(Amber)
“A deep chesty bawl echoes from rimrock to rimrock, rolls down the mountain, and fades into the far blackness of the night. It is an outburst of wild defiant sorrow, and of contempt for all the adversities of the world.”
—ALDO LEOPOLD, A SAND COUNTY ALMANAC
Decision time.
I glance at the midafternoon sky and try to calculate how many remaining hours of good light I can hope for today. About four, I’m guessing. More than enough time to put a stalk on the bull elk that’s appeared in the draw below me. All I need to do is pack up my spotting scope, grab my bow, and work my way down from the high ridgeline I’ve been perched on for the last four hours. Once I climb the next draw, I can then drop down into position near the watering hole I know this bull must be headed to. I’ve watched two young raghorn bulls plus a few still-single ladies make their way over there already today. This big guy and his harem of cows are bound to take the same trail, I’m sure of it.
So long as I keep my steps steady but quick—and that elk continues to take his sweet time meandering around and bugling like a moronic frat boy catcalling on spring break—I’ll make it to the watering hole long before he finally arrives.
Elk are in the rut this time of year, so bulls are consumed by the need to breed, single-mindedly doing whatever it takes to attract all the cows they can and show dominance over any other bull in the vicinity. This guy already has a decent-sized harem, but that doesn’t stop him from giving up a loud, squealing grunt every ten steps and rubbing his body across each pine tree he passes by to leave his scent, all so he can add yet another cow to the group.
Bull elk. They’re controlling, mouthy, narcissistic, belligerent, and totally unfaithful. What a catch, right? It’s a good thing they have biology working in their favor.
The bull comes to a stop, draws his head down and arches his back, then lets out another ear piercing bugle. The sound is beautiful and obnoxious, wild and ancient—and it also sounds like he’s taunting me.
That’s it. I’m going after him. This will work, I know it. Just so long as everything works in my favor.
Unfortunately, that right there is the problem. Not much of anything has gone my way so far. I spent the first two days of my hunt trying not to puke or pass out from an unexpected bout with altitude sickness, and the following two days on what felt like a never-ending nature hike for the sheer lack of elk. I finally picked up and moved my camp on day five. A good decision it seemed, because that afternoon I heard what sounded like a nice mature bull bugling in a thatch of dark timber below my tent. I hustled my way through a deep draw nearby and proceeded to spend the next forty-five minutes luring him my way using a reed-based cow call, only to have him suddenly go silent and then seemingly disappear entirely.
After that, I decided it was time for a reboot—and a shower—so I spent the night at Braden’s. Lying in his bed last night, I could practically hear him giving me a stern, well-timed pep talk, and I woke up this morning ready to tackle the mountain again.
After stowing away my spotting scope and cinching down my pack, I use my binoculars to make one last pass over the area, sweeping them over the bull and his harem, who are now up and on the move. As the crow flies, there are probably a good two miles between where I am now and where I need to be, but with the wide berth I’ll need to maintain so the elk don’t scent me along the way and terrain that doesn’t offer a straight shot to my destination, I have one hell of a climb ahead of me. And standing here thinking about that doesn’t get me any closer. Bow in hand, I settle on a route and start to hustle in that direction.
Here goes nothing.
An hour and a half later, I finally reach the water hole, finding the area surrounding it a little more exposed than I expected, so my options are limited when it comes to cover. But after ducking under a low tree limb, I spot a small boulder that will work. The rock is big enough to provide cover but low enough that when I’m ready, I can rise up on my knees and have a clean shot into the clearing that lies twenty yards beyond. Doing my best to keep from snapping too many of the dry twigs scattered on the ground, I hunker down behind it and remove my pack then adjust the action cam mounted to my hat, cursing the damn thing for all its awkwardness.
When I see Colin again, I’m going to throw myself into his arms and smooch his cheeks until he blushes tomato red. I will never take his expert cameraman skills or his human packhorse qualities for granted ever again. And as for all those luxury ranch hunts I thought I was so tired of? After this trip, some overpriced pampering and a little five-star cuisine sounds pretty damn good.
Solo hunt. DIY. Public lands. In arid, high-altitude Colorado. Stupid, stupid idea. Muttering under my breath, I swear to myself I am never doing this again—and even if I know I’m lying, it’s a soothing thought in the moment.
