The Rational Hunter

hunting, conservation and our place in the world

Recent Comments

  • Buy ambien on The Wolf and the Canary
  • Buy ambien on The Wolf and the Canary
  • Spentagreet on Hunter-Gatherer Fitness
  • Laudgediemi on Hunter-Gatherer Fitness
  • Spentagreet on Hunter-Gatherer Fitness
  • Levitra dysfunction erectile on The Wolf and the Canary
  • Free online poker on The Wolf and the Canary
  • Speed Up My Pc on The Wolf and the Canary
  • Speed Up My Pc on The Wolf and the Canary
  • Viagra increases penis size on The Wolf and the Canary

Recent Posts

  • Greetings from Alberta
  • Wolf Management in Alaska
  • View from the North
  • Some Changes
  • Hunter-Gatherer Fitness
  • Food as Medicine
  • The Wolf and the Canary
  • Paleolithic Fasting
  • The Logic of Participation in Nature II
  • Of Mountains, Prairies and Sage Brush Steppes

Recent Books

  • : In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave

    In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave

  • :

  • Bernard E. Rollin: Animal Rights & Human Morality

    Bernard E. Rollin: Animal Rights & Human Morality

  • Courtney Borden: Adventures In A Man's World: The Initiation of A Sportsman's Wife

    Courtney Borden: Adventures In A Man's World: The Initiation of A Sportsman's Wife

  • Curt Meine: Correction Lines: Essays on Land, Leopold, and Conservation

    Curt Meine: Correction Lines: Essays on Land, Leopold, and Conservation

  • David Petersen: On the Wild Edge: In Search of a Natural Life

    David Petersen: On the Wild Edge: In Search of a Natural Life

  • Herschel Elliott: Ethics for a Finite World: an Essay Concerning a Sustainable Future

    Herschel Elliott: Ethics for a Finite World: an Essay Concerning a Sustainable Future

  • Jan E. Dizard: Mortal Stakes: Hunters and Hunting in Contemporary America

    Jan E. Dizard: Mortal Stakes: Hunters and Hunting in Contemporary America

  • Jeffrey A. Lockwood: Prarie Soul: Finding Grace in the Earth Beneath My Feet

    Jeffrey A. Lockwood: Prarie Soul: Finding Grace in the Earth Beneath My Feet

  • Mark Kingwell: Catch and Release: Trout Fishing and the Meaning of Life

    Mark Kingwell: Catch and Release: Trout Fishing and the Meaning of Life

  • Michael Pollan: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

    Michael Pollan: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

  • Philip Cafaro: Thoreau's Living Ethics: Walden And the Pursuit of Virtue

    Philip Cafaro: Thoreau's Living Ethics: Walden And the Pursuit of Virtue

  • Richard Louv: Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

    Richard Louv: Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

  • Ted Kerasote: Out There

    Ted Kerasote: Out There

  • Ted Williams: Wild Moments

    Ted Williams: Wild Moments

  • Tom Regan: Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights

    Tom Regan: Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights

Archives

  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2006
  • March 2006
  • November 2005
  • October 2005
  • September 2005
  • May 2005
  • March 2005
  • February 2005

Greetings from Alberta

Hello Posters:

Mark Moffett has invited me to step into this blog and offer what I can. If the conversation drifts toward the meaning and practice of hunting and other sustainable uses, my contributions won't likely embarrass me; where I delve into - and I will -  things philosophic, economic, or post modern, please take my thoughts with a salt block.

I am an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta in the Department of Renewable Resources where my work focusses on wetlands, conservation biology and sustainable use.  Although I am southern born and raised, Canada is now home. I work locally as a garden variety academic for research and recreation, and I do things internationally through my IUCN position for research and recreation (Zimbabwe, Mexico, US, Botswana, South Africa, India).

The blog names "Lee" and "Foote" were taken so I snagged "prewar" as an obscure musical reference and to mislead people into thinking I am an 85-year old war veteran.  There is great power in being misunderstood on one's own terms.

