Kelpy and I were spending the 2013 archery elk season (end of August through end of September) in our favorite place, up high in the “Middle of Nowhere”, Southwest Colorado. Our camp was just 30-feet behind where this picture was taken.
One of Colorado’s more obscure backcountry skiing destinations, this cabin is located about twenty miles from the historic mining community of Minturn, Colorado. Four friends and I made the nine mile ski into the cabin for four days of fun and fellowship. It had been snowing on and off throughout our stay, making for some prime deep powder skiing. We skied all day everyday and were ready for some hard earned rest.
We hadn’t seen the sun in three days and, just as we were headed out (you can see our telltale single file trail), it magically cleared as if the snow gods were bidding us goodbye. I looked over my shoulder and waited a moment before snapping this pic. It was cold and sunny for the ski-out to the trailhead and our awaiting vehicles below.
It’s no secret how popular climbing Everest has become. Here’s a few statistics to digest before tearing into the story. I know, there are two different figures shown for “Successful Climbs”. What do you expect for AI?!
Courtesy AI Summary
I just got done watching “Dying for Everest”, a 2007 documentary based on double amputee Mark Inglis’s triumphant summit bid on Mount Everest and the existential happenings during that climb.
Image Credit: Unsplash
Starting at a relatively young age, Inglis had been a professional mountaineer and member of an alpine rescue team based in his home country of New Zealand. He was already a gifted and highly experienced mountaineer when he spent twelve days on New Zealand’s Mount Cook, after being caught high on the mountain with his partner in an extended blizzard before they were finally rescued. As a result, severe frostbite brought an end to his legs and feet (from the knee down). While undergoing a brutally painful and lengthy rehab, he was fitted with prosthetics and began the long road back to seeking adventure.
Fast forward to the mid-2000’s when Inglis made the decision to be the first double amputee to reach the summit of Mt. Everest and went about joining an experienced team, several of whom had summited Everest on two or more occasions and were old friends. Anymore, most people are familiar with Everest, the tallest of the world’s 8,000 meter peaks at over 29,000 feet ASL (Above Sea Level) and the endless stream of climbers of all ability levels who make the attempt each climbing season (lasting just a few months). From both an ecological and spiritual standpoint, the mountain is truly under siege. Strewn everywhere are non-biodegradable trash such as plastic water bottles and used oxygen cylinders from around base camp at 17,000 feet to the furthest reaches of the mountain, a testament to the thousands of people who have attempted the climb. Only a fraction have made it safely to the summit and the return cimb down.
Inglis and his team which included a climber known as “Cowboy” who had designed and fabricated Inglis’s highly specialized climbing legs were well funded and well prepared, enough so that they were able to contribute $80,000 to a charitable group that involves amputees. The team had ample media coverage commensurate with covering such a huge human interested story. I can recall the ferver surrounding the climb as the date closed in. There aren’t many “firsts” remaining on Everest or, for that matter, in mountaineering, adventure or extreme sports, discovery, or exploration in general. The turn of the twentieth century and the twenty years on either side were banner times with the races for the poles, polar travel, arctic and antarctic attempts and crossings. It seems that “firsts abounded”. We even made it into space by the late 1960’s. Everest is not considered the most difficult of the 8,000 meter peaks. Though they are seldom used, there are far more difficult routes on the mountain than the one taken by probably 99% of the people attempting the climb. In comparison, K2 has an unbelievably low success rate coupled with the highest death rate which is one in every four climbers. With that in mind, it’s all but inconceivable that people attempt it at all. Imagine being a father or mother and having your adventure seeking husband or wife inform you that they’ve made their decision and will be joining their team of three or five others to climb K2 during the next climbing season. In the 1970’s with the world’s climbing community saying it was impossible to do Everest without oxygen, a forty year old debate, German-Italian Reinhold Messner, one of the all-time best mountaineers not only proved them wrong once, but twice while taking one of the most difficult, but direct routes up the mountain unaided by the use of oxygen. These were feats that went unchallenged until a super-climber named Ed Visteurs repeated it sometime in the early 1990’s. So, attempting to climb Everest while being a double amputee would garner a lot of press and the climb was followed by millions.
