The BowHunter's Code

Though shalt pursue wounded quarry until thy skeleton rots in the high desert.  This is the code of the bowhunter that I cursed and pleaded with for the last few hours.  I had blood and tracks but still no body and the sun was slowly cooking my brains.
My son Tanner and I miraculously drew tags this year for a premium X zone Archery Hunt in Modoc county.  Usually I hunt my friend Roy's private property where bucks cross from Alfalfa to rocky cliff faces to bed.  This year however, he was building a large barn/garage and construction was loud and heavy.  On the opening weekend, we saw only does and a perfect bedding imprint of a large buck in deep dust.  Like a snow angel made by a kid, the bucks toes, antlers and large mass were all perfectly etched in the ground urging me to continue hunting this locale.  Unfortunately, when we returned I found a skeleton from what I assume to be a Mountain Lion kill turned coyote feeding frenzy.  Even the antlers were chewed off.
So we found ourselves on Sunday morning driving up a draw to high ground to watch the alfalfa at first light.  Tanner and I hiked up to a point that overlooked several promising fields to the east and a perfect mesa to the north.  Any bucks exiting the field just before first light would be in the crosshairs of our optics and provide an opportunity to spot and stalk them.  Nothing.  I decided to glass every last Sage bush one last time and set up my spotting scope on a line that separated standing timber from the mesa side which had been eradicated of Junipers.   No sooner did I look through the scope than I spotted a spike buck, staring back into the timber.  I watched him for five minutes or so, urging him to grow another point so my son would have a chance but no joy.
"Let me see Dad"
"OK but don't bump the scope, It's set up perfectly"
Of course he kicked the tripod as we switched seats.  "You're going to have to find him on your own now" exclaimed grumpy know it all dad.
"I found him!  He's a fork!"
"Tanner I've been watching him for the last five minutes, he's just a spike"
"He's a fork I swear" Tanner insists again as it sinks in that he might be right.  Sure enough another legal buck was now out in the open and feeding slowly up the open face to what I presumed to be their bedding spot at the foot of a rocky outcrop near the top of the table.
Tanner wanted to go and go right now but I insisted we wait and watch. 
"Once they bed down, they will stay down for awhile and we can plan a good stalk.  We've got all day so let's do it right."
An hour later and 1500 vertical feet find us on top of the mesa with the wind somehow at our backs.  I don't understand this as the sun is now up and the thermals should be rising so we proceed slowly and try to keep the bedded deer at an angle that won't bring our scent to them.  We creep down the face and get to within 35 yards of the dead timber they put to their backs.  I'm just about to have Tanner take the lead when I hear them bust.  They're not fill tilt boogy though and I try to range them through the snags of Juniper.  47 yards but he's the spike.  Now I have the fork but he trots off behind more slash piles so we followed them up and around the mesa only to find...another hunter?  He's dressed in the latest camo and tells us he just saw them at 80 yards, running across the table top.
"I couldn't take the shot, they headed up that way" and sure enough I catch movement farther up the hill.  The white rump disappears slowly behind a brush pile.  The Lone Archer who appeared out of nowhere graciously suggests that we go after them and so we're gone. 
We pick up tracks at the last sighting and decide they went over the face near where we came up and peek over the side.  The spike is staring at us from the side of the hill about 100 yards away and we hatch a plan.  I will drop down after 50 yards and Tanner will stay on top of the table in the hopes that I will bump them up and over.  "Stay on the edge of the rim and keep eye contact" I remember telling Tanner before I slide down the slope and start to side hill.  I'm not being too sneaky as I want to bump them to Tanner.  I look up and Tanner is nowhere to be seen.  Just then I realize there's a buck staring at me behind a fallen tree, frozen like he doesn't think I see him.  I raise my binoculars to confirm that he's the legal forked horn.  I can see his tall tines through the dead branches, so I act like I don't and range the tree to his left:  50 yards.  I face up the hill, count my pins so I know for sure I'm using the red 50, take a step backwards, and come to full draw, all the while staring up the hill so as not to put him on guard.  He stares back nervously and I settle on his chest.  It feels like he's right there and I let it fly.  An eternity seems to pass as the arrow arcs and spins.  It takes so long I get that sinking feeling I've missed.  I remember holding my follow through, willing the arrow to connect and then it does.  The reassuring "WHACK" brings me back to reality.  The buck humps up, breaking the dead branches of a tree and rockets downhill with a noticeable limp from his back leg.  I think I see blood but can't be sure.   I drop my pack where I released the arrow and went to inspect the point of impact.  There's a few drops and splatters of blood and no arrow so I think it's a fatal shot.
I head up the hill to find Tanner and let him know what just happened.  He is happy for me but disappointed that he didn't get a shot.  I'm not counting but we've probably had at least a dozen hunts and he still hasn't gotten an opportunity to shoot.   It's bittersweet for me but I'm excited to share this part of the hunt with Tanner:  The blood trail.  Little do I know what the rest of the day has in store for us.
We follow the blood and tracks down the hill.  I let Tanner take the lead up to where I last saw him.  Every time he finds a track I swell with pride that he's gaining the tools to one day bowhunt on his own.  We find a shady spot and relax for awhile, hydrating and organizing our packs.  I grab a roll of TP to mark the last blood locations and then we take off after the trail.  If I learned anything on this ordeal it's to apply the same basic principle of bowhunting to blood trailing:  be patient!  Several times I get excited and race ahead of the track, over confident it turns out, that the buck will be just ahead as they have been for me so many times before.  This time is different however, this buck sidehills all the way to the valley floor and then disappears into the sea of chin high sage brush.  Plenty of cover for a buck to lay down and hide.  Plenty of cover for a buck to lay down and die, slowly cooking under the rising sun.  This last thought maybe is part of why I'm so impatient.  I want to get him gutted and cooling ASAP but the tracks don't lie and so I go back to the drawing board again and again.  I start to see a pattern.  One track prints perfectly.  He must be favoring it.  One barely registers, like a tiptoe.  One isn't a hoof at all but he's walking on his wrist. And the last has blood in it nearly every step.

The Board Shorts Buck

I forgot the Ravens were watching me until the arrow hit home. Their death cries marked the celebration of my first archery black tail:  a giant, velvet-antlered monarch I could only have dreamed of taking when I first set out on this mission over a decade ago.  Why they never betrayed my presence I will never know.  Were they anticipating a fresh feast of steaming gut pile?  Or simply intrigued by the entire episode unfolding beneath them in the forest canopy?  They had squawked and cawed to herald my arrival but their presence was forgotten once the stalk got underway.  Did I somehow win their approval with my patience?  Or did they too, forget about me as I waited for the breeze to cover my movements, sweeping the oak litter aside with my foot to mimic the squirrel and clear a silent footfall.  You read that right-I too forgot about me-at least for much of the stalk anyways.  Bowhunting can do that to you;  create an outer body experience in which one has silent conversations with overgrown crows.  I had become a tree.  And then a squirrel rustling up an acorn in the brittle oak detritus.  A pine bough teetering in the breeze.  To a flock of turkeys who passed by at a respectful five yards, I was a ridiculous scarecrow of a hunter: some joke-of-nature mannequin dressed in a Camo Gilligan hat, stuffed with leaves, barefoot in board shorts.   Yet there I was, poised to make the biggest archery shot of my life.
This was day #10 in my quest to take a blacktail on public land with archery equipment.  I only knew that because my wife likes to remind me of the sacrifices she makes for my crazy ambitions.
Packing up my camp that morning, my disappointment at going home empty-handed again was tempered with the reassurance that I still had one more trick up my sleeve; one more buck I hadn't yet busted.  I know it sounds crazy but I had a confident feeling that morning that my string of heartache was about to run out.
A week ago I had spent five days in the same area with one of my former students:  "Merica".  A popular cowboy of a kid, he won his seat on the student council unopposed, but earned his nickname with his speech.  That is to say his nickname was his speech:  "Merica".  He volunteered to start our Hunting and Fishing Club at the high school when he was a freshmen and I wanted to pay him back for all of his hard work and dedication to the club, while at the same time, easing my wife's worries of going it alone.  He made a great hunting partner and we got more action that trip than either one of us would have admitted to hoping for.  We both missed "gimme shots" on the same "spork" from the same tree stand, and the last day "Merica" got a good look at Mr. Mountain Lion in hot pursuit of "Lucky Sporky".  An experience I'm envious of and one he won't soon forget.  On the second afternoon of our hunt, we crept up a valley and bumped a nice buck.  He got a better look at it than I did and proclaimed it to be "nice and tall".  I made a mental note to return again.  Once I had my truck packed up, I already knew where I would head for my "Hail Mary".
The valley lies at the head of a meadow-the parking spot a campsite for purveyors of target trash.  A lone bowling pin, long since whacked in a barrage of bullets, marks the trailhead.  I gently pressed the doors shut, grabbed my pack and bow and, sockless in running shoes, proceeded up the trail, determined to lose a race with a snail.
Even the soft soles of my Nikes snapped the pine needles and crunched the earth and so, in one of my characteristic fits of homage to Ishi and his brethren;  I removed my shoes.

