Last year I was hunting Moose while deer hunting season was on at the same time in this unit.  After a couple days of hunting Sue encouraged me to get a deer tag also, just in case we saw a nice buck, so I did.  The very next day I was calling moose when I saw a flash of white down in the trees and my mind said “moose horn palmation”.  When a beautiful whitetail buck stepped out, quartered away and stopped.  I put the cross-hairs on him and said “bang”.  When he had finally run out of patience and ran off Sue asked “whats wrong, wasn’t he big enough?”  All I could do is look a little sheepish as I had forgot about the tag in my pocket, as my mind was still on Moose.

Than this year toward the end of Archery season in a certain area it was legal to shoot a cow elk with rifle in a certain area so I took bow and rifle to my set up one morning.  Sitting in the dawn I had four cows cross in front of me at 70 yards. Since this was to far for my  bow, I watched as they passed.  When they ducked out of sight at about 250 yards, it all of a sudden hit me, I could have used my rifle.

Nice little Five point, pretty as a picture. It's a good thing Sue was there to record for future generations what gramps can't do when offered the perfect situation.

Then how is this one.  This year I decided before archery season to extend my range so moved my 50 yard pin out to 55 yards.  My second son, Todd says “I wouldn’t do that dad, its going to bite you”.  But sure of what I was doing I did it anyway.  I mean who can’t remember that he now has a 20 – 30 – 40 and now a 55 yard pin?  It happened the third Saturday of the season when Sue and I had traveled in a huge circle starting at 5:00 AM that morning and not seeing any sign or hearing any elk movement.  It was now 5:30 PM and we were only 30 minutes from the trail and an hour and a half from the PU when out of the blue a bugle answered my cow call.  He was less then 100 yards off in the brush so we hurriedly made a set up.  That bull we could tell was circling down wind but a second bull started on in on a line from further up canyon.  I ranged a line of brush at 51 yards and just like clock work he came to an opening in this brush line.  When he came through my mantra was ‘turn broadside’.  Low and behold, he did at 48 yards.  My new mantra was ‘now stop’, and again as if he was listening and obedient, he stopped to trash a bush.  With everything going perfect I had no worries, put the 50 yard pin on him and released.  Wait a minute, that was a 55 yard pin, but it was too late to pull the arrow back.  It bit me.  We were able to call him back in but not for another shot.  Kind of makes you sick but there is no way to rectify such a mistake, so I guess you smile and joke about it.

I was sitting ahead and to Sue's left so actually had a perfectly clear path to this fellow who was busy letting everyone know how tough he was.

Then there was the last day of deer hunting this year.  It was a very windy and bone chilling day and I figured the deer would be finding places to hole up.  The bigger bucks wouldn’t like to be caught down in the brush so would find a sheltered spot on the protected side of some ridge.  We decided to hike up close to the top and then start going across the ridges to try find one of these bigger bucks.  We had got our altitude by 10:00 in the morning and on about the fifth ridge we crossed, there 100 yards below us laid our buck laying flat out and thinking he was hid.  I sat down put the cross hairs on him and said, “you take first shot Sue.”  With the wind blowing she didn’t hear me and I didn’t hear her when she said, “shoot”.  This buck was probably the biggest I have seen in the last 25 years and he didn’t get that big by being dumb.  While Sue and I were waiting for each other to shoot, the bucks patience wore out, he stood and was gone around the brow of the hill leaving us to wonder, what happened here?  I’ll guarantee, this never would have happened five years ago.  I think I’m getting to old to make snap decisions too.  Oh well, I’m having fun, especially having Sue hunt with me, so guess there’s no reason to slow down, yet.

Cold clear and windy this day. Kind of miserable to be out on the wind swept ridges but the scenery made it all easier to handle. Some people actually hunt this hard for Chukars.