I drop down and sit back on my heels, bow in hand so I can nock an arrow in preparation. Based on the growing sound of his bugles, the bull and his harem aren’t far off. I can hear my breath and it’s too wild, so I tell myself to calm down and forget everything but staying invisible. But my skin is slicked with sweat from the near-trail-run pace I kept in order to get here and after just a few minutes in this position, I think my right foot is starting to fall asleep. No time to adjust my perch or strip off a layer of clothing, though, because a series of bugles pierces the air, followed by tree limbs falling and bark coming loose in the wake of my elk’s approach. I hold my breath for a moment, waiting to see or hear him. I know he’s close; I can smell him. Earthy and ripe, the presence of elk in the rut has its own distinctive scent, one that in large doses is pungent enough to make your eyes water.
When he steps into my sight line, I freeze. All I can see is the tip of his snout, but that’s enough to turn my breath wild and rushed again. Adrenaline takes over, drowning out everything but the rush of blood I can hear pounding in my ears. He steps forward again and stops, raising his head to rotate his ears, listening as best he can. A few beats pass, and he relaxes his posture.
Come on, come on, come on. Five more yards. That’s all it will take.
He raises one hoof, gingerly taking one new step. Slowly, I rise up on my knees and raise my bow, watching his movements as I question whether to draw the bow now or wait a few more seconds. Once I’m at full draw, I want to spend as little time as possible holding that position before triggering the release and sending my arrow, staving off the fatigue that will eventually cause my arm to shake. If I’m there too long and my form starts to break down, I may have to abandon the shot altogether.
The bull prepares to take another slow step, and I know this is my chance. I draw back and center my sights, curling the tip of my index finger around the release so that when it’s time, only a small squeeze will set it off. All I need now is for the bull to take that final step.
But suddenly, his head lifts. His ears prick up as his nostrils begin to flare.
And then I feel it. A tiny breeze working in from behind me, skating past my ear, and downwind from there. Straight into the snout of the seven-hundred-pound beast with the epic olfactory senses, who immediately takes two steps backward. His head swivels from side to side, seeking out what he scents as unfamiliar, predatory, and out of place.
When he pauses and fixes his gaze in my direction, I see the glossy shine of his coal-colored eyes, and it feels like he’s staring directly at me, but I can’t say that’s the truth. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Because he’s already gone, disappearing back the way he came, bumped into action by one squirrelly moment of shifting wind.
I let down my bow and sink back onto my heels, all my earlier adrenaline waning into something sticky and suffocating. Something that goes beyond frustration. Beyond disappointment. Beyond defeat.
Failure.
By the time I make it back to my camp, it’s dark. The moon is only a sliver in the sky, but the stars cut a bright swath above. With darkness came the cold and now the sweat on my skin feels like shaved ice melting under my clothes.
As soon as my headlamp illuminates camp just ahead of me, I quicken my steps and immediately off-load my pack inside the tent. I know I should take a few minutes to make a short video diary entry about the failed stalk from this afternoon, so the experience of it all remains fresh, but it’s too fresh, and I don’t have it in me to hear my own voice as I retell it for an audience.
Headlamp still on, I zip up the tent and trudge the seventy yards to get to the tree where I’ve slung a rope over a high limb and tied a bear-proof bag to it. While this isn’t major bear country, it’s always better to take a few precautions when it comes to keeping Yogi and Boo Boo out of your camp. Untying the end of the rope from the trunk, I give it some slack so the bag slips down from where it was hanging about twenty feet in the air.
Once it’s down, I survey my choices for dinner: freeze-dried chili mac, freeze-dried beef stroganoff, freeze-dried lasagna, or freeze-dried beef stew. So many sodium-laced, gummy, depressing delicacies to choose from. Unfortunately, they all pretty much taste like the same bad lunch-line slop I remember from my elementary school days, so I grab the bag that’s on top and let fate decide for me.
Stroganoff it is.
The bear bag goes back up into the air and I head back to camp, knowing that I shouldn’t cook near or eat in my tent just in case a Yogi Bear does decide to wander by, but I’m willing to take the risk tonight. I set up my backpacking stove—essentially a miniature fuel canister set on a tiny tripod with a small cooking pot attached to the top—and, using what’s left in my water bottle, fill the pot and then light the burner.