Every three cautious steps brought a pause.  Waiting for arms to levitate I would scan the surrounding woodland with naked eyes and then again with the Nocs, breaking the vista into corridors in which I would dial into focus, near to far.  After maybe fifteen minutes in and approximately 30 cautious steps, I noticed something funny.  Tree branches moving during a windless episode.  Brown tree branches in the shape of antlers sucked my breathe away.  Before I could bring the glass to my eyes, my knees began to shake uncontrollably.  A good look at the massive rack swinging back and forth as he stripped the brush only made it worse.  I sat down to regain my composure and try to figure out what the hell I was gonna do!  Just up the hill, totally oblivious to my presence, up on his feet feeding, was the grandest velvet-racked blacktail I'd ever laid eyes on!  The internal dialogue began to return from orbit:
"OK, forget about the rack, forget about the rack!"
"How the hell am I gonna get up there?"
"Rangefinder, rangefinder.  How far is he?  Ok.  75 yards or so.  No way I wanna take that shot"
"You're ridiculous"
"OK, what do I do?  What's the wind doing?  Left to right in the direction he's feeding he'll be in the slight clearing straight ahead.  Gotta scale an open face with loose, sun-scorched rock and maybe, just maybe he won't see you."
"Shut up and go!"
"Slow the ****down or he'll hear you, idiot!"
And thus the internal dialogue waged a war that melted as I came into tune with my surroundings.  My bare feet proved a worthy weapon so long as I resisted the urge to vocalize my discomfort.  My toes helped me cling to lose rock and sensed the brittle snap and, thus sensing, could sweep the whistleblower aside.  Just a squirrel having a snack.
I had to lose vision of the buck to scale the rise and hoped to come up behind an obstacle that would obstruct his vision.  I crested the hill with glass to eye, knowing the only way to beat him was to see him first.  Just when I began to believe what my mind had been telling me for the last half-hour, the same thing everyone will tell you about stalking blacktails in the heat of summer:  that you can't fool the Blacktail Ninja-I spotted him again.  He had moved almost 100 yards, retreating behind the rise, finding shade and cover in the corner of the grove.  With a sure sense of direction now, I covered ground more quickly, ducking below his horizon.  Finally I was within 50 yards of the buck, now bedded and facing away.  A flock of turkeys darted behind him and soon began to work their way between us.  An ancient dance of bobbing heads made their way past.  I, a wayward mannequin, and the turkeys in their noble, if not slightly suspicious, procession, gawking as only a turkey can.
I watched them fade away into the forest and then turned my attention back to the quarry.  He was up!  I ranged him at 35 yards before he made a beeline down the depression.  I thought, "Oh great, here is where he just keeps on trotting off".  But he veered back up the hill, bent on a path that would put him right in front of me!  I came to full draw unconsciously as he passed behind an old grey stump.  I heard the footsteps but he never appeared and I seriously started to believe he had disappeared!  I took a few cautious steps and he was NO WHERE TO BE SEEN!!??  This was one of those silent scream moments.
Great.  He heard me, saw me or smelt me.  Just great.
For the thousandth time I fought off the urge to believe what my brain was telling me:  "Oh well.  It was never meant to be.  Good game, etc."

I took two more steps to see around the whole tree and farther below me I saw a brown rump.   A calm took over that I'm still ruminating on.  I tiptoed around a christmas tree and squatted to clear the branch.  At 25 yards I put a pin on his back and one below the waist.  I heard a pumpkin stabbing hit and then a sickening crunch as the arrow beat bone.  He fired off at a gallop and I heard him crash in the brush below.  That's when I heard the Ravens and remembered they had been there with me, all along.
Not that they could help me drag the buck back to the truck, but it's always nice to have someone to celebrate with you when you score on a nice one.  Then, when I sat down to give thanks after the hit, I began to think that the Ravens all represent some one who had gone before me.
Hey there Ed. Grandpa, Grandma, Larry, did you guys see that?  Glad you could be here with me.

Archery Is My Tattoo

All I have is the title.  Four lousy words that mean everything to me.  The story keeps playing itself out in my head.  It starts like this:  My wife wanted a Tattoo and I didn't, and like most men probably, I seized the chance to capitalize on a moment of weakness.  I'd been shopping for compound hunting bows lately, if the truth must be known, waiting for my chance to spring the question.  Not that I needed a racquet to get what I wanted, I just never seem to be around when the UPS guy shows up.
So I said, "Sure you can get a tattoo, if I can get a bow."
Thus began my sojourn into the ancient world of archery.
Not that I have anything against tattoos, well I must, seeing that I still don't have any.  Maybe I'm just waiting to get real old and wrinkly before I get tatted with some fresh ink.  Better than the other way around don't you think?  In either case, I had ulterior motives for wanting a bow;  I wanted to go deer hunting.
It's ridiculously ironic when I think about the single me vs. the married me.  When I was single I tried my best to convince every chic I met, and myself for that matter, that I was a caring and sensitive guy who wasn't just in it for my own needs:  time off for hunting and fishing mainly.  Now my wife has convinced me,  through a long and strategically masterful campaign, that I am in fact a totally insensitive, completely selfish dude who mainly just wants to be left alone to hunt and fish and the most wonderful thing about it all is that I'm OK with it  We have an understanding.  Still, it's important to maintain a certain level of sensitive discretion when pursuing ones passions.  And so I quoted her the base price for a ready to shoot Bear Charge: $399 and left the accessories to my own devices.
Though her Tattoo was much less expensive initially at $225, owning my own bow has been a priceless experience.  My bow, to me, is like a key that unlocks another realm.  A realm steeped in nature: breath-taking, awe-inspiring beauty and intense close-encounters with four-legged prey.
Archery has gently encouraged me to push my body and mind beyond their breaking points and to be still at the moment of life and death.  Archery has helped me tune my heartbeats to the rhythm of a gusty wind; has shown me paths that I had once passed before and didn't recognize; gives me peace in a world that likes to hurt; has stationed me squarely atop the food chain in a very real context and, just like a Tattoo, has engrained those primeval urges into my brainwaves, never to be erased or forgotten.  Unlike a Tattoo, I sense somehow that the lessons Archery has taught me are for eternity.  The Ink will die with the flesh, or possibly remain a symbol in a photograph.  The bow and arrow, while symbolic, are in their essence reality.  Energy stored and released.  Mass.  Gravity.  Physics in motion.  A hit or a miss.  Sustenance or starvation.  The ultimate clutch.

Sasquatch Winter

"Sqwuack!  Sqwuack!'  The sound of a grey jay never sounded so welcoming as it did this sunny morning at 8000ft in the picturesque high country of trinity county.  A friend come to visit gave Chris the final ounce of courage needed to roust himself from his place of safety.  Searching the remains of last night's raid, he couldn't discern whether or not anything was missing so he gave into his rumbling stomach.  Placing his stove on a rock, he struck a match to the granite and kissed the hissing valve with a "poof".  Propane burned blue under a titanium pot.  He carefully measured out two cups of water and poured it onto the hissing pan.  Unfolding his havalon knife, he checked its edge against the packaging of freeze dried biscuits and gravy.  The brand new razor edge passed with a clean slice and he poured the contents into a lightweight bowl, still slightly marred with the remains of last nights kung pao chicken.  "Adds extra flavor" he could hear his Dad say as he shook a few tablespoons of coffee into a tin mug.  By this time the water began to bubble so waiting, he turned his attention to the breathtaking surroundings.  Granite faces, scree slides and vast, flowing boulder gardens offset the greener, softer patches of willow and aspen.  Sunbeams began their march down the mountain faces and Chris suddenly noticed the vibrant contrast from last night.  Mountain chickadees quarreled in concert, squirrels bickered and the intermittent throttle of a woodpecker all joined in the cacophony.  Like the "camp robber" who woke him this morning and now waited patiently on a spruce bough nearby, the animals kept him company.  Unlike last night, when he felt alone.  Alone like a solo tourist who suddenly found himself in a dark alley with three or four "local boys".  Was it just the onset of darkness that unleashed the cloak of silence over the valley?  Or was there a real presence, in the form of a giant ape-man that opened a gigantic can of "shut the hell up" over the area's inhabitants.  Chris had read many stories of the "feeling" that people got from being near a bigfoot.  Now he knew that its presence was as unmistakeable as a light switch:  click it "On" and the creepies invade your gut and escalate to the top of your scalp;  Switch it "Off" and all the heavy, dark feeling lifts as a fog from the marsh.
The water reached a rolling boil.  Poured into the containers, a steam lifted in the air.  His sister used to say you were releasing a spirit when you did that.  Quickly he wolfed down the biscuits, chopping them up with his spork to release the vapors.  Sipping his coffee meditatively, he pondered the dilemma of finding such an elusive creature in such a vast landscape.  His experiences and research told him that looking for them was a futile exercise.  Best to exploit their natural curiosity and let them come to you.  Still, he couldn't just sit and wait all day for nightfall so he laced up his boots and headed for a secluded ridge at the fire side of the alpine lake where he might search for some sign along it's banks and then head for high ground to glass for clues.  He planned on buying a deer tag for this coming fall so was going to use the opportunity to scout for sign.  Figuring he could kill the proverbial "two birds with one stone", he set out to look for signs of life and possibly a bachelor herd of high-racked blacktail bucks with their antlers still puffy in velvet.  His March was a brisk one and he found himself in the valley before the sun.  Skirting the creek, more like a seep really, he searched for muddy spots that might hold a decent track.  Finding one, he squatted to read the story. 