Image Credit: NBC Sports
The rest of this story isn’t so much a chronicling of Inglis’s remarkably successful climb (much has been written about the endeavor), but something that occurred along the way to the summit and its aftermath. There is a point on the mountain (generally described as being over the 26,000 foot mark) above which is considered the “Death Zone” and it is thought by all to be the most dangerous aspect where an individual climber can spend only so much time within that space and the summit, on the way both up and down. This includes spending time trying to get some windblown rest at Camp 5, perched precipitously several thousand feet below the summit. There is absolutely no margin for error including ailments such as cerebral edema which happens when the blood no longer carries enough oxygen to the brain. If it goes untreated for even a full day or two, it can lead to certain death. The primary treatment for getting someone who is suffering its ill effects is getting them down to a much lower elevation, as quickly as possible. Once at basecamp, the symptoms wii disappear on their own, that is, unless more permanent damage to the brain has already occurred.
Many climbs have ended for entire teams so that the life of one of the members can be saved in an all-for-one effort to get that team member back down the mountain. Working as fast as possible, with the death zone surrounding them, often leads to more than just the one casualty. None of the climbers have their wits about them. Some more than others, but any kind of injury is made exponentially worse simply by being that high up on the mountain. Often a climber will stop to rest for what was supposed to be just a few minutes and when they try to get up and move on, they find that they can go no further.
What many people aren’t prepared for is the area known as Green Boot Cave named after a dead Japanese climber whose green mountaineering boots are still quite visible wrapped around his feet. There are some ten or eleven other dead climbers from ill-fated expeditions in the past couple of decades whose frozen bodies decorate this part of the mountain. At that elevation, it takes decades for bodies to even begin to decay, but, since they are no longer of this world, even their own climbing buddies elect to leave them on the mountain rather than risk becoming another casualty in an attempt to haul these bodies all the way back to base camp. But in the moment that Inglis and his team were passing through this frozen battlefield, there was another body in the crack in the rock, a body which was still moving ever so slowly and trying to speak, Inglis’s team stopped for enough time to decide that there was nothing they could do for him. The stricken climber was all but gone and that was the consensus amongst the team members. Throughout the day and into the night, an estimated 30 other climbers passed the man, many without knowing he was still clinging to life. Sad to say, but even if a rescue effort had taken place now, it is highly unlikely that anything could have been done for the severely frost bitten and nearly braindead climber. From the various accounts, it is all but certain that he would have been brain dead and incapable of surviving the grueling trip down the mountain. Too much time had lapsed in a place where there is no time.
By the time the story had been picked up by the media and reached the world, the public outcry was merciless and, because Inglis’s story was already being covered heavily, the story became a story within a story and Mark Inglis and his team were being blamed for the death. Judgement wasn’t nearly has harsh within the climbing community even though the mountaineering world is traditionally unforgiving and harsh when it learns of mishaps that were largely due to poor judgment, they knew that this wasn’t one of those occurrences. This case of death high up on a Himalayan mountainside was scrutinized by a general public that knows absolutely nothing about the conditions these climbers face at such extreme altitudes. Inglis’s “trial by fire” was not conducted by an objective judge and a jury of his peers. When mountaineering accidents happen, people from both inside and outside the mountaineering community want answers and above all, they want to see real accountability. But this was extremely hurtful to Inglis who’s only real crime was being there after the crime had already been committed. Where was this climber’s team? Ostensibly, having left their comrade behind, they were off chasing the summit. Though there were several teams in that general area at the time, it is difficult to get a straight story. Again, each of these climbers wouldn’t have been functioning at their normal levels, mentally or physically. Many were simply mute or mumbling, in a hurry to keep moving toward the summit with the primary goal of summiting and getting back down below the death zone.
