In early January, I heard elk on the mountain behind my house. The crisp air carried not only the cow calls, which sound like trees bending in the wind, but also the otherworldly bugles of bull elk, which sound like a soundtrack to the Northern Lights.
Learning the Game
During hunting season, the pace can be exhausting. But in the off-season, we can pursue our prey at a more leisurely pace. Such as from a backyard hot tub in the case of the midnight bugles. Or last week at a used bookstore , where I picked up a copy of “Hunting Farmland Bucks” by John Trout Jr.Farmland deer hunting is more than a sport or sustenance; it is a human responsibility. Our species has beaten down the wolves, mountain lions, and the rest of the deer’s natural predators, while at the same time converting the hardscrabble natural landscape into an all-you-can-eat buffet of corn, soybeans, alfalfa, sunflowers, wheat, barley, and lentils, to name a few. Every time you hunt a farm deer, it helps the farmers retain more of their crop for sale to humans, and it will probably save somebody’s car from a high-speed encounter at dusk.
Although Trout lived and hunted in faraway Illinois, I felt a kinship with the author, as a farmland buck hunter. Flipping through it, I quickly learned that a late-season North wind will get the bucks moving. That information was quite interesting to me because, in my experience, the North wind moves me to soak in the hot springs rather than hunt. Note to self.
The Best Kind of Meat
I finally scored, on a stunning piece of public land, early on the second-to-last day of the season. The buck was standing on the other side of the river when I shot him, and dragging his body across that river was the coldest, wettest, most joyfully quasi-hypothermic experience of my life. No meat tastes as good as whitetail buck, properly killed, cleaned, trimmed, wrapped, and frozen. Not whitetail doe. Not even elk. If you don’t believe me, let’s go. Meat to meat, mano a mano, pan to pan.To prepare wild game, you often have to do more trimming than you would with a store-bought steak. Use a sharp knife to trim off any tendons or connective tissue, and sometimes even a thin slice of the surface of the meat, if it happens to get brown in the freezer. Lather your trimmed meat with olive oil and toss with salt and pepper. Heat the pan. Pour the wine.
A Hunter’s Life
On the last day of the general season, still tired from dragging my buck across the river the day before, I found fresh elk tracks in the snow. And just like that, I was in my happiest of happy places, sneaking through the woods and squeezing pellets of elk poop to assess freshness. The magic of snow is that it allows you to read the tracks in sharp detail. The magic of elk tracks is that they lead straight to an elk.At first, the tracks were single file, clearly on a mission to cover ground. But eventually the tracks fanned out as the individual animals began to feed on tufts of grass poking out of the snow. Soon they would bed down. As the tracks slowed, I slowed down too, expecting to see some bodies bedded down on the snow. Then I saw that unmistakable glint in my peripheral vision. The same color scheme as the forest, but the reds, yellows, and browns are a thousand times more vibrant. Not bedded down. It was the biggest cow elk I have ever seen. But her calf was nearby, mostly hidden in a bush. And no way was I going to shoot a cow in front of its calf. I have done that once, and the memory will haunt me to the grave. So it was either shoot the calf or shoot them both.
I did not have a shot on the calf, but I had the cow’s ear in my scope at 100 yards, an easy shot. It was 3 in the afternoon, and I was alone, about three miles from the truck. I knew from learning the hard way that if I shot the cow, the calf would stick around for an easy follow-up.
But I didn’t pull the trigger. I had my buck on ice back in town, and in my laziness, I was able to convince myself that my buck was enough. Had it been a bull of a stature that would have my friends secretly despise me, I would not have had the luxury of restraint.
Walking at a leisurely pace, unburdened by hundreds of pounds of meat and bone, I got back to the truck in plenty of light. I went for a soak in the hot springs, and then went to Jesse Peppers Smoke Shack in White Sulphur Springs, Montana, to feast upon some brisket and deep-fried, pickled-brined chicken breast, followed by a well-earned lemon bar. Nothing beats the hunting lifestyle. Whether or not you kill it yourself, you’ve earned the right to eat some meat.