Sasquatch Spring

Chirping, twittering, singing, song birds serenaded Chris whilst he warmed up a pot of water for coffee and oatmeal.  Still in his sleeping bag, half protruding from his tent, the morning sun burned through the sequoias in a hazy eastern dawn.  Bolstered by the warm illuminating forces of our closest star Chris chuckled at last night's paranoia.  Caffeine surged through his veins and a plan began to formulate:  No one ever finds him, he finds you.  Rummaging through his gear, Chris located his trail cam and checked that the batteries had juice and the memory card had space.  He strapped it to a tree overlooking his camp and camouflaged it as best he could with pine boughs he slipped between the straps, careful not to block the flash, trigger or lens.
The skeptics popular argument:  With all of these game cameras in the woods, why don't we have some clear pictures? -Is a decent one.  Though there are a few shots of dark, fat fingers and even two decent photos of a gangly adolescent sniffing some bear bait in Pennsylvania, no one has hit the jackpot yet with an indisputable shot of an adult, complete with facial features.  Maybe, as some conjecture, the camera emits some sort of low frequency sound that is alarming to biggie, or maybe they are just intimately familiar with their own living rooms and shy away from any new and unexplained "packages" in their territory.  Much like a flight attendant might flee from and subsequently report an unmanned backpack in an airport terminal.  In any case, Chris was out here to beat the odds and, just like you can't bag game if you don't go out and hunt them, one cannot catch anything in a trap if it isn't set.  So Chris gathered a day pack full of belongings and headed for the top of Castle Crags, the highest peak in the marble mountains, and left his camera and a sprinkling of hope behind at his base camp.
Heading off at a familiar clip, eating up ground at a pace that wouldn't break a sweat, Chris gained elevation and a new outlook with every step.  The trail bissected a boulder field and then wove it's way through a heavily forested draw, spitting him out again in more alpine terrain, his view spreading out and growing.  As he  marched he recalled the video he had watched over and over on youtube.  The video that brought him here and rekindled his confidence that a hairy apeman could be delivered safely into the context of rational conversation.
What is seen in the video is an outing for kids who are mentally handicapped but obviously fit enough for a trek into the high country with their supervisors.  The footage begins with the counselor narrating for the folks at home as he pans over what appears to be a bigfoot's shelter.  He comments on the materials used to create the structure and the fact that no sharp object appears to have cut the branches limbs and boughs that make up the tidy A frame shelter.  Whatever made it appears to have used an abundance of brute strength to crack off limbs over 6" across.  In the background one of the students blurts out that the owner is returning or something to that effect and for the remainder of the video we watch a very tall, upright creature with long arms meander down the spine of castle crags, skylined atop a towering peak.  How tall is unclear until a re-enactment shows it had to have been upwards of eight or nine feet.  The narrator notes the creatures agitated behavior and puts words in the Squatches mouth as it were, "Get out of my camp, Get out of my camp!"  Comments ranged from seriously skeptic to convinced but what stuck with Chris was the gait of the mystery camper.  The arms swung down near the knees and the head attached to the shoulders directly.  It's knees seemed perpetually bent as it stooped down the steep slope.
Chris had chosen his campsite carefully based on what he could glean from the footage and now he hoped to reach the area where the creature had stood.  Calves and thighs protested with an intense burn now and he paused to take in the scenery.  An intense vertigo overwhelmed him as he turned to face downslope.  A gently breeze rocked him like a seasickness as the panoramic abyss threatened to swallow him whole.  He marveled at the landscape.  Hundreds of thousands of acres here and more than the eye could see constituted a territory few modern humanoids could even comprehend and yet most "expert skeptics" are convinced there is nowhere for an as yet underdiscovered animal to hide.  If only he could drag them here for one look.  One taste of this native anthropoids home turf and possible seems more plausible than impossible.
Suckling from his bladder in between gulps of too thin-scratchy alpine air, he returned to the mission at hand:  reach the tree from the video and then literally reach for the limb.  The one the silhouette walks under without ducking, creating a perfect frame of reference for Chris to see for himself just what kind of height range the creature belongs in.  The cluster of trees grew larger with each step and he approached the last few paces cautiously.  The last sip of a fine chardonnay.  The closer he got the  more he doubted what he was seeing and then he was under the exact limb.  It had to be as the cluster was made up of only five altitude defiant trees and this, the one on the right was easy to pick out.  Chris reached his hand to it's full height of 7 feet and felt like he did as a point guard in high school, small.  The limb was perched at about the same height as a regulation basketball hoop putting the creature convincingly, at least to Chris, in the 9-10 foot range!
While it's plausible that a 7 foot man could have hoaxed or colluded to hoax the video, climbing 1000 extra feet to become a youtube anomaly.  But to do it on stilts becomes a circus act of epic proportions.  Highly, highly unlikely if not impossible.  Chris shook his head and sat down to admire the world from his perch sans vertigo.
Later, from the peak, Chris pulled out his spotting scope and glassed the valley below.  Even with 25 power glass, his tent was only a small grey speck in the tableu of alpine habitat.  He wondered what the creature was thinking as he paced agitatedly from this crows nest.  He also realized how easily the creature had traversed the treacherous terrain.  Every one of Chris's steps was calculated and accompanied with the real fear of falling to his death.  The film subject sauntered down the mountain like a neighbor retrieving his newspaper from the driveway.  Whereas before the Marble Mountains footage was intriguing to Chris, it was now convincingly legit.  No question an agitated squat had been here, would probably return and was very likely in the vicinity at this very moment.  Possibly it was watching him plod along right now.

Sasquatch Fall

"Swishh, shake, shake, shake", Chris cocked his head to the sky and his insides fluttered.  Just like before his excitement was tempered with a paralyzing fear and the realization that as much as he told himself that he wanted this:  an experience with the legendary bigfoot, he knew that he couldn't hack it.  He wasn't brave enough.  He was a chicken shit little coward hiding in his sleeping bag frozen with fear.  Disbelief and incredulity flowed hand in hand like a tiny kayak over an enormous waterfall;  careening unstoppably towards a cataclysmic disaster.
He listened.  Something was rummaging through his backpack.  "The Last time" was three years ago when a group had tried to scare Chris and his roommates out of a remote campsite near this same area.  His friends had nervously laughed off the encounter but for Chris, who had witnessed a shadow return to his tent later that night and cast an unmistakeable silhouette over his tent, the experience had tattooed his brain leaving him a changed man.  The fact that he couldn't move a muscle during the entire episode, couldn't bring himself to roll over and grab his camera as the massive shape groped at the zipper, is what brought him back.  He wanted to test himself again to prove to himself that he wasn't scared of the "boogyman";  to prove to himself that he was brave and courageous.  But at this moment he realized that wasn't it at all.  He was here because he was curious.  All along he knew that even the bravest of men, when confronted by the legendary sasquatch in fur and blood, would balk at the chance to step up to him.  Seasoned mountain men were and have been terrified of the mountain devil for eons.  Native American culture professes a very legitimate respect for the validity of avoiding this creature and its territories at all costs.  The fact that he returned, alone, was enough to satisfy the question of bravery.  Unfortunately it did nothing to change the fact that the situation he found himself in at this moment was the last place on earth he wanted to be.
Summoning the courage that had eluded him in the past, Chris rolled to his side and fumbled for the video camera he had placed next to his sleeping bag, all the while waiting for his tent to cave in on him from the massive rush of an 800 lb beast.  As he got into position near the door and hit record, his heart thumped in his ears and he paused to listen.  Not a cricket nor frog nor boogeyman betrayed the suffocation of the most completely deafening silence he had ever experienced.  The thing must be frozen near my bag, waiting for me to make a move, it occurred to him,  so he can pounce, and once again Chris felt the petrification crystallizing  his body. Waiting, crouched by the zipper to the tent door, he could feel his muscles start to give and the feeling of being watched assuage.  From all he had learned of the forest giants, one never wins a game of cat and mouse with them.  He took a deep breath and with a deafening "ZZZZIIIIIP", aimed his camera light into the darkness.  A Kelty backpack reflected blue and grey from a crumpled pile of camp detritus then onto a tree limb, rocks, trunks, earth.  Whatever had been rummaging departed without notice as soon as he had turned for the camera.  If he slept at all that night, he was unaware of it, taunted completely by the lack of any sound.

