- Thread starter LosPadre
- Start date
BlackFail 9
When I used to hunt on Fort Hunter Liggett, before I got sick of their petty rules, assumptions that all hunters are terrorists and their lower-than-DMV quality of Customer Service, I was driving back in Area 10/13 of the base, I believe, when I got my two-wheel truck stuck somehow on one of the access roads where it is pretty hard to get stuck. But I did it. The person who happened along who then became the designated guy to help out, which does not have a volunteer requirement, by the way, you just ARE the guy to help, was a person who held a bit of notoriety. This man was one of THE fabled ‘Rooftop Koreans’ from LA. If you were born this morning, well, the Rooftop Koreans were a handful of local business owners, all whom happened to be Korean, who took to the roofs of their buildings with firearms to protect the businesses from looting during the LA Riots. If you don’t know what the LA Riots are just imagine 2020 Portland or Minneapolis times a hundred and subtract 25 years or so and you have an idea. Or google Reginald Denny.
Mr. Rooftop at first did not really want to help me but he ended up helping me. In the process he eventually opened up and we chatted and he even wanted to do the evening hunt together later on. Of course during the conversation he shared with me some of the details of the rooftop experience. He said him and the others were getting shot at themselves and so they did indeed pull the triggers up there on the rooftop. He said he knows bodies went down, but he does not know that anyone whom they shot at got killed. An astute observer will note the relationship between an armed presence at a business and the lack of looting at the same business. Bottom line, once the bodies started dropping the rioting mob seemed to have a mysterious change of heart about looting those particular businesses. Who knows, maybe they were shooting smart pills out of those guns.
But we also talked about hunting and Mr. Rooftop shared a particular pig-hunting strategy with me. He said sometimes he and his friends go to a really thick place where they are pretty sure some wild boar are holed up in and put on knee pads, elbow pads and take only a .44 magnum. Then they find a pig trail, get on their hands and knees and crawl into the thick stuff on hands and knees. They basically get in there at ground level and stay at ground level to hunt the pigs. What genius! I thought! It made perfect sense. I knew I would be adopting this method.
Well, I did adopt this method and even talked my wife into joining me. Once. It does get pretty hairy down low like that. You have to watch and pay attention and sometimes in tight squeezes your movement is limited so if you get charged at that moment you’ll be in trouble, but you try to stay out of those situations. A second hand gun was a good idea for those situations and so I carried one. Mostly the pigs simply move away from you. They go this way, so you go this way then they go that way. Back and forth. I will say it presents a new perspective on animals and hunting. You are not getting slapped in the face with branches because you are underneath all the branches right on the pig trail. And you see what they see.
So all this to simply say that I adopted this on the ground with a pistol only hunting strategy and enjoyed it greatly. It was exhilarating. But then one day I decided to do it deer hunting…
Me The Poacher
It is mid season. Probably Labor Day weekend. I decide to drive down to one particular hunting area I had been to many times except this time I wanted to hunt a hillside I had seen many deer come out of at the top. I did not want to hunt from the top, but from the bottom up. It was thick brush the whole way. I realized that this would be the perfect application for the on the ground with a pistol only hunting method. So I left my rifles at home, fully committed to doing this.
The experience was pretty much exactly what I thought it was going to be. Somehow it is liberating. No backpack, no rife, scope and sling. You are freed up to move. Your thinking changes as well. You think like a stalking predator because you are down low at eye level to everything. I do need to share that I did have a little excitement this day. I was navigating some side hills and it was pretty thick. I finally got through it and proceeded to easier going for another 100 yards. I went to adjust my handgun, but found that my handgun was not there. I had lost it. That thick brush had torn it off my hip and I had not noticed. So back I go trying to re-trace my exact route in search of a .44 magnum. I did find it about 20 minutes later which was a big relief.
So this hunt was a morning – afternoon hunt and I was headed home late afternoon. I got about 10 miles toward home. It was probably around 5:00 pm and was on a semi-busy road. I looked over as I usually (always) do and found that there were a few deer in a field about 300 yards away. There happened to be a spot to pull over there so, thinking, hey I didn’t see a deer all day (which was true) I want to at least see what these guys look like. So I pulled over and was watching them. Where I am from this is every day behavior; folks are always watching the deer. I still do this all the time.
I was not there long when in behind me pulls up a visitor. This is one of the County’s finest, a local Deputy Sheriff in his squad car. I thought that was all fine and good. He gets out of his car and asks me what I am doing. I told him I had been hunting all day, didn’t see any deer and wanted watch these for awhile. I said it cheerfully because I was, well, glad to be out in God’s creation doing what I was doing. I was absolutely 100% completely honest. I was forth coming and told him the bare naked truth. The good Deputy asks to see my hunting license along with my driver’s license, registration and proof of insurance. OK, I have not done anything wrong, but sure, he can have all this stuff. After going through the items which he asks me a few questions about, he then asks if he can see my hunting firearms. Well, ya know Iam was a cooperative kind of person, so I decide to accommodate the man and opened my trunk where my firearm was located. I get the pistol out and he examines it, writes down some numbers and is generally eroding away at all the good cheer there was in the air when he arrived. Then he asked to see my hunting rifle. Well, I don’t have a rifle because I was not hunting with a rifle.
From that point on, even though I explained how I hunted that day, and why it only required a handgun, the Deputy Sheriff began doing everything he could think of to nail me, the poacher, whom he had caught in the act, to the wall. He asks, you are hunting, but you are not using a rifle? Who hunts deer without a rifle? Yes, I reply, I am hunting deer without a rifle and I do not know who else beside me and a Rooftop Korean who do this. But I didn’t sense he was in a mood to hear about the Rooftop Korean so I withheld that part on the outside. He starts looking in the trunk and in through the car windows and asks me would there be any reason for blood on or in my car if he found any? I said, well, there’s not blood anywhere so...so no, no reason. I was realizing that he was convinced I was a poacher, that I was out there and was going to shoot those does from 300 yards away with my handgun on a busy road. He must have had a lot of confidence in my shooting ability. And the only reason I did not have blood on my hands was because he happened on the spot in the nick of time.
So I told him, “I am not poaching.” And it was the truth. I have no idea what poaching happens in that part of that county or anywhere, no idea whatsoever. It could be poaching heaven, it could never have happened before, who knows, but it had nothing to do with me. Have you ever had to prove your innocence? I was having to prove my innocence. I was a poacher until I proved I was not, in this person’s mind. He assumed I was guilty. And then he would pause, you could see the wheels turning, and come back with another question or way to ask a question to try to trap me or get me to admit something or whatever, he just kept things rolling. “Well,” I said, I told you I am not poaching, so…” and he would just go back to trying to trap me or discover some inconsistency. It was one question after another.
At some point I felt like the kind officer had pretty much worn out his welcome and my own patience was wearing thin. So finally, tired of his fantasy, I turned the tables on him and said, “Ok, so I’ve been extremely cooperative with you, answered everything you asked and have told you several time I am not a poacher. Yet you do not believe me. Evidently nothing I say is going to change your mind. So why don’t you call Deputy (so and so) and ask him if he thinks I am a poacher? Do you know Deputy so and so?” Yes, the Deputy responds, he knows Deputy so and so, and seemed pretty surprised I had dropped the name of the senior Deputy so and so. “Well,” I continued, “I know Deputy so and so very well. My son spent the night at his house two weeks ago. I was on another ride-along with Deputy so and so about three weeks ago in this very area, on this very road and we probably drove in the squad car you are now driving. Call him now and ask him if he thinks you have nabbed a poacher or not. Go ahead, call him. Do you want his number?”
The good Deputy suddenly seemed to have a mysterious change of heart about him arresting me the poacher. It no longer seemed like the good idea it had been for the previous ten or fifteen minutes when he was scrounging for things that simply weren’t there.
Apparently I had dealt him a smart pill.
Lesson 19: When going through rough brush ALWAYS check to make sure your hand gun has not been ripped off by aggressive branches.
Lesson 20: When going through rough questions always check to make sure your freedoms have not been ripped off by aggressive (and young in this case) LEO’s.
Next time: Wild Justice, the television show
When I used to hunt on Fort Hunter Liggett, before I got sick of their petty rules, assumptions that all hunters are terrorists and their lower-than-DMV quality of Customer Service, I was driving back in Area 10/13 of the base, I believe, when I got my two-wheel truck stuck somehow on one of the access roads where it is pretty hard to get stuck. But I did it. The person who happened along who then became the designated guy to help out, which does not have a volunteer requirement, by the way, you just ARE the guy to help, was a person who held a bit of notoriety. This man was one of THE fabled ‘Rooftop Koreans’ from LA. If you were born this morning, well, the Rooftop Koreans were a handful of local business owners, all whom happened to be Korean, who took to the roofs of their buildings with firearms to protect the businesses from looting during the LA Riots. If you don’t know what the LA Riots are just imagine 2020 Portland or Minneapolis times a hundred and subtract 25 years or so and you have an idea. Or google Reginald Denny.
Mr. Rooftop at first did not really want to help me but he ended up helping me. In the process he eventually opened up and we chatted and he even wanted to do the evening hunt together later on. Of course during the conversation he shared with me some of the details of the rooftop experience. He said him and the others were getting shot at themselves and so they did indeed pull the triggers up there on the rooftop. He said he knows bodies went down, but he does not know that anyone whom they shot at got killed. An astute observer will note the relationship between an armed presence at a business and the lack of looting at the same business. Bottom line, once the bodies started dropping the rioting mob seemed to have a mysterious change of heart about looting those particular businesses. Who knows, maybe they were shooting smart pills out of those guns.
But we also talked about hunting and Mr. Rooftop shared a particular pig-hunting strategy with me. He said sometimes he and his friends go to a really thick place where they are pretty sure some wild boar are holed up in and put on knee pads, elbow pads and take only a .44 magnum. Then they find a pig trail, get on their hands and knees and crawl into the thick stuff on hands and knees. They basically get in there at ground level and stay at ground level to hunt the pigs. What genius! I thought! It made perfect sense. I knew I would be adopting this method.
Well, I did adopt this method and even talked my wife into joining me. Once. It does get pretty hairy down low like that. You have to watch and pay attention and sometimes in tight squeezes your movement is limited so if you get charged at that moment you’ll be in trouble, but you try to stay out of those situations. A second hand gun was a good idea for those situations and so I carried one. Mostly the pigs simply move away from you. They go this way, so you go this way then they go that way. Back and forth. I will say it presents a new perspective on animals and hunting. You are not getting slapped in the face with branches because you are underneath all the branches right on the pig trail. And you see what they see.
So all this to simply say that I adopted this on the ground with a pistol only hunting strategy and enjoyed it greatly. It was exhilarating. But then one day I decided to do it deer hunting…
Me The Poacher
It is mid season. Probably Labor Day weekend. I decide to drive down to one particular hunting area I had been to many times except this time I wanted to hunt a hillside I had seen many deer come out of at the top. I did not want to hunt from the top, but from the bottom up. It was thick brush the whole way. I realized that this would be the perfect application for the on the ground with a pistol only hunting method. So I left my rifles at home, fully committed to doing this.
The experience was pretty much exactly what I thought it was going to be. Somehow it is liberating. No backpack, no rife, scope and sling. You are freed up to move. Your thinking changes as well. You think like a stalking predator because you are down low at eye level to everything. I do need to share that I did have a little excitement this day. I was navigating some side hills and it was pretty thick. I finally got through it and proceeded to easier going for another 100 yards. I went to adjust my handgun, but found that my handgun was not there. I had lost it. That thick brush had torn it off my hip and I had not noticed. So back I go trying to re-trace my exact route in search of a .44 magnum. I did find it about 20 minutes later which was a big relief.
So this hunt was a morning – afternoon hunt and I was headed home late afternoon. I got about 10 miles toward home. It was probably around 5:00 pm and was on a semi-busy road. I looked over as I usually (always) do and found that there were a few deer in a field about 300 yards away. There happened to be a spot to pull over there so, thinking, hey I didn’t see a deer all day (which was true) I want to at least see what these guys look like. So I pulled over and was watching them. Where I am from this is every day behavior; folks are always watching the deer. I still do this all the time.
I was not there long when in behind me pulls up a visitor. This is one of the County’s finest, a local Deputy Sheriff in his squad car. I thought that was all fine and good. He gets out of his car and asks me what I am doing. I told him I had been hunting all day, didn’t see any deer and wanted watch these for awhile. I said it cheerfully because I was, well, glad to be out in God’s creation doing what I was doing. I was absolutely 100% completely honest. I was forth coming and told him the bare naked truth. The good Deputy asks to see my hunting license along with my driver’s license, registration and proof of insurance. OK, I have not done anything wrong, but sure, he can have all this stuff. After going through the items which he asks me a few questions about, he then asks if he can see my hunting firearms. Well, ya know I
From that point on, even though I explained how I hunted that day, and why it only required a handgun, the Deputy Sheriff began doing everything he could think of to nail me, the poacher, whom he had caught in the act, to the wall. He asks, you are hunting, but you are not using a rifle? Who hunts deer without a rifle? Yes, I reply, I am hunting deer without a rifle and I do not know who else beside me and a Rooftop Korean who do this. But I didn’t sense he was in a mood to hear about the Rooftop Korean so I withheld that part on the outside. He starts looking in the trunk and in through the car windows and asks me would there be any reason for blood on or in my car if he found any? I said, well, there’s not blood anywhere so...so no, no reason. I was realizing that he was convinced I was a poacher, that I was out there and was going to shoot those does from 300 yards away with my handgun on a busy road. He must have had a lot of confidence in my shooting ability. And the only reason I did not have blood on my hands was because he happened on the spot in the nick of time.
So I told him, “I am not poaching.” And it was the truth. I have no idea what poaching happens in that part of that county or anywhere, no idea whatsoever. It could be poaching heaven, it could never have happened before, who knows, but it had nothing to do with me. Have you ever had to prove your innocence? I was having to prove my innocence. I was a poacher until I proved I was not, in this person’s mind. He assumed I was guilty. And then he would pause, you could see the wheels turning, and come back with another question or way to ask a question to try to trap me or get me to admit something or whatever, he just kept things rolling. “Well,” I said, I told you I am not poaching, so…” and he would just go back to trying to trap me or discover some inconsistency. It was one question after another.
