Lessons from a Stone

I grew up in the outdoors skiing, hiking, hunting, and fishing and logged mile after mile literally following the size 13 footsteps of my father. I learned my way around a rifle and was taught how to shoot by the time I was seven. At twelve, I got my first gun, a still in the box Winchester 94-22 given to me as a Christmas present by my grandfather. My first deer hunting experience came at fourteen and I hunted archery season that same year. Even back then, I had a preference for archery and my dad and I would practice all spring and summer preparing ourselves for the late September/October whitetail deer season.

Other than some wonderful time spent with my dad, the things I enjoyed most about bow-hunting were that it was an entire month long, you could dress normally (camo would come a few years later) and weren’t required to wear blaze orange because, particularly in 1976, there were so few other hunters in the woods during archery season. In fact, it wasn’t unusual for my dad and I to go an entire season without bumping into another hunter. Our hunting grounds were located in central New York and north into the Adirondack mountains not far from my boyhood home near Saratoga. Both of my parents were from tiny towns in the Adirondack High Peaks region, a place we used to call “God’s country”. I spent every opportunity in my youth running around in the Adirondacks and communing with my grandparents and extended family. I learned much of what I know about life and the type of lifestyle I wished to pursue well before my eighteenth birthday.

I’d travelled through the deep Rocky Mountains on a fishing trip with my father and brother when I was twelve. If I remember, we spent two weeks fishing the great trout streams of the West including the Madison River near Ennis, Montana, and the Wind River along the Wind River range near Lander, Wyoming. Being the outdoorsman my dad was, these weren’t little stops we’d make along a main road that snaked its way along portions of these famed trout fisheries. That just wouldn’t have been the experience my dad wished to engrain in us. Instead, we’d backpack into a remote place along these rivers and fish for food. On occasion, we’d come into a town to rest up and get a much needed shower. Once or twice, my dad talked a diner waitress into throwing that day’s catch on the grill. That was the cherry on the top of another perfect day.

Sometime during that trip, I decided that after I’d graduated whatever college was in my future, I would head West in the way the idea of “Manifest Destiny” drove our  forebears to carve out a life for themselves in the quickly developing West , or pushed on to California and Oregon.. I worked the first twenty years in the Denver area and living in the foothills of Colorado’s famed Front Range Then came the move of my lifetime to Durango to run a forestry business and eventually start my own with some novel ideas on restoration thinning. Our work would place me in some of the best mule deer and elk country known to hunters everywhere, though instead of buying some out of state tag for $450, I was a resident hunter paying just $45.

In total, I spent nearly thirty years in Colorado, working across three industries: Mining and Metals, Forestry, and Oil and gas. The first and last ten years involved working on a career in process development and refinement as a project manager, and for almost ten years in-between, I owned and operated a forest restoration company which took logging to a much more refined level where we were far more ecologically advanced and our highly selective thinning work was designed to take ponderosa pine forests and restore them, mechanically, to pre-settlement times. This required tremendous physical work and I all but destroyed my lumbar spine in just that one decade. Sports like mountain bike racing and motocross were also taking their toll.

One final move for a job took me to Pennsylvania for my first back surgery and subsequent retirement. My ten years younger wife wasn’t yet close to retiring and landed an engineering job in Houston followed by another in San Antonio, not far from where we live today in rural  central Texas where we have a wonderful but demanding country home on some property.

My last hunting trip to Southwest Colorado and my old hunting grounds came just seven months after a major spinal fusion surgery in late 2012. I recovered from the surgery and trained my butt off before the trip, wherein I decided to bring my Australian Kelpie (my then six year old daughter named her Kelpy which I thought was clever, so it stuck). Aussie kelpies are well known in Australia for their sheep and cattle herding capabilities which include toughness, endurance, and intelligence. When I was with Kelpy, I never felt alone. As a trip companion, there’s no one I’d rather have as my copilot. She was (RIP, 2020) a marvel to watch, her movements, quick but smooth as if planned. On my property in Southwest Colorado, she kept the prairie dog and jackrabbit populations in check. As we were waving goodbye to my lovely wife and other beloved dog, Sage, I knew we were in for the trip of a lifetime. For good measure, I’d racked my mountain bike and packed my flyfishing and running gear. I would need to run Kelpy for six or seven miles every morning before I could hunt for the day, traveling miles and often not getting back to camp until well after dark, between nine and ten. Including our runs, I would cover up to twenty miles in a day and probably averaged sixteen with a 30 pound pack strapped over my shoulders. Kelpy would dutifully lord over the truck and camp, often waiting ten or more hours for me to get back.