Ernie Belf the Elf-He is where the magic lives

Ernie came to live with us one day.  A product of the naturally curious and daydream afflicted, our Ernie showed up on the doorstep in a box, of all places.  He didn't seem lost or the least bit worried.  His directions simply stated that we were to give him a place in our home and that he would choose a different location every night.  No one is to touch or bother him in any way and he will be watching.  Oh yes, Ernie is always watching to see that you are being nice for his is the greatest purpose that exists:  Ernie Belf Nelson the Elf is one of Santa's personal assistants.  More specifically he is THE Behavior Investigator.  El BElfo, as he is known by his compadres in the polar region, has a keen eye for spotting misbehavior and mischief in general of any kind or sort known to mankind and most specifically to little boys and girls.  He can smell a temper tantrum boiling up inside an upset child before even the child themselves can tell it's coming like a thunderstorm over the bayou in Baton Rouge but that's in Louisiana and why, I'm forgetting the most important part!  Why, Ernie doesn't just sit there judgin ya'll day neither.  Shhoo oot!  Nah lawd firecracka nah!  Ernie can make you happy too Chile!  It's true Mon!  Like dem Jamaicans say in their island irie way, "No Problem!"  And if Ernie Belf is anything at heart, It's a true Jamaican.  So don't worry be happy now mon!  Dream likle dreams of dem fishes in da sea.  Jus lak dat der movie with the los chile fish.  He find him Daddy and they be real irie right?
And don't you forget chile!  Done go on lookin at Ernie too hard for e'll know yer worryin ya soul chile.  Just breathe peace and easy goin style and ya be jus all right son, jus alright!  Big smile now, off ya go to bed.
What?   You don't believe that Ernie Belf is one of Santa's Elves?  Well then, you'll have to see for yourself come Christmas time Son.  Ask him a question with your heart and then stay true to your promises and Ernie will stick to his.
The boy laid down but his bright eyes sparkled with the christmas lights.
Will Ernie answer all of my wishes Dad?  The boy asked hopefully.
Only if you have the courage to believe in your dreams son.  Ernie knows that if you're brave enough to face your fears and embrace every challenge attempted as a victory, you can do just about anything you put your mind to.  His Dad tucked the covers under his Boy's chin.  Good night
Good night Dad. 
The Boy wondered if Ernie really was magic.  He just looked like a doll to the boy but then again, that face.  Every time he walked into the room it was like he could feel the elf's presence before he saw him.  I know there is magic in that little guy and so what the heck?  It only works if you believe in it right?
The next morning when the boy awoke from a heavy slumber, he stumbled out of bed and immediately went to go look for Ernie Belf but he wasn't swinging from the picture frame any longer!  Ernie was sitting on top of the drapes!  He had actually moved!  The elf had moved and it was a miracle.

Perseverance

Like a ghost from thin air, the brown body of a buck appears to my right.  He's a nice "hard-horned" fork and he's prodding a young spike out in front of him.  My heart skips a beat and I'm immediately afflicted:  Buck Fever has set in once again and I'm helpless to control it.  This is the ninth day I've spent hunting X3B since the season began and the second to last day of the season.
Last weekend, I missed a bruiser almost directly beneath my stand.  If you read my previous article, you can count and that makes two beautiful bucks with some degree of injury still hiding out in the area.  The beautiful typical 4x4 was still in velvet and he never meandered or gave me a broadside look until I came to full draw.  Struggling with the angle and at leveling my bow, I put the 20 yard pin in front of his rib cage and let loose.  Devastated, I watched my arrow thump him in the rump, missing his spine and leaving the trophy buck indignant.  He shuddered but didn't take a step!  I grabbed for another arrow and promptly removed my entire quiver.  As I fumbled to extract one more piece of precious ammo, the 175 plus monarch took a few steps and disappeared from the last of my shooting lane.  I watched helplessly as he and his six teammates, a sea of velvet antlers, melted into the junipers and buckbrush.  Moments later they climbed out of the steep canyon to my right, their leader ominous as he stared back at me from mid hill, my arrow jutting skyward from his generous rear, glaring at the little wasp who'd dared to sting him.  I felt more like an ant at that moment.  He teased me with a glimmer of hope as he balked at jumping the fence with the rest of the herd, instead opting to circle back down into the canyon.  I heard a crash as he skidded down the hill and then a loud "twang" as he somehow made contact with the fence.  Hoping to find him tangled up with some barbed wire, I snuck into the spot where I'd last heard commotion and found my arrow neatly pointing towards his escape route.  There was blood on my two blade rage but it only traveled about three inches up the shaft.  A glob of blood roughly the size of a quarter lay on the other side of the fence.  I spent the rest of the day trying to track him across the shale and rock to no avail.  The next day, I headed up to where I knew they liked to bed, only to glass the other six bucks traveling right past my previous stand location!  Dumbfounded, I set up ambush at the top of the ridge where they had escaped the day before, only to have them cross out of range as the youngest "scout spike" had me pinned from about 10 yards away.  Unable to move without spooking the scout, I had to watch my bow hunting dreams again elude me and I suppose it was at that exact moment that I started to conjure up my plan to return for the last weekend, stubbornly refusing to admit defeat.

Perseverance pays off for the author on a nice high-desert muley

So hear I am in the tree again.  My eleventh stand of the season.  I am calling my wife and kids again.  Exhausted from a day of trying to track "Grey Ghosts" over rocky terrain and scouting out ambush spots along the most recent travel routes from the alfalfa fields to rimrock bedding areas, I am second-guessing everything I've worked so hard to accomplish over the past year.  "Should I continue to pursue yet another deer when I've already wounded two?  Is it fair to ask my wife to stay home with the kids for a third weekend?  My tenth day in the field?  And shouldn't I be putting all of my full attention on hunting right now since I'm gone anyway and I can't teleport back and I'm not really paying attention to them anyway, whispering, "Oh Great." And, "that must've been fun" as I scan the terrain for movement, knowing that any potential targets will be spooked by my conversations anyway.  Damn cell phones.  I ring off and immediately notice the deer to my right.  Great.  I blew it.  I drove 600 miles just to get homesick and blow my shot yet again.  My eyes lock on the spot where I'd last seen the Grand Muleys but they never reappear and hope springs eternal.  I wait with renewed enthusiasm for nearly an hour before I hear the magic sounds of hooves on gravel.  I glance a nice forky behind me and I know he will follow the trail past my stand.  Preparing to shoot, I hear more magical hoof scratches.  In the dusk just before legal shooting light wanes, another forky, this one wider and with some extra "stickers" crosses beneath me.  I breath slowly, trying to lasso the shakes and then come to full draw on the nicer fork who I can see now actually has "lobster claws" on each fork and could be called a 4x4.  But wait!  There's the sound again.  They keep getting bigger so I let down slowly and wait.  I'm not disappointed as a bigger buck ensues.  When I hear a fourth buck, I figure he might just be the monarch I missed earlier.  I showed a picture of him that I captured on my truth cam to my buddy and he nicknamed him:  That f(^*^%er has a swing set on his head.  But "Mr. Swing Set" is a no show, it's just the scout spike and he's nervous.  The three shooter bucks begin to feed on a very popular stand of buck brush which had attracted me as well.  Tracks led me here earlier in the day.  Why this buckbrush was any more attractive to these bucks than any of the myriad millions of others in the area I'll never know but it's popularity was validated without a doubt as I took a bead on the biggest buck.  The pressure to make a good shot here was tripled.  I didn't let my mind wonder:  "what if?"  What if I wound and lose a third buck?  What if I used up the last of my "Honey DO" credit and returned empty handed?  Buck fever was now just a familiar heart beat and I settled into instinct mode.  I became the arrow and left the string in slow motion, someone else's trigger finger setting me free with a gently squeeze.  The Montec G5 sizzled through the air and I watched my red lumenok stick and then disappear into the side of my target, right behind the ribcage.  The desert ghost came alive and whipped around, giving me a perfect look at the exit wound in his shoulder, the arrow whipping around, delicately trapped by the fletchings.  A perfect hit.  The buck did just that, taking out a few branches from an innocent juniper and then bolting across the open space below my stand.  He did another spinning "buckin' bronco" kick and I watched the lumenok dance through the air like I used to twirl "sparklers" on the fourth.  I stared intently as he raced off and then heard a resounding crash.  Celebration-shy from my last two failures, I didn't allow myself to give into a grin when I found copious blood sign or my arrow covered to the nock with dried blood.  When my flashlight illuminated his rump and stiff legs, I allowed a little fist pump and then paid my respects to the spirit that moves in all things silently.
Tred Barta loves to say that he learns more from failure than he ever would from success and I think it is true.  Losing two bucks taught me a ton.  I love to practice with all kinds of different set ups and even tried to simulate shooting from a tree stand.  But I never practiced shooting straight down and it cost me a 175 inch class buck.  Upon experimenting with this angle, I realized that there is only a small window where you can make an accurate shot.  Trying to shoot straight down and to either side will leave you "out of bubble"; a risky shot at best.  I've also learned how to "range" any possible obstructions with my pins to avoid deflection.  Even though In hindsight, I probably should've passed on both of the earlier shots I had taken and probably will if presented with the same looks in the future.  Nevertheless, my misses and painstakingly bloodless tracking sessions made me question the effectiveness of an expandle broadhead and for my last hunt, I switched to a cut on contact and was ecstatic with it's performance.  One trick is to use a rubber O ring between the tip and the shaft that allows the broadhead blades to be lined up with the fletching.  Set up this way, my point of impact was nearly identical to a field point which was what sold me on expandables in the first place.  I didn't like that they could open in the quiver or field at the moment of truth or that, after shooting them once, they are basically useless.  The Montec G5 is simple and bulletproof.  I could've picked up my bloody arrow and shot it again if necessary.  Re-sharpening is simple and the extra five bucks will pay off after your first shot.
Driving home after dropping the body off at Enoch Wood's (seriously?) butcher shop, I felt a huge sense of relief at having sealed the deal on my last trip.  I wondered briefly how I would've felt if I hadn't filled my tag but I already knew that I couldn't have stayed home regardless.  Yes, I feel a twinge of remorse at having two nice bucks slip between my fingers but I find solace in the fact that they are tough as hell, they are and always will be part of the food chain and I came to realize one simple fact:  you can't kill em if you don't shoot.