More comments on recent posts to follow.

Lee Foote

April 13, 2007 at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Wolf Management in Alaska

Hi Everyone,

Been recently getting some questions about "predator control" in Alaska.  There are some controversial wolf and bear control programs going on up north, and it brings up the question of how we will manage our wolves (and bears) in future. Hunters in general, whether from Alaska or not, tend to favor these predator control programs, even when they drift toward extremes.  They want higher ungulate densities and a larger slice of the ungulate pie and are even willing to live with higher hunter densities, more crowding, more noise, and even habitat damage in order to have higher success rates. Like "combat fishing," some areas may be moving toward a different form of "combat hunting," which for Alaska is a relatively new thing.

The how and why of the combat hunting and fishing mindset would make a fine sociological study in its own right <grin>, but right now I would like to ask all of you what your take is on prudent wolf management.

Should we manage wolves at all? Should we have reasonable seasons and bag limits on wolves, allow the trapping of wolves as a part of our management toolbox? And what about predator control...when if ever is it a viable option? Only in biological emergencies or even in order to boost an ungulate population thought to be too low?

In Alaska our Intensive Management Law (proposed and lobbied by hunters) mandates we achieve certain population and harvest goals of moose and caribou in some game management units. The objectives vary, with some calling for irruption densities of ungulates and hunters, while others are more moderate in scope.  The range of the objectives gives quite a bit of latitude (for example, the harvest goals for one caribou herd call for 1,000 - 15,000 animals harvested annually), which is why various administrations can either promote widescale extreme predator control or virtually none other than what trappers and hunters might take.  Without any predator control, some rural areas with few trappers would likely stay in low-density (LDDE) states indefinitely, and hunters would thus be limited to about a 3-5% harvest of an estimated moose population. 

So there's some give here...and in trying to promote a more moderate position that neither says "No predator control ever" nor "widespread predator control forever," it causes me to ponder just what the outcome would be this conflict was ever resolved in a meaningful way. I realize that the conservation role I may play is in large part really about mitigation. Alaska will have future development, more roads and trails, and demand will always be there for more moose and caribou. So how do we manage our wolves in not only a biologically prudent way, but in a way that hunters and the public would accept?

April 07, 2007 at 04:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)

View from the North

A little behind on this, but I want to welcome two new members to the blog, Mark Richards and Dave Lyon. Mark and Dave are co-chairs of the Alaskan chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and both are heavily involved in conservation efforts in that state. (You can read a bit more about them if you click on their names in the side bar.) Despite its image as the last American frontier, Alaska is beginning to feel the pressures of overexploitation and development that has more or less depleted the wildlife in the lower 48 states. Consequently, this is an important time in the history of conservation and there are a lot of open questions about whether or not we have learned our lessons. (Though, as this National Geographic article makes clear, this is doubtful.)

Thanks for signing on!

March 28, 2007 at 02:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Some Changes

Owing to the difficulty of writing enough to keep the Rational Hunter in new material, I am going to develop it as a group blog with some other like-minded folks.

Toward that end, I would like to welcome two new authors.

First, my friend and colleague, Jeff Lockwood. Jeff is an entemologist by training, but a philosopher by disposition. His book Grasshopper Dreaming, is a fascinating mediation on the complex issues surrounding human-nature interaction as seen through the lens of his experience as a field entemologist. Other books of note include: Locust  and Prairie Soul. Although Jeff is not a hunter himself, he noted over lunch today that there is more than a passing resemblance between pest control and hunting as both involve the taking of lives for the sake of food procurement (a point also made to good effect by Ted Kerasote in his excellent book Bloodties).

I would also like to welcome Mark Kingwell. Mark is a philosopher by training, but a flyfisher by disposition. Along with a host of scholarly work in philosophy, Mark has penned a fine work on fishing, Catch and Release: Trout Fishing and the Meaning of Life. The book, by Mark's own reckoning, is not about fishing--but I have personally gleaned some fishing insights from it nonetheless.

