For Dad

All five boys are here. The last one snuck in around midnight. In the early morning, we shuffle and whisper in the dark, donning gear and gathering guns. Most of us have 300 Win. mags. I am the oldest at thirty-nine, the youngest is twenty-four.

Dad says in a hoarse stage whisper, “I can’t believe you’re so loud! No lights. No sound.”

When my youngest brother was a toddler, Dad bought a big wall tent and a stove and planned a trip to a new hunting spot six hours away. At midnight, we loaded up the horses, and the entire family climbed into the pickup. At daylight, we crept down an impossibly steep hill, still known among us as “the cow’s face.” At the bottom, across the creek, we set up the wall tent, gathered firewood, saddled horses, and entered a completely unknown landscape. Mom made camp and food and contained the two little boys and their sister in the wall tent. Brave woman, my mom.

I circled around the crest of the hill, and Dad came through the middle of the little bowl. In the thick timber, brown flickered at bow range. I crouched and shook, unable to see the head. When he finally ran, Dad saw him and would have killed him, but his bad eye slowed him down. It was a hot, dry week in new country, and none fired a shot.

As the earth turns, slowly, imperceptibly, dark shapes emerge on the edge of the canyon below the house. We crowd the windows in the dark, waiting, speculating, strategizing. One brother says, “Why are you getting all your clothes on? I’ve never shot an elk in my underwear but now might be the time.”

Dad again, “Never thought I would build a five-hundred-thousand-dollar hunting blind.”

That first year in the late season, we went back in the knee-deep snow, and Dad killed a cow, and my brother killed a spike. We tracked them from the face of the big bowl and caught them up in the timber, bedded in the quiet, muffled trees and blow down. My brother shot the spike, and we trailed it over the top, down to the creek, and finished it in the bottom of the canyon. As it grew dark, Dad carried a frame pack full of meat while we carried the rest of the meat suspended from a pole on our shoulders. For a while, Dad had one end of the pole on top of the frame pack, and I carried the other end. Big man, my dad, in more ways than one.

It is a few days before Christmas. Dad called and said, “The elk are here.” We drove hours to be here, none willing to miss out on a chance to fill our late-season cow tags. Elk filter away through the canyon and up the other side. Legal shooting light is thirty minutes before sunrise. We have a rough plan who shoots first but choose to let the situation develop and take it as it comes rather than shoot together. Dad says, “There’s still five right here by the cabin!”

After dark, the two-way radios would beep to life. “Did you see anything?” “I’m coming down the lookout.” “I know where I’ll be first thing in the morning.”

Back at camp, the glow from the wall tent filtered through the trees. Mom had a hot meal waiting every evening. We would sit and eat and talk about hunting, waiting for the last ones to show up. During those weeks, I very seldom thought about work or news or anything normal life is consumed with. After the last one came in, Dad would pray, and we would sleep in tingling anticipation of morning. Long before first light, we were up and out.

As the seconds count down to legal shooting light, one of us is on the balcony, one is set up out of an upstairs window, and three of us lie in the snow beside the house. The elk are mostly bedded across the canyon at 300 yards but some wise ones are getting suspicious. Thankfully, my brother is wearing clothes.

My wife went along to hunting camp. By then, there were two wall tents and a pup tent or two. I shot a cow the first evening, and my wife and I spent all next day extracting her with our horses, Comet and Tracy. We had only one set of paniers, so we poacher packed the hindquarters.

On the last afternoon, I walked with Dad and two brothers past the spring under the bald knob. They killed two bulls at last light. We had three horses, two sets of paniers, and two dead elk. Long after dark, everything was loaded, with us stumbling and jumping through the timber. On the opposite hill side, one of the horses ran into trouble with his chest strap and went down. We jerked the saddle loose, and he got to his feet and seemed all right. We learned that this particular horse cannot tolerate a breast band and never used one on him again. We left one elk lying on the hillside and came back for it the next morning as the rest of us broke camp.

A rifle shot from the balcony shatters the crisp cold peace, and an elk drops in her tracks. The remaining herd jumps and runs as one. As they slow at 400 yards, I am swinging left to the closer elk. As they stop, my crosshairs are high on the shoulder of one of the last cows, one quartered sharply away. My gun jumps, I hear it hit, and they are off again spurred by more shots from the upstairs window. Desperately, I scan the hill for my cow as an elk splits from the herd and careens downhill out of control toward us to the bottom. I have to finish her behind the barn. My brother with the long-range rifle in the upstairs window makes a perfect lung shot at 450 yards. It is, however, his third attempt. The two others wisely decided to withhold fire.

On my last hunt in the old camp, I shot a 5x5 at 200 yards, resting over my brother’s shoulder up in the hotspot. He had already killed a broken-antlered six-point on the first day. A few years later, my sister killed a 6x6 bull on the face of the big bowl. Ten years ago, we moved to a neighboring state, and I have not been back to hunting camp since. Every year, I listen to the stories and remember the saddle, the windy ridge, the heart shot, the lookout, the spring, the bald knob, the big bowl, the little bowl, the hotspot, and the comradery and stability and completeness only a family can achieve.

We crowd back into the house, all talking at once. Mom emerges and says, “It sounds like a war.”

Shots right above her bedroom with the empties hitting the floor. Dad says, “Only elk could bring all the boys home with one phone call.”

We hike up the hill and find the elk lying in the sagebrush. After circling to verify there are no blood trails leading away, we start field dressing and hear an engine cough to life at the barn. Dad drives up the hill with a skid steer. We load both elk in the bucket. He takes them down then returns for the cow in the canyon. We start a fire in the shop and drag the carcasses inside. A couple hours later the meat is cooling and covered.

When we reassemble for Christmas, we spend a day deboning and grinding hamburger in Dad’s shop. Thank you, Dad. As we sit around Mom’s kitchen, eating and talking, I am struck forcibly by the uniqueness and privilege of family. Thank you, Mom.

I am slowly emerging from payments and pampers. Last fall, I had the privilege of taking my oldest daughter hunting for the first time. Now my family is at the same stage of life as Dad’s was when he bought the wall tent. If I live long enough, one day I will return to the elk camp that Dad started for the family all those years ago. Thanks again, Dad.