Opening Day for Archery

With "plan A" foiled by a fallen log, we beat up my truck for a few miles down a rancher's boulder strewn road.  I tell my buddy not to worry about it until the sickening crunch of undercarriage on Modoc Counties infamous "rubber-grating lava rock" forces us into another U turn.  Plan C?
Your vehicle can be a great tool when hunting, allowing the prospecting hunter access to mountaintops and providing a tool for covering lots of ground.  At that moment though, it felt like a jail cell.  I'd spent months studying topos to get me AWAY from the roads and I wanted to start burning leather pronto.
Suddenly I spotted movement to my right and called out "buck"!  Then, "Bucks"!  A bachelor herd was hightailing it across the low rise to our right, obviously spooked  by something.  I spotted two or three large shooters and told my partner, Kelly, to slow way down.  We hatched a plan to try and intercept them and then have me slip out of the truck behind a tree or other suitable cover and then stalk them from there.  As we closed in on our targets though, we noticed two hunters walking towards each other across the road. One had just left his treestand and the other left vacant a groundblind next to a cattle trough.  The oldest was visibly agitated.  I figured we had blown his setup and felt a little guilty pursuing the herd right under their noses so we conspired to play dumb.
"Was that guy with you?"  he asked us.
Kelly and I gave each other a stupified look and I said, "It's just the two of us.  We've been in the truck this whole time."  We are literally watching our quarry galloping off in the distance behind us but stay the course.  "All we've seen are does and fawns.  Do you mind if we head on up that way?"
"Shoot go ahead.  I don't own it."  he replies.  We deduce that they are father and son as the younger one asks who or what it was that his Father saw.  Kelly and I decide to give them the slip as they argue and it's game on.  I can't figure who it was they saw unless they just heard the deer running behind their stands or bigfoot is protecting his stock of venison.  They were the only other hunters we had seen that morning and we were returning from where we had come.  In either case it was game on and we motored ahead, anxiously scanning the landscape for the escaping prey.  Just around the bend, we spotted one of the smaller forks running across the road and then another three higher up the hill, still moving but with less urgency.  I decided to leave my pack in the truck and slipped out the door as we passed a boulder and skinny juniper.  I shut the door gingerly as I stepped off the floorboard and ducked behind my cover, hoping they would focus on the passing truck.
I waited for a few minutes until the trucks' exhaust echoes and faded into the distance.  My goal was to locate them before they spotted me if I was to have a snowball's chance in the desert, but nothing going.  Shedding my boots, I crept at a millipede's pace, alternating between scanning each bush with my binoculars and then creeping along silently.  The terrain is littered with dry skunk cabbage of which the leaves rattle like crepe paper and the stalks snap like an alarm so each step has to be precisely placed.  I slack my jaw, trying to stay relaxed and focused.  I scan the willows where I'd last seen the bucks and try to stay patient.  I know they were hear just minutes ago so I keep telling myself not to give up on the situation.  They must be here but my gut tells me they're not.  Somehow they gave me the slip I'm thinking.  I start to glance up the hill and suddenly spot antler tips in the mahogany brush above me!  I recognize the rack as the biggest of the three bucks, a nice three pointer with eye guards.  I remember where my heart is at this moment.
Thankfully he can't see me but the wind is all wrong.  I figure if they haven't spooked on my scent yet I might as well give it a go.  I'm not wearing any expensive scent control garments but I do take care to keep my camo as uncontaminated as possible and the fact that this buck is casually browsing 50 yards upwind from me proves that all of my crazy (to my wife at least) "scent free products" are paying off.  Changing direction from a crouch, I ease up the rise towards the thick mahogany maze.  I spot a grouse perched atop a snag, surveying the surroundings and then two more not 15 feet away.  Careful not to spook them, I keep on creeping at a painstaking pace.  The turtle would be smoking me right now in a race.  I know the key is to become a stump.  Just become part of the landscape and let the bucks go about their normal routine.  Flushing a covey of grouse right now would send the bucks into another mad dash.  I don't make eye contact with the grouse and they must wonder what this camo giant is doing on their turf but they go about their business and I go about mine.
As I crest the ridge, I spot them feeding out in the open now and my enthusiasm dwindles.  Nothing between me and them but a field of crunchy skunk cabbage and an old burned out yellow pine, bleached white as a skeleton.  The bucks keep glancing in my direction.  They know something isn't quite right but they're not sure what exactly.
I contemplate backing out and changing tactics when the spirit gives me a sign.  Rain drops begin pelting the cabbage leaves and the silence is broken with a symphony of drumming skunk cabbage.  Oh blessed raindrops!  As soon as the bucks go back to feeding, I position myself to use the tree to block their vision.  As soon as I have all of their heads behind the trunk, I make up ground quickly.  When I peek around the tree with my rangefinder, they are still a good 80 yards but they seem to be frolicking now in the rain.  I ease around the tree to try and keep my back dry when the three point locks on me.  I slowly shift my gaze to my now sodden socks and play the waiting game.  After what seems like eons, the bucks finally bed down next to an old snag and I go back to work.  One foot goes in front of the other, feeling first with my toes and then along the outside edge of my foot to my heel, testing for any give that might betray my presence and then slowly shifting my weight.  Unbelievably I'm within range and I try and get a read on the big buck.  He shakes his head from side to side and I put the cross-hairs on his head through the fallen bare branches.  39 yards.  I practice a lot at 35 and so I try and get closer, focused intently on the three pointers position, I notice that there are other sets of ears and slightly to the right, the small fork suddenly turns and gives me the look like, "Hey.  What are you doing here?  You weren't there before!"  I come to full draw as the forky stands at attention, poised for me to make the next move and itching to go first.  I know the others will be right  behind him so I put my 40 yard pin on the big buck as he levitates from his bed.  There is a curved branch in my shooting lane but it's arching perfectly over the bucks shoulder.  I can see a clear path to the vitals so I lower the pin just below this arch and aim 35 yards at his heart.  I wait for the circles to steady and remind myself to squeeze smoothly.  It feels good on the release but then I see the arrow jump and hit the buck square in the neck!  He stands there like nothing happened so I grab for another arrow.  Then he spins away and to my right, directly behind the forky who is still trying to figure out who I am and what I'm selling.  My instincts tell me that my hit wasn't solid and I see that my first target is covered.  I instantly think of taking the fork instead but thankfully talked myself out of it.  By the time I have a clear lane at the big buck, he's 60 yards and all I see is his white rump bouncing away with the fork in tow.
I let down and fall to my knees in dismay, cursing myself for not aiming at 30.  In hindsight, the buck was 31 yards.  If my arrow was two inches lower, I would be eating venison tonight but instead, I have to chalk it up as a learning experience.  I shouldn't have taken the shot with that branch in the way.  Upon closer inspection, the "arching branch" was missing a chunk of bark.  And I recalled the "tink" sound my arrow made just before it glanced up into the bucks neck.  Also, not wanting to spook a wounded animal, I didn't pursue the bucks over the rise to get a look at where they were headed;  A fact that kicked my ass for the next hour as Kelly and I, and then Kelly and I and his Father Roy and his dog Mack, hiked all over the hillside trying to find tracks.  To make matters worse, when I got back to the truck after the shot, rain started to fall and fall heavy for about half an hour.  When the average rainfall there is under 10 inches, a 30 minute downpour makes for some tough tracking.
In the end, we never saw a drop of blood and the bucks left behind few traces to follow.  Judging by his reaction to the hit, that buck has probably shaken out the arrow and will have to let someone or something else taste his delicious meat.  Bittersweet defeat I call it though.  I had made a perfect stalk on three beautiful bucks on public ground, right under the noses of unsuspecting rivals and though the final outcome was tainted by my horn envy, I'm a wiser man from the experience.

