James McKew

No country for old men

That’s Northwestern Colorado hunting boiled down to its simplest form. Steep rocky cliffs, deep pine covered drainages, green aspen groves that lace the upper canyon rims. The mountain tops are blanketed with sagebrush and prairie grass, making a perfect summer vacation spot for range cows, this is where I hunt …this is my recent report.

Actually …this year I decided to not purchase an archery elk tag, my compound bow needs repairs, so I opted out, and instead have agreed to go as meat-hauler for Katie’s nephew. We hunted together last year for the first time in this same spot with no luck …not for the lack of trying. We spent six days last September in this canyon system and saw game on almost every visit.

Opening day for Archery Elk starts at 4A.M. it’s warm at 9,000 feet, we have oatmeal and instant coffee under the stars.

The hike into our sweet spot is very painful on the knees. This is my last year of hunting in my forties …a thought that comes to mind over the next 36 hours. Neoprene athletic wraps pinch the back of my knees under my camouflage pants, I use ski poles to keep my balance on the hillside and take Aleve by the handfuls … I’m turning fifty.

Katie’s nephew is ahead of me by thirty minutes, we have a meeting spot called “The Big Tree” where we meet. Actually it’s two large aspen trees covered in bear claw marks. An ever-present reminder to us about how wild this place can be.

By 5A.M. there’s enough light to see the trail without my headlamp. A group of wild turkeys walk up the side of the hill and stand not more than thirty feet away. I love to hunt turkeys, maybe even more than elk, just something about this symbol of the Fall harvest that makes me want to throw a dead bird over my shoulder and burst through the front door; “Honey …your hunter-man is home with the Thanksgiving meal, get the corn and mashed potatoes ready…and call the Indians.”

We meet at The Big Tree with no elk sign. We use the smell method for tracking elk, there’s a particularly earthy and acidic odor to elk urine that once you’ve got it lodged in your brain, it doesn’t go away. Car crashes happen frequently in Colorado because a hunter is flying down the highway and suddenly catches a whiff. For us it’s two things really; pee and poop. Fresh elk excrement looks like martini olives spread out in wet dirt and the sight of it combined with a nose full of moist pee makes us giddy as twelve year old boys with a nudie magazine.

An elk bugle echoes in the next canyon to the west, we head in that direction and within twenty minutes spot a young spike bull and cow across the canyon and moving downhill. I use an artificial elk call to try and fool the bulls into believing I’m a lost and lonely cow looking for a date.

We sit and stare in disbelief as raghorn bull comes up through the underbrush, his young immature horns still covered in reddish velvet. He walks within twenty yards and catches our human scent, stops …sniffs the air then bolts backwards, practically doing a back flip while charging into the deep woods. Our tag is for either a bull or cow elk but the tricky part with hunting bulls is counting horns and brow tines while simultaneously aiming an arrow at the animal chest and praying that your own heart doesn’t explode under the excitement. This is why I just hunt cow elk and leave the bulls for someone else. The raghorn would be illegal to shoot; he’s just a foolish teenager really, with only one thing on his mind.

What is it that makes a person hunt, and at what age does it happen? Certain people, like my dad, seem to have been raised around hunting and it was what he and his dad did as a past time, not a once a year event, it was an everyday thing. I didn’t get the itch until well into my thirties and shooting at 3D archery events for a couple years.

It was after my dad and I visited his old hunt camp in Meeker, Colorado that Carnivore Jim decided to try and kill a large North American mammal. For many men it’s a right-of-passage, a chance to “fit” into the wheel of existence. You’re born, you’re raised, you reproduce, you live, you die and so does everything else around you. Hunting can make you feel small in that way, more often than not, when faced with killing another living thing, I can see the world through the elk’s eyes and understand that my days are numbered, either cancer, heart failure or a freak accident will take me at some point.

In the midday heat, most mammals are bedded down in the shade and so am I. Up under a pine tree with a sandwich, water and a Louis L’amour novel. We wait with patience for the animals to stand up and start feeding again. During this time, sometimes up to four hours, is a great opportunity to observe nature in its purest form; bees land every so carefully on thistles and collect pollen, squirrels bomb us with pinecones from above, a passing cloud becomes fascinating.

Even beyond the question of why we hunt is a more disturbing question of our methods of killing.

I have this belief that humans will immediately look at a challenge and begin to conjure up a method to beat the odds …even when it comes to harvesting a seven hundred pound herbivore in a deep isolated canyon that will require no less than four trips with one hundred pounds or more of raw meat on your back to get to the car…in the summer heat. A guide here in Colorado was convicted early this year of baiting elk, using salt licks to draw animals into an area where his clients would wait in a hidden location for the animals to arrive, and then shoot them. This technique is illegal in Colorado, along with the use of aerial drones to spot animals and night vision goggles, the list of inventive but un-sporting methods grows each year, and I’m sure that new technology will only spawn more clever methods for beating the odds.

Males for the most part, are built for the hunt, they dig this sort of thing, very primal and fulfilling, even when you come home empty handed, there’s still the tiring act of hunting, which in my humble opinion is often the best part of the event …certainly the easiest on my sore legs …did I mention I’m turning fifty?