At some point I felt like the kind officer had pretty much worn out his welcome and my own patience was wearing thin. So finally, tired of his fantasy, I turned the tables on him and said, “Ok, so I’ve been extremely cooperative with you, answered everything you asked and have told you several time I am not a poacher. Yet you do not believe me. Evidently nothing I say is going to change your mind. So why don’t you call Deputy (so and so) and ask him if he thinks I am a poacher? Do you know Deputy so and so?” Yes, the Deputy responds, he knows Deputy so and so, and seemed pretty surprised I had dropped the name of the senior Deputy so and so. “Well,” I continued, “I know Deputy so and so very well. My son spent the night at his house two weeks ago. I was on another ride-along with Deputy so and so about three weeks ago in this very area, on this very road and we probably drove in the squad car you are now driving. Call him now and ask him if he thinks you have nabbed a poacher or not. Go ahead, call him. Do you want his number?”
The good Deputy suddenly seemed to have a mysterious change of heart about him arresting me the poacher. It no longer seemed like the good idea it had been for the previous ten or fifteen minutes when he was scrounging for things that simply weren’t there.
Apparently I had dealt him a smart pill.
Lesson 19: When going through rough brush ALWAYS check to make sure your hand gun has not been ripped off by aggressive branches.
Lesson 20: When going through rough questions always check to make sure your freedoms have not been ripped off by aggressive (and young in this case) LEO’s.
Next time: Wild Justice, the television show
sportyg
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Poor deputy was just trying to make a name for himself and up his rep with the department. If you had a scope on the .44 the shot was makeable. I used to have a .41 and that was good for 200 yds on a deer. Not that I ever shot one that far away. Only used it in thick brush. Handgun hunting is not uncommon. More people do it then most realize.
BlackFail 10
In the course of chasing after the elusive blacktail buck it just so happened that I also learned where all the quail hide. In fact deer hunters in California probably know better that quail hunters in California where the quail are. I also have stumbled on the cave all the local doves nest at. That one’s staying a secret, however. It is just what we learn by pounding miles and miles of ground. Where are the quail? I’ll throw out a free hint: quail need water too. Second hint: quail really don’t like to fly. Third hint: if you see does and fawns, quail are likely not far away. Where are the does and fawns, you say? Well, the veteran hunters on here already know the answer to this but for the noobies, the does with fawns are exactly where you would be if you were taking care of a little one and had to leave him there by himself while you go get water and a bite to eat from time to time. If I’ve just eliminated a lot of territory, including the high, treacherous stuff with no water, that you no longer have to walk to check for quail on your next quail hunt, you’re welcome.
So a family member knew that I knew where the quail were and asked me if I would take him quail hunting. Sure, love to. This story, therefore is NOT exactly about blacktail hunting, but about hunting quail in blacktail territory. If it violates you by presenting content unrelated to the overall title of this series of stories since the following is not directly about blacktail hunting and is therefore ‘false advertising,’ I apologize. I will give you a full refund. Please leave bank account information in the Comments section. But, really, who does not want to hear a story about the Wild Justice television crew showing up on a guy’s hunt? I see there is only one hand raised. My own.
The Wild, Wild Justice
We hunted quail in three or four different spots that day because the quail have more than one community. At our first location as soon as we got out of the truck we saw some trash off the road which included a can and an interchangeable roundish ‘fuel’ canister for camp stoves. You know what I’m talking about, they are made by Coleman, they say Coleman in big letters, are green with some silver on, and you can get them at sporting goods stores or maybe even Target or Walmart. And you connect them to your stove, use them and swap them out with the next one. They don’t have a lot of fuel, they are small, not like a gallon can. Well we picked both items up and threw them in the back of the truck in the spirit of ‘leave the woods cleaner than you found it.’ Before we chucked it in however, we examined it. Sure enough there were bullet holes in it. A close look revealed that there was rust on the edges of those holes meaning it had been there awhile.
Near the end of the day we were going to hunt in a big circle. That is, we parked at, say, a 5 o’clock position, then hunted counter-clockwise and would be coming back to the truck from the 7 and then 6 clock position. We would cover between 1.5 and 2.5 miles. I let my hunting partner use my shotgun because he did not have one yet. Part of this was to see if he wanted the same shotgun that I had. Myself, I brought a .22 in an effort to stave off total world domination by the ground squirrel. My partner was doing well on the shotgun, knocking the quail down like a pro. I was kicking sand up around ground squirrels everywhere. Having a great time.
Then tit was getting to be about that time and we were at the 9 o’clock or 8 o’clock position and I see there is some activity at the truck. My first thought was I hope these idiots aren’t thinking they will see us before we see them...we are hunters for heaven’s sake, we’re going to see you first. What I was looking at was two Game Warden / Department of Fish and Game – type vehicles parked near my truck and walking over to it. Well, we thought, this looks interesting, let’s just lay low here and see what happens. So we eased back a bit into cover. We pulled out the binoculars and watched just in time to see that there was a cameraman with a big expensive video camera on his shoulder who was filming my truck and then walked right up to the bed and was filming INSIDE my truck bed. OK, who does this jackass think he is, I thought. How would he like me filming inside his personal vehicle? Then my hunting partner says, “Remember that fuel canister we threw in the back of your truck? I bet he’s filming that.” And he was right. That is exactly what this guy was filming. I knew right away one could draw the wrong conclusion from that and I did not want to necessarily be accused of something with a camera on site. So we understood the gig – it’s either a department training-video situation or it is the Wild Justice television show. Either way, we both said, let’s just hang here and let them leave. We sat down, got comfortable and enjoyed the show. They had no idea we were watching them. Amateurs.
After about 30 minutes we were getting toward sundown and last light, so we figured, well, were not hunting illegally, let’s just get down there, get it over with and get headed toward home. Plus we were not really wanting to walk out in the dark. So off we went. We had been watching them from about 300 yards away. They didn’t see us at 300 or 200 or 100 or even 50. And then our last little jaunt presented the strangest of situations...we were coming up a last little hill by the truck when there on the trail about 30 yards away to the side is a skunk! I can see the people and their trucks, they do not see us, I can see the skunk just off to the side from where they are. Then I see their dog...it is a German Shepherd on a leash. (Oh great…) This was like theater – what’s going to happen if that dog smells that skunk? What’s going to happen if that skunk is rabid and comes our direction? Things could get very wild here on Wild Justice. As I was doing the calculus with all the variables, the intrepid law enforcement crew spotted us, the guilty, lawbreaking hunters!
So the skunk scenario was still very real when we got near my truck. All things were fluid regarding it. I was half-waiting for the dog to jump at the leash toward that skunk no more that 30 yards from all of them, but down a backside of a little hill a few feet. All of them were oblivious to the skunk. Apparently they don’t teach situational awareness at the Barney Fife School of Law Enforcement they went to. The ‘main’ game warden or law enforcement official, I still don’t know who or what he was, started talking to us. Let’s call this man Game Warden Eddie Haskell. I tried to tell them about what craziness might erupt because of the presence of that skunk, but Warden Eddie Haskell had no interest at all in what I was saying. He just tried to herd us in a direction so he could start reading to us from the script in his head. As soon as he started talking that video camera pointed right in my face. I told Warden Eddie Haskell that I did not consent to being filmed. He said something like, “Don’t worry about the camera,” (did I say I was worried???) “just come over here, “ and waved us in to a position like were were all filming a movie together or something and we had to get on our masking tape x’s and he had to get on his, slightly off to the side. Theater indeed!
I had told the officer that I did not consent to being filmed. I said I do not want to be filmed. Warden Eddie Haskell ignored my wishes and my requests and moved along with his narrative and his performance in front of the camera. OK, I thought, you want to shove something down our throats and not listen to a word I have to say? Good, I’m not breaking the law and you have no reason to herd us into a stage type setup so I am going to waste your film. So I looked at the camera and kept talking. I was talking about that skunk and the dog. I did not care if Warden Eddie Haskell was listening to me or not because he already demonstrated that he had no interest in anything I had to say so I am talking to the camera man and telling him things and asking him questions. I am not jumping into an interrogation situation because I was not under arrest, did nothing wrong and was just a guy coming back to his truck. The crew was not earning points with us thus far.
So we showed them we had our guns unloaded, set them down nearby and we handed over hunting licenses. Warden Eddie Haskell handed licenses off to his lackey while Warden Eddie Haskell did the talking. So - he says - he knows that were were target shooting at an incendiary, explosive device….
He KNOWS we were target shooting at an incendiary device, you see. Yes, he says that they heard us shooting at it and they found the device...
OK, one big huge pause here...now this fellow has LIED to me. We were not target shooting at the canister and no one was target shooting or doing any shooting except us and we only shot about a mile away on the other side of the road. We did not see quail or ground squirrels anywhere near the truck. And no one else was even in the area that day. Just us. Warden Eddie Haskell LIED to us. Which can only mean Warden Eddie Haskell has an agenda and is trying to steer us into a place he wants us to be.
Let me ask you, does what he just did have ANYTHING at all to do with me legally hunting, my freedoms, my rights, the law and law enforcement? No. Not a thing. This person is manipulating. I have two very important things to say about this. First of all, like many families, we have several law enforcement officials in our family. My ‘nephew’ is a highly respected Deputy Sheriff in a certain California county. On the job, he leads with his humanity and has his badge as something to fall back on. Granted he is a battle-proven US military warrior, trained in martial arts and a physical beast, but he uses humanity first, not his power or his badge on the job until the humanity fails or is no longer appropriate. This is why my ‘nephew’ is going to be County Sheriff one day like my grandfather was. People love and respect him because he is a human first.
Secondly did you ever wonder where the FBI gets human beings low enough to attempt to betray and set up America-loving patriots and frame them in a scam to ‘kidnap’ a governor? Well, I now know where they get such shallow, self-serving people to do their manipulating...they get guys like Warden Eddie Haskell who stood in front of me and lied to my face. Frankly, if you lie to me, you have just forever forfeited any authority you had or ever will have over me. You are now a selfish, petty tyrant and no longer a public servant. You do not lead with your humanity, you lead with your badge and only your badge. And besides your badge you have nothing. I will play the game, but only because I had no other choice at this stage.
So now because Warden Eddie Haskell LIED, proving that he should not have a badge, I realized anything was possible, he could make up things, he could say whatever he wanted and I would not have a quick, easy or inexpensive easy way out. I did not trust Warden Eddie Haskell just as I do not trust any liars. I did not like being in this situation; I just came to let my hunting partner go hunt quail and now I was going to be on national television with a lying government official dumping whatever he wanted on to my head. I did not like this at all.
I tried to explain where the fuel canister came from but Warden Eddie Haskell wasn’t hearing a word of it. Not a word. He brushed off everything I said. Everything. Warden Eddie Haskell was convinced I was guilty and he was just pressing for a confession. In life I am convinced there are two types of people, know-it-alls and learn-it-alls. The first guy knows everything and he will make sure you hear about how much he knows and how great he is. The second guy is a life-long student. Warden Eddie Haskell already knew everything, he did not need to hear what I had to say about that incendiary device. He knew we shot it, and we were going to get charged with some reckless fire-endangering something, or other. Frankly I knew I could beat this in court by simply showing the judge the RUST all over the edges of ALL the bullet holes but that didn’t help with the present antics of Warden Eddie Haskell.
And then his buddy, the officer with the dog, chimes in something about the shotgun and tells something to Warden Eddie Haskell. Warden Eddie Haskell asks me who’s shotgun this is? I said it is mine, why? Well, who was carrying it? Well, my hunting partner was carrying it. Why? Before he responded I wondered what in the world Officer Lackey was doing HANDLING my gun? I did not remember giving Officer Lackey permission to touch my property. And here he was examining my gun? Well, he found something...and here is where it goes from bad to worse...you see my shotgun had recently been employed as a self-defense tool. To get it ready for this duty, I had taken the shell-limiting rod out of the shotgun for proper buckshot-buckshot-slug-slug-buckshot slug self defense preparedness. Well, when I brought the shotgun on this hunting trip, apparently I had forgotten to put the rod back in the shotgun. Call in the dang Army, this hunter has a shotgun that holds more that three shells!!!!!!! Yes indeed, Warden Eddie Haskell had found an actual crime!!!
Oh, crap, I thought. We hadn’t even noticed the oversight because I had told my hunting partner he could only put three shells in the shotgun and he therefore never even tried more than three...so we had no idea the rod was not in there and that we were therefore in violation of such a huge crime.
OK, fine, write me up, I said. This was not intentional, I said, and I explained to Warden Eddie Haskell but, all together now, Warden Eddie Haskell did not listen to a word I said. He had his man, he had his crime and he was going to make it on to NATIONAL TELEVISION, PRIME TIME, BABY!!!!
Oh, no, he says, we are not going to write you up because you were not in possession of the illegally-configured firearm, the other guy was. So then I go to begging on national television to please give me the citation or death penalty or whatever it is that such a heinous crime deserves and please please please do not give it to my hunting partner. He wasn’t having ANY of it. The other hunter was getting the write up and there was nothing I could say about it to change their minds. And I’m sure he thought he was so pleased to have a man begging him, the absolute star of the show, on national television.
You know when you try to connect with people and work through things together on the human level and not lead with power but with humility, cordiality and kindness? You know you just try to make living and duties and responsibility a little easier by fitting it into the context of common humanity? Well that is the high road. Warden Eddie Haskell was not interested in the high road. Warden Eddie Haskell was interested in the glory road – him the star busting the criminals on national television.
Do you remember I said our family has several family members who are in law enforcement, and that one of them leads with humanity not his badge? Well he is not the only one who does things in his law enforcement job this way, we have another who also leads with humanity and is also rising fast in his department. And that other person in my family who is a great law enforcement human being was my hunting partner that day. He was the one Warden Eddie Haskell was writing up a citation for.
“So,” I finally say, “you’re set on giving him the citation for sure?” Yes, Warden Eddie Haskell responds, he is getting a citation because he was carrying the firearm. Yep, I thought, he is committed to this path. OK then...
“And you are going to give a fellow law enforcement official, a police officer, a citation?” I asked. Warden Eddie Haskell stopped dead and looked at me dumbfounded. “Who is a police officer?” he asked. I pointed at my hunting partner. “He is.”