The Defiant Husband

"Both of you get your teeth brushed and get to bed right now" my wife boomed as the bedtime clock tick tocked.  "It's late and you both have to get up tomorrow."  My youngest had tears running down his face and his whine meter turned up to 7 or 8.  Just then Tanner emerged from his bedroom, camouflaged from head to tow with Bow and Arrows in hand.  "Can I go out in the greenbelt and shoot my bow mom?"
"Absolutely not, it's bedtime!  You need to get your pajamas on!"
For a sportsman dad like myself who has been trying to get his kid hooked on hunting since he was old enough to stand and fall on his face, the sight before me was like... I don't know what but I did know that I was soon going to be the defiant husband.  "Get your boots on and get out the door Tanner.  Go! Now!"
"Oh hell no!  What do you think you are doing?  He's got to get to bed!"
"Just five minutes babe."  I pleaded
"Your five minutes is half an hour!"
"Yes.  I know"
"This may be my proudest moment as a father and I'm going to run with it."  I may have even lifted my chin and stuck my chest out as I wiggled through the slider.  I think her face may have softened slightly.  It could've been a trick of the fading afternoon light.  In either case, Tanner and I found ourselves trompsing down the fire break in the open space towards our range.
We were free.  We were wild.  He shot arrows like a young man into a haystack and each hit or miss was a new discussion.  A new equation where values balanced and life meant living right now.  All that exists is the arrow.  It's flight suspends time and catches us from floating off.  Willing witnesses to gravities truth.
"Bullseye!" and indeed his premier shot was a centerpiece in a vast ocean of hay.  I couldn't have placed it any closer with a point blank jab.  And every shot after that fell away but we kept the bullseye arrow in.  A tangible goal:  he wants to split it in half like Robin Hood. 
Each arrow is a new discussion, a gateway connecting our worlds:  so far apart yet running in parallel circles.
We pull them out and start fresh but the bullseye arrow remains.  Each arrow is a new conversation another leap of faith, another bond between us hammered home.  That bullseye will always remain.

The giftcard was a Christmas gift from my sister four years ago. Presumed lost in the Christmas packing (see my blog about Trashic) the card lay dormant for years, lurking inside the pristine but empty flip mino packaging box. Politely acknowledged, filed in a likely safe spot, and then promptly forgotten. The Card as it shall now be known, escaped certain annihilation that day and yet it's fate so much worse. Like the evil "prospector" from toy story who betrays "Woody" the card smoldered for years. Obsessed with extracting a most satisfying revenge on those who had imprisoned and neglected him.
Oh if only the card had any idea as to the pain and suffering his grieving owners had expired in securing his value. The calls they made to gift card employees from India, sitting in a room infested with cubicles, ringing phones and ceaseless chattering in foreign accents. If only the card knew the embarrassment and shame the family knew as they stalked ClaimJumpers, harassing managers, pleading with them to know if anyone knew the identity of this card and could replace it's 50 dollar value?
Please? Isn't there anyone who can confirm the card's existence and replace his value? Why I assessed a Male gender to the card I will never now as he possesses the stubborn, hard to get attitude of a hot female just as much as the evasive aloufness of a dude but I digress. We were given a code that didn't work and numbers that led nowhere. We had given up on the card after exhaustive spousal arguments. The card was dead to us and then one day we found it!
Oh the joy! The card lives! We skipped to ClaimJumpers, our feet merely brushing the pavement as the entire family floated across the Carquinez bridge, along the freeway and into the Willows shopping center where ClaimJumpers sat triumphantly awaiting our royal arrival.
The Euphoria as we entered was tempered by the familiar sights and smells of a run of the mill diner with cool Moose Antlers: "seasoned" waitresses, dank carpets and generic wooden booths. I thought of the prospector. Locked in that box, he'd gone batshit crazy. Defying all logic to betray his newest friend.
The meal was so so. Maya and i chatted as the waitress brought us the check.
This giftcard doesn't seem to work. It's already been charged twice for 50 dollars.
What? That's impossible. They wouldn't even let us cancel it!
I'll Get the manager. Said the seasoned waitress. She knows how much he makes and she's going to let him earn it.
The Manager approaches. He couldn't be more than25 and he's polite and to the point and I appreciate that.
I'm very sorry but there's nothing on this card. Not a red cent. There's nothing I can do.
I don't appreciate this. Something like a wave walls up inside of me and a storm from regions I haven't explored in a long time is summoned with breathtaking speed and urgency. I know that my wife and two young boys are watching and yet I cannot control myself.
I hurl the card like I'm turning two and hits a bald guy square in his forhead and I'm sorry but I'm still pissed and I find myself shouting
This card is fucking cursed!
Sit down sir or I'll have to call the police.
Call them! Somebody stole 50 bucks off this card and I want them arrested! I want my money! Where is it? Who has it? My sister paid good money for that and she deserves to have it count. And I kick the stuffed Moose in the gut and then I shoot down for his leg like one of those MMA guys going for the ground and pound. I've got it in a bear hug and I start to pull it.
Just like I'm pulling your leg right now!
Happy Birthday to me. Every bit of this is true up until I write "I hurl the card". Well, that part is true too, it just happened in my mind.