Welcome aboard, guys!

March 19, 2007 at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Hunter-Gatherer Fitness

We tend to think of olympic athletes as being "fringe" physical specimens. This is true in a number of ways, but it is not true as a matter of standard benchmarks of physical fitness. Consider, for example, aerobic fitness. One standard measure of aerobic fitness is VO2max (basically, a measure of maximum oxygen uptake). Elite olympic athletes tend to have VO2max scores of around 60 ml/kg/min (see, e.g., Lauresen & Jenkins, "The scientific basis for high-intensity interval training," Sports Medicine, 2002). In contrast, the average value for Americans as a whole is about 37.2 ml/kg/min. The question, however, is who represents the fringe fitness group here?

Well, if you look at modern hunter-gatherers, you will find that their VO2max is about 57.2 ml/kg/min (Boyd Eaton & Stanley Eaton, "An evolutionary perspective on human physical activity," Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, 2003). So hunter-gatherers have aerobic fitness values that are comparable to modern Olympic athletes. But, of course, hunter-gatherers approximate the evolutionary context in which human beings evolved. Put simply, your genes expect you to be an Olympian, not Homer Simpson.

But make no mistake, hunter-gatherers ain't marathoners. Overall, they are  more powerful than your average American as well, about 20% more powerful (Cordain, Gotshall & Eaton, "Physical activity, engergy expenditure, and and fitness: An evolutionary perspective," International Journal of Sports Medicine, 1998). Your average marathoner would be less powerful than your average American for the simple reason that their training regimen changes the relative percentages of slow twitch, fast twitch and intermediate muscle fibers. Marathoners have slow twitch muscles, but it is fast twitch muscles which provide you with power/strength. And it is worth noting that a 20% increase in strength is considerable. For instance, my 1 rep max for a barbell curl is 135 lbs. A 20% increase would take that up to 162 lbs. That is a LOT of additional weight.

So despite the fact that hunter-gatherers have a very high level of aerobic conditioning, they are also physically powerful.

Now how does this sort of information relate to issues in the philosophy of hunting? Well, part of the answer is straightforward. If your fitness levels are more like the fitness levels of hunter-gatherers than like those of Homer Simpson, then you will be able to hunt more like hunter-gatherers; that is, off the trail without reliance on modern mechanical labor saving devices and other space-age crutches. (It will also just make you a better hunter.) But there are also less tangible effects. If you have ever taken up, say, a running program for long enough to gain some significant health benefits you will know that the experience of running changes from one of misery to one of enjoyment over time. The same thing applies in hunting: the experience of wilderness of a physically fit hunter is very different from (and more pleasant than) the experience of one who is not fit.

So the bottom line is this: physical fitness affects how the hunter "interfaces" with the natural environment. (So, incidentally, does a knowledge of natural history.) Seeing the wilderness as formidable, imposing, difficult to navigate through, and adversarial is NOT a natural way of relating to the environment.

April 26, 2006 at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (91) | TrackBack (0)

Food as Medicine

The following table contains the in vitro antioxidant capacity of a number of common foods. There is little point in trying to compare across categories (e.g., comparing fruits and vegetables). With some caveats, however, it is useful for within category comparisons.

(The total antioxidant capacity (TAC, expressed in umol of TE/g) is the sum of the oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) from both the lipophilic and hydrophilic elements in the sample. )

Fruits

The Big Winners:

Cranberry TAC = 94.56
Blueberry,
**Cultivated TAC = 62.20
**Wild TAC = 92.60
Plums,
**Plums TAC = 62.39
**Black TAC = 73.39
Blackberry TAC = 53.48
Raspberry TAC = 49.25

Solid Showing

Apples,
**red delicious TAC = 42.75
**granny smith TAC = 38.99
**gala TAC = 28.28
**golden delicious TAC = 26.70
**fuji TAC = 25.93
Strawberry TAC = 35.77
Cherries, sweet TAC = 33.61

Another Step Down

Avocado, Haas TAC = 19.33
Pears,
**Green cultivars TAC = 19.11
**Red Anjou TAC = 17.73
Peaches TAC = 18.63
Oranges, navel TAC = 18.41
Tangerines TAC = 16.20
Grapefruit, red TAC = 15.48

The following had TACs less than 15 but greater than 5: apricots, bananas, kiwi, nectarines, pineapples.