It was archery elk season and we were camped at 9,800 feet for the bulk of September. Years ago, I found that a surplus military M-105A trailer suited my lifestyle and was the ideal setup to haul my MX bikes around from track to track, and to camp out of on prolonged mountain biking and hunting trips. This one was my second and was brand new off the Air Force Base in Ogden, Utah. It was painted alpine forest green, brown, and black camo and had a matching heavy duty tarpaulin cover making it all but water and snow proof in the heaviest of weather. I’d done some work on it to ride level behind my truck and I installed a variety of hitch that lent itself well to off-roading. This meant that I could select places to camp well off the Forest Service roads and back it into the dark timber where no one could find it without proper instructions.

By now, you might have guessed that when it comes to hunting, I think of myself as a purist. No RV camps with ATV’s strewn about. I hunt alone not only for the solitary experience, but to help prevent something foolish from happening. I’d hunted just enough with other people that I just plain don’t like it. The mountains aren’t some sort of human playground, particularly during hunting season. Parties, bonfires, alcohol…NO THANK YOU! I tend to look at it through the eyes of the creatures we’re there to hunt. Sheer terror running from encounter to encounter with no safe place to run to that doesn’t involve some level of luck in finding. I was there for the express purpose of calling- in and putting an arrow throu-h a trophy -size bull and having other hunters around me wasn’t going to help. Thankfully, this was archery season and, though its increase in popularity over the years was significant, you could still get in before the season to scope-out an area of interest regarding elk movement that year and find a camp location that was well off the beaten path. This is important for a number of reasons including theft. It’s rare, but on occasion some ne’er-do-wells take advantage of hunting season to pillage camps while the hunters are off hunting for the day. But first they need to stumble upon your camp, which is why I go to some trouble when choosing a viable site. I have the added benefit of having a protective dog to watch over things while I’m away. I had told my wife and my good friend John where I was going to be in case of an emergency. Being diligent and maintaining a neat camp can go a long way towards personal safety. So does paying attention to what you’re doing. I have found other hunters (a “hunting party”) to be nothing but a dangerous distraction. I have, myself, done things I’m not proud of  when in the midst of a group and have found that the only person you can control is yourself. My camps are so well hidden in the woods that someone would have to be roaming about and literally bump into it before locating it by sight. Having a protective dog to mind the camp while you may be many miles away lends a fair amount of peace of mind to the situation. I don’t worry about Kelpy because she’s smarter and more sensible than most people I’ve met and can take care of herself.

It was 1984 when I first went archery elk hunting. It was a wondrous experience with miles of terrain between hunters. Archery hunters tend to be a different breed from their rifle toting counterparts. Among other things, you have to find ways to get closer to your prey. Elk are highly social and intelligent animals who are in constant communication, particularly during the rut when they are distracted by the primal need to pass on their genes and their hormones are raging, particularly for the bulls who, during the rut, act more like teenagers than giant, mature adults who have all of their senses employed in the name of the survival of the species. Outside of the rut, these animals aren’t easy to find. A good hunter learns how to exploit this annual behavior by masking their scent and learning how to mimic a variety of calls. It takes years of practice for a hunter to be able to “communicate” with their prey.  My favored offense is to locate a small herd with a herd bull and a dozen, or so, cows and play that bull against a number of small bachelor groups in the area. This entire group of animals represents a splinter group which has broken from the main herd (which can number in the hundreds) due to hunter pressure during archery and then rifle season. Once you’ve located a splinter herd, you can set yourself up to hunt that one group for the coming days or weeks before the season ends. How much time is remaining determines your strategy. Naturally, once you’ve chosen a splinter group to hunt, you need to keep your own wits about you. Otherwise, you could spend days or even a week waiting for that one golden moment, only to “blow your cover” and scatter the herd to the four winds, at which point, there may or may not be enough time remaining on the clock to start the process over. My experience has shown me that you get one shot at all of this in a season. Blow it, and go home empty handed to think about whatever it was that you had or hadn’t done to blow the entire season.