It takes only a few minutes for a pot of water to reach full boil, but when you’re beat down, hungry, and tired, time doesn’t pass the way it should. To keep from letting those too-long minutes eat away at what sanity I have left, I use the time to snap a picture so I can post an update on social media, using my headlamp to light a shot of just my boots and the camp stove on the ground.
Dinner. After this, sleep. More miles to put on tomorrow.
#hunting #longday #neverquit #coloradoelk #worththeclimb #grateful #stayingstrong
Decent signal strength means I don’t have to go wandering around with my arm stretched above my head to post the pic, saving me from questioning whether I believe half of what I just hashtagged. After today, I can’t say if I have a clue what I’m doing out here. Maybe the skills I thought I had were nothing but a delusion created to convince myself I could do this.
The water comes to a boil, so I shut off the burner and tear off the top of the freeze-dried meal’s pouch and prop it open on the ground to carefully pour the water in. With my dinner in hand, I head inside the tent and set the pouch off to one side so it can steep in the hot water as directed. Add water. Wait nine to ten minutes. Stir. Enjoy!
Sure. Enjoy. That’s not a reach at all.
Quickly, I take my boots, my coat, and my brush pants off, then crawl into my sleeping bag in my base layer gear and wool socks, sitting cross-legged so I can set my dinner in my lap. I take a deep breath and relish in the relief that a little warmth can bring about.
But after only a moment, I realize that a strange hissing sound is competing with my deep breathing. I dart my gaze around the small tent. Not the hiss of an animal or a snake. Not the sound of my dinner “cooking.” And since the wind has already been sucked out of my emotional sails, I can’t blame this noise on that.
I peer down at my lap, now noting how my body seems to be . . . sinking.
Oh, come on. No. This can’t be happening. The universe cannot be this cruel; it isn’t possible.
But it is, apparently. Because my sleeping pad—the one-inch cloud of comfort I dragged up here in my backpack, then spent a good fifteen minutes blowing up puff by puff when I set up camp, and is the only thing between me and the rock-hard ground when I sleep—apparently has a fucking hole in it.
I’m sure there’s a rock somewhere that’s to blame, but who knows. All I know is that now, I have the distinct pleasure of feeling every rock beneath me as each one digs into my back tonight.
Now, to those who’ve never slept in the backcountry, this might seem like a minor setback. Not worthy of the jaw-clenching, guttural groan I just let out or the dizzy sensation of uncontrollable anger that’s clouding my vision a little. But for those of us who have spent multiple nights afield, we understand that there are small luxuries you come to rely on when regular-world comforts are miles away—and without them, you can easily start to lose perspective on everything.
If this weren’t a solo hunt, and if I weren’t slowly working over my very last nerve, this would be one of those moments that Teagan and Colin and I would laugh ourselves stupid over. Teagan would have heard the hissing first, widened her eyes, and waited until Colin heard it, too. Colin would make a predictably male joke about musical fruits or toxic gases, or something, until fatigue and stupidity would have us all in tears from laughing so hard.
But without them the humor is hard to find. Suddenly, I feel impossibly, utterly, entirely alone. More than merely lonely. More than solitary. Alone.
When the last of the air seeps out from my precious sleeping pad, all I want is someone here, with me, because I miss everyone in my life so deeply it feels like my heart is about to crack open. Trey and Jaxon, Teagan and Colin. My parents. My uncle Cal. I miss them all.
And Braden? I miss him, too.
Because Braden understands this life better than anyone. He would remind me that this isn’t bad luck, because luck is for suckers. Out here, hard work is all I have—and the only thing I can control.
Wild, unruly frustration begins to rush though me, tension coiling in my chest so tightly that the tent becomes too small to breathe in. I haul myself out of my sleeping bag, yank on the tent zipper, and crawl out so I can stand under the near moonless sky. The cold beneath my feet feels damp, and even through my socks, that sensation roots my body to the dirt.
I ball my hands into fists, tip my head back, and stare at the blanket of stars above me, my breath curling into the cold air as nothing but silence surrounds me.
Alone means no one will hear me.
One long breath in through my nose. I hold it, then close my eyes.
Then I scream my weary little heart out.