cellini's Diaryland Diary

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The Elk Hunt

I'm back from the elk hunt. I did not get an elk, although clearly we were in the right place because only a week before someone got a big one only about a mile and a half away.

We missed a day and a half of hunting because, once again, Bob kinda pussied out and wanted to come home early. Because it rained a little and he was sore from sleeping on the ground and tired from alternately hiking so much and then sitting perfectly still for hours on end. Christ. We're HUNTING ELK in the middle of the wilderness. What the hell did he expect? Elk are earned.

I don't know that I was going to get an elk, but I'm pretty damn sure that I could have come back with a nice big deer and some turkeys if I'd had the full time to hunt that we'd initially planned.

Bob is a good guy and all, but I think that my next overnight hunting trip will be taken alone. Maybe I got all fucked up from Outward Bound or something, but I really don't need much to be happy in the outdoors. If I can keep more or less dry, warm enough not to shiver, with food to eat and relatively clean water to drink, that's really all I need. Bob likes to talk a big game about going out there into the mountains, but when you get right down to it he keeps bailing right when things get the slightest bit tough. He's only 54 years old. It's not like he isn't physically capable of doing this.

Hunting elk is not something you do lightly. It means going to where the elk are, which means hiking up and down mountains and putting yourself through all manner of pain and deprivation. That's half the point of the entire exercise. Putting yourself into this crucible of cold and pain and personal danger to find out whether you will have what it takes to fight through it all for that moment when you squeeze the trigger and take home several hundred pounds of food. I feel pretty good about just facing down the physical and mental challenges even if I never manage to actually catch up with an elk.

Bob just doesn't quite get it. On Saturday afternoon we were sitting up on a bluff overlooking a broad beaver meadow and 4 deer crept into view. This particular county is 'bucks only' meaning that you cannot shoot does. And you can only shoot one deer there per year. One buck and that's it. An elk counts as a deer. Anyway, one of these deer was a 4 point buck. I literally had it in the cross hairs of my scope and my finger was on the trigger. Bob wasn't in a position where he could shoot, so he was just watching me. I watched that buck for a moment and then took my finger off the trigger.

I didn't shoot. Afterwards, Bob kept shaking his head and saying that I should have shot. He doesn't seem to get it. If I'd pulled the trigger, the hunt would have been over on the very first full day. If I'd done that and then seen an elk a few hours or days later, I would have to pass it up. For what? A measly little 4 point buck. What the hell would be the point of killing that? I didn't have to do any special amount of work that day to get the shot. Nothing was really earned. And 2 points on each antler is nothing to write home about. Certainly not a 'trophy.' I see nothing creditable in killing an animal under such circumstances.

As for the meat, that would have been nice but I had half a doe in the fridge already. I didn't come all that way just for meat. To get some venison, I can (and do) walk out to the back of my own property to pick off a deer at dusk.

Anyway, sometimes hunting is about not pulling the trigger. This was one of those hunts. I'm happy with my decision not to shoot.

By the way, it's a damn good thing that I do have all that venison in the freezer now. We have $18 in the bank and that's it until the end of the month when my $10k bonus will FINALLY arrive. I don't know how I'm going to pay for gas and other sundry expenses before then. But at least I know that feeding everyone will not be a problem. I might see about shooting another deer tomorrow just in case.

1:55 p.m. - 2007-11-21

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