The following had TACs less than 5: cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon.

Non-starchy Veggies

The Big Winners

Artichoke, cooked TAC = 94.09
Cabbages
**Red (cooked) TAC = 31.46
**Red (raw) TAC = 22.52
**Common (raw) TAC = 13.59
Asparagus,
**Raw TAC = 30.17
**Cooked TAC = 16.44
Broccoli,
**Raab (raw) TAC = 30.84
**Raab (cooked) TAC = 15.55
**Common (raw) TAC = 15.90
**Common (cooked) TAC = 12.59
Beets, raw TAC = 27.74
Spinach, raw TAC = 26.40
Eggplant, raw TAC = 25.33

Solid Showing

Lettuce,
**Red leaf TAC = 17.85
**Green leaf TAC = 15.50
**Butterhead TAC = 14.24
**Romaine TAC = 9.89
**Iceberg TAC = 4.51
Onions,
**Yellow (cooked) TAC = 12.20
**Yellow (raw) TAC = 10.29
**Red (raw) TAC = 11.46
**Sweet (raw) TAC = 6.15
Carrots,
**Raw TAC = 12.15
**Cooked TAC = 3.71
**Baby (raw) TAC = 4.36

Another Step Down

Peppers,
**Yellow (raw) TAC = 10.24
**Sweet orange (raw) TAC = 9.84
**Sweet red (raw) TAC = 9.01
**Sweet red (cooked) TAC = 8.47
**Sweet green (cooked)TAC = 6.15
**Sweet green (raw) TAC = 5.58
Radishes TAC = 9.54
Cauliflower, raw TAC = 6.47
Celery, raw TAC = 5.74

The following had TACs of less than 5: cucumber, pumpkin (raw), tomatoes (raw/cooked).

Starchy Veggies

Potatoes,
**Russet (cooked) TAC = 15.55
**Russet (raw) TAC = 13.23
**Red (cooked) TAC = 13.26
**Red (raw) TAC = 10.98
**White (cooked) TAC = 10.81
**White (raw) TAC = 10.59
Sweet Potatoes,
**Raw TAC = 9.02
**Cooked TAC = 7.66
Corn,
**Raw TAC = 7.28
**Frozen TAC = 5.22

Legumes

Beans (dry, uncooked),
**Small red TAC = 149.21
**Red kidney TAC = 144.13
**Pinto TAC = 123.59
**Black TAC = 80.40
**Navy TAC = 24.74
Peas,
**Blackeye (dry) TAC = 43.43
**Green (frozen) TAC = 6.00
Peanuts TAC = 31.66
Beans, snap (raw) TAC = 2.67

Nuts

Pecans TAC = 179.40
Walnuts TAC = 135.41
Hazelnuts TAC = 96.45
Pistachios TAC = 79.83
Almonds TAC = 44.54
Cashews TAC = 19.97
Macadamias TAC = 16.95
Brazil nuts TAC = 14.19
Pine Nutes TAC = 7.19

Dried Fruits

Prunes TAC = 85.78
Dates,
**Deglet Noor TAC = 38.95
**Medjool TAC = 23.87
Figs TAC = 33.83
Raisins TAC = 30.37