The Moment

"I feel like a heroin addict who just got a fix" I told Joe as I fumbled over a cup of cowboy coffee. The morning was "twilight-zone-still" as the crisp smells of aspen and juniper, mixed with a little dust and french roast, tried to stop my body from shaking almost convulsively. My first Archery Buck was presumably laying somewhere close by in the high desert of Modoc County. The shivers and shakes came in waves, receding to an unnoticeable condition and then peaking in a crescendo of shuddering; the mixture of a chilly morning and the adrenaline rush better known as "buck fever". Joe smiled, a veteran hunter, he knew the feeling well and nodded in agreement and slight envy. The "after shakes" are what motivate us to prepare, practice and perform for months in anticipation of "the moment of truth": that split second when the arrow is airborne, time freezes, and life hangs in the balance.
"Well, it's been about forty five minutes, if you hit him square, he should be ready" Joe observed, staring down in the dust for a hint of fresh track or blood sign. "I heard you hit him-you know. I told my wife you just shot a buck and she asked how I knew. Heard it from the bathroom window just before I got in the shower. Sounded like you hit him good."
"Right behind the shoulder" I commented with a confident aire though doubt loomed somewhere in the recesses. Too many blown stalks, peetered out blood trails and a coyote that disappeared two weeks ago after being hit squarely near the shoulder, have all cautioned me against any kind of early celebration. The buck had been hit well, yes, but I wasn't about to count chickens. All we had right now was eggs.
The night before, Joe showed me the bucks' favorite haunt, a much chewed upon clump of buck brush that the mule deer had been visiting every morning like clockwork. After setting up under an juniper tree where we figured they would meander for a good shot, it was just a matter of waiting for the right moment to present itself. Sleep came sporadically that night and I awakened with a start. The slightest glow of dawn was apparent as I tied up my boots and slipped over-sized socks over them for stealth. I debated a sweatshirt versus my thin scent-lok and opted for the lighter. I hadn't practiced much with a heavier coat and didn't want to snag my string on it during the release so I went with the light pullover. I debated this decision often as I crouched in the soft bed of juniper needles, trying not to shiver.
"The Grey Ghosts" as they are known in this country, seemed to materialize from the terrain. Three bucks, the one you see here, and two others, slightly smaller and still in velvet, but with a few extra points on either side. I don't remember letting my guard down for a second and yet, without detecting movement or sound, there they were in an opening, making their way down the draw towards Joe's guest cabin and the popular clump of buck brush. I ranged them as they passed behind the sparse stand of trees and momentarily contemplated a stalk to cut the distance of 54 yards that appeared on my range finder. Gathering my breath through lips parted to avoid any sound, I thought better of it. Motionless, I was invisible but trying to sneak up on these deer would be a mistake. Their mule-like ears are like satellites, picking up the slightest noise from far off and putting them on alert. Though they don't see well, they are keenly attuned to pick up movement and of course, moving my position might move my scent trail although the wind this morning was all but undetectable. So I sat tight and stayed put, momentarily letting my gaze fall to the ground,When they first appeared, "the grey ghosts" as they are known in this calming myself by staring at rocks rather than antlers. When I looked up, it was like a dream, the buck I was after (completely velvet free, taller more symmetrical, larger bodied) was steadily moving towards me, abandoning the path the first two meandered along which would've taken them all out of range. Afraid to "stare him off", again I averted my eyes and began to make incremental and (hopefully) undetectable movements, setting myself up for a shot under the cover of the juniper. Finally he was in position and looking the other way. Joe had warned me last night to focus on just one and to not worry about the others-"it's like flock shooting, ya gotta pick one out and stick with it." I came to full draw and my upper limb brushed a branch with an audible "scratch". The buck looked up and froze. My sight pins danced. Shaking circles didn't match. I remember to breathe and then caught myself using my forty yard pin instead of my twenty. Time stood still as the Buck seemed to peer deep into my soul, calculating my intentions. Apparently convinced I was a part of the landscape, or at least a vegetarian, he dropped his head and continued feeding. Everything settled into place right behind his shoulder and at the instant he let his guard down to nibble one last tidbit from the buck brush, I released the arrow. "Whack" the impact startled me as it hit home reassuringly. The buck charged off in a stampeding bee-line down the draw. I heard a crashing and a "snap" as the buck stumbled and broke off the arrow somewhere beyond my sight. Tracking the sounds as long as I could and then waiting another five minutes or so after that, I retreated back to the cabin to try and calm my nerves-and put on a sweatshirt.
Joe eagerly and painstakingly picked up the track, intermittently urging me to keep my bow ready, "look ahead!" and then inviting me to check out the tiny drop of blood he found or the slightest fresh scuff of earth, then chastising me again to "keep your eyes up there!" I had to smile because he was as fired up about finding this buck as I was. But still, the blood was painfully sparse. Finally we found where he had "crashed" and recovered the bloody tail-end of my arrow. "Good" blood and some tissue wrapped the snapped end.
"How do you like my tracking so far?" Joe asked with his immutable confidence.
Making sure not to let him catch me looking down at what he had just pointed out I replied, "I like it a lot!" Finally Joe spotted the body (so much for my looking ahead) and after a cautious approach, pictures were taken and the work began. "Grab your knife", Joe said and I looked at him with a dumb smirk.
"That might've been a good thing for me to bring along eh?" Same goes for my little digital camera but then again, I never go anywhere without the cell phone. Joe let me borrow his knife and we had that buck at the butcher by ten a.m. that morning. The "Old West" butcher near Alturas does a great job for an unheard of price. "Buck Burgers" and "Buck Stix" are a popular request from my boys and my wife has even made quite a few crock-pot recipes with the burger. I could live off just the steaks and a little cajun spice. I love that we can enjoy the buck and honor him around our dinner table for months after the hunt. Young, big-bodied and Alfalfa-loving, the meat off of my first Archery Buck is divine. I've never been more popular with my carnivorous buddies.

South Texas New Year's

I know I'm weird but I can't think of a better way to ring in the New Year than tracking a wounded doe through the Brush Country of famed South Texas. Maya's uncle Andrew has invited us to The De La Garza Ranch along with the rest of the extended family, eighteen in all, to celebrate New Year's. Now, we're on our hands and knees, in the pitch dark, looking for tiny droplets of blood that will lead us to our wounded quarry.
It all started when Maya's Father Mike was remarried in Santa Barbara this summer. Sitting around a fire outside the pepper tree hotel, Maya had the brilliant idea of a reunion at the Ranch over New Year's. I believe everyone in attendance that night was reunited six months later under the lone star around a much bigger bonfire (everything's bigger in Texas). Gazing at the wide open Texas star scape and reflecting into my chilly microbrew I recounted the days events and considered it a blessing to be here.
Our flight out of Sacramento left at 6am that morning, not an easy task with two toddlers, luggage and car seats. I dropped the kids and Maya off at the terminal, sped back to the economy lot and jumped on a tram, not before nailing my noggin on the hatch of the freestyle hastily grabbing tanner's Thomas the Train sweatshirt (which I found once we returned home in the car seat bag, unworn). In the rush I forgot to note the parking location and paid for that later too but hey, we made it didn't we?
We nearly missed our connecting flight in Denver-which would've set us back a day-but instead sprinted (Maya carrying Sage and me dragging a belligerent Tanner) all the way across the airport, only to wait for an hour as crews de-iced the wings. I should probably omit the fact that Maya was ready to give up but I won't because this blog is "The Man's Side" and I'm proud of the fact that I didn't. "We're too late!" she cried, obviously unnerved and embarrassed by Tanner's wailing.
"We don't know that!" I retorted with my best Nicolas Cage impression. "We've just gotta get there!" The portly attendant asked us if we had heard her paging us as we breathlessly arrived at the gate, 15 minutes after the scheduled departure time. We chuckled to each other, giddy that the plane hadn't left us for a day in quickly-freezing-over Denver. We couldn't have heard a siren over Tanner's wailing.
We arrived in San Antonio two hours late but Aunt Andy was there with the De La Garza's Suburban and we were off for Catulla, home of George Strait and ground zero for big oil speculation. On the ninety minute car ride we witnessed no less than three accidents, one of which unfolded in front of our eyes in a cloud of smoke. It seemed obvious then that "The Big Guy" was definitely looking out for us. Welcome to Texas Baby! Let's go hunting!
If you've never been to South Texas, the landscape is thoroughly monotonous and impressive only for the fact that it seems to stretch endlessly into the horizon, an ocean of tangled branches. "Brush Country" pretty much sums it up. Different shades of gray interspersed with the occasional jolly green of a prickly pear cactus, smothered in a tan layer of dust, rolls out along lonely stretches of highway. Unimpressive of course, unless you are a hunter. The particular area where the De La Garza Ranch is situated is a world-renowned Whitetail Deer hunting haven, legendary amongst even the most casual hunting enthusiast. Hardware stores showcase feeders and box blinds on tall "quad-pods" that tower over even the tallest of camo and winch-equipped, four-wheel-drive trucks.
Word got out amongst the family of our harrowing airport travails and we were greeted as heroes at the ranchhouse, a white-washed and red-trimmed affair that seemed to sprout right out of the desert. Complete with snake-proof fencing it spoke to the weary traveler, beckoning him to a desert outpost after a long journey.
Uncle Andrew is instantly the friendliest guy you will meet and yet underneath runs a strong current. He is constantly on the go and always seems to have everything under control. His wife Christine belies the same electricity, a top OB/GYN, non-pareil amongst her peers, she epitomizes Texas warmth and hospitality. They make us feel welcome at once and Uncle Andrew is kind enough to broach the subject of hunting. "Oh Yeah, we'll set you up in the Rock Blind tomorrow. You should see a lot of game. Deer, Hogs, turkey, maybe even a bobcat or cougar."
The next day Aunt Karen and I post up in the rock blind before dawn breaks. The whirring of the feeder sounds off at 7am and ratchets up the anticipation. Something will be coming by soon it says. A doe materializes from the mist. A low fog has settled over the horizon and descends and recedes like the pulsing of a tidal swell. I set the .270 rifle up on the window and get a good look at her. The De La Garza's have a strict management strategy for their property. They harvest only one mature buck each year that meets their specifications. As such, it's important to harvest a few mature does each year to keep the buck-to-doe ratio up and thin the herd appropriately. The trick is to find a mature doe that isn't trailing fawns. Just as I started to seriously consider taking the mature doe, a young fawn stepped out from the mist. I told Karen that we wouldn't take this one and she thanked me for sparing her the agony. I teased her later that she was "holding me back" but after seeing the fawn, it wasn't a question. There is just too much game around the ranch to take anything other than exactly what you're looking for.
For the next two hours we watched a family of deer mill about, at times spooky and staring at the box blind, other times browsing contentedly only yards from our location. I noticed that the fawn had "nubs" and the other two deer were bucks. One was a small 2x3 and the other -"Daddy" we called him- had an identical but much larger and taller rack. There's nothing like observing wildlife from a hidden vantage point. I could tell that Karen enjoyed playing "hide and seek" with the family of deer and just watching them in their natural surroundings. Although we didn't find a doe or a hog that was suitable for taking, we definitely gained a better appreciation for the nature that surrounded us here in South Texas.
To be continued....