When looking at the full measure of accidents and catastrophic events that have occurred on Everest over the last thirty years, it is clear that there are too many climbers on the mountain at almost any given time. And, at just a few months, the climbing season is very short. I can imagine sitting in a small Tibetan cafe and “feeling” the eyes upon me from the people who have lived for centuries in the shadow of this great peak and be viewed as another clueless American who has come to desecrate their most holy of religious and cultural places. Perhaps a mother of a Sherpa who lost his life trying to make a living for his community by ferrying loads for the thousands of foreigners just passing-through each climbing season. On the other end, you’ve got a huge cloud of pressure that resides over the mountain and everyone who travels so far from home and family to pay their $50K to one of the many guiding operations with the unspoken promise of getting them up the mountain. For most, just arriving at base camp is the culmination of saving money and getting physically and mentally prepared for years. If they don’t end up among the fortunate climbers who summit and make the even more hazardous trip down to complete the climb, many are willing to literally die trying. They understand that this is the downside of what they signed-up for. With that level of commitment and focus on a dangerous goal, self imposed or otherwise, you can picture the amount of collective angst that is on Everest every single day of each climbing season. I’ll venture that it’s nothing short of being palpable. No matter how well prepared your typical Everest climber might be, there are few things in ordinary, day to day life that prepare them for that kind of pressure. As the numbers have steadily risen, there are fewer and fewer climbers that have the experience or wherewithal to even step into base camp. But at roughly $50K per climber, there is big money at stake and many people simply talk their way onto a climb.
It’s not like the route taken is difficult. It is the easiest way to get people up and down the mountain and is a predominantly well-marked and maintained path interspersed with a number of quasi-technical features to best along the way. But it is not for the faint of heart. It is the sheer number of climbers that has become the greatest challenge (and hazard). During a Camp 5 to summit,-push, there may be eight, or more, teams of six to twelve climbers vying for very limited space the entire way up and down. In most places, there is a single path to be taken with invariable “log jams” occurring in places like the “Hillary Step”, a moderately technical section of the route that spells mishap for numerous climbers each year. When looking down from this vantage point, there is a seemingly endless stream of people that have been forced as if like cattle from a herd into a confined, singlefile corridor. If you stumble or fall, you’re causing an undesirable stoppage. Now picture people of all abilities from guides and those who may already have summited four or five times to work-from- home gym rats or even a celebrity or two. This all makes for a day in the life of a climber on a push for the summit, typically a sixteen to twenty hour stint when finally getting back into Camp 5.
Additional pressure builds during instances where a storm is on its way (this happens often and accounts for many bad decisions) and climbing against the greatly reduced time allotment pushes many people beyond their ability to cope with the added physical and mental strain. Perhaps they’re feeling the effects of altitude sickness, are already running low on their oxygen appropriation for the day. Or, their guide who senses that a particular climber isn’t up to the task at hand has to make the never enjoyable but hugely important decision to send them down along with another guide to ensure their safety during the long and hazardous trek back to base camp. The team leader will now become the one and only guide. If the weather holds, only a fraction of those who began their summit push in the wee hours of the morning, in the pitch black darkness of this other-worldly mountainscape, wiill summit that day. It is one of the single most difficult 24 hour periods in all of sports.
Inglis summited and spent a bit of time at the top. By the time he reached Green Boot Cave hours later on the now dark trail, the stricken climber would be no more. By the time the world heard the story, it was apparent that Inglis had been singled out from the thirty-two other climbers who were there that tragic day on Everest. In fulfilling his double -amputee dream, his story was the best one for the media to latch onto and embellish. It took considerable time for the “Trial by Public Opinion” to calm (months ) and sift fact from fiction. Numerous climbers had been informally interviewed upon returning to basecamp and it seemed that with each telling, there was a different story. But there were ample similarities, perhaps, the most important of which was that not a single climber had assigned a speck of blame on Inglis as it related to any other climber or the whole of the ignominious failure to do “the right thing”, as the world would perceive the dilemma. To comprehend what occurred (or didn’t occur) on the mountain that day, it is of paramount importance to remind ourselves that the accident happened in Everest’s”Death Zone”, a place where no one on earth could still be 100% in control of their mental faculties. It was later found that many of the climbers who passed the body that day either thought it was dead just like the other bodies they’d come upon, or didn’t see him crouched in the crack (“cave”) right next to the long-since frozen Japanese (“Green Booted”) climber.