Spices

Cloves, ground TAC = 3144.46
Cinnamon, ground TAC = 2675.36
Oregano leaf, dried TAC = 2001.29
Turmeric, ground TAC = 1592.77
Baking chocolate TAC = 1039.71
Parsley, dried TAC = 743.49
Basil leaf, dried TAC = 675.53
Curry powder TAC = 485.04
Black pepper,
**Whole TAC = 301.41
**Ground TAC = 250.94
Yellow mustard, ground TAC = 292.57
Ginger, ground TAC = 288.11
Chili Powder TAC = 236.35
Paprika TAC = 179.19
Garlic Powder TAC = 66.66
Onion Powder TAC = 57.35

Information taken from: Wu, X., G. Beecher, J. Holden, D. Haytowitz, S. Gebhardt, & R. Prior. 2004. Lipophilic and hydrophilic antioxidant capacities of common foods in the United States, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 52: 4026-4037.

March 07, 2006 at 01:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The Wolf and the Canary

It is well known that miners used to take canaries into the mine shafts as an early warning signal that carbon monoxide levels were getting to high. If the canaries died, it was time to high tail it out of the shaft.

I want to suggest that the wolf plays a similar role. It is often said that wolves ought to be preserved because of their intrinsic value, their beauty, uniqueness and the added sense of wildness that they bring to the American backcountry. It is also often said that wolves, as keystone predators, play an essential role in the long term stability of the ecosystems to which they are native.

I don't entirely disagree with either of these claims. However, I think that in addition, the wolf is a marker of the quality of our society in much the way that the canary was a marker of the quality of the air. Wolves require huge, largely unfragmented tracts of land in order to thrive without undue conflict with developed regions. They are a potential threat (albeit a very, very small threat) to our personal survival. They oblige us to take on the costs of their presence in terms of depredation, management, accomodation around human habitation, etc.

For these reasons and others, the wolf represents a non-negligible cost to human beings. Consequently, the fact that a society tolerates or fails to tolerate the continued co-existence of the wolf is a partial measure of that society's attitudes toward nature and its level of commitment to the preservation of wilderness. In this sense, the wolf is a measure of a society's magnanimity, broad-mindedness and humility; that is, it is a measure of the collective maturity and/or nobility of the society. And since these are surely the sorts of characteristic one would desire in one's society, the wolf is a measure of how desirable our society in fact is.

November 23, 2005 at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (34) | TrackBack (0)

Paleolithic Fasting

Off and on over the years (and now almost exclusively) I have subscribed to some form of the paleolithic diet, most notably articulated by Loren Cordain. The basic idea is that human beings have evolved and that, in particular, we have evolved over millions of years to eat a diet that is rich in lean meat and seafood, fruits and vegetables and nuts. We are not well-adapted for a diet high in carbohydrate rich foods like starchy vegetables, legumes, grains or dairy. Even worse are the unnaturally high levels of concentrated sugars and salt.

These basic guidelines give the content of the original human diet. But there is a further question concerning the pattern of eating in hunter gatherer society. Cordain and his colleagues are starting to address this issue (which can be found in his latest newsletter). And it appears that hunter-gatherer dietary patterns are at odds with conventional (though unsubstantiated) conventional wisdom in the health food community. Hunter-gatherers do not "graze" on small meals throughout the day. The typical pattern appears to be one of intermittent fasting: one large meal in the evening (sometimes with a small meal consumed in the morning).

It makes sense to me, that is exactly how I do things when I am out hunting all day. It is only when I sit here behind the computer that I get tempted to hit the fridge for a mid-day meal.

November 14, 2005 at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

The Logic of Participation in Nature II

In Part I, I tried to spell out why I think that a particular defense of hunting based on participation in the natural order implies some fairly heavy conservationist commitments on the part of hunters. In this post, I want to spell out a different sort of implication of this defense.