Warden Eddie Haskell went over and asked my hunting partner if he had a badge. My hunting partner said yes. Warden Eddie Haskell wanted to see it. So my hunting partner pulled it out and showed it to him. Suddenly Warden Eddie Haskell was all Goober and Gomer with my hunting partner. Egg on his face everywhere. “Out of professional courtesy” there would be no citation, of course. And nothing filmed here will be aired on television, of course. But why, he asks, didn’t my partner show him his badge earlier? Well, by now you know the answer to this question, which is obvious, but guys like Warden Eddie Haskell never will understand. Unlike Warden Eddie Haskell, my hunting partner does not lead with his badge.
Lesson 21: If you see a skunk by the truck, go find a place to sit down - by the does, fawns and the quail. And come out after dark when the skunk has left.
Next time: Speaking of skunks...
In the course of chasing after the elusive blacktail buck it just so happened that I also learned where all the quail hide. In fact deer hunters in California probably know better that quail hunters in California where the quail are. I also have stumbled on the cave all the local doves nest at. That one’s staying a secret, however. It is just what we learn by pounding miles and miles of ground. Where are the quail? I’ll throw out a free hint: quail need water too. Second hint: quail really don’t like to fly. Third hint: if you see does and fawns, quail are likely not far away. Where are the does and fawns, you say? Well, the veteran hunters on here already know the answer to this but for the noobies, the does with fawns are exactly where you would be if you were taking care of a little one and had to leave him there by himself while you go get water and a bite to eat from time to time. If I’ve just eliminated a lot of territory, including the high, treacherous stuff with no water, that you no longer have to walk to check for quail on your next quail hunt, you’re welcome.
So a family member knew that I knew where the quail were and asked me if I would take him quail hunting. Sure, love to. This story, therefore is NOT exactly about blacktail hunting, but about hunting quail in blacktail territory. If it violates you by presenting content unrelated to the overall title of this series of stories since the following is not directly about blacktail hunting and is therefore ‘false advertising,’ I apologize. I will give you a full refund. Please leave bank account information in the Comments section. But, really, who does not want to hear a story about the Wild Justice television crew showing up on a guy’s hunt? I see there is only one hand raised. My own.
The Wild, Wild Justice
We hunted quail in three or four different spots that day because the quail have more than one community. At our first location as soon as we got out of the truck we saw some trash off the road which included a can and an interchangeable roundish ‘fuel’ canister for camp stoves. You know what I’m talking about, they are made by Coleman, they say Coleman in big letters, are green with some silver on, and you can get them at sporting goods stores or maybe even Target or Walmart. And you connect them to your stove, use them and swap them out with the next one. They don’t have a lot of fuel, they are small, not like a gallon can. Well we picked both items up and threw them in the back of the truck in the spirit of ‘leave the woods cleaner than you found it.’ Before we chucked it in however, we examined it. Sure enough there were bullet holes in it. A close look revealed that there was rust on the edges of those holes meaning it had been there awhile.
Near the end of the day we were going to hunt in a big circle. That is, we parked at, say, a 5 o’clock position, then hunted counter-clockwise and would be coming back to the truck from the 7 and then 6 clock position. We would cover between 1.5 and 2.5 miles. I let my hunting partner use my shotgun because he did not have one yet. Part of this was to see if he wanted the same shotgun that I had. Myself, I brought a .22 in an effort to stave off total world domination by the ground squirrel. My partner was doing well on the shotgun, knocking the quail down like a pro. I was kicking sand up around ground squirrels everywhere. Having a great time.
Then tit was getting to be about that time and we were at the 9 o’clock or 8 o’clock position and I see there is some activity at the truck. My first thought was I hope these idiots aren’t thinking they will see us before we see them...we are hunters for heaven’s sake, we’re going to see you first. What I was looking at was two Game Warden / Department of Fish and Game – type vehicles parked near my truck and walking over to it. Well, we thought, this looks interesting, let’s just lay low here and see what happens. So we eased back a bit into cover. We pulled out the binoculars and watched just in time to see that there was a cameraman with a big expensive video camera on his shoulder who was filming my truck and then walked right up to the bed and was filming INSIDE my truck bed. OK, who does this jackass think he is, I thought. How would he like me filming inside his personal vehicle? Then my hunting partner says, “Remember that fuel canister we threw in the back of your truck? I bet he’s filming that.” And he was right. That is exactly what this guy was filming. I knew right away one could draw the wrong conclusion from that and I did not want to necessarily be accused of something with a camera on site. So we understood the gig – it’s either a department training-video situation or it is the Wild Justice television show. Either way, we both said, let’s just hang here and let them leave. We sat down, got comfortable and enjoyed the show. They had no idea we were watching them. Amateurs.
After about 30 minutes we were getting toward sundown and last light, so we figured, well, were not hunting illegally, let’s just get down there, get it over with and get headed toward home. Plus we were not really wanting to walk out in the dark. So off we went. We had been watching them from about 300 yards away. They didn’t see us at 300 or 200 or 100 or even 50. And then our last little jaunt presented the strangest of situations...we were coming up a last little hill by the truck when there on the trail about 30 yards away to the side is a skunk! I can see the people and their trucks, they do not see us, I can see the skunk just off to the side from where they are. Then I see their dog...it is a German Shepherd on a leash. (Oh great…) This was like theater – what’s going to happen if that dog smells that skunk? What’s going to happen if that skunk is rabid and comes our direction? Things could get very wild here on Wild Justice. As I was doing the calculus with all the variables, the intrepid law enforcement crew spotted us, the guilty, lawbreaking hunters!
So the skunk scenario was still very real when we got near my truck. All things were fluid regarding it. I was half-waiting for the dog to jump at the leash toward that skunk no more that 30 yards from all of them, but down a backside of a little hill a few feet. All of them were oblivious to the skunk. Apparently they don’t teach situational awareness at the Barney Fife School of Law Enforcement they went to. The ‘main’ game warden or law enforcement official, I still don’t know who or what he was, started talking to us. Let’s call this man Game Warden Eddie Haskell. I tried to tell them about what craziness might erupt because of the presence of that skunk, but Warden Eddie Haskell had no interest at all in what I was saying. He just tried to herd us in a direction so he could start reading to us from the script in his head. As soon as he started talking that video camera pointed right in my face. I told Warden Eddie Haskell that I did not consent to being filmed. He said something like, “Don’t worry about the camera,” (did I say I was worried???) “just come over here, “ and waved us in to a position like were were all filming a movie together or something and we had to get on our masking tape x’s and he had to get on his, slightly off to the side. Theater indeed!
I had told the officer that I did not consent to being filmed. I said I do not want to be filmed. Warden Eddie Haskell ignored my wishes and my requests and moved along with his narrative and his performance in front of the camera. OK, I thought, you want to shove something down our throats and not listen to a word I have to say? Good, I’m not breaking the law and you have no reason to herd us into a stage type setup so I am going to waste your film. So I looked at the camera and kept talking. I was talking about that skunk and the dog. I did not care if Warden Eddie Haskell was listening to me or not because he already demonstrated that he had no interest in anything I had to say so I am talking to the camera man and telling him things and asking him questions. I am not jumping into an interrogation situation because I was not under arrest, did nothing wrong and was just a guy coming back to his truck. The crew was not earning points with us thus far.
So we showed them we had our guns unloaded, set them down nearby and we handed over hunting licenses. Warden Eddie Haskell handed licenses off to his lackey while Warden Eddie Haskell did the talking. So - he says - he knows that were were target shooting at an incendiary, explosive device….
He KNOWS we were target shooting at an incendiary device, you see. Yes, he says that they heard us shooting at it and they found the device...
OK, one big huge pause here...now this fellow has LIED to me. We were not target shooting at the canister and no one was target shooting or doing any shooting except us and we only shot about a mile away on the other side of the road. We did not see quail or ground squirrels anywhere near the truck. And no one else was even in the area that day. Just us. Warden Eddie Haskell LIED to us. Which can only mean Warden Eddie Haskell has an agenda and is trying to steer us into a place he wants us to be.
Let me ask you, does what he just did have ANYTHING at all to do with me legally hunting, my freedoms, my rights, the law and law enforcement? No. Not a thing. This person is manipulating. I have two very important things to say about this. First of all, like many families, we have several law enforcement officials in our family. My ‘nephew’ is a highly respected Deputy Sheriff in a certain California county. On the job, he leads with his humanity and has his badge as something to fall back on. Granted he is a battle-proven US military warrior, trained in martial arts and a physical beast, but he uses humanity first, not his power or his badge on the job until the humanity fails or is no longer appropriate. This is why my ‘nephew’ is going to be County Sheriff one day like my grandfather was. People love and respect him because he is a human first.
Secondly did you ever wonder where the FBI gets human beings low enough to attempt to betray and set up America-loving patriots and frame them in a scam to ‘kidnap’ a governor? Well, I now know where they get such shallow, self-serving people to do their manipulating...they get guys like Warden Eddie Haskell who stood in front of me and lied to my face. Frankly, if you lie to me, you have just forever forfeited any authority you had or ever will have over me. You are now a selfish, petty tyrant and no longer a public servant. You do not lead with your humanity, you lead with your badge and only your badge. And besides your badge you have nothing. I will play the game, but only because I had no other choice at this stage.
So now because Warden Eddie Haskell LIED, proving that he should not have a badge, I realized anything was possible, he could make up things, he could say whatever he wanted and I would not have a quick, easy or inexpensive easy way out. I did not trust Warden Eddie Haskell just as I do not trust any liars. I did not like being in this situation; I just came to let my hunting partner go hunt quail and now I was going to be on national television with a lying government official dumping whatever he wanted on to my head. I did not like this at all.
I tried to explain where the fuel canister came from but Warden Eddie Haskell wasn’t hearing a word of it. Not a word. He brushed off everything I said. Everything. Warden Eddie Haskell was convinced I was guilty and he was just pressing for a confession. In life I am convinced there are two types of people, know-it-alls and learn-it-alls. The first guy knows everything and he will make sure you hear about how much he knows and how great he is. The second guy is a life-long student. Warden Eddie Haskell already knew everything, he did not need to hear what I had to say about that incendiary device. He knew we shot it, and we were going to get charged with some reckless fire-endangering something, or other. Frankly I knew I could beat this in court by simply showing the judge the RUST all over the edges of ALL the bullet holes but that didn’t help with the present antics of Warden Eddie Haskell.
And then his buddy, the officer with the dog, chimes in something about the shotgun and tells something to Warden Eddie Haskell. Warden Eddie Haskell asks me who’s shotgun this is? I said it is mine, why? Well, who was carrying it? Well, my hunting partner was carrying it. Why? Before he responded I wondered what in the world Officer Lackey was doing HANDLING my gun? I did not remember giving Officer Lackey permission to touch my property. And here he was examining my gun? Well, he found something...and here is where it goes from bad to worse...you see my shotgun had recently been employed as a self-defense tool. To get it ready for this duty, I had taken the shell-limiting rod out of the shotgun for proper buckshot-buckshot-slug-slug-buckshot slug self defense preparedness. Well, when I brought the shotgun on this hunting trip, apparently I had forgotten to put the rod back in the shotgun. Call in the dang Army, this hunter has a shotgun that holds more that three shells!!!!!!! Yes indeed, Warden Eddie Haskell had found an actual crime!!!
Oh, crap, I thought. We hadn’t even noticed the oversight because I had told my hunting partner he could only put three shells in the shotgun and he therefore never even tried more than three...so we had no idea the rod was not in there and that we were therefore in violation of such a huge crime.
OK, fine, write me up, I said. This was not intentional, I said, and I explained to Warden Eddie Haskell but, all together now, Warden Eddie Haskell did not listen to a word I said. He had his man, he had his crime and he was going to make it on to NATIONAL TELEVISION, PRIME TIME, BABY!!!!
Oh, no, he says, we are not going to write you up because you were not in possession of the illegally-configured firearm, the other guy was. So then I go to begging on national television to please give me the citation or death penalty or whatever it is that such a heinous crime deserves and please please please do not give it to my hunting partner. He wasn’t having ANY of it. The other hunter was getting the write up and there was nothing I could say about it to change their minds. And I’m sure he thought he was so pleased to have a man begging him, the absolute star of the show, on national television.
You know when you try to connect with people and work through things together on the human level and not lead with power but with humility, cordiality and kindness? You know you just try to make living and duties and responsibility a little easier by fitting it into the context of common humanity? Well that is the high road. Warden Eddie Haskell was not interested in the high road. Warden Eddie Haskell was interested in the glory road – him the star busting the criminals on national television.
Do you remember I said our family has several family members who are in law enforcement, and that one of them leads with humanity not his badge? Well he is not the only one who does things in his law enforcement job this way, we have another who also leads with humanity and is also rising fast in his department. And that other person in my family who is a great law enforcement human being was my hunting partner that day. He was the one Warden Eddie Haskell was writing up a citation for.
“So,” I finally say, “you’re set on giving him the citation for sure?” Yes, Warden Eddie Haskell responds, he is getting a citation because he was carrying the firearm. Yep, I thought, he is committed to this path. OK then...
“And you are going to give a fellow law enforcement official, a police officer, a citation?” I asked. Warden Eddie Haskell stopped dead and looked at me dumbfounded. “Who is a police officer?” he asked. I pointed at my hunting partner. “He is.”
Warden Eddie Haskell went over and asked my hunting partner if he had a badge. My hunting partner said yes. Warden Eddie Haskell wanted to see it. So my hunting partner pulled it out and showed it to him. Suddenly Warden Eddie Haskell was all Goober and Gomer with my hunting partner. Egg on his face everywhere. “Out of professional courtesy” there would be no citation, of course. And nothing filmed here will be aired on television, of course. But why, he asks, didn’t my partner show him his badge earlier? Well, by now you know the answer to this question, which is obvious, but guys like Warden Eddie Haskell never will understand. Unlike Warden Eddie Haskell, my hunting partner does not lead with his badge.
Lesson 21: If you see a skunk by the truck, go find a place to sit down - by the does, fawns and the quail. And come out after dark when the skunk has left.
Next time: Speaking of skunks...
BlackFail 11
I like skunks. I think they’re cute little fellas, especially the younger ones. But I do not like what happens when a skunk shows up. Because of the fact that a skunk’s retreating position is indistinguishable from his firing position, and the fact that he has range and accuracy, not many good things can happen if a skunk shows up and you, the human, can not get away. I mean you can’t tell if he is turning to leave or turning to fire, right?
I’m even used to having dogs get hammered by them. We’ve had three big dogs and all three took at least three or four sprays to the face before they stopped getting F’s from Professor Skunk’s difficult and unconventional class. No matter how much or what method you try to get the smell off the dog, it never works completely so sometimes the house just smelled like skunk for a few days, no big deal.