 Both colts prospered and at two years old were everything that we had hoped they would be.  But that fall we had a insect carrying disease sweep through our neck of the country called Pigeon Fever.  It reminds a person of ‘Strangles’ but it seems to break out on the chest and under belly instead of up on the neck like ‘Strangles’ does.  Four of our seven horses had it in varying degrees but the veterinarian assured us that no matter how ugly it was, it would pass in time.  Then we noticed Peter, who we thought had escaped it, his legs were swelling and he just stood in the pasture looking despondent.  Unfortunately Peter evidently had it internally and wasn’t able to get rid of the poisons.  After about three to four months of treating him with massive doses of antibiotics and other medications he began to come around.

For the next two  years he seemed to do well.  The only two things different that we noticed was that he never seemed to get fat like the other horses in the summer on grass, and it seemed his growth was stunted.  Because of this last fact he became known as Little Pete and because of all the handling, he got to be a favorite of ours.  He was just the right size for packing and was as strong as we would ever hope for.

Then this spring, coming out of winter he never really picked up any weight on grass, in fact it seemed he was getting thinner.  When we could no longer ignore this fact we packed him up and made the well known trip to see Frank the Veterinarian again.  Frank is the best in the business when it comes to horses as far as I’m concerned.  He was flabbergasted when he saw Little Pete.  He took samples of some lumps, of blood, of other tissue and put him back on antibiotics, just in case.  What came back was that he now had an autoimmune disease that is most often found in dogs and not in horses, so Pete’s luck was still running to the bad side.  He put him on medication for it and there seemed to be a few days of reprieve and then things turned south again.  More tests, more medication and this time the verdict needed some decisions to be made.  He had a type of Leukemia found in horses.  I don’t know how one little horse could have so much bad luck in his short life, but that was Little Pete’s lot.

When I led Little Pete on his last ‘swaying shuffle’ between the corrals, the other horses didn’t seem to pay us much mind.  They seemed to leave the emotional hurt to Little Pete’s human friends.  No more visions of him packing out the elk and the deer from trips in the wilderness or even off the hill from behind our place.  No more good natured bantering for a chosen space of ground.  Sue has a lasting mark to show Little Pete had won once.  No more good morning greetings from Little Pete’s pen.   We miss the little bugger, but it can be said, ‘that’s life’.  He drew the short straw on luck and life, but  he had the heart of a lovable champion.

Holly’s story, ‘So, a bear walked into a restaurant…’ brought to memory an experience a little closer to home.

An elderly lady, Nelly,  who lives not to far from here, was living in a house which had a solarium on the full south side of the house.  From the solarium there were doors and windows that lead into the main part of the house, most notably into the kitchen and the living room.  One day Nelly was in the house canning, and when she hears noises, she looks up to see a bear staring back at her from inside the solarium, 12 feet away.  She then starts to threaten the bruin with every threat an elderly little lady can threaten, but it seemed only to entice the blacky all the more.  He then started pounding his paws all along the windows and when he got to the screen door, hit on it.  He wasn’t the brightest bear in the world or he would have noticed that every time he hit the door it opened a few inches as it was only held shut by its spring.  By now, our lady seeing this, was getting quite frantic and ran into the living room only to have the bear run to those windows and start pounding on them.  Gaining a little sense, she picked up her phone and called the neighbor.  Fortunately he was where he got the call, grabbed his gun and headed over there half afraid of what he would find when he got there.  While she waited, Nelly continued this strange little dance with the bear, to the kitchen, then back to the living room and then return to the kitchen.  She wanted to keep him busy on all fours so he wouldn’t happen to hit the screen door again.  Finally the neighbor came tearing into the yard and when Nelly saw him she went charging out the side door shouting ”shoot him, shoot him”. 

When the nieghbor was able to get her cooled down he explained to her, “I can’t ma’am, he’s inside your house.”

She appreciated the fact that the bear liked her canning, but she just didn’t like the way he looked at her, and even at her age that was still very important.