Life has its way of getting in the way, and it had been four years since I’d last hunted. To make it even more challenging, I’d had a tri-level spinal fusion surgery seven months before leaving for Colorado, in late August of 2013. The destination, near Cortez and my old home in Colorado, took seventeen hours of drive time. I was hauling my military trailer, so I stuck to the posted speed limits. The area we were hunting was about thirty miles on a Forest Service road, off the  highway between Cortez and Telluride, a location I knew well from hunting there more than a few times and dirt biking and snowmobiling all over the area. Over my many years in remote, backcountry settings, I had acquired some very good navigational skills and was quite comfortable as long as I had a good map of the area, a well made compass and altimeter, even operating at night. I believe in having a keen understanding of how to navigate using traditional means, but I carry and know how to use a high quality GPS as backup. It had been unseasonably warm in the last week leading up to the September season and then the entire first week was in the mid-80’s. In all likelihood, this meant that the elk would be remaining higher in elevation to avoid the heat and probably wouldn’t be coming down lower until the first snows moved them a couple thousand vertical feet to where they’d overwinter in some place more to their liking. Contrary to what you might think, it is the herd’s matriarch cow, and not the herd bull, who makes this type of decision. The remaining herd follows wherever the matriarch takes them. This is something every hunter should know, though it’s not always possible, never to shoot a matriarch cow for she holds the secrets of a thousand matriarchs that came before. If your wish is to see that an entire herd vanishes in the pending winter, shooting the matriarch would be the way to do it.

With any luck, cooler weather was right around the corner and would trigger the rut (the time of year the elk breed and bulls exhaust themselves fighting for the right to keep a harem of cows to themselves) and mating season would be on. There’s a lot at stake for a herd bull who’s been at the top of his game for several years while once younger bulls have grown much larger and want to give it a go. These fights can go from a brief sparring session with the older, more experienced bull winning easily, to grave, extended battles, sometimes to the death. These big, nature bulls who have “ruled the roost” for a number of years eventually find themselves old and worn out, ripe for a de-throning or worse, injured or dead. If injured, autumn in the Rocky Mountains isn’t a good time for convalescing. And the the herd bulls aren’t the only bulls that are so thoroughly impacted. Younger, less experienced bulls can completely exhaust themselves, losing so much body mass that they die from exposure and starvation. But some bulls do everything just right to make it through the winter and go on to fatten-up and put on muscle mass through summer, they are the ones to become the next generation of herd bulls. The resilience of youth sees them to the coming warmth and bounty of spring. Pregnant cows that made it through winter begin dropping their calves in March. It’ll take three years for this year’s crop of baby elk into mature versions of their mothers.

Kelpy and I drove up to the campsite we’d located a couple of days before opening day. This year, with such a long drive from Texas, I’d left us no time to locate some elk, only to find an awesome site to stuff the truck and trailer. After getting the trailer leveled, we unpacked only the essentials for building fires, laying out ten gallons of water, and broken out the camp stove, lantern, and what I would be preparing for dinner. If you’ve packed well, in anticipation of what you’d need day to day, you can minimize potential theft and unwanted visits from bears. Keep a neat and clean camp as if you were in your own home, and you’ll save time and frustration when on the road. We’d planned for three straight weeks being camped up high, and five days for the drive to and from Colorado. Unless I got a nice bull early on, this would have us breaking camp and pulling out by the end of closing day, September 27th that year. For those of you who know Colorado mountain weather, particularly in Southwest Colorado which is infamous for its inordinately deep and heavy snows, you know that it can go from good to bad before you’re even aware of it. It is generally still relatively warm for the first week in September, considerably cooler by the end of the month, with potential for significant early snows. Though rain is generally out of place that time of year, particularly at elevation, we had every kind of weather imaginable. Hot, 85 degree days to start, followed by several days of heavy rains, followed by eight inches of fresh fluff. We spent two straight days in a hurricane type storm in the trailer, unable to do anything but sleep or get blown around and soaked, a good way to get sick or injured. It would have been better had I ever taught Kelpy how to play poker!

After the weather broke, I’d already lost six days to conditions. I hunted during the warm days, but in warm weather, the elk generally sit pretty tight on some steep, north facing slope in the thick timber. Stalking them when it’s that “crackly” underfoot is virtually impossible and you run the risk of scaring the elk out of the area. But, during letups in the wind, I hunted in the rain and located a small herd of elk. They weren’t “talking” yet, something that increased with the flurry of the rut. Any calling I might do would probably alarm them more than than draw them in. I stealthily reconnoitered the area where I’d found them, making sure to not be smelled, heard, or seen. I formulated a plan for the coming days and it was after 10 PM before I’d hiked the eleven miles back to camp. I was cold, wet, and hungry and made a late dinner to be enjoyed around the fire. I fed Kelpy first thing upon getting back that night. As much as I wanted to offer it to her, she ate her Kibble and was satisfied. She was an incredible, once in a lifetime dog.