I mean I will try to get away from a skunk. If I see one I turn and run, no questions asked. No matter what. You win, buddy, this turf is all yours. But while deer hunting I haven’t always been in a position where turning and running was an option. It was simply down to me, or…
Don’t Spray Me, Bro
To get some context I need to first relay some whitetail deer hunting episodes. Yes I know this part is not blacktail hunting related, but neither was me petting the bison and a few other things. Fact is, I am writing because I cannot be out hunting blacktail deer and you are reading because you cannot be out hunting blacktail deer so we’re all stuck here. And this one’s a pretty good story, so here we go…
So whitetail hunting happens in the thick woods near fields. One method people use is to walk down a trail or into the woods really slow and really quietly. And by really slow I mean ‘stopped’ with very occasional movement. My dad used to tell us, “Take one step, rest 10.” But in reality it is take one step, rest 5 or 10 minutes. Note: this is not possible while hunting blacktail in California Zone A. Because there is nothing on this earth that is as dry and brittle and noisy as an oak leaf in California in August. There is no sneaking over the cornflakes that are those leaves. Remember the old Indian saying? “A leaf fall in the woods. The eagle saw it, the bear smelled it and the deer heard it.” You might as well announce your arrival to the deer with a bugle instead of trying to walk across a patch of oaks leaves on a deer trail here in California. However not every place is so dry. In Wisconsin it always rained this morning or a few days ago. And in late November (deer hunting season) the rain becomes snow. So either the ground is not horribly dry or it is snow-covered. It is, therefore considerably easier to slow-walk the woods than it is out here.
On one day I was slow-walking a peninsula of woods that had cornfields on either side and a small hill in the middle. The woods was thick, but the ground did not have California cornflakes, so you could slow-walk it. It took me all morning to go about 100 yards. Carefully. No hurry. Any movements, which were few, were very slow, as if a human were imitating a slow-motion scene. Eyes were scanning everywhere. The next footstep was carefully planned in advance, with note how to balance after the step was taken. The entire process was summed up nicely by Elmer Fudd when he said, “Be vewy, vewy quiet.”
I was quiet. But this time I was too quiet. In my path had been a fallen log about 16 inches in diameter. I planned out my approach to the tree and carefully found the best path and method to get my left leg over the log with as little commotion as possible. My left foot first came to rest on top of the log. Five minutes later my left leg gets planted on the ground on the other side of the log. I am straddling the log, which almost comes up to my crotch, one leg on this side, one leg on that side, log in the middle. After about 5 minutes I began planning on how to get my right foot to come to rest on top of the log so I can eventually have both my legs on the other side of the log.
I am looking and planning when all of a sudden I see white-black, white-black, white-black in a blur of movement. What is this movement, you ask? Well, this movement is of a pretty skunk who has just awakened from his nap, taken a few steps out from his hidey-hole into the world, and is shaking his fur, like a dog who just got out of the water. Shaking himself awake, would not be a wrong description. Where is this movement, you ask? Well, it just so happens that the skunk who is just waking up from his beauty sleep is doing so right next to my left foot, between my legs. You know, those legs with a log between them so that I cannot escape.
I have a skunk three inches from my boot. I cannot move without getting busted. He is a legit animal with senses, he is not stupid. He is going to figure out in when he gets the cobwebs out in very short order that I am not part of the environment he lives in. Then I will be hosed, literally. So I had to make a very quick decision, him or me. I like skunks but I’m not going to let one spray me. I do not like what happens when a skunk shows up. And I still don’t like that I had to pull that trigger and get out of there very rapidly. The woods smelled like skunk for a week.
But that was not the only skunk I encountered. The next was when I was still-walking once again up a certain trail toward the crest of a hill in the woods. I was silent. Never quieter. Not a sound because the ground was generally moist. I felt primitive because it was like I could have snuck up on anything. Nothing knew I was there. Which is part of the problem…
I am on a trail that is arrow-straight. I am nearing the top. The crest of this little hill is about 10 feet in front of me. I am scanning everywhere for deer. Then some movement right in front of me captures my attention. My saucer-sized eyes see that a skunk has crested that hill, on the same trail I am only going south, and is heading down the downhill side, my side, in a going-about-my-business trot. In no time at all he is 5 feet down the trail on my side of the hill. That means there is 5 feet between he and I. At about that moment he sees that I am not something he is used to. There was no actual stopping. He simply flipped north and south and once again I was left with only bad choices. No way could I get out of his firing range quickly enough. I was his, dead to rights. I pulled up my .35 Rem with tipped off scope, and got him in my iron sights instantly. That had been the deer rifle my dad had got me for my first hunt when I was 12. I bagged a deer at 12 and every year thereafter with that gun and it just fit naturally. I almost don’t have to aim it, I pull it up and there it is, right on target. I bet you have a gun like that, the one that just fits perfectly and is an extension of your body.
Well poor Mr. Skunk was in those iron sights before he could get his own safety off. But I will tell you what – that tail was high and mighty, and all the business underneath it was pointed directly at me. As much as I would have liked, there really was no time for discussion. Once again I had to squeeze. That still bothers me too.
With skunks and whitetails out of the way, let us turn our attention to skunks and blacktails.
You know, I said I was trying to safely hunt more, right? You remember, my wife did not want to have the search and rescue team find me in a pile of mush at the bottom of a cliff I shouldn’t have messed with and all, right? So I really did change a lot about the way I hunt. I don’t stay entirely away from vertical, but if I do I take routes that you could take a bus load of kids on a field trip onto. Well, usually. Or, sometimes. Or, I have; I have taken those nice routes. Those nice and unchallenging and easy routes. The ones a buck would never take….well I try to behave, how’s that?
And in one case when I was behaving I had a brilliant idea. It was August. It was bone dry. It was just shy of a billion degrees and by the end of the day the heat was oppressive. I realized that if I was that hot and thirsty, how much more hot and thirsty were the deer? So I cut across some fields so that I can get to the river about ½ mile from where I want to hunt. Then with boots and all I walk right into the river. It goes up past my knees. It feels amazingly good. I can’t believe I had never thought of this before...I am going to silently walk right down the middle of this river, upstream, and be there waiting when those parched deer get to the riverbank for that drink they’ve been thinking about all afternoon. It was perfect in every way.
So I had about an hour and a half before sundown. Now that I myself was pleasantly cooled, the late afternoon became bearable and beautiful. You make zero noise slowly walking in water. Nothing would hear me coming. Nothing would expect to see me in the river so wouldn’t be looking. I slowly moved up river with the cooling water flowing past me at a steady rate. It was wonderful.
Then I saw one of the coolest things I’d ever seen. I have seen a lot of animals in California, I’ve seen a golden eagle fend off the attack of a territorial hawk by flipping over on it’s back mid-air, fight off the hawk with it’s feet, then flip back to an upright position and continue on flying. I’ve seen bald eagles dive for trout in tiny mountain streams. I’ve seen bears and mountain lions in these dang mountains. I’ve seen badgers in California, which sort of ticked me off because I assumed Wisconsin had exclusive and proprietary rights to those animals. I had a golden eagle attack me...well, he misinterpreted my size when I was on this high, barren hillside, he circled and then came down to get me with his talons spread. A simple raise of my rifle between him and I when he was about 9 feet away ended the mystery for him. I was much bigger than he thought, so he moved on. I was sitting in full cammo overlooking this shrub hillside once and saw a hawk post up in an uphill tree to overlook the same area. He was about 200 yards away. I happened to move my foot. Like about an inch, which scraped the ground. Instantly I watched the hawk push off from his limb and glide absolutely and directly toward the sound I had just made. He never flapped a wing, just silently sailed directly at me. Once again, raising my rifle and putting it between us solved the mystery for him too.
But in this river I was moving quietly when off the right riverbank out pops this rabbit. He slips right into the water, ears back, and expertly swims about 2/3 of the way across the river. He flips on a dime, swims the length back swiftly and directly. He hops out of the water, gives himself a complete full-body shake to get the water off, five quick shakes took about a half-second total, and disappears back into the brush. It was so cool. I didn’t even know a rabbit could swim. But these are California rabbits. They can probably surf. He had no inefficient movements, everything was precise, direct and smooth.
Well soon after this I came to the sweet spot. There was a nice big bend in the river where the trees opened up and I could see a little distance. In other words, I could see a deer who was coming down to drink. Since there was a bend in the river, the inside bank was deeper than at other places. So deep that I had to get over to the right bank in order to keep walking up the river. It was still over my knees, but workable. It all was perfect because the angle of view I was gaining by getting on that right side of the river coincided perfectly with how the woods was opening up. I was sure I was going to see a nice buck any moment.
Right them I heard something to my right. I looked but did not see anything on the riverbank. Then I tilted my head a little bit and could see that there was a shelf under the riverbank...but above the waterline. There was a little Town of Bedrock rock cave in there and who did I discover lived there? Well, this was Mr. Fred Flintstone Skunk. Mr. Fred Flintstone Skunk was four feet away from me. The noise I had heard was him shaking awake. I was in water over my knees, there was no way I would be hurrying away in any direction. Mr. Fred Flintstone Skunk spun his body...there was nowhere for him to be retreating to, because there was nowhere for him to go. Or me. So he was not turning to flee.
I felt bad but I had to quickly draw my .44 mag or I was going to get sprayed right there and then. I knew it would ruin my perfect setup and that as soon as I pulled the trigger I would be done hunting for the day. I was terribly disappointed but I’m just not going to let a little skunk, as cute as they are, get me in his cross hairs and pull his trigger. He got to “Yubba-dubba,” but my .44 chimed in early and beat him to the ‘Do.’
Sorry little buddy. You didn’t do anything wrong.
Lesson 22: Stop taking hunting advice from Elmer Fudd
Lesson 23: Sometimes, no matter what, it does come down to you, or it
Next time: California Dreaming (and...only a few more stories left.)
I like skunks. I think they’re cute little fellas, especially the younger ones. But I do not like what happens when a skunk shows up. Because of the fact that a skunk’s retreating position is indistinguishable from his firing position, and the fact that he has range and accuracy, not many good things can happen if a skunk shows up and you, the human, can not get away. I mean you can’t tell if he is turning to leave or turning to fire, right?
I’m even used to having dogs get hammered by them. We’ve had three big dogs and all three took at least three or four sprays to the face before they stopped getting F’s from Professor Skunk’s difficult and unconventional class. No matter how much or what method you try to get the smell off the dog, it never works completely so sometimes the house just smelled like skunk for a few days, no big deal.
I mean I will try to get away from a skunk. If I see one I turn and run, no questions asked. No matter what. You win, buddy, this turf is all yours. But while deer hunting I haven’t always been in a position where turning and running was an option. It was simply down to me, or…
Don’t Spray Me, Bro
To get some context I need to first relay some whitetail deer hunting episodes. Yes I know this part is not blacktail hunting related, but neither was me petting the bison and a few other things. Fact is, I am writing because I cannot be out hunting blacktail deer and you are reading because you cannot be out hunting blacktail deer so we’re all stuck here. And this one’s a pretty good story, so here we go…
So whitetail hunting happens in the thick woods near fields. One method people use is to walk down a trail or into the woods really slow and really quietly. And by really slow I mean ‘stopped’ with very occasional movement. My dad used to tell us, “Take one step, rest 10.” But in reality it is take one step, rest 5 or 10 minutes. Note: this is not possible while hunting blacktail in California Zone A. Because there is nothing on this earth that is as dry and brittle and noisy as an oak leaf in California in August. There is no sneaking over the cornflakes that are those leaves. Remember the old Indian saying? “A leaf fall in the woods. The eagle saw it, the bear smelled it and the deer heard it.” You might as well announce your arrival to the deer with a bugle instead of trying to walk across a patch of oaks leaves on a deer trail here in California. However not every place is so dry. In Wisconsin it always rained this morning or a few days ago. And in late November (deer hunting season) the rain becomes snow. So either the ground is not horribly dry or it is snow-covered. It is, therefore considerably easier to slow-walk the woods than it is out here.
On one day I was slow-walking a peninsula of woods that had cornfields on either side and a small hill in the middle. The woods was thick, but the ground did not have California cornflakes, so you could slow-walk it. It took me all morning to go about 100 yards. Carefully. No hurry. Any movements, which were few, were very slow, as if a human were imitating a slow-motion scene. Eyes were scanning everywhere. The next footstep was carefully planned in advance, with note how to balance after the step was taken. The entire process was summed up nicely by Elmer Fudd when he said, “Be vewy, vewy quiet.”
I was quiet. But this time I was too quiet. In my path had been a fallen log about 16 inches in diameter. I planned out my approach to the tree and carefully found the best path and method to get my left leg over the log with as little commotion as possible. My left foot first came to rest on top of the log. Five minutes later my left leg gets planted on the ground on the other side of the log. I am straddling the log, which almost comes up to my crotch, one leg on this side, one leg on that side, log in the middle. After about 5 minutes I began planning on how to get my right foot to come to rest on top of the log so I can eventually have both my legs on the other side of the log.
I am looking and planning when all of a sudden I see white-black, white-black, white-black in a blur of movement. What is this movement, you ask? Well, this movement is of a pretty skunk who has just awakened from his nap, taken a few steps out from his hidey-hole into the world, and is shaking his fur, like a dog who just got out of the water. Shaking himself awake, would not be a wrong description. Where is this movement, you ask? Well, it just so happens that the skunk who is just waking up from his beauty sleep is doing so right next to my left foot, between my legs. You know, those legs with a log between them so that I cannot escape.
I have a skunk three inches from my boot. I cannot move without getting busted. He is a legit animal with senses, he is not stupid. He is going to figure out in when he gets the cobwebs out in very short order that I am not part of the environment he lives in. Then I will be hosed, literally. So I had to make a very quick decision, him or me. I like skunks but I’m not going to let one spray me. I do not like what happens when a skunk shows up. And I still don’t like that I had to pull that trigger and get out of there very rapidly. The woods smelled like skunk for a week.