Participation, like naturalness, comes in degrees; I can participate more or less fully in a given acitivity. And in the case of hunting we have a pretty clear sense of the spectrum of participation in the natural order: it runs from, on the one extreme, occassional forays into the field with little or no effort or chance of success to, on the other extreme, substistence or near subsistence hunting. Now, when hunters invoke participation in nature as a defense, what degree of participation is required to make this work? It seems clear to me that simple dalliances into the field on a sporadic basis are unlikely to be sufficient. After all, it is hard to see how this sort of hit-and-miss "participation" could generate a sufficiently significant impact on the individual's overall life projects to even call such activities participating in the natural order. It seems equally clear to me that someone who routinely kills enough game to feed themselves and their family (singular "they") is participating in a significant way and that such participation impacts their lives in a meaningful way. In between, there is a lot of gray area, but here is what I think is the minimum baseline requirement for participation:

  • The hunter's commitment to hunting is substantive. The hunter is willing to put out the time and effort to master the relevant skills involved in hunting. He or she is willing to master their chosen weapon, learn the relevant sorts of woodsmanship required for their chosen quarry, and learn the relevant natural history involved in hunting that quarry in a serious way. Moreover, he or she is willing to pursue this quarry regularly (according to game laws) and prioritizes such pursuit reletively highly overall in his or her particular conception of the good life. Finally, when afield, the hunter is reasonably focused on being successful and is willing to work toward being consistently successful in his or her pursuits.

In sum: to participate is at a minimum to be regularly focused on taking game and to be adequately competent to make the likelihood of success more than an illusion. And even though I believe that this is the bare minimum required by the participation defense, it is a standard which many hunters simply fail to meet. Contrary to popular belief outside of the hunting community, most hunters really are competent with their weapons; it is with many or most of the remaining requirements that hunters are often below par.

But if we want to look at a more solid set of requirements for participation, I think we should include the following:

  • Consistent success
  • Nonselectivity/opportunism: taking the first legal animal(s)
  • Primitiveness: dedication to achieving sucess with fewer technological fixes over time
  • Persistence: regular pursuit of game
  • Bioregionalism: pursuit of game from one's local bioregion
  • Integratedness: hunting is an integral component of one's overall worldview

I won't try to defend these requirements at the moment. I do want to note a couple of things, however. First, these are highly demanding requirements. If we took them strictly to be requirements for an adequate degree of participation, very few modern hunters would pass. Still, they should be taken seriously as an ideal for all hunters. Moroever, they cast suspicion on certain types of hunting, such as traveling far from one's native bioregion to pursue exotics.

Second, there are trade-offs between the various requirements and their may be mutliple ways of satisfying them. For example, use of primitive weaponry may compromise success rates even for highly skilled hunters.

October 20, 2005 at 06:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Of Mountains, Prairies and Sage Brush Steppes

My house here in Laramie is surrounded by four general ecological settings: the high plains, the sagebrush steppes, the timbered mountains, and the alpine peaks. The animals I hunt range through these biozomes. Pronghorn can often be found high in the foothills, skirting aspen and lodgepole pine outcroppings. Mule deer bucks linger on the alpine peaks, moving into the timber in the fall; other mule deer transition from the tops of canyons for bedding, out onto the sagebrush and prairie morning and night. The elk, too, range from the tops of the mountains to the sagebrush flats.

Each animal is the product of its environment, a contiguous part of the land which nourished it. And when we consume those animals, we are indirectly being sustained by that very same environment: grass, becomes pronghorn, becomes human. It is a cycle which connect us, as a contiguous part, to the land on which we live; a chain which helps to convert us from living on the land, to living within it. As an outdoorsman, I love each of these enivornments and spend numerous days every year, year round, wandering through them (alone, with family, and with friends). They are magical to me; spiritual.

This year was a transformative season in which I was changed from a New Mexico transplant to this land, to a citizen of it. Not, of course, in the arbitrary political sense of these terms, but in the spiritual sense...