For years when we had company over the subject always got around to “what are we dining on today”?  Usually it was deer or elk with a possible exception of Goat, Bear, Antelope or Moose depending on how lucky the draw was for us that year.  Well for the last year when I heard ‘whats for dinner?’ all I could say was ‘Beef, it’s what’s for dinner’.  At least one industry loves me this year.  Looking back on the year I’ve had to ask “what in the Sam Hill happened anyway?”  True, I’m getting older and slower, but I still cover the ground.  Maybe I don’t see or hear like I once did, but I have Sue with me and she isn’t seeing or hearing anything either so I don’t think that’s it either.  But then I thought of a couple instances that kind of turned me a bit red, yes maybe there is a reason.

Moose country without the moose.

I had a Moose tag last year and since its a difficult draw I decided a major portion of my time needed to be spent chasing them.  My draw was in an area that had Whitetail deer and the seasons ran at the same time.  So after a couple days of hunting Sue felt we ought to go out and get a Whitetail tag just in case.  The reasoning was as long as we are out there and if we saw a nice buck we’d kick ourselves if we didn’t have a tag.  The very next morning we sat on an open outcropping on a hillside overlooking a beautiful draw.  Sue set up the camara and I started my best rendition of a Bull Moose with his rut corpusals fully engaged.  It wasn’t but a few minutes and I saw a flash of light color down in the woods below us and in my mind it said, “Moose antler palm.”  I threw my rifle up and put the scope on the place he would come out of the woods.  When he did come out he was broadside slightly quartering away, perfect, only it was a 10 point Whitetail.  I put the crosshairs behind his sholder and said bang.  Then I watched as he made his way down the draw and out of sight.  I then turned to Sue all happy about the sight but disappointed that it wasn’t a bull Moose and she says, “Whats wrong, wasn’t he big enough?”  It wasn’t till then that I realized I was carrying a whitetail tag. I had “moose” so imprinted on my mind I had totally forgotten I could have pulled the trigger.  Now which emotion should I feel as I had three or four of them to pick from at that time.  Whichever emotion I settled on would have to get along with the stupid feeling which was holding court at the moment.

Earlier in the season we were bow hunting elk and had spent the morning moving in on a herd that we had been doing a little elk talk with.  As we got close I miscalculated where they were and walked right into the middle of them.  Unfortunately the bull was closest to me and must have got a nose full of Essense de Gary because he vacated the premise without a second look or smell.  It was towards the end of the season so when a couple cows stood up to my left at 40 yards I decided it was meat time.  One cow was standing behind a tree with just her front end, back as far as 4″ behind the front shoulder showing.  I put the site to the right of the tree and in my mind said don’t hit the tree.   I think they call that negative attention getter because that is exactly what I did.  There is a huge Yellow Pine in Elk Gulch that is still wearing a 100gr. Cobra broad head.  The last I saw it, it appeared it would survive quite well, which is just as well as Yellow Pine does not taste good.

My camera lady and I should have switched places and we at least would be eating venison!!

I’m guessing I really should spend more time behind the video camara and encourage Sue to do the shooting and maybe we’d have a more tasty selection of meat in our freezer.  At least my hunting this year has provided some humor around the table when the family gets together.  I’m not quite used to that, and I have no desire to get used to eating crow.

The interesting thing about having so many Antelope is you see them with so many other animals.  Even domestic ones.  We saw them feeding close to horses, cows, sheep and even in the same pastures with meat goats.  I had to wonder how they got into some of these pastures as they are not known to be fence jumpers.  If they can’t find a way through or preferably under, they usually don’t cross a fence.  We did see one bunch with a mule deer feeding with it also.

Back to our trip.  I have been to the north edge of Denver before but have never driven through it.  After driving 50 miles of four and five lane, bumper to bumper traffic this country bumkin was ready to head back to Idaho.  Even thinking of having to drive back through that mess tomorrow evening makes me break out in a sweat.  But once we are through it we’ll have a thousand miles of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho to enjoy the open country again.  Sorry we don’t have any pictures, we should have, but I have a hard time stopping once I get the car heading down the road.  Maybe on the way home we can be more patient.

Have a happy and safe 4th.