But that was not the only skunk I encountered. The next was when I was still-walking once again up a certain trail toward the crest of a hill in the woods. I was silent. Never quieter. Not a sound because the ground was generally moist. I felt primitive because it was like I could have snuck up on anything. Nothing knew I was there. Which is part of the problem…
I am on a trail that is arrow-straight. I am nearing the top. The crest of this little hill is about 10 feet in front of me. I am scanning everywhere for deer. Then some movement right in front of me captures my attention. My saucer-sized eyes see that a skunk has crested that hill, on the same trail I am only going south, and is heading down the downhill side, my side, in a going-about-my-business trot. In no time at all he is 5 feet down the trail on my side of the hill. That means there is 5 feet between he and I. At about that moment he sees that I am not something he is used to. There was no actual stopping. He simply flipped north and south and once again I was left with only bad choices. No way could I get out of his firing range quickly enough. I was his, dead to rights. I pulled up my .35 Rem with tipped off scope, and got him in my iron sights instantly. That had been the deer rifle my dad had got me for my first hunt when I was 12. I bagged a deer at 12 and every year thereafter with that gun and it just fit naturally. I almost don’t have to aim it, I pull it up and there it is, right on target. I bet you have a gun like that, the one that just fits perfectly and is an extension of your body.
Well poor Mr. Skunk was in those iron sights before he could get his own safety off. But I will tell you what – that tail was high and mighty, and all the business underneath it was pointed directly at me. As much as I would have liked, there really was no time for discussion. Once again I had to squeeze. That still bothers me too.
With skunks and whitetails out of the way, let us turn our attention to skunks and blacktails.
You know, I said I was trying to safely hunt more, right? You remember, my wife did not want to have the search and rescue team find me in a pile of mush at the bottom of a cliff I shouldn’t have messed with and all, right? So I really did change a lot about the way I hunt. I don’t stay entirely away from vertical, but if I do I take routes that you could take a bus load of kids on a field trip onto. Well, usually. Or, sometimes. Or, I have; I have taken those nice routes. Those nice and unchallenging and easy routes. The ones a buck would never take….well I try to behave, how’s that?
And in one case when I was behaving I had a brilliant idea. It was August. It was bone dry. It was just shy of a billion degrees and by the end of the day the heat was oppressive. I realized that if I was that hot and thirsty, how much more hot and thirsty were the deer? So I cut across some fields so that I can get to the river about ½ mile from where I want to hunt. Then with boots and all I walk right into the river. It goes up past my knees. It feels amazingly good. I can’t believe I had never thought of this before...I am going to silently walk right down the middle of this river, upstream, and be there waiting when those parched deer get to the riverbank for that drink they’ve been thinking about all afternoon. It was perfect in every way.
So I had about an hour and a half before sundown. Now that I myself was pleasantly cooled, the late afternoon became bearable and beautiful. You make zero noise slowly walking in water. Nothing would hear me coming. Nothing would expect to see me in the river so wouldn’t be looking. I slowly moved up river with the cooling water flowing past me at a steady rate. It was wonderful.
Then I saw one of the coolest things I’d ever seen. I have seen a lot of animals in California, I’ve seen a golden eagle fend off the attack of a territorial hawk by flipping over on it’s back mid-air, fight off the hawk with it’s feet, then flip back to an upright position and continue on flying. I’ve seen bald eagles dive for trout in tiny mountain streams. I’ve seen bears and mountain lions in these dang mountains. I’ve seen badgers in California, which sort of ticked me off because I assumed Wisconsin had exclusive and proprietary rights to those animals. I had a golden eagle attack me...well, he misinterpreted my size when I was on this high, barren hillside, he circled and then came down to get me with his talons spread. A simple raise of my rifle between him and I when he was about 9 feet away ended the mystery for him. I was much bigger than he thought, so he moved on. I was sitting in full cammo overlooking this shrub hillside once and saw a hawk post up in an uphill tree to overlook the same area. He was about 200 yards away. I happened to move my foot. Like about an inch, which scraped the ground. Instantly I watched the hawk push off from his limb and glide absolutely and directly toward the sound I had just made. He never flapped a wing, just silently sailed directly at me. Once again, raising my rifle and putting it between us solved the mystery for him too.
But in this river I was moving quietly when off the right riverbank out pops this rabbit. He slips right into the water, ears back, and expertly swims about 2/3 of the way across the river. He flips on a dime, swims the length back swiftly and directly. He hops out of the water, gives himself a complete full-body shake to get the water off, five quick shakes took about a half-second total, and disappears back into the brush. It was so cool. I didn’t even know a rabbit could swim. But these are California rabbits. They can probably surf. He had no inefficient movements, everything was precise, direct and smooth.
Well soon after this I came to the sweet spot. There was a nice big bend in the river where the trees opened up and I could see a little distance. In other words, I could see a deer who was coming down to drink. Since there was a bend in the river, the inside bank was deeper than at other places. So deep that I had to get over to the right bank in order to keep walking up the river. It was still over my knees, but workable. It all was perfect because the angle of view I was gaining by getting on that right side of the river coincided perfectly with how the woods was opening up. I was sure I was going to see a nice buck any moment.
Right them I heard something to my right. I looked but did not see anything on the riverbank. Then I tilted my head a little bit and could see that there was a shelf under the riverbank...but above the waterline. There was a little Town of Bedrock rock cave in there and who did I discover lived there? Well, this was Mr. Fred Flintstone Skunk. Mr. Fred Flintstone Skunk was four feet away from me. The noise I had heard was him shaking awake. I was in water over my knees, there was no way I would be hurrying away in any direction. Mr. Fred Flintstone Skunk spun his body...there was nowhere for him to be retreating to, because there was nowhere for him to go. Or me. So he was not turning to flee.
I felt bad but I had to quickly draw my .44 mag or I was going to get sprayed right there and then. I knew it would ruin my perfect setup and that as soon as I pulled the trigger I would be done hunting for the day. I was terribly disappointed but I’m just not going to let a little skunk, as cute as they are, get me in his cross hairs and pull his trigger. He got to “Yubba-dubba,” but my .44 chimed in early and beat him to the ‘Do.’
Sorry little buddy. You didn’t do anything wrong.
Lesson 22: Stop taking hunting advice from Elmer Fudd
Lesson 23: Sometimes, no matter what, it does come down to you, or it
Next time: California Dreaming (and...only a few more stories left.)
BlackFail 12
Ever since I was young if I wasn’t hunting, oftentimes I would be dreaming of hunting. Maybe that’s why I’ve got myself into so many predicaments – I sit and dream about what could happen, what might happen, what if I do this or go there or try this, etc. and then I go try it. Maybe that’s how we all go about it. Maybe we all dream it first before we do it.
Regardless, many of my hunting dreams have happened here in California. It is a fact that some of the the things I’ve experienced would never have happened back home because they don’t have these dang mountains back home. Here are a few of those memorable items.
California Dreaming
His name was Jim. He’d been divorced twice because he ‘hunted too much’. I met him hunting. I knew the moment I met him he was no amateur because of where I met him. I was two ridges and two valleys from the road when he came hiking down a side hill toward me. We chatted briefly. I have always found it helpful to explain some general things of my intentions to others I meet in the field and to get an idea of what they are doing purely for safety’s sake. Knowing a human might be one direction is just good for everyone in the field to keep in mind. He was going to go to a third ridge and hunt the opposite valley. I told him I was gong back up to ridge number 1 and hunt east of where we both were. Where he was going was simply a nasty place. And to even get where we both stood was not for the casual hunter. It was vertical and severe. So I knew I was with an expert of sorts right then because he dared come out here where only experts (him) and fools (me) dared go. Before he left he said, “Hey, if I get one do you think you could come and help me drag it out?” I said sure, I would do that. Because I knew dragging out would be up and down and up and down, up and down. All of it steep. And the last hill alone was a 600 foot gain in elevation. He would need help.
So I got back on top of ridge number 1, walked it east and hunted the canyons down both side of this ridge. Every once in awhile I would look over and see Jim way on the other side of the larger canyon which separated us. He was on that ridge facing north so all I saw was his back. He was small but I could make him out easily with the naked eye. Eventually I worked my way back to the west. Then as I was looking down into the trees of one of the canyons between us, I saw a deer. The deer was eating from the oak trees and it’s head was obscured by branches so I could not tell if it was a buck. Just then I heard Jim’s rifle crack. I could tell by the sound that it was pointing away from me, so he was shooting north. Then I heard a second shot and heard a dull thud which means that shot hit a body. I took my eyes off my deer to see if I could see anything. I saw that Jim was moving around. My attention went back to the deer in my scope. Still no horns. Boy, this was a big deer though, I thought. Given the kind of deer that hang out up there, I was pretty sure it was a buck. But you can’t take the safety off until you see forks so I could not do anything but wait for the deer to move a little to it’s right or left.
Just them I heard a voice calling from the other side of the valley, “Hey. I got a buck. Are you going to help me?” Jim yelled. He had walked over to the part of his little ridge that was absolutely closest to me to make his plea. Well, I had a nice deer in my own sights and if I yelled a response to Jim, this deer would be gone. So I tried to wave and point at what I was looking at. I don’t think Jim understood my motions, so he yells the same thing again. I wave exaggeratedly and pointed with emphasis to the deer below that I was looking at. Jim still didn’t understand and then he yelled a little more desperately, “Are you going to help me or not?” OK, Jim, if I reply to you the way you want me to reply I am going to miss out on my own deer here. But, I finally conceded, I’ll respond to you and we’ll get your deer out of the mountains. It’s your day, not mine. I yelled back across the canyons that yes, I will help him. I looked back down, my deer was gone. It was all a strange spot to find oneself in. I wanted my deer, but I guess there was no way to communicate that with him so I had to surrender the chance.
I hike down my hill over another ridge, then over to Jim’s ridge. By the time I got there his buck was field dressed and ready to go. I believe it was a nice 3x3, a good healthy deer and a nice showing for Jim’s efforts. We both pulled his deer down, then worked together to get it going uphill which was quite difficult. So the rest of the afternoon was spent in laboring to get Jim’s deer over that final ridge and then 400 vertical feet down to the road.
But there was not just effort going on. Jim, apparently grateful for my help, began giving me tips about how to hunt in the mountains, and teaching me many of his California blacktail hunting secrets. He told me things I never would have thought of on my own. “When you hike up a mountain and are getting close to the top, right before you get to the top, stop and rest. You want to catch your breath and be steady before going over in case there is something right on the other side. If you are breathing heavy, your aim will not be steady.” That was the first lesson. Then, “And never stay silhouetted on the top. Get right over and drop some elevation so the sky is not at your back.” Jim was also the one who told me that bucks go high with hunting pressure. “They head for the hills and stay there.”
We tugged and pulled and lifted and strained and fell and slipped and sweated and kept the deer moving along. The whole time Jim was teaching me. He shared many, many things with me. Great ideas. Sound advise. True hunting wisdom. Often, fully exhausted from the strain, we would stop and rest. He stood there on a side hill and told me blacktail hunting things. What a classroom. What a teacher.
One of the most interesting things he taught me was how to hunt a canyon alone from the top. He said to walk down one finger of the canyon as far as you can so that you are as close to the bottom or beginning of the canyon as you can be. Make sure you can still see the saddle at the top of the canyon, right there at where the canyon meets the ridge where a deer might come out if he were to leave the canyon and flee to the top of the mountain and over the other side. Then roll as big of a rock as you can find, one rock or two, down the hill toward the bottom or beginning of the canyon. Of course this is going to make all kinds of racket. By the time it hits the tree line, it will be moving like a freight train and will make a huge crash when it hits something. No deer is going to stay in that area with that kind of noise. And you have just removed the beginning of the canyon as an escape option for him which means he has only three options. One is up the finger on the opposite side from where you are which is an easy shot for you. Next is toward you. And the final option is out the back or top of the canyon which is why most of the time you are watching that part.
Next, you walk uphill about 20 yards on that finger you are on and rinse and repeat. More rocks. Only this time you are targeting the area of the canyon that is a little higher up than your first volley. As is obvious by now, the hunter is creating a firestorm of noise hoping to herd the deer deeper up and then eventually out the back of the canyon where your scope is waiting. As Jim explained this to me I thought it was brilliant! I loved the idea. And over the years I will say that this tactic absolutely works. Like a charm or a cheat code. It is fantastic. And it works in the same canyons every year.
I gave up a possible deer to help a fellow hunter out. I was paying it forward. It was the right thing to do and we all would have done it. But who I happened to help made this the best trade-off of my hunting life. He gave to me tools to hunt blacktail deer in these dang mountains that I could use for the rest of my life. I was and am and am forever grateful. Jim was, far and away, the best hunter I’ve met in California. I would almost compare him to my own uncle back home. They are both grand masters. And, interestingly both my uncle and Jim have two ex-wives to prove it.
So in my California hunting dreams I ran into a great teacher. But that is not all a blacktail hunter roaming the woods of Zone A can run into. I would also find this out.
I am hunting this place I had wanted to hunt for quite awhile but it had never made the final cut until mid season one year I decide to check it out. I cross a river and get past the flat general waterway area to where there is a hill. I find a deer trail and start going up this hill. About the third uphill step I look down and see where a deer had stepped slightly off the trail and taken out a foot-full of the side hill leaving some exposed fresh black dirt. And right in the middle of this fresh dirt sat a beautiful little arrowhead!
I have only found one other arrowhead so this was a pretty big deal to me. Was this a good omen? I spent quite a bit of time looking it over and of course imagining how and when it got there. Eventually I got back to hunting and worked my way up this hill. I noticed after a bit of a hike that the hill was going to flatten out. So I headed up toward this area in hopes I could get a look into the flat areas where a buck might be taking it easy. There was one more berm to cross. I am hiking up it when I notice some plastic off to my right. That’s strange, I thought, would there be a construction project this far back into the woods? Or maybe it was a form of erosion control because the plastic was right in the middle of a creek bed that came down from the top and would flow into the river I had crossed below earlier.
So I was in a bit of unalarmed confusion and was casually trying to solve the mystery when I saw the hose. A garden hose. Running right down the middle of the plastic which was in the bed of a creek...I froze. I realized that I was looking at the irrigation part, and was therefore in the middle of, an illegal marijuana grow. I also knew that the folks who put these together were not Boy Scouts. I knew that the cartel was who was doing this.
I immediately sunk to the ground. The game had just changed. I was no longer deer hunting. I was now in the position where I had to see a human before the human saw me. I had no doubt that if a guard / overseer of this grow were to see me first he would kill me and bury my body way back here where nobody ever came. There was too much to loose for them if they let a witness to this grow walk away. I knew it wasn’t going to happen.