I don’t think many of us understand the motivation behind trying to have immediate closure to some sort of tragic mystery, particularly when it involves a dead body or a person who seemingly vanished from the face of the earth, but, as we’ve all seen on TV shows like long-aired CSI, rushing to judgement rarely turns out well, especially for those persons who initially appeared to be a primary suspect or person of interest. Their lives have almost invariably been changed for the worse even after being formally ruled-out of an investigation or exonerated. It was no different for Mark Inglis whose only crime was being a celebrated person for having the intelligence, grit, and determination we all wish for but never seems to find us. It can only come from knowing the darkest of places and having the temerity to wriggle back out and never, ever throw in the towel. To attack him personally and professionally for what happened that day was wrong and the people who never went so far as to find out what really happened before pointing the finger own him one huge apology. I hope he one day gets it, at least a modicum of it.
Tibetan Prayer Flags Against an Everest Backdrop Credit Shutterstock
Archery Elk Season, 2013 Various Pics of camp trailer, the San Juan Mountains, me and my partner, Kelpy
My background includes fifty-three years experience starting with hunting whitetails (both rifle and bow) with my father in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York, not far south of the Canadian border. The year was 1973 and I was just twelve years old. I would go on hunting with my dad throughout my teen and college years until I moved to Colorado after graduation where I continued hunting for both deer and elk. I would alternate years, hunting archery season one year and go rifle the next. But I missed numerous seasons due to conflicts with my project load at work. I remember the sacrifice and the strong yearning to be in the woods. That feeling would stick with me for months.
That first year hunting in the West was in 1984 and I was just twenty three. I already had eleven years under my belt when I began my hunting journey as an adult in the best physical condition of my young life. And I did so as a soloist with just a few exceptions. Not that I would have changed anything, but my career in engineering meant that there would be times when I couldn’t breakaway. For me, that was just part of the game if you wanted to hold on to a good job in the mountains of Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah. I hunted big, rough country alone, without the aid of horses or an ATV, and would regularly cover eighteen or twenty miles in a day. For a long time, I was a competitive mountain athlete and was constantly training for an upcoming event or for the simple pleasure of being at the top of my game. Forever waiting for hunting buddies to catch up was not my idea of “fun” and I learned quickly that I enjoyed the solitude far more than the companionship – with the exception of being with my father and later, my nephew when he came of hunting age. Other than those exceptions, I would spend the rest of my hunting days going it alone.
I have hunted in every kind of weather Colorado can serve-up. Snow storms were my favorite. As an accomplished alpine and backcountry skier, I’ve skied hundreds of miles in the backcountry of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming and was more than comfortable in deep snow and temperatures ranging from ten degrees to twenty below. Horizontal rain, sleet, hail were no fun, as was the case on warm days, but they didn’t keep me in camp. In Colorado, archery seasons are nearly a month long, taking place from late August to late September and some years, it doesn’t cool down until a couple of weeks into the season. This meant hiking around at or above treeline shouldering a twenty-five pound pack and sweating through my shirt and hunting pants and having to stop once or twice a day, strip down, and hang my clothes to dry. I’d put on another layer to thwart getting chilled while my clothes were drying. This was just part of staying safe and it’s so dry in Colorado, that the drying process would typically last no longer than twenty minutes. Time for a sandwich and I’d be on my way again. For the first ten, or so, years, I had entire areas pretty much to myself but, sometime in the early 90’s, the Colorado Division of Wildlife, in its infinite wisdom, crammed a two week long muzzleloader season into the last two weeks of archery. Muzzleloading had become a trend to be reckoned with, bringing thousands of additional hunters and their money into the state each fall. While growing in popularity, archery hunters quickly became the minority and with the muzzleloaders growing in such numbers, many of whom were from out of state, I began to feel pressed for space. In came the mega-travel trailers and ATV’s along with groups of hunters ranging from four to a dozen. Many of these guys waited and looked forward to their hunting trips all year long (I couldn’t blame them) and their presence in, what were just a few years earlier, wilderness settings made it feel more like a school playground than a wild place where large, wild creatures roamed freely. Back then, when it was archery only, there were seldom enough archery hunters in a given hunting unit to have any sort of long term impact on the animals that called these places home. Often, I could hunt for days before seeing another hunter. In retrospect, it was the end of an era. A time in my life that I’m thankful to have had. I’m now sixty-four and have no one left except for my eighty-five year old dad who remembers these times in the way I do. He agrees and has stated that, for all of the same reasons, he had it even better than I did, hunting for most of his active years well before the woods were full of people and the sounds of trucks and ATV’s everywhere, and some bonfire party just a few hundred yards from what either of would consider an ideal camp.