Yeehaw

It's Sunday and the spouse is throwing a "hot pants" party. Mr. Wheat called to save me, offering to let the boys ride one of the horses he tends on a local ranch. "Do they have rubber boots?" he asked. "Sure do, matter-of-fact, Sage has his on right now!"
We met Ron at the Ranch about 20 minutes later. I picked up my Pops on the way and grabbed him some boots too. John, the Rancher, wanted to give vaccinations to some of his calves as they were getting runny noses. The boys and I tried to stay out of the way and let the real cowboys round up the cattle.
When the horses were all saddled up, Sage got to go first and the grin on his face was pure joy, the most genuine smile I have ever seen him conjure.
Tanner was next and the resulting grin was identical. He got a little more excitement though as a passing car slightly spooked the horse and Tanner got to go for a brief trot. Ride em' cowboy! You can tell Ron has been around horses his entire life. The horses obviously respect him and he moves about them fluidly, without a wasted movement, brushing, saddling, strapping and leading.

After the boys got their fill-Ron showed his experience dealing with competing brothers and let them ride tandem-it was time for yours truly to saddle up!

I hadn't ridden a horse since before Tanner was born but I was much more excited than nervous. After being reminded that you always mount a horse on its left side, and having Ryan help me into the stirrup, we circled the corral and headed for the hills of Southampton. After crossing a slippery bridge, Ron led me up the hill and informed me, "They like to run up hill." About half way up, my saddle started tilting to the right. Being the novice, I tried to wrench it back into place with my hands on the pommel and the next thing I know, I was eating dirt.
The horse obediently stood there as I dusted the mud off my face and Ron re-settled the saddle. I thought of the old saying about "getting back on your horse" as I swung my leg back over the saddle on the slippery, muddy slope. We headed back up the hill and I used my legs as instructed to stay centered and balanced.
The view from a horse in the hills evokes images of the wild-west to be sure, but also this feeling of royalty. Like sitting on top of the world with a beautiful animal at your beckon call. I could instantly see how Ron commits himself to these horses everyday. They give back everything they get and then some. After reaching the top of the saddle, we head back downhill. This time I really put the brakes on and we pick our way down the trail, back to the reality of town and family commitments, leaving the majestic hill top and it's misty diversions at our backs.

The Dog Days of Summer

Montana got sprayed by a skunk last week. We found a recipe to rid her of the odor and it worked on about 95% of the smell. Of course even 5% of a skunk's nasty devil juice is enough to keep her outside for the week so that's where she sits, outside. You've never seen a more attentive, plaintive looking hound in your life. She's got more patience than I do. I admit it, I'm bored.
My latest diversion is creating a mountain bike track in the green belt behind the house. Who cuts dead dusty grass and then shovels rocks for fun in the summer heat? I need a quarry. The DMV still hasnt' sent me the tags for my boat. I'm the dumbass who kicks himself everyday for mailing it into the massive Sacramento bureaucracy rather than braving the lines at a DMV but then again, standing in line at the DMV is about as fun as a rectal exam but at least I would have my tags by now and I could fight with my wife about something substantial like going Sturgeon fishing or taking the boat to a lake. There's no Salmon to chase nor Rockfish nor Abalone. But I know what it is: I've got my Deer Tags and I want to go scouting.
Sure my kids are a blast but I just get tired of "pretending" to be on Ax Men or Monster Quest. I mean, Tanner's all set to go-Camo overalls, boots, ammo bag, stick gun, etc. but he won't stop talking for five seconds! And his plans change by the minute. First he wants to be a scuba diver so I make him a tank out of a crystal geyser bottle and a garden hose. But wouldn't you know it, now he needs a trail cam to try and get photos of a chupacabra so he drags out the portable DVD player. Now that doesn't belong outside so I have to grab the real one for him and hope he doesn't dunk it in the pool. I used to think I would be one of those Dads who could say no to everything, and I still am to some extent, but I've also learned that just making him a damn scuba tank from a garden hose, baseball belt and plastic water jug is easier than convincing him that he doesn't need scuba gear for a 10" deep, blow-up backyard pool because you can't. The line between reality and pretend is thin indeed. I do enjoy going there for awhile but sometimes I just want to live in the real world without being attacked or on fire or playing super hero:)

Eagle Lake 2010

If it be said that I only write of hunting and fishing, let it be said, for these are the fuel for my existence.
Another Memorial Day has passed and thus another storied Eagle Lake expedition. It's no longer a trip as the family has grown as have the families of all those who attend. No longer can two or three dudes pack into a truck and make the trip like a pack of lone wolves on an extended hunt. Nowadays the packing is a two week fiasco. "Hon, do we need to bring the "Pack N Play" for the little one?" "Of course". Along with bags of toys, changes of clothes and night time stories. Actually the kids ended up on the short end this year. I brought: three fishing poles, my dog, my rifle and enough ammo to defend Waco for a few days, my guitar and song book and my fishing backpack and fillet board. The kids didn't get: the quad, the bike and trike nor their mini "Lightning McQueen" fishing poles (I don't know what they did with them and they scare me when they start flailing a hookless weight around each other). All in all we actually packed suprising light what without having to camp. The cabin we rented was recently remodeled and besides having to have "Lynyrd Skynyrd" turn our hot water on after I found some wires loose in the hot water heater closet, it offered most of the comforts of home. Plus it had a nice mule deer buck mounted over the living room, various fishing books and an old fly rod on the wall for the perfect ambiance. Oh Yeah, I never touched my guitar nor fired a shot from my rifle-next time I'll have to throw Tanner's bike on top of the pile.The Rivalry is still alive and well however. Lately it's been Heyman & Pattyo vs. Nelson and the Rings on this trip and thus it was this time around. Saturday morning began dubiously. Heyman needed a jump so he drove me back to my truck where I could grab my booster box. Once he was charged, he sped off and left us outside the no wake zone with a clogged impeller. Peanuts boat has been plagued with problems and he had hoped a new engine rebuild would solve his worries once and for all. Unfortunately, we couldn't get on plane with Archie calling it correctly from the first failed-full-throttle, "It sounds like something is clogging the impeller" he stated matter of factly. Rather than miss the dawn bite making the repairs, we limped to the tules and wet our worms. Final score for the morning, Heyman 5, Nelson/Ring 3. Even though we came up short, Heyman didn't have a limit and the foreign object was successfully removed from the impeller.
Sunday morning we got the jump on Heyman and the rest of the Tule Belle Duck Club. We knew we were early when Shrimp Island "The Secret Spot" didn't light up like times square and we got a front row seat to the hottest trout fishing on the West Coast. Peanut had two in the box before we could see without a flashlight. As he was re-rigging, I watched his bobber dunk and took my turn on his second rod. If you snooze you lose and it was someone else's turn anyways:)
We had a limit by 6:45 am. We took a victory lap past the Heyman and basked in the full moon of a Pattyo "Bare Ass". Oh sweet victory is ours!
Monday morning was more of the same and we were back at the Cabin by 7 cleaning our fish and packing up. The old saying really is true: time flies when you're having fun. And so it was that we were headed home, smelling of trout and already making plans for next year.

The Shark In the Dark

Young Tanner McDougal's was a happy young boy
Until his Daddy told him about the shark in the dark
The shark in the dark flies by the moon on the bay
thats what his daddy told him yesterday
Oooh the shark in the dark, is he mean asked the boy?
Will he chase me and bite me and steal all my toys?
Is he big? Is he mean? Asked young Tanner McDougal
That's when the shark attacked our poodle.
Our poor poodle monties never hurt a fly
Until the shark in the dark decided to come by
He came in the night as sharks tend to do
and when he ate monties we didn't know what to do
So Tanner took out his new home made sword
and then turned to his ship and climbed aboard
He manned the wheel and loaded the harpoon
Knowing the shark in the dark was coming soon
But when he came he didn't smirk or grin
The poor shark didn't even know how to swim
And monties was chasing him, biting his tail
And the shark in the dark let out a mournful wail
Oh please don't get me with your big harpoon
I only come out every seventh full moon
I'm the shark in the dark and I wouldn't hurt a fly
That's when Tanner's momma came by
She gasped at the scene and cried out, "What a Mess!"
This shark in the dark is surely a nasty little pest,
He hides in your closet and only comes out at night
Why I don't think that shark even knows how to bite
But Tanner was focused on the mission at hand
He pulled the poor shark from the water and up on to land
He seized the shark by it's rough skinned tale
and told that shark to leave the island, set sail
For the shark in the dark scares me no more and
he paddled the sharks bottom with an oar!
And he cleaned up the mess and he picked up the debris
Hurling all the sharks victims safely back to sea.
And victorious he settled back into his bed
Knowing that shark would soon be dead
For no sea creature can survive the dreadful mcdoogal stare
and besides no creature would ever dare
cross the young sea hunter aboard his trusty skiff
As his father waves goodbye from the top of the cliff
Now that the seaman has conquered his foes
He heads for adventure wherever the wind blows.