I scanned every inch of ground in the opening at the top of this berm I could see. Then I pulled up my binoculars and scanned it closer. I looked at every shadow, every tree, every leaf that shook in a tree. Then I turned and studied behind me and to the sides. I looked for hiking trails or paths they may have made. I was not scared because I knew I was there and they did not. And honestly, at this point, they should have been afraid of me. Because if one of them was armed and alone, I wasn’t going to be the one who missed dinner that night.
When I was a kid, second grade, I tagged along with my older brother and his buddy who were going to go night crawler hunting as soon as it got dark. We rode bikes on the back roads two miles out of town to this lawn in front of a house. Sure enough it got dark and they started shining for night crawlers. Well, there was only one flashlight and I got butt-hurt that I wasn’t getting any time with the flashlight so I decided I would leave them there and go home. I am riding my bike. It is dark. I can barely see the road but know the road well enough that I can get along.
I am a mile or so down the road when a car comes. It is in the opposite lane, headed toward me. I was thankful for the light it cast so I could see the road much better. But as it neared me it started to slow. It was a summer night and the car had all it’s windows down. I know this because when it passed I could hear their voices and could tell it was a carload of...teenagers. I realized this at the same time the driver realized what he had seen. He had seen a small child. By himself. On a bicycle. In the dark. A mile from anywhere. That’s what he saw and I believe I heard the girls with him tell him to stop.
What I saw was that the car had slowed a little, then passed me, then hit the brakes hard. Then it grabbed reverse. I knew they were coming for me. One thing I did not trust was a teenager. They were bullies and unpredictable. They did not play by the same rules as the rest of us kids did. I knew I couldn’t out run a car on my bike and I knew I didn’t want anything to do with those types of people so I drove my bike to the woods-side of the road, rode it a few feet into the ditch and dumped it. I left my bike there and sprinted into ...the woods. The black woods. Why did I do that? Because we grew up playing in the woods. We knew the woods. The woods was my friend. I felt comfortable in the woods and knew 1000% that I was safer in the dark woods than I would have been in the clutches of some teenagers.
I still do feel comfortable in the woods. Is was my refuge and still is my refuge. Everything is in order in the woods. Nothing lies. Everything tries to live. And when it dies, it still fits within what the woods is. So if there was a foreign national with a rifle and criminal intent nearby, even though this is California and not Wisconsin, that man was in my world, the woods, he was on my turf and I would dictate terms and conditions from this point on. He would have brought a gun, a cartel enforcement tool, to a hunter fight. We hunters are at home here. He was doing a job here. Big difference. He was going to lose.
So what I did was that I very, very carefully and uber-slowly hunted my way out of that area. I was sure of every step, sure of what could see me at all times. I watched for any sign of a human. I kept a careful eye on my backtrail. I did not rush or hurry one iota. I surgically removed myself from that place and did it in near silence. And when I got to where I could traverse in open places I remained in the woods and went the longer, concealed way rather than expose myself in any fashion to anyone related to that grow. When I got to my truck I quickly stashed my things and drove out of the area. Only then did I let out the sigh of relief. What the heck, I thought? I’m out there deer hunting and minding my own business and I walk into a CARTEL MARIJUANA GROW??? That could have killed me?? I was thankful to be alive but it really ripped me that this can happen in America. This was not part of my California Hunting Dreams. And yet it happened.
Did I mention yet that I happened to know a guy on the County Sheriff’s Department’s Marijuana Interdiction Taskforce / Eradication Team? It was so interesting, those guys would come down from a helicopter onto a grow site, arrest people, tear all the marijuana plants out, burn it all and hike out. And don’t you know that shortly after I got back to civilization I just happened to show this same friend on a map about where I had found an arrowhead on my last hunting trip.
He told me a few weeks later I was lying, there are no arrowheads in that area.
Lesson 24: When you share some hunting secrets, you equip the listener for life
Lesson 25: When you share some arrowhead secrets, you might save the next hunter’s life
Next time: the final story.
Ever since I was young if I wasn’t hunting, oftentimes I would be dreaming of hunting. Maybe that’s why I’ve got myself into so many predicaments – I sit and dream about what could happen, what might happen, what if I do this or go there or try this, etc. and then I go try it. Maybe that’s how we all go about it. Maybe we all dream it first before we do it.
Regardless, many of my hunting dreams have happened here in California. It is a fact that some of the the things I’ve experienced would never have happened back home because they don’t have these dang mountains back home. Here are a few of those memorable items.
California Dreaming
His name was Jim. He’d been divorced twice because he ‘hunted too much’. I met him hunting. I knew the moment I met him he was no amateur because of where I met him. I was two ridges and two valleys from the road when he came hiking down a side hill toward me. We chatted briefly. I have always found it helpful to explain some general things of my intentions to others I meet in the field and to get an idea of what they are doing purely for safety’s sake. Knowing a human might be one direction is just good for everyone in the field to keep in mind. He was going to go to a third ridge and hunt the opposite valley. I told him I was gong back up to ridge number 1 and hunt east of where we both were. Where he was going was simply a nasty place. And to even get where we both stood was not for the casual hunter. It was vertical and severe. So I knew I was with an expert of sorts right then because he dared come out here where only experts (him) and fools (me) dared go. Before he left he said, “Hey, if I get one do you think you could come and help me drag it out?” I said sure, I would do that. Because I knew dragging out would be up and down and up and down, up and down. All of it steep. And the last hill alone was a 600 foot gain in elevation. He would need help.
So I got back on top of ridge number 1, walked it east and hunted the canyons down both side of this ridge. Every once in awhile I would look over and see Jim way on the other side of the larger canyon which separated us. He was on that ridge facing north so all I saw was his back. He was small but I could make him out easily with the naked eye. Eventually I worked my way back to the west. Then as I was looking down into the trees of one of the canyons between us, I saw a deer. The deer was eating from the oak trees and it’s head was obscured by branches so I could not tell if it was a buck. Just then I heard Jim’s rifle crack. I could tell by the sound that it was pointing away from me, so he was shooting north. Then I heard a second shot and heard a dull thud which means that shot hit a body. I took my eyes off my deer to see if I could see anything. I saw that Jim was moving around. My attention went back to the deer in my scope. Still no horns. Boy, this was a big deer though, I thought. Given the kind of deer that hang out up there, I was pretty sure it was a buck. But you can’t take the safety off until you see forks so I could not do anything but wait for the deer to move a little to it’s right or left.
Just them I heard a voice calling from the other side of the valley, “Hey. I got a buck. Are you going to help me?” Jim yelled. He had walked over to the part of his little ridge that was absolutely closest to me to make his plea. Well, I had a nice deer in my own sights and if I yelled a response to Jim, this deer would be gone. So I tried to wave and point at what I was looking at. I don’t think Jim understood my motions, so he yells the same thing again. I wave exaggeratedly and pointed with emphasis to the deer below that I was looking at. Jim still didn’t understand and then he yelled a little more desperately, “Are you going to help me or not?” OK, Jim, if I reply to you the way you want me to reply I am going to miss out on my own deer here. But, I finally conceded, I’ll respond to you and we’ll get your deer out of the mountains. It’s your day, not mine. I yelled back across the canyons that yes, I will help him. I looked back down, my deer was gone. It was all a strange spot to find oneself in. I wanted my deer, but I guess there was no way to communicate that with him so I had to surrender the chance.
I hike down my hill over another ridge, then over to Jim’s ridge. By the time I got there his buck was field dressed and ready to go. I believe it was a nice 3x3, a good healthy deer and a nice showing for Jim’s efforts. We both pulled his deer down, then worked together to get it going uphill which was quite difficult. So the rest of the afternoon was spent in laboring to get Jim’s deer over that final ridge and then 400 vertical feet down to the road.
But there was not just effort going on. Jim, apparently grateful for my help, began giving me tips about how to hunt in the mountains, and teaching me many of his California blacktail hunting secrets. He told me things I never would have thought of on my own. “When you hike up a mountain and are getting close to the top, right before you get to the top, stop and rest. You want to catch your breath and be steady before going over in case there is something right on the other side. If you are breathing heavy, your aim will not be steady.” That was the first lesson. Then, “And never stay silhouetted on the top. Get right over and drop some elevation so the sky is not at your back.” Jim was also the one who told me that bucks go high with hunting pressure. “They head for the hills and stay there.”
We tugged and pulled and lifted and strained and fell and slipped and sweated and kept the deer moving along. The whole time Jim was teaching me. He shared many, many things with me. Great ideas. Sound advise. True hunting wisdom. Often, fully exhausted from the strain, we would stop and rest. He stood there on a side hill and told me blacktail hunting things. What a classroom. What a teacher.
One of the most interesting things he taught me was how to hunt a canyon alone from the top. He said to walk down one finger of the canyon as far as you can so that you are as close to the bottom or beginning of the canyon as you can be. Make sure you can still see the saddle at the top of the canyon, right there at where the canyon meets the ridge where a deer might come out if he were to leave the canyon and flee to the top of the mountain and over the other side. Then roll as big of a rock as you can find, one rock or two, down the hill toward the bottom or beginning of the canyon. Of course this is going to make all kinds of racket. By the time it hits the tree line, it will be moving like a freight train and will make a huge crash when it hits something. No deer is going to stay in that area with that kind of noise. And you have just removed the beginning of the canyon as an escape option for him which means he has only three options. One is up the finger on the opposite side from where you are which is an easy shot for you. Next is toward you. And the final option is out the back or top of the canyon which is why most of the time you are watching that part.
Next, you walk uphill about 20 yards on that finger you are on and rinse and repeat. More rocks. Only this time you are targeting the area of the canyon that is a little higher up than your first volley. As is obvious by now, the hunter is creating a firestorm of noise hoping to herd the deer deeper up and then eventually out the back of the canyon where your scope is waiting. As Jim explained this to me I thought it was brilliant! I loved the idea. And over the years I will say that this tactic absolutely works. Like a charm or a cheat code. It is fantastic. And it works in the same canyons every year.
I gave up a possible deer to help a fellow hunter out. I was paying it forward. It was the right thing to do and we all would have done it. But who I happened to help made this the best trade-off of my hunting life. He gave to me tools to hunt blacktail deer in these dang mountains that I could use for the rest of my life. I was and am and am forever grateful. Jim was, far and away, the best hunter I’ve met in California. I would almost compare him to my own uncle back home. They are both grand masters. And, interestingly both my uncle and Jim have two ex-wives to prove it.
So in my California hunting dreams I ran into a great teacher. But that is not all a blacktail hunter roaming the woods of Zone A can run into. I would also find this out.
I am hunting this place I had wanted to hunt for quite awhile but it had never made the final cut until mid season one year I decide to check it out. I cross a river and get past the flat general waterway area to where there is a hill. I find a deer trail and start going up this hill. About the third uphill step I look down and see where a deer had stepped slightly off the trail and taken out a foot-full of the side hill leaving some exposed fresh black dirt. And right in the middle of this fresh dirt sat a beautiful little arrowhead!
I have only found one other arrowhead so this was a pretty big deal to me. Was this a good omen? I spent quite a bit of time looking it over and of course imagining how and when it got there. Eventually I got back to hunting and worked my way up this hill. I noticed after a bit of a hike that the hill was going to flatten out. So I headed up toward this area in hopes I could get a look into the flat areas where a buck might be taking it easy. There was one more berm to cross. I am hiking up it when I notice some plastic off to my right. That’s strange, I thought, would there be a construction project this far back into the woods? Or maybe it was a form of erosion control because the plastic was right in the middle of a creek bed that came down from the top and would flow into the river I had crossed below earlier.
So I was in a bit of unalarmed confusion and was casually trying to solve the mystery when I saw the hose. A garden hose. Running right down the middle of the plastic which was in the bed of a creek...I froze. I realized that I was looking at the irrigation part, and was therefore in the middle of, an illegal marijuana grow. I also knew that the folks who put these together were not Boy Scouts. I knew that the cartel was who was doing this.
I immediately sunk to the ground. The game had just changed. I was no longer deer hunting. I was now in the position where I had to see a human before the human saw me. I had no doubt that if a guard / overseer of this grow were to see me first he would kill me and bury my body way back here where nobody ever came. There was too much to loose for them if they let a witness to this grow walk away. I knew it wasn’t going to happen.
I scanned every inch of ground in the opening at the top of this berm I could see. Then I pulled up my binoculars and scanned it closer. I looked at every shadow, every tree, every leaf that shook in a tree. Then I turned and studied behind me and to the sides. I looked for hiking trails or paths they may have made. I was not scared because I knew I was there and they did not. And honestly, at this point, they should have been afraid of me. Because if one of them was armed and alone, I wasn’t going to be the one who missed dinner that night.
When I was a kid, second grade, I tagged along with my older brother and his buddy who were going to go night crawler hunting as soon as it got dark. We rode bikes on the back roads two miles out of town to this lawn in front of a house. Sure enough it got dark and they started shining for night crawlers. Well, there was only one flashlight and I got butt-hurt that I wasn’t getting any time with the flashlight so I decided I would leave them there and go home. I am riding my bike. It is dark. I can barely see the road but know the road well enough that I can get along.
I am a mile or so down the road when a car comes. It is in the opposite lane, headed toward me. I was thankful for the light it cast so I could see the road much better. But as it neared me it started to slow. It was a summer night and the car had all it’s windows down. I know this because when it passed I could hear their voices and could tell it was a carload of...teenagers. I realized this at the same time the driver realized what he had seen. He had seen a small child. By himself. On a bicycle. In the dark. A mile from anywhere. That’s what he saw and I believe I heard the girls with him tell him to stop.
What I saw was that the car had slowed a little, then passed me, then hit the brakes hard. Then it grabbed reverse. I knew they were coming for me. One thing I did not trust was a teenager. They were bullies and unpredictable. They did not play by the same rules as the rest of us kids did. I knew I couldn’t out run a car on my bike and I knew I didn’t want anything to do with those types of people so I drove my bike to the woods-side of the road, rode it a few feet into the ditch and dumped it. I left my bike there and sprinted into ...the woods. The black woods. Why did I do that? Because we grew up playing in the woods. We knew the woods. The woods was my friend. I felt comfortable in the woods and knew 1000% that I was safer in the dark woods than I would have been in the clutches of some teenagers.