The Prairie: The year began, as always, with the true native of the land, the pronghorn (Antilocapra americana; photo). The bow season begins in mid August when the daytime temperatures still soar into the 80s and the "goats" must come to drink on a daily basis. This year, my brother and I had to change are hunting location last minute. After two days of scouting we finally settled on a new spot and set up our blind. We got to observe the prairie in action: mule deer, ducks, porcupines and coyotes. We also got to see a number of pronghorn, but none of them presented a makeable shot with the recurves.

As a result, I found myself trapsing over the prairie in late September with my .243 Winchester, a small but highly accurate rifle given to me by my father-in-law. I had two tags to fill, a doe/fawn tag and a buck tag. (The herd in this unit is over sized and doe/fawn tags are plentiful, this being the best way to reduce the herd size and correct the buck:doe ratio.) My philosophy with the rifle is to take the first legal animal and it didn't take long to fill my doe tag in the rolling foothills where I hunt. I got to my hunt area a few hours before dark and within minutes had glassed a small band of antelope feeding over the next ridge. 30 minutes (and a belly full of cactus spines) later, I selected a young "dry" doe from the back of the group. A clean shot at 40 yds, an ideal humane kill.

My remaining pronghorn tag was for "any antelope", which I feared was going to try my commitment to shooting the first legal animal. As it turned out a week later, however, the first legal animal was a nice buck. A few miles south of where I had taken the doe, I glassed another band of antelope feeding over a small ridge: 5 does, a large buck, and two smaller bucks. The rut was in full swing and the herd buck was distracted keeping the two little guys away from his girls. Again I eased over the ridge and there was the buck staring down one of his rivals at about 60 yds. The shot was again clean, but he bolted about 30 yds downhill with his group and finally buckled a lay still.

We learned from last year's pronghorn that we love the taste of these prairie ghosts and look forward to some sacred meals. Indeed, we are visiting my sister-in-law for Christmas and will cook a bone in rump roast to share with all.

The Sagebrush Steppes: I decided this year to dedicate September to the pursuit of elk, only chasing mule deer as opportunities arose. This was a tough decision, because I truly love mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus; photo); to me they are the epitome of all that is wild and rugged in the Rocky Mountain West. But as a practical matter, I thought I would be more likely to tag my elk with the bow than with the rifle.

Consequently, the day after shooting my buck antelope, I was contouring through the bitterbrush and sage canyons of Sheep Mountain. Opening morning I came upon a little fork horn (yearling) buck feeding out in the foothills--but the wind was at my back and he scurried off into the brush. The rest of the weekend was an exercise in futility. I would pick my way to the tops of the steep, crumbly canyons where the deer were holding--only to hear them sneak off just ahead of me. It was hot and the deer were not staying visible very long in the mornings.

Finally, on the next weekend, I decided to work my way up an unnamed canyon which I call "Buck Canyon". As I headed up, all the factors were in my favor. A small snow during the week made stalking a bit quieter, the wind was at my face, and there was just a hint of daybreak peaking over the eastern mountains as I reached the bottom of the canyon. Slowly, I moved up: step, step, glass; step, step, glass. One hour and 400 yards later, I still hadn't found anything. Discouraged, I began to move a bit faster. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Almost immediately I heard the tell-tell snort of a mule deer across the canyon. Busted! Without looking, I dropped to my knees and began to scan the opposite side. I quickly located the dark face of a young mule deer buck. He had been bedded behind a small juniper and had stayed low, probably watching me the whole time until I got too close for comfort. But he still didn't know what I was (the reason that having the wind at your face makes all the difference). I put my glasses on him to confirm that he had antlers, as only an antlered mule deer was legal at this point. Sure enough, he was a small fork horn. Easing the .243 up, I put my scope on him and waited. At the moment, he was staring at me nearly dead on and this was not the shot I wanted. So I waited for him to move. Finally, he blinked, easing from behind the juniper and turning broadside at about 100 yds--trying to get a bead on the object across the canyon. As usual, I was startled by the ring of the rifle; a ring he never heard.