I got to thinking of this about three weeks ago as I was on my morning walk.  I was about a mile from the house when a red fox came out of the borrow pit on the left side of the road about 50 yards ahead of me.  He stopped in the middle of the road to do his morning business then edged over to the right side and never did look my way.  All this time I was walking towards him and had it down to about 15 yards  when he looked up from having his nose in the grass and I think by the look on his face he was about to do some more business.  He wasted no time in getting out of there and he wasn’t slowing down the last I saw him about 200 yards up the hill.  Then last week a young deer came out of the brush 150 yards up the road, saw me and started trotting my way.  I have no idea what it was thinking but somehow it must have seen me as another deer walking in his direction.  By the time he was within 40 yards of me his brain cells must have started giving off warnings as he didn’t take long to vacate the premise.

This reminded me of the day several years ago that I was archery hunting elk and like a dummy had not picked up my deer tag when I bought the elk tag.  I was walking along a very old logging road which was grading around the hill.  As I came around the corner of a ridge that headed back into a draw I saw a nice wide 3 point mule deer on the next ridge and he was coming on the same logging road I was on.  I cuddled up to a couple saplings growing up in the middle of the road and just waited.  Sure enough, a few minutes later here he comes around the corner and headed right towards me.  When he went by me I had an awful urge to poke him in the posterior just to let him know I had gotten that close to him, but common sense persevered as I believe the closer you get to them the more dangerous they can be if surprised.

Probably the most awestruck I’ve been during an encounter was a good 20 some years ago in Oregon hunting mule deer.  I was crossing an old logging road when I noticed a big old 6 point bull elk feeding on the road just 100 yards down the road.  I don’t know why I did it, but I sat down in the middle of the road and thought I’d watch the show.  He was slowly feeding my way and I was thoroughly enjoying the spectacle as its not often you get a chance to watch such a grand animal feeding closer and closer.  The whole scene was just about more then I could take in as he cut the distance to 40, then 30, then 20 and finally 10 yards.  What a grand sight, 15 feet away and nothing between us.  It wasn’t until he all of a sudden focused on me that I began thinking maybe I wasn’t the brightest bulb around.  In that second when he looked there was no way to know what he was going to do as it was a look of, ‘I’ve been had – do I fight or flee?’  We sat there looking at each other for what seemed like five minutes but I’m sure it could have been measured in seconds.  He then really surprised me by neither fighting or fleeing as he just slowly turned to his right and slowly crept out through the bushes as if thinking if  he did this, no one would see him.  I’ll guarantee you there was at least one heart,  and possible two that didn’t slow down for awhile.

Then there are the bears, the coyotes and other animals that have made my day with their presence.  I even had a raccoon climb a tree 10 feet from me the other day not knowing I was around.  Half the fun is watching the recognition of my presence come to them and see how they react.

With thoughts running in this vein, I got to thinking back on an incident that Sue and I had with a couple last year.  Its quite obvious we are not only dealing with their professional sides at times, but also their very human personality side as well.  So in that sense we have to give them a little room just as they give us a little room to be human at times.

 Interesting county, flat as a table then you come to one of these!