I still do feel comfortable in the woods. Is was my refuge and still is my refuge. Everything is in order in the woods. Nothing lies. Everything tries to live. And when it dies, it still fits within what the woods is. So if there was a foreign national with a rifle and criminal intent nearby, even though this is California and not Wisconsin, that man was in my world, the woods, he was on my turf and I would dictate terms and conditions from this point on. He would have brought a gun, a cartel enforcement tool, to a hunter fight. We hunters are at home here. He was doing a job here. Big difference. He was going to lose.
So what I did was that I very, very carefully and uber-slowly hunted my way out of that area. I was sure of every step, sure of what could see me at all times. I watched for any sign of a human. I kept a careful eye on my backtrail. I did not rush or hurry one iota. I surgically removed myself from that place and did it in near silence. And when I got to where I could traverse in open places I remained in the woods and went the longer, concealed way rather than expose myself in any fashion to anyone related to that grow. When I got to my truck I quickly stashed my things and drove out of the area. Only then did I let out the sigh of relief. What the heck, I thought? I’m out there deer hunting and minding my own business and I walk into a CARTEL MARIJUANA GROW??? That could have killed me?? I was thankful to be alive but it really ripped me that this can happen in America. This was not part of my California Hunting Dreams. And yet it happened.
Did I mention yet that I happened to know a guy on the County Sheriff’s Department’s Marijuana Interdiction Taskforce / Eradication Team? It was so interesting, those guys would come down from a helicopter onto a grow site, arrest people, tear all the marijuana plants out, burn it all and hike out. And don’t you know that shortly after I got back to civilization I just happened to show this same friend on a map about where I had found an arrowhead on my last hunting trip.
He told me a few weeks later I was lying, there are no arrowheads in that area.
Lesson 24: When you share some hunting secrets, you equip the listener for life
Lesson 25: When you share some arrowhead secrets, you might save the next hunter’s life
Next time: the final story.
BlackFail 13
Words are weak, limited, pregnant things. A speaker may say, “I fell out of an airplane and lived,” and a listener gets the basic idea but has no way of understanding the totality of the experience which the speaker went through. We all agree what ‘red’ is, so words suffice in situations such as describing the color of a fire truck, but when it comes to describing experiences, the reality is so much more than can be handed from one to another using the restrictions of words. “I fell out of an airplane and lived,” is pregnant with implications to the extent that perhaps no one besides the speaker can truly know what that was like.
So if I were to say I was enriched by many conversations with the old boys, those old-timers who once walked the woods and the hills where others hunt now, those would be just words to the reader. But if I were to tell you that those conversations revealed scope and depth and secrets of the hunt in that geographic area that would give you tangible things to help comprehend what I meant by ‘enriched,‘ correct? They were indeed were amazing conversations. Until one of them asked ME a question.
The Old Boy
I developed two Primary Zone A blacktail deer hunting spots. One High and one Low. The High one was in brutal, severe terrain. Yes, I got in trouble up there. The Low one had some easier, flatter terrain but was surrounded by brutal, severe terrain where I also got myself in trouble. So if you wanted easier, flatter, you had to do so strategically because, of course, once the hunting pressure begins, the bucks go to the brutal and severe. But they don’t all go there immediately or all at once.
It was in the Low hunting area where the old boys were. I could assume that their age tamed their mountain climbing ambitions like it does to all, and that they were there out of resignation. In fact I did assume that. Until I learned their secrets. And some of those secrets have been described in these stories. Themes like where a pressured deer feels safe once the shooting starts, which is its’ perceived sanctuary. Which deer do and which deer do not go up to these sanctuaries. It was after I had learned these types of secrets that I realized the old boys weren’t hunting the Low area because they couldn’t climb like they did in their youth, they were hunting the Low area because they didn’t have to climb like they did in their youth. They had cunningly figured out how to hunt effectively in the midst of hunting pressure.
One old boy was named Sal. Sal had actually worked for the government in this Low area. He might have been a Ranger, or a Game Warden, or otherwise connected to the area. When he retired he just kept hanging out in the area. He just did things. And I don’t even know what he did or who he did it for. Was it for some Department of Natural Resources or Department of Fish and Game project? Were they National Forest projects? He cleaned up things, and helped restore things. He was just active and I never figured out what he was doing. But he always had time to talk. I spoke with him a number of times when he was doing things and those conversations happened many years after he retired from his official work there. I loved learning from him and I hammered him with questions like Tom Brady gets after a Super Bowl. He knew everything about the area. It was truly enriching.
And then there were the two old boys who also were working on some type of project which I never put together. I spent a few hours with these fellows. They were both near the end of their 70’s and didn’t look in particularly good shape, health-wise. But whatever they were doing was volunteer work and they were doing it happily and cheerfully. I wouldn’t be surprised if one wasn’t an aged Tom Sawyer who was showing his friend how much fun the work was. They were boy-ish. They were very chatty. They answered in details every question I posed to them including where the best spot to find gold was in the area when that topic came up on a whim. Strangely, they shared with me like they were passing something on to me. Like they had all this knowledge of the area and no one asked them about it. It’s like they did not want all their knowledge to pass with them, which was going to be relatively soon. Years, that is, not decades. Those old boys had been hunting in this little area for over 50 years each. They knew things. I was all ears. And I was so thankful to have been given what they gave me.
You see, what was going to happen is that I was absorbing all this area hunting knowledge, I was getting incredible hunting experience in both High and Low spots and when my boy got old enough we would hunt together and I would get to teach him hunting, like my dad taught me, and then hunting in these areas like Jim in the mountains and the old boys down low had taught me. So I was soaking it all in.
Hunting alone is something all its own. You’re the only one who sees where you are going, who struggles with the terrain, who is blown away by the beauty of the redwoods and the Pacific both standing before you. When I first got to California and was often driving down dark freeways in the middle of the night to get to a hunting spot by sunrise, so many times I wished my dad was sitting in the passenger seat. So when I had a boy, I was very excited for him to get to be legal hunting age so I could introduce him to this beautiful hunting world I had worked so hard to develop.
About three years before my boy could hunt with me, I was hunting the Low area and in late morning I went to hunt this particular spot. Well, right there in the in the middle of this particular spot I ran into this other old boy. He was far older than the old boys I had previously met. He was 83 at least. And he was different. I had wanted to hunt there so I was not really in a hurry to leave since he was in my Plan A and I did not have a Plan B that day. As a result we got to talking. This old boy would talk to me and then look over my shoulder, then around and over his shoulder. He was actively hunting while we chatted.
This old boy had been coming down there for over 60 years. He was with others but I never met them or saw them. He suggested that the others he was hunting with were doing something and he was there to intercept a buck that would try to get by. We chatted and I moved on, leaving him to hunt and me to think up another plan.
A year later, I returned to this place in the early afternoon of Opening Day. I am going to hunt the exact place I had intended on hunting the year before when I had run into this old boy. When I got there, there he was, posted up in the same spot. He recognized me and I him and we hunted the spot together for an hour or so. I began to think that he was not at this spot by chance, that in fact it was deliberate.
When I saw him there again the next year, I was frankly surprised he was still hunting. He had already looked like a skinny Santa Clause without the beard. But he was looking older. Again we chatted and hunted. He spoke kindly and considerately. He was a nice man. He told me what his hunting companions were doing, they were going up and around a mountain and it was like an open roadway inside all the trees on the way down, he said, the deer had it just trampled. I didn’t know which mountain he was talking about. I still don’t. But I realized he knew that this spot was strategic, just like I myself had suspected which is why I wanted to hunt there.
A year later, my dreams had finally come true – my boy was going to go legally hunting with me!! I was elated. I would never hunt alone again!!! I finally had a hunting partner!! I took him up high in the morning. He did good with the hills, probably a little better than me because age had started whispering physical restrictions to me. I had to rest more on the way up. I had to go slower. It was foggy that morning, We had to hike up in the fog. After particular instruction I dropped him off on a ridge overlooking a sweet and promising canyon and I moved 50 yards up and hunted the opposite side of the ridge. I really could never see anything that morning because the fog never lifted but my boy saw a doe and another deer he could not see fully. With the fog having robbed us of any decent hunting, we climbed down mid-morning. I would drive him over to the Low area which was still ripe with Opening Day opportunity, if it was done correctly.
So my boy and I get over to the Low area and we hunt in to the place I want to be. Who is already there? The old boy. And I was a rather proud father introducing my son to the old boy. He took a special interest in my son and asked him some questions about how his first deer hunt was going. I could see in the old boy’s eyes that he knew what was going on – a father taking his son deer hunting for the first time. The old boy knew the score, he knew exactly what the deal was. And no doubt it reminded him of the first time he took his own son deer hunting. We chatted a bit then my boy and I moved to Plan B, which I had developed out of necessity because the old boy was always sitting on my Plan A. But Plan B was not that far from Plan A, so we weren’t too far away.
While we were at Plan B, I decided to take a little hike and glass a particular hillside. I would only be about 100 yards from my boy and within sight. I did so and remember coming back and seeing my boy, who was not paying attention to his hunting zone but was playing with his handgun instead. I still laugh about it. It was cute. He was practicing handling the handgun, his secondary weapon, while his rifle was slung over his shoulder. I could have been a 50 point buck and he would not have seen me. But it was my dream and there are no bad parts to a hunting dream. My son wasn’t yet the trooper his old man was and by the end of the day he was pretty hot and worn out. So we called it and headed for home.
And now, let’s talk about pregnant words. I will type some words on a page but they are mere words. They cannot even come within light years of describing actual experience. Here are the pregnant words: five months later I lost my son. Tragically. Unexpectedly. Unspeakably. If I told you what happened you too would be weeping. You do not want to know what I know. You do not want to see what I saw. Or you, too, would have to live with it. And you too would hunt alone the rest of your life.
The next deer season, I went High on Opening Day. I could only see the person who was not there. I climbed down and will never go back again. I drove over to the Low area. I went to go hunt Plan B where I had hunted together with my boy, where he was playing with his handgun. It never dawned on me that I had to go through Plan A to get to Plan B. Honestly, nothing dawned on me for years, it was all a blur and a sleepwalk. So when I was passing through on my way to Plan B, I happened to be at Plan A and I look up and there’s the old boy. I had forgotten about him (and everything else.) I came near him and he smiled and asked, “Where’s your boy?”...
I will never forget that moment. I could not answer the old boy. I could not speak it. I could not say it. I did not want to be there with the old boy and tell him that my son was gone. I couldn’t even tell myself. I couldn’t say the words. Here was the old boy, the only human being who saw my son and I hunting deer together, the only living witness to me living my lifetime dream, and I could not speak the words that my son and my dreams together were gone to this, the only man who saw the dream happen when it was alive. Somehow, someway I eventually was able to express the reality to him. He understood and put his head down. I believe the old boy wept. I never saw him again.
I lost my only son many years ago. It still hurts every day. There’s a man upstairs who keeps me together and about 7 years ago I smiled again. But the loss is always there. What I saw doesn’t go away. And I’ve hunted alone again for many years. Those days of making flatland mistakes in these dang mountains were many years ago as well. I am a successful deer and hog hunter in Zone A in California.
Two years ago I was looking for a particular knife and stumbled on to this site, Jesse’s Hunting. I looked around a little and saw a category called Mentors and New Hunters. There was one unanswered entry of a new hunter requesting some mentoring. I thought it was interesting and moved on. A few days later I wondered if that new hunter got connected so I came back to the site. Two other new hunters had put something out there and had responses but the first guy was still unresponded to. What kind of operation is going on here that people are just going to ignore helping a new hunter? I thought. So I said, hey I do this and only this. I do it at this time and only this time. I do not do anything else. I told that to the kid (young man in his 30’s). If he was interested in just this, to let me know. Well, he let me know.
He didn’t have a gun so I taught him how to shoot my Browning BAR 30.06. I also let him shoot my .308, .270 and .45-70 for grins. I told him what to bring. I took him blacktail hunting. I told him what to do and why. He is very smart and is filled with questions. I answer them all. He asks what the deer are doing now. I tell him they are going to go up high on the hillside in the shade with the wind in their faces so if anyone comes near they will hop over the hill to the other side and escape. In the late afternoon he asks what are the deer doing now? I say they should be coming down from those hillsides to graze and head toward water. We go sit there with binoculars and watch it happen. He says they are doing exactly what you said they would do.
You see, I am white-haired and getting up in years. I've already outlived all my grandfathers. I do not want all the knowledge I have gained, I do not want all the knowledge passed on by those old boys, who have all been gone for many years now, to evaporate into thin air. Last week I texted this same ‘new hunter’ detailed maps and screen shots, including a shot of the area from Google Earth, the entire plan to hunt my High ground, where I met Jim and almost killed myself twice. ‘New Hunter’ has his own .30-06, a shotgun and a few handguns now. He also has cousins who want to learn how to hunt. There is plenty of room up there for all of them. That was my dream hunting place. I am handing down to him how to hunt it, what do do, how to do it. I am handing him, passing down, my dream.
I am now The Old Boy.
Lesson 26: Sometimes hunting dreams are all we have
Lesson 27: If my boy can be taken from this dream, imagine how great the dream will be when we are together again
Thank you for letting me tell you my stories and my dreams. They are all true.
/end
Words are weak, limited, pregnant things. A speaker may say, “I fell out of an airplane and lived,” and a listener gets the basic idea but has no way of understanding the totality of the experience which the speaker went through. We all agree what ‘red’ is, so words suffice in situations such as describing the color of a fire truck, but when it comes to describing experiences, the reality is so much more than can be handed from one to another using the restrictions of words. “I fell out of an airplane and lived,” is pregnant with implications to the extent that perhaps no one besides the speaker can truly know what that was like.
So if I were to say I was enriched by many conversations with the old boys, those old-timers who once walked the woods and the hills where others hunt now, those would be just words to the reader. But if I were to tell you that those conversations revealed scope and depth and secrets of the hunt in that geographic area that would give you tangible things to help comprehend what I meant by ‘enriched,‘ correct? They were indeed were amazing conversations. Until one of them asked ME a question.
The Old Boy
I developed two Primary Zone A blacktail deer hunting spots. One High and one Low. The High one was in brutal, severe terrain. Yes, I got in trouble up there. The Low one had some easier, flatter terrain but was surrounded by brutal, severe terrain where I also got myself in trouble. So if you wanted easier, flatter, you had to do so strategically because, of course, once the hunting pressure begins, the bucks go to the brutal and severe. But they don’t all go there immediately or all at once.