We were two weeks into it and had developed our routine. I’d feed Kelpy around first light and take her of a run on the Forest Service road, well away from where I’d been hunting. After doing five or six miles we’d return to camp and I shoot some practice arrows and be on my way for the day an hour later. I was now hunting a good distance from camp but didn’t want to potentially disturb the elk I’d found by relocating closer. Plus, there were places within a mile of camp where the elk could end up after getting pushed down by the ensuing cold. The snow came during our third and final week, on the heels of some heavy rains, just horrible weather…wet and cold. My hunch about where they’d be dropping down when the cold weather finally came was off, but not by a lot. The elk had drifted down the next drainage to the north, putting them about halfway back to where I’d planned.

There’s a lot of strategy in hunting, particularly if you’re hunting solo. Most of it is based on years of experience and gaining a pretty thorough understanding of the big game you’re after. Deer and elk operate quite differently, and mule deer differently from whitetail. All I put-in for is a bull elk tag as that is where my interests lie. Mature bulls are extremely difficult to hunt, particularly with a bow where you need to be much closer to get within range. Most responsible bow- hunters don’t shoot at anything much past forty yards. I’ve taken elk with a rifle from as far away as 400 yards. When the timing of the rut coincides with the kind of weather we’d had over the past week, before it cleared but stayed cold, I was in a great situation. The cold keeps your scent from travelling as far and the eight inches of snow we’d encountered made for good tracking opportunities and quiet stalking conditions. Though it can be uncomfortably cold and wet, it’s about as good as it gets for an archery hunter.

On the next to last day of the season, the elk had begun to vocalize a lot with the coming of the rut. The small herd that I was working contained a large bull, a lieutenant, and a dozen, or so, cows.  My plan for the day involved a six or seven mile hike which I did that morning, before stationing myself well out of sight and about a half-mile’s distance from the area were now in. I found good cover, took-off my pack, peeled-off a damp layer and put on a dry one, while settling -in until dark. I spent the first thirty minutes listening and heard a few cow calls… just checking in with one another. It had gotten thick with fog. Perfect. I let out a few cow “chirps” and gotten a response before I let out a few more. It was getting late and I decided to be aggressive in my tactics. I donned my gear and began to wind around so I could approach them from uphill. I let out a full-on bull call, a challenge to the two bulls. I got a response and slowly began to approach while letting out another challenge bugle. Sure enough, I heard the muffled crackle of dry leaves under the snow when about sixty yards distant. It was an hour before dark as I slipped over to a think stand of young fir trees and a few larger aspen. There was this perfect little hollow and I managed to crawl over to it and prepare myself before letting out another challenge. These were the culminating moments of three weeks of hard work and suffering through some pretty severe weather. The day before, all of the other hunters in the area had packed it in and broken camp, headed for a warm bed wherever it was that they came from.

I let out a lost cow call and a full-on bugle. It didn’t need to make sense.  Just something to really get them “jacked up”. They kept coming but did not vocalize. “Oops” I thought. Damn! I stayed quiet. By now there were at least two cows that had crossed over to investigate. This would raise the bar as there were now many more eyes and ears to avoid. To my advantage, this particular spot was thickly timbered with lots of deadfall. What I needed to worry about was having some cow that I hadn’t seen smell or spot me. I hunkered down as they continued to approach. The choice bull was massive and the lieutenant bull was well worth bragging rights.  I made a giant gamble and passed on a broadside shot at the younger bull. The herd bull had just two more steps to make and I’d be able to draw as his head passed by a tree that obscured my location. I would have just a second. He hit his mark and I drew back, unaware of the cow that had come in behind me. She had me, dead to rights and let out an alarm as she turned and bolted. That was all it took. My bull hadn’t quite stepped into the opening at just twenty yards. All hell broke loose and they quickly disappeared like ghosts in the fog.

What a rush! I sat for ten minutes or so. It was now too dark to shoot and I had nothing left to do but hike the six or seven miles back to camp.  By the time I got back to my trusted dog for a warm greeting, I’d gone over the scene in my mind, prying to see if I could find where I went wrong. Getting that close to a bull of that size was a once in a lifetime opportunity, particularly now that I was living in Texas and no longer hunting every year. The fact is that, relative to the circumstances, I’d made no mistakes. I felt good about the experience and had a memory that I’d be able to recall for decades to come. Tomorrow would be closing day but I knew that I’d had my one chance and was too exhausted to hunt another day. Better not push it.

I got the fire going and made a dinner of one full box of Kraft macaroni and cheese, had a couple of margaritas, and put us to bed. We had a big day that lay ahead, pulling up stakes and getting on the road for the sixteen hour trip home.

That would be Kelpy’s last trip to Colorado, where she was born and spent the first seven years of her life. I am left with a memory that is hauntingly beautiful and will never let me forget her. I’ve had many dogs, but she has been, and will always remain the dog of my lifetime.