Hunting in Colorado and many other Western states has become a huge industry. In a few states, hunting and fishing is the primary breadwinner for the state and it is the means by which many small western towns exist. The woods have become super-saturated with the sheer magnitude of hunters such that the deer and elk have changed their movements in order to avoid the mass onslaught of people roaming the woods with guns and blaze orange every autumn. The elk can no longer be found in or near their historical places, places they called home for centuries during this time of year, which included mating season (also known as “The Rut”). One reason that I’ve always enjoyed bow-hunting over rifle hunting is simply the bow and how quiet it is. Additionally, it makes hunting much more challenging than if one were toting a rifle. With a bow, it’s not unusual to shoot and miss but not scare your intended target in the slightest as opposed to the ensuing chaos a shot from a high-powered rifle can bring. The gun shots are typically followed by the sound of ATV’s and trucks driving around on the network of Forest Service access roads in an attempt to locate the downed or injured animal. Once the shooting starts with muzzleloader season in mid-September, most of the wildlife in any given hunting area all but moves out, often seeking refuge on the private lands below and staying there for several months or, depending on the location and the inclination of the individual landowners, the animals might stay straight on through to the following spring.
Rather than descend en masse with the main herds, splinter groups comprised of fifteen to twenty, up to thirty individuals will move into heavily treed (often referred to as “dark timber”) and steeper and more rugged terrain on north facing slopes (to escape the remaining warm days) until driven downward as the early, heavy snows, and cold temperatures begin to encourage them to move down low enough to survive the winter and any remaining hunters. It is only after hunter-pressure ceases in mid-Dembember that they again move about more feely to get to better sources of food and warmer temperatures associated with dropping a couple thousand feet in elevation.
What I haven’t mentioned but is a tremendously important factor in the survival of the species is the major interruptions that occur during the critical time of breeding season which takes place (approximately) from mid-September and runs through a large portion of October. This is where things get complicated and the long-term impacts from hunting can be seen by comparing the health of the gene pool from forty or fifty years ago to that of today. Because these results vary depending on where a particular herd is being studied, the topic warrants a much more thorough analysis than I can present here but I may make an attempt in future writings. Suffice it to say that there has been an overall deleterious effect due to hunting pressures and differing herd management protocols from state to state. I believe it has gone so far as to become a very big example of animal cruelty. Imagine you and your chosen mate attempting to do just that while being shot at and chased for weeks on end, never afforded the luxury of stopping and remaining in one place for long enough to be successful in this primally driven endeavor. Now imagine what it must be like for a mature, dominant bull elk to marry with as many females as he can, all the while being challenged by other bulls on top of being shot at…for up to two months a year! By the time the rut is over, the cold snows and winds of winter take over while many of these bulls are a hundred pounds underweight and too stressed to survive yet another Rocky Mountain winter.