It was in the Low hunting area where the old boys were. I could assume that their age tamed their mountain climbing ambitions like it does to all, and that they were there out of resignation. In fact I did assume that. Until I learned their secrets. And some of those secrets have been described in these stories. Themes like where a pressured deer feels safe once the shooting starts, which is its’ perceived sanctuary. Which deer do and which deer do not go up to these sanctuaries. It was after I had learned these types of secrets that I realized the old boys weren’t hunting the Low area because they couldn’t climb like they did in their youth, they were hunting the Low area because they didn’t have to climb like they did in their youth. They had cunningly figured out how to hunt effectively in the midst of hunting pressure.
One old boy was named Sal. Sal had actually worked for the government in this Low area. He might have been a Ranger, or a Game Warden, or otherwise connected to the area. When he retired he just kept hanging out in the area. He just did things. And I don’t even know what he did or who he did it for. Was it for some Department of Natural Resources or Department of Fish and Game project? Were they National Forest projects? He cleaned up things, and helped restore things. He was just active and I never figured out what he was doing. But he always had time to talk. I spoke with him a number of times when he was doing things and those conversations happened many years after he retired from his official work there. I loved learning from him and I hammered him with questions like Tom Brady gets after a Super Bowl. He knew everything about the area. It was truly enriching.
And then there were the two old boys who also were working on some type of project which I never put together. I spent a few hours with these fellows. They were both near the end of their 70’s and didn’t look in particularly good shape, health-wise. But whatever they were doing was volunteer work and they were doing it happily and cheerfully. I wouldn’t be surprised if one wasn’t an aged Tom Sawyer who was showing his friend how much fun the work was. They were boy-ish. They were very chatty. They answered in details every question I posed to them including where the best spot to find gold was in the area when that topic came up on a whim. Strangely, they shared with me like they were passing something on to me. Like they had all this knowledge of the area and no one asked them about it. It’s like they did not want all their knowledge to pass with them, which was going to be relatively soon. Years, that is, not decades. Those old boys had been hunting in this little area for over 50 years each. They knew things. I was all ears. And I was so thankful to have been given what they gave me.
You see, what was going to happen is that I was absorbing all this area hunting knowledge, I was getting incredible hunting experience in both High and Low spots and when my boy got old enough we would hunt together and I would get to teach him hunting, like my dad taught me, and then hunting in these areas like Jim in the mountains and the old boys down low had taught me. So I was soaking it all in.
Hunting alone is something all its own. You’re the only one who sees where you are going, who struggles with the terrain, who is blown away by the beauty of the redwoods and the Pacific both standing before you. When I first got to California and was often driving down dark freeways in the middle of the night to get to a hunting spot by sunrise, so many times I wished my dad was sitting in the passenger seat. So when I had a boy, I was very excited for him to get to be legal hunting age so I could introduce him to this beautiful hunting world I had worked so hard to develop.
About three years before my boy could hunt with me, I was hunting the Low area and in late morning I went to hunt this particular spot. Well, right there in the in the middle of this particular spot I ran into this other old boy. He was far older than the old boys I had previously met. He was 83 at least. And he was different. I had wanted to hunt there so I was not really in a hurry to leave since he was in my Plan A and I did not have a Plan B that day. As a result we got to talking. This old boy would talk to me and then look over my shoulder, then around and over his shoulder. He was actively hunting while we chatted.
This old boy had been coming down there for over 60 years. He was with others but I never met them or saw them. He suggested that the others he was hunting with were doing something and he was there to intercept a buck that would try to get by. We chatted and I moved on, leaving him to hunt and me to think up another plan.
A year later, I returned to this place in the early afternoon of Opening Day. I am going to hunt the exact place I had intended on hunting the year before when I had run into this old boy. When I got there, there he was, posted up in the same spot. He recognized me and I him and we hunted the spot together for an hour or so. I began to think that he was not at this spot by chance, that in fact it was deliberate.
When I saw him there again the next year, I was frankly surprised he was still hunting. He had already looked like a skinny Santa Clause without the beard. But he was looking older. Again we chatted and hunted. He spoke kindly and considerately. He was a nice man. He told me what his hunting companions were doing, they were going up and around a mountain and it was like an open roadway inside all the trees on the way down, he said, the deer had it just trampled. I didn’t know which mountain he was talking about. I still don’t. But I realized he knew that this spot was strategic, just like I myself had suspected which is why I wanted to hunt there.
A year later, my dreams had finally come true – my boy was going to go legally hunting with me!! I was elated. I would never hunt alone again!!! I finally had a hunting partner!! I took him up high in the morning. He did good with the hills, probably a little better than me because age had started whispering physical restrictions to me. I had to rest more on the way up. I had to go slower. It was foggy that morning, We had to hike up in the fog. After particular instruction I dropped him off on a ridge overlooking a sweet and promising canyon and I moved 50 yards up and hunted the opposite side of the ridge. I really could never see anything that morning because the fog never lifted but my boy saw a doe and another deer he could not see fully. With the fog having robbed us of any decent hunting, we climbed down mid-morning. I would drive him over to the Low area which was still ripe with Opening Day opportunity, if it was done correctly.
So my boy and I get over to the Low area and we hunt in to the place I want to be. Who is already there? The old boy. And I was a rather proud father introducing my son to the old boy. He took a special interest in my son and asked him some questions about how his first deer hunt was going. I could see in the old boy’s eyes that he knew what was going on – a father taking his son deer hunting for the first time. The old boy knew the score, he knew exactly what the deal was. And no doubt it reminded him of the first time he took his own son deer hunting. We chatted a bit then my boy and I moved to Plan B, which I had developed out of necessity because the old boy was always sitting on my Plan A. But Plan B was not that far from Plan A, so we weren’t too far away.
While we were at Plan B, I decided to take a little hike and glass a particular hillside. I would only be about 100 yards from my boy and within sight. I did so and remember coming back and seeing my boy, who was not paying attention to his hunting zone but was playing with his handgun instead. I still laugh about it. It was cute. He was practicing handling the handgun, his secondary weapon, while his rifle was slung over his shoulder. I could have been a 50 point buck and he would not have seen me. But it was my dream and there are no bad parts to a hunting dream. My son wasn’t yet the trooper his old man was and by the end of the day he was pretty hot and worn out. So we called it and headed for home.
And now, let’s talk about pregnant words. I will type some words on a page but they are mere words. They cannot even come within light years of describing actual experience. Here are the pregnant words: five months later I lost my son. Tragically. Unexpectedly. Unspeakably. If I told you what happened you too would be weeping. You do not want to know what I know. You do not want to see what I saw. Or you, too, would have to live with it. And you too would hunt alone the rest of your life.
The next deer season, I went High on Opening Day. I could only see the person who was not there. I climbed down and will never go back again. I drove over to the Low area. I went to go hunt Plan B where I had hunted together with my boy, where he was playing with his handgun. It never dawned on me that I had to go through Plan A to get to Plan B. Honestly, nothing dawned on me for years, it was all a blur and a sleepwalk. So when I was passing through on my way to Plan B, I happened to be at Plan A and I look up and there’s the old boy. I had forgotten about him (and everything else.) I came near him and he smiled and asked, “Where’s your boy?”...
I will never forget that moment. I could not answer the old boy. I could not speak it. I could not say it. I did not want to be there with the old boy and tell him that my son was gone. I couldn’t even tell myself. I couldn’t say the words. Here was the old boy, the only human being who saw my son and I hunting deer together, the only living witness to me living my lifetime dream, and I could not speak the words that my son and my dreams together were gone to this, the only man who saw the dream happen when it was alive. Somehow, someway I eventually was able to express the reality to him. He understood and put his head down. I believe the old boy wept. I never saw him again.
I lost my only son many years ago. It still hurts every day. There’s a man upstairs who keeps me together and about 7 years ago I smiled again. But the loss is always there. What I saw doesn’t go away. And I’ve hunted alone again for many years. Those days of making flatland mistakes in these dang mountains were many years ago as well. I am a successful deer and hog hunter in Zone A in California.
Two years ago I was looking for a particular knife and stumbled on to this site, Jesse’s Hunting. I looked around a little and saw a category called Mentors and New Hunters. There was one unanswered entry of a new hunter requesting some mentoring. I thought it was interesting and moved on. A few days later I wondered if that new hunter got connected so I came back to the site. Two other new hunters had put something out there and had responses but the first guy was still unresponded to. What kind of operation is going on here that people are just going to ignore helping a new hunter? I thought. So I said, hey I do this and only this. I do it at this time and only this time. I do not do anything else. I told that to the kid (young man in his 30’s). If he was interested in just this, to let me know. Well, he let me know.
He didn’t have a gun so I taught him how to shoot my Browning BAR 30.06. I also let him shoot my .308, .270 and .45-70 for grins. I told him what to bring. I took him blacktail hunting. I told him what to do and why. He is very smart and is filled with questions. I answer them all. He asks what the deer are doing now. I tell him they are going to go up high on the hillside in the shade with the wind in their faces so if anyone comes near they will hop over the hill to the other side and escape. In the late afternoon he asks what are the deer doing now? I say they should be coming down from those hillsides to graze and head toward water. We go sit there with binoculars and watch it happen. He says they are doing exactly what you said they would do.
You see, I am white-haired and getting up in years. I've already outlived all my grandfathers. I do not want all the knowledge I have gained, I do not want all the knowledge passed on by those old boys, who have all been gone for many years now, to evaporate into thin air. Last week I texted this same ‘new hunter’ detailed maps and screen shots, including a shot of the area from Google Earth, the entire plan to hunt my High ground, where I met Jim and almost killed myself twice. ‘New Hunter’ has his own .30-06, a shotgun and a few handguns now. He also has cousins who want to learn how to hunt. There is plenty of room up there for all of them. That was my dream hunting place. I am handing down to him how to hunt it, what do do, how to do it. I am handing him, passing down, my dream.
I am now The Old Boy.
Lesson 26: Sometimes hunting dreams are all we have
Lesson 27: If my boy can be taken from this dream, imagine how great the dream will be when we are together again
Thank you for letting me tell you my stories and my dreams. They are all true.
/end
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MQ
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Your written words have more power than you give them credit. Your ability to paint a picture with your words is amazing.
I am truly sorry for the loss of your son. Reading those words was a gut punch to me.
I have been blessed to hunt with my two sons, and am now getting a grandaughter and grandson, along with their newbie father, out in the mountains. I can't imagine losing any of them.
Thank you for the great stories, they were entertaining and informative (and sad).
God bless.
I am truly sorry for the loss of your son. Reading those words was a gut punch to me.
I have been blessed to hunt with my two sons, and am now getting a grandaughter and grandson, along with their newbie father, out in the mountains. I can't imagine losing any of them.
Thank you for the great stories, they were entertaining and informative (and sad).
God bless.
Your hunting dreams remain alive. May they do so for many years to come. I have two step-daugters and hence two son in laws (one is the police officer described in The Wild Wild Justice story) and some grandchildren as well. Not a real big interest in hunting from those directions, however. You are The Walking Blessed Man to have hunted with sons and now grandchildren. Teach them everything you know. Live the dream.
MQ
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Grab one or two of those grandkids if you can. Take them for a little walk in the woods. You might light a fire in one of them. The joy having them out with you cant be matched. I sure hope you can find that happiness with them.
Darrell2000
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I teared up reading this last story man, I couldn't imagine the pain of losing your son. Your stories are so interesting to read. I'm glad I stumbled on this thread, as I am going to start hunting A zone this year.
I'm fairly new to deer hunting, so I don't really know what I am doing, my dad got me into hunting when I was 11, and I lost him shortly after I turned 12. So for the last 9 years I've been having to learn all of this hunting stuff by trial and error. I appreciate you sharing your experience's, and i am so sorry for your loss.
I'm fairly new to deer hunting, so I don't really know what I am doing, my dad got me into hunting when I was 11, and I lost him shortly after I turned 12. So for the last 9 years I've been having to learn all of this hunting stuff by trial and error. I appreciate you sharing your experience's, and i am so sorry for your loss.
Of course this entire exercise was written for you and other young hunters like yourself. The seasoned hunters just showed up to see what kind of idiotic stunt I would pull next. The final story touched you because you recognized the territory. It was familiar. You recognized that we are standing on opposite sides of the same canyon. And indeed we are. As it relates to this canyon only may I say no matter how deep the canyon gets, there I always light overhead. Don't forget that. It appears your father sent you on a powerful trajectory to get you hunting even after he left this planet for better hillsides beyond, but it takes great courage to put on the man boots with no one looking over your shoulder. Every hunter here respects that. Likewise it is admirable that you have sought to follow in your father's footsteps even though the wind has blown much of them away so they are almost indistinguishable to you now. But me and every experienced hunter here know where your father's footsteps went. First they led to water. He knew all bucks need water, period. They may hike a mile at night to get it but they need it daily. Then your fatherks footsteps went and found the buck's sanctuary. How? He followed the trail from the water. Where is a sanctuary? It is the same place you'd be if you skipped school and then saw the principal out looking for you...somewhere isolated, concealed, hard to get to. A sanctuary is where a buck was when nobody bothered him. Your father understood that bucks have two super-powers, their ears and their nose. They eyes and their ears can be fooled (hence my canyon rock rolling trick) but their nose cannot be fooled any more than your dog's nose can be fooled. If you tell your dog that a steak is an apple but he smells it, he's going to beg for the steak. Same with deer. They believe their noses above thei eyes and ears. Knowing this your dad hunted the wind in absolute terms. He always hunted in to the wind and never with the wind at his back. He also kept a cigarette lighter in his pocket to test the wind regularly because in the mountains it can get squirrely. His footsteps went slowly and quietly. He stepped on dirt or rocks rather than leaves because of the noise and the deer's hearing superpower. He would hunt between the water and the sanctuary at first and last light and at midday he would glass all the hillsides to find a buck snoozing in the shade. But it all begins with water. That is the starting point. Start there. The fact that you learn by trial and error means you are out there and trying. That's how we all learned. And yes you do know the pain I went through; it's the same canyon. Your dad would be real proud of you for your honorable efforts to do what it takes to shadow him here. It sounds like you might be the chip off a mighty block or you would not have already reached for it. But you did. So you will succeed.
Darrell2000
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Wanted to bump this post back up for our new members or anyone that hasn't read them, great stories.
blazintowers
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yep, lots of great information in these post's from LosPadre for newbies and Veterans alike... I would love to share a campfire with him. Hope he comes back and shares more knowledge.
Darrell2000
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agreed