I was now back in the mountains quite a distance. After field dressing the young deer (and, as is the tradition, burying the liver in a small unostentatious ceremony), I put him under a tree for shade and headed back to get the horses to help pack him out. My wife and two children joined me and I was glad that the kids got to learn a bit more about the nature of our relation to the world.

The Mountains: Nothing on earth is as exciting as hunting rutting elk (Cervus elaphus; photo) in the transition areas between the heavy timber and the alpine peaks. Two days into bow season, I managed to move in on a young (raghorn) bull and a cow crossing an old logging road. The big bulls had been bugling all around me in the darkness as I made my way to this point. The little raghorn, walking about 100 yds ahead of me, let out a little squeal. Quietly I closed the distance as he fed on the exposed grasses. 80 yds, 70 yds, 60 yds. At about 50 yds, decided to move across the the road, broadside to me. With a modern compound bow, I could probably have taken him at this point. But with my recurve, I still had at least 15 yds to go. But it was getting light and he was now heading for timber off the road. After the pair disappeared I knelt down and gave a couple of soft cow calls, hoping to lure him back. Nothing. The big elk continued to bugle and answer my calls, but none of them would come closer than a few hundred yards. By 9:00 am, the morning symphony was silent and no elk were to be found again until evening.

Variants of this scene, with different bulls of different sizes, played out every morning and every evening of the bow season--but I just couldn't get to withing bow range. (I learned, though. Too much calling on my part. Bugles to locate, only cow calls thereafter.)

It was an exciting and highly successful elk season, but I did not fill my tag. So again, I was back out opening day of rifle season with a bigger gun (30-06) that my brother had loaned me. The area that had been crawling with elk a few weeks before was now nearly devoid of sign even in the fresh snow. I decided to go lower on the mountain, down in the aspen canyons and foothill parks. Sure enough, there was plenty of elk sign in the wet sand. I knew that still hunting through these tangled canyons would only pollute the area and at best give me a running shot at a spooked elk; better to stay put for evening and glass the parks. So I waited, and waited, and waited. Nothing. Finally, I glassed some mule deer feeding in a small sagebrush ravine below me. Thinking that there might be some elk higher up in the ravine (where I couldn't see) and needing to get off the mountain before it was too dark, I eased my way along the aspens. In the ravine there were four or five more mule deer, but no elk. The park, however, had a small finger along a little bench between aspen groves so I focused what little time I had left of shooting light on that bench. Finally, I picked out the silhoutte of an elk. Light was fading fast and my tag was for "any animal". I took the binoculars and confired that it was a young cow. Dropping to a knee I put the scope right behind here front leg. Bam! She never moved.

After dealing with the calf cow in the dark, I picked my way off the mountain to return the next morning to pack her out.

The point of this lengthy post is this: The areas I hunt are wild areas, places I love to spend my time. For some people, the church is their santcuary; for me, it is the wildlands. And these animals each represent some different component of those wildlands, they will nourish and sustain my body as the wildlands nourish and sustain my soul.

October 17, 2005 at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Next »

Authors

  • Lee Foote
  • Dave Lyon
  • Mark Richards
  • Mark Kingwell
  • Jeff Lockwood
  • Marc A. Moffett

April 2007

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30          
Subscribe to this blog's feed

Conservation Websites

  • Wyoming Range Sportsmen
  • Wilderness.net
  • Wilderness Arts Institute
  • Trout Unlimited
  • Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership
  • Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation
  • Orion
  • North American Pronghorn Association
  • National Wildlife Refuge Association
  • National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
  • Leave No Trace: Center for Outdoor Ethics
  • Izaak Walton League of America
  • International Hunter Education Association
  • Federation of Fly Fishers
  • Ducks Unlimited
  • Continental Divide Trail Alliance
  • Campaign for America's Wilderness
  • Backcountry Hunters and Anglers
  • Backcountry Hunters & Anglers: Alaska Chapter
  • Back Country Horsemen of America

About

Blog powered by Typepad