Unfortunately, after spending thirty years in Colorado, I had the need to relocate with my wife to Central Texas. We found a place far out in the country on a slice of land and live a good life here with our three dogs. My last hunting trip was to Southwest Colorado with my dog, Kelpy, for the whole of archery elk season in 2013. I’d not hunted there in several years and in that brief period of time, hunting as I had known it for so many years had come to an end. I’d hunted this same area in 2010 but it seems that it had been “discovered’ during the three years I’d been gone. I got in there a couple of days before the season opened to find a good, out of the way place to camp, well hidden off the Forest Service access road. I was roughly thirty-five miles in on that road, and the country it serviced was steep and uninviting. My dog and I spent a wonderfully quiet night under the stars. The next day would be a long one, hiking some 20+miles reconnoitering the area. I located some elk about ten miles in from camp and observed them for a couple of hours before heading back. By now, there were a number of other camps within a few hundred yards of ours.
All things considered, this wasn’t too bad. You couldn’t see my campsite from anywhere on the road, and I sensed that no one knew we were in there. The elk I spotted weren’t accessible by road or ATV and were far enough away that it would be unlikely that any of these guys would get that far off the trail I’d used to get within five miles and the next five were gotten only by hiking off-trail. I was well prepared and knew the area well. I spent the next three weeks hiking out in the early morning after I had taken Kelpy on our run, and back an hour or two after dark. As I had expected, the first week was almost too warm to hunt as the animals wouldn’t be moving around much and mostly remaining bedded down. The next week brought torrential rains and I hunted mornings but spent afternoons with Kelpy in my military tailer reading and catching up on rest. I wanted to be ready when the weather broke, which it did for a couple of days when I was able to call-in a couple of smaller bulls. From the tracks leading in and out of the area, I knew there was one big bull in there, amongst a four and a five point and around a dozen cows, spikehorns, and yearlings.
I would get just three days and three opportunities at the medium-sized bulls, and then two days of snow followed. The temperature dropped a good twenty degrees and I hunted through the storm being careful to stay on a perimeter of a couple hundred yards. What I was waiting for was another break in the weather, which came along with eight inches of cold, dry snow on top of mud from the rains, which had saturated the ground. I had just two days left and now that I had my weather and the clock was ticking fast, it was time to employ some more aggressive tactics. I would slip in closer letting out a good close-range bugle and a lost cow chirp. I got some cow chirps in return and could hear what I knew was the big bull approach toward my position, which I changed before he got too close. I had a clean shot at sixty yards but thought I could bring him in closer. I let out some grunts and that lost cow chirp, and that did the job. It was getting dark quickly as he circled a bit while at about fifty yards but much of his body was now obscured by a bunch of deadfall…maybe six or seven downed fir trees. I stayed put, waited for as long as I could before darkness descended. Forty yards but no clear shot. Right about then (this is a situation to always be aware of) I was “made” by a couple of curious cows checking on the lost cow call. I would have heard them were it not for the freshly fallen snow. I don’t believe they even saw me at first but the evening breeze had gone from being in my favor, to swirling just the littlest bit. I’m pretty sure they’d winded me until they saw me draw back in the direction of the bull in case he somehow presented me with a shot. He’d picked his way through the deadfall up to about thirty five yards, turned and ran in the opposite direction, as did the cows. I was crestfallen, with nothing to do but go over it in my mind while making my way uphill and back towards camp. Going for a big bull during archery season is more miss than hit, so the turn of events hadn’t surprised me. While I didn’t beat myself up over it, I was bothered by it enough that instead of using my one remaining day, I decided that I was done for the year. I was exhausted and may well have run into trouble getting an animal out on the off-chance that I did shoot something. It wouldn’t have been a smart thing to do.
A huge saving grace, my forever best friend, Kelpy, was happy to see me stagger back into camp. We embraced for a moment before getting ourselves fed and going on our nightly walk. I’d played it through in my mind on the long and dark hike back to camp. Relative to the circumstances, I had made no mistakes. Don’t get me wrong, I have made a number of mistakes when in-close with large bulls during past archery seasons but had learned something during each of those encounters. Downing a large bull like that one was is no mean feat. So many obstacles to overcome just to have a chance at one. He was a big-bodied six by seven of probably seven or eight years. That’s a long life for a any bull found on public lands during hunting season.
