It Takes a Village... a Hunting Story:
Part One

by David Scherer
Read Part Two | Read Part Three

There was conflict at the home-fire. I had hunted seventeen days without seeing anything other than the elk or deer that fled my headlights in the pre-dawn. Eight days for archery cow elk, five days for first rifle either sex, and now, four days for second season deer. I was agonizing over my buzzard's luck with my wife, Minda. I needed to be validated, hugged, reassured before making a final attempt to turn things around. There were just five days left in second season. My flagging manhood needed propped up. Deep inside, my confidence sagged beneath the weight of failure.

The seventeenth day had proven too much for me. I was totally defeated at Devil's Mountain. Pessimism had overtaken me. I could not sit still, nothing felt right. I had lost my groove. The groove had now become a full-blown rut, not to be confused with the mating season. The dry leaves crackled beneath my feet like cannon shots, the brush was too thick for anything but a desperate shot. Desperate summed up what I was feeling. I needed to find a fresh sign but there was none. I would have given my lunch for a steaming pile of brown pellets.

Minda scowled at me with that superior look women have when they occupy the higher ground. It was the sneering look of one who was on the visitor side of the plexi-glass in a mental institution. She had rightly divined my weakened condition and I was pathetic in her sight. There I sat, broadside and vulnerable, the very thing that had been denied me while hunting. Her skeptical eye was cocked and she peered down at me along her elliptical nose just like a rifle sight. I cringed, waiting for the shot.

Any hope for my flagging manhood was crushed by the thinly disguised cynicism of her words, "Why don't you just quit! Give it up." I had read almost those exact words somewhere. Of course, they were the words of Job's wife, "Curse God and die." Mrs. Job continued her diatribe, "Laith has a soccer tournament in Cortez this weekend and I am tired of doing it alone." I can't believe she played the guilt card. I agree, her words are not without some whiff of logic. If my hunting was a business venture; then it was bankrupt. If it was an oil well, it was a dry hole. But hunting, is like gambling, it is an addiction. The next hand will make you a winner. Perseverance will win the day.

I had talked to recent winners. Joe, who was semi-prone, when a bull followed his scent trail and stared at him from forty yards. Joe slowly raised himself up and was surprised to find the bull in his scope. Curiosity kills the bull because he thought Joe was an exotic. Clarence was a winner with a 6x6 opening day. His season lasted fifteen minutes of dawn. I have had coffee breaks longer than that when I was working! Seventeen days, phooey! He guided a friend to the same spot the following weekend and repeated the feat. I have to get Clarence a Christmas gift this year. My own hunting partner took an elk calf after jumping them in their beds. He sat on a stump and cow called as a last resort. It must have been a nursing call because the calf ran off the mountain to within twenty yards of him like he was a (blank). We have a mountain named after it.

Maybe you are noting a little jealousy here. That didn't happen till I saw my neighbor with a fine buck hanging in his garage. Took it at 9:10, a running shot in the neck at seventy yards. His manhood was justly brimming. Or maybe it happened when meeting the Texan who had encountered a cow elk leisurely strolling in front of him at thirty yards earlier in the morning. He wished he had a cow tag. He did! It was first season. We each pulled our license and held them side by side to make the comparison. There it was in bold-slash letters, E/S. That means Either Sex I informed him, not all my 'ex's live in Texas.' I would have felt smug, as a local, but it was just a Texan. It wasn't that long ago I was one.

I found myself starved for words in these exchanges with other hunters who had taken or saw game. The inevitable question came, "Have you got anything?" I mumble something evasive and optimistic. "The aspens are nice this time of year," is my closer. There, I put the best face on it I could muster. But I know my upbeat reply was false and they knew it too. I blamed the full moon, or I could not get high enough, and then there were too many out-of-staters where I hunted. The gurgle of my own inadequacy made it awkward but closer to the truth. We diverted our eyes from each other in the painful moment. This signaled the obligatory congratulation on my part, it was tinny and mere lip service. Envy is a horrible thing in a human being, forcing us onto the stage, playing roles we never auditioned for. I have five days left to take a leading role and get my buck.

At my regrouping dinner that night with family, my young hunting partner, Lucas, told how we had climbed to the top of a mountain and sat on a sunny slope overlooking Piedra Road in the far distance. The sun was warm and I soon came under its spell. I fell asleep and began snoring, so I am told. A chipmunk charged to the end of a nearby log and began scolding me for disturbing his peace. The little arms flailed the air for emphasis like Hitler. My son, Laith, found that scene extremely funny and began rewriting it like a Mel Brooks movie where a gang of chipmunks lined up behind my prone body and on the count of three gave a collective shove to send me rolling down the mountain like a log. The family roared at the vision. This does not happen to a hunter that has game hanging or elk for the night's entree.

Five days left to erase this mocking image of my 2005 hunt or this would be my winter legacy. I needed to do something drastic, something unconventional. Then it came in one of those flashes of brilliance, impossible to conjure up, so blessedly simple. Hunt in my own backyard! I live in Twincreek Village and we see mule deer all the time in the summer. Last fall I saw five bucks from my son's bedroom window. How fitting would it be to leave the pungent smell of gunpowder clinging to his beanie babies? I should have been ashamed but last night's reverie still clung to my fragile psyche. The window shot was out of the question; I had neighbors. But the solution lay minutes away inside the U.S. National Forest, which was very near my backyard.

The more I thought on it, the better it sounded. I had been trying too hard, pressing where I should have been in the moment. I know it is a cliché but it lives true. Off came the pressure to have game hanging. I was coming back to a purer place…a hunter's higher ground. It was exhilarating; I had my groove back. There was no anxiety when I turned the alarm off and sauntered to the kitchen to make coffee. Steaming cup in hand, I turned on the fireplace and read for the pleasure of inspiration. The ticking of the clock was audible in the still darkness but I refused to be brought under its rule. For the first time, I was hunting my near backyard, on my own terms; how totally liberating. I packed my lunch and slipped into the garage. The diesel sputtered and coughed like an old nag that had been forced from the barn one too many times in the pre-dawn. It found its fire and I backed out into the darkness. It never had a chance to warm up before I shut it off again to hunt.

The neighbor's houses were still dark when I turned my back on the village and carefully picked my way over rock and fallen trees that were made visible only in shadows and shades of gray. First light was silvery and had barely crested the canyon as I reached the fence. This was the barbed line, the mystical separation of two kingdoms. On one side stood the village and on the other side, the wild forest. It was there for our kind only; animals found it a minor annoyance, imagining it to be a part of creation. I walked the defining line threaded through the aspen. Nearby was a hollow where the lower wire was at its highest and I could crawl under it. It loomed in front of me and I passed my rifle through the fence, which I carefully leaned against a post.

Continued in Part Two

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