A First Bull for Grandma

This story was given to me by my grandmother, Willa Ziniker. This is the story of her first bull – it was taken in the sixties in the beautiful Wallowa Mountains of Oregon.

I began reminiscing a little – about how hunting has long been in my family’s bloodstream.  Gun talk and yarns of the stalk had carried the will to survive from one hunting season to another.  It would have been unforgivable to have married a non-hunter…so I had picked the cutest one with the quietest gun.

For several busy years I had been content to just pack the shells, grub, and long-handle underwear each fall, to kiss the hunters good-bye, and to listen attentively to their returning trophy tales.  But after spending some summers packing in the mountains and camping throughout the forest, the idea of joining the hunting party became an obsession.  It was one more excuse for becoming a part of the outdoors I loved.

Faithfully, I had trudged to the target range one summer, padding my arm with a heavy coat and my fright with a deceitful smile.  Bravely I shouldered whichever musket was handed me, generally located the target, gently closed both eyes, sucked in a large gulp of air, and fired away.  Gradually I did learn to open one eye.

There were types of guns I had discovered.  Some jumped up and blackened your eye (sometimes two eyes, even); others jarred back and bruised your shoulder.  Others left you whole, mentally and all, but these kinds were not legal nor practical for big game hunting and were generally reserved for husbands to hand to innocent wives to prove that guns do not kick.

My training had not ended there.  Besides degrees of compression involved, there were various actions used in rifles.  I was sure there was only one kind of action: painful!  Actually, this term had to do with the manner in which ammunition was loaded and fired inside the firearm.  There was the bolt action, which resembled an eggbeater handle.  This was to be pulled back toward your nose and then slammed forward and down toward your frozen shoelace in one smooth and dedicated motion.  My trouble was threefold!  I was neither smooth, dedicated, nor a master of motion.

Then there was the action called a pump.  This in general as it indicated, pumped the shell from the gun with a forward motion of the arm upon a long underside section of wood about the shape of a rolling pin.

A third type of action I really liked – the automatic.  It seemed logical that this would entail some button for selecting the correct caliber bullet, load a clip, and hit the target.  However, I learned this was only a semiautomatic.  Thus, the only automation involved was in the action . . . and this was exactly what the Hawkins’ were worried about when they learned Ed had purchased the short .30/06 carbine automatic for me this year.  The rifle is somewhat short on both ends, kinda like me, since the stock has been cut considerably.  Weight can be a real discouragement to a woman, but I have never noticed this rifle becoming a burden, even after climbing ridges or tensely slipping through the brush with it.

Memories build year after year as you hunt in the same area, and if they are pleasant and productive ones, the experience becomes a nucleus for thought and conversation.  You talk about it for months afterward and plan and dream for the next trip.  Such had been our elk hunts in the winter Wallowas.

Each fall there had been the usual problem common with mothers: shall I go hunting or should I stay with the children?  For every single argument for joining husbands, there must be ten for staying home.   One year Mari’s teacher asked me, “How can you enjoy hunting with men?”

“Well,” I had laughed, “I don’t find them too repulsive really.  After all, I liked one hunter well enough to marry him!”

Eagerly we had exchanged our Willamette drizzle for the crisp, late November weather of Pendleton and LaGrande.  Our hunt was to be during the last week of the season, a choice Ed made because of heavy snows which tend to bring the elk herds down out of the peaks.  Pickups with large racks had met us time and again as we had sped along the Columbia and we had wondered if there were any more left in all of Eastern Oregon.

The next morning as we prepared for the ride into the mountains, the hint of winter whipped off the peaks and laid skiffs of snow across the waiting saddles.  I had shivered at Wayne’s long, lean riding legs in thin blue jeans and his cold ears which were collecting a little snow beneath his western hat.  Hawkins had all snapped on leather chaps and rolled their black raincoats, but I was thankful for some of my city underwear.

We had laughed as Mrs. Lungren, the other woman hunter, had to be boosted into the saddle.  Grinning out of her hood like a sheep dog, she said, “I guess I could play strip poker for an hour and still be decent!”

By mid morning, lunches had been stuffed in our heavy jackets and stirrups lengthened to prevent knee cramps.  Some hunters strapped their rifles in scabbards, although there was small chance of needing to get at them on the trail.  The pack trains with mantas neat and secure brought up the rear.

Our reception at camp this year had been impressive.  Emery and Babe Ferguson had provided an unusually comfortable tent city, with fresh fir bough carpets in the two women’s tents.  On the stove, tied with a gay red yarn, lay a small bundle of kindling.

The snow had piled up and hunting had been limited to short trips out from camp.  “I think I’ll take my backpack and head for the high basins,” Ed had announced on the third morning when the skies began promising a little better weather.  He wrapped his sleeping bag in plastic, sacked the dehydrated food we had brought along, added fresh batteries to his flashlight, said goodbye, and he was off up the trail.

Continue to part 2.