Depending on where you are in the Western US, several things have impacted the relative livelihoods of various wildlife over the many years of hunting and game management practices. Different states manage game animals in different ways and certain states are fairing better than others. While Colorado has the overall largest number of elk that call it home, the herd as a whole is not as healthy as places like Idaho and Arizona, but I’m not an expert on land use. Administering conservation practices against huge revenue generating fish and game activities on millions of acres of land with overlapping jurisdictions between the state wildlife agencies, the USDA Forest Service and the Federal Bureau of Land management) is a huge and highly complicated job. But the statistics taken over many years strongly indicate that some wildlife management practices work far better than others. Otherwise, the health of our country’s deer and elk populations wouldn’t be so different when comparing big game states against each other. The only thing that stands in the way of each state adopting the best overall strategies to maintain healthy individual animals and appropriately sized herds is money. As with most things, there is a strong countering relationship between managing for quality and managing for quantity. In my opinion, Colorado sells far too many elk tags to have a sustainable, healthy herd, and the overall health of Colorado’s elk has been in decline for decades. States that place more emphasis on herd quality don’t sell more tags than their herds can sustain over a long period of time.
Another significant change that I’ve witnessed over the years with elk is the amount these animals are verbally active. Hunters use various calls to get the elk communicating with them in an attempt to call their quarry into shooting range. The most exciting part of calling is in learning how to call a big, mature bull from where he is, perhaps, three or four hundred yards distant and, while continuing to call, use that little bit of time to get yourself situated and prepared to shoot should the opportunity arise. The idea is in getting your bull so focused on fending off this particular challenging bull (you) that he momentarily drops his guard and approaches straight towards you, as you draw your bow and launch a well placed shot. This is probably one of the single most captivating moments in all of outdoor sports, the feeling that you’d just accomplished what you set out to do at the beginning of the season.
During my last few hunting seasons, I began to hear an unusual trend and, by the time this season rolled by, I noticed that the elk were barely “talking”, that there was much less vocalizing than in any of my prior hunting seasons. With so many people calling or attempting to learn, the elk have become much more selective in what they discern as genuine, or false. It should be obvious that the time to learn is well before the season begins. All it takes is one bad call and the elk you’re after may choose to vacate the area, leaving you and your fellow hunters high and dry. There are many types of calls on the market but, in my opinion, reed calls can be the best. You just slide the little disk into your mouth and learn to use it such that you seldom let out a suspicious call. It can take years of practice not only in terms of the technical aspect , but in learning enough about why, when, and how elk communicate to know the when’s and why’s as to your own calling. As gratifying as “talking with the elk” can be, the fact that they’ve all but ceased must have farther reaching implications that don’t bode well for these animals. Imagine the disruption to humankind if we could no longer communicate using verbal language, even if it were limited to a couple of months a year. And that’s assuming they revert back to normal behavior once the combined hunting seasons come to an end. I would guess that that’s not nearly the case.
These things have conspired to make elk hunting much less enjoyable (at least for me) than it was fifteen years ago. It has bothered me enough to call an end to my years as a hunter. For years, affluent hunters have been paying large fees, including the cost of highering a guide and paying for a private lands hunt that they find to be the most desirable. Game processing is typically included. The pay-hunts like these don’t interest me and even if they did, I don’t have the kind on money to afford the associated $5K to $15K, or more, for a tag that would only be good at the game ranch I had chosen. While archery hunts of this nature have their place and have success rates of seventy-five percent, a public lands archery hunt averages around twenty percent. But, for me, I put more emphasis on the quality of the total experience and refuse to pay someone else to take me to the elk and do so enough times that I finally get my bull. I wouldn’t do it if you paid my way.
To have an opportunity like I had just a day before season’s end was a thrill I would not trade for a large bull on an expensive paid hunt. As a wonderful bonus, I had brought along my best friend, my dog, Kelpy, with whom to share the experience. That put my trip over the top! After driving down into Cortez, getting a hotel, cleaning up, and getting a good night’s rest, we were on our way home with just 1,670 miles to go! I am forever grateful for my years of roaming Colorado before it evolved into one big “sacrificial park” (where everyone goes so that other places may remain pristine).
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