Sue and I were down in the south central part of Idaho doing a little scouting two weeks before archery antelope season opened.  We knew it was illegal to set up blinds over water holes two weeks in advance so we didn’t even bother bringing one.  We had one hole about two miles off the highway pinpointed but then we got to looking it over and wandered if we came in from another direction if we could cut that distance in half.  About half an hour later found us driving in from another direction and we were happy to see our thinking was right.  We had come up to a gate and rather go any farther we decided since we found out what we needed we’d just turn around and head back out.  Just as we were turning around we saw another vehicle coming from about a half a mile on the other side the fence.  As I looked in my rear view mirror I thought, “wow those guys are in a huge hurry as they were going way faster then they should.”  About that time they got to the gate, a guy jumped out and opened the gate and the pickup never even bothered to pick up the gate opener and then the lights came on and I realized we were the subject of their interests.  I stopped and the gal come barreling up behind me, slammed on the brakes, jumped out and come running up to Sue’s side of the pickup.  Now Sue has never been suspected of anything bad before so she was really shook up and this lady biologist lit into us pretty heavy.  Finally her partner come puffing up from opening the gate, and listening to the conversation, you could see he got the picture real quick.  There was a blind set up on the pond (illegal), there was no name or address on the blind(illegal) and we were the suspects since we were coming that way, then turned around when we saw them.  Madam biologist had us pegged and wouldn’t back off, but her buddy tried to help her save face.  Finally when everything settled down and Sue explained we were looking for a place we could get close to for her 79 yr old dad who had a broken leg, he even said to give him a call on his personal cell phone when we were about to make the trip down as he felt he had a couple places that would work.  A couple weeks later we tried the cell phone number and sure enough, it was for real, and he was for real and gave us all kinds of information.  Nice guy going beyond the call of duty.  But I can understand the tight rope they walk and maybe they would rather disappoint us by not being to precise with their information, rather than give us information that doesn’t work out.  I don’t know.

 Our water hole!

What I do know though, is they came up on Sue’s side of the pickup so they were very aware who the suspicious and dangerous person in the rig was.  And to think I have lived with her for 36 years and never realized it till then!!

 She does look a little criminalistic doesn’t she?

Benji and a Brown on the Snake.  This is catch and release so I still don’t know what they taste like.

First off, lets go fishing.  My mouth starts to do convulsions just thinking of Walleye or perch.  It doesn’t get any better then that.  Little crappie fillets aren’t far behind.  One of my most memorable fish dinners was when one of my hunting partners surprised us and packed several pounds of fresh Tuna into elk camp.  So I realize when the taste buds get something they aren’t expecting, that immediately pushes it up the list too.  I also enjoy Pike if someone knows how to get rid of the Y bones.  Trout in butter and pepper wrapped in foil and cooked in coals of the campfire has its special appeal too.  There again I realize the aesthetics of the time of consuming has a lot to do with it.

 Tom’s Brown from the Owyhee River.  We couldn’t eat them either.

Now when it comes to birds, I don’t have a whole lot of experience, but of all the birds I have consumed there is nothing like a Chukar feed.  Pheasant and Ruff Grouse are delicious and Hungarian Partridge isn’t far behind.  I’m going to have to concede my history with water fowl is very limited.  When we moved from Oregon to Idaho fifteen years ago, I went to move the freezer and found it was over half full of ducks.  Tom loved jump shooting ducks along the river and evidently our ability to make them palatable was lagging behind his ability in stocking the freezer.  They did finally disappear as where we moved didn’t offer him the same access to jump shooting as he had.  Turkeys? I’m still waiting for the first one to make it to the cooler!

 Benji, Todd, cousin Sean, and I with pheasants along the Malhuer River.  Great hunting and great eating.

Sue’s dad with Chukars from the Steens Mt.s.  This is the primo of table fare.   (taken 40-50 years ago)

Game animals are tough for me as they all seem to be special.  Probably at the top of the list though would have to be antelope as they are tender, fine textured and sweet.  But if I was to have only one kind of meat I believe it would be elk.  Its just plain good and has a taste you can’t get tired of.  About 30 years ago I brought home a large calf elk and we smile about it even today as it had on it about 70 pounds of the most tender tasty meat you can imagine.  You never needed a knife to cut it, just awesome.  Mule deer comes right behind elk.  Mountain goat has a wonderful taste but much of the meat tests the strength of your jaws.  I guess you can call it tough and tasty.  Sue’s moose?  We had heard so many tell us what great meat it was but it took us a little while to appreciate it.  She shot it in the rut and it just plain stunk.  It took us a little while to get that smell out of our nostrils.  Then we found it a little on the tough side so we took some into a couple that run a Norwegian restaurant in town and she told us how she cooked it and that old moose disappeared real quick.  Whitetail deer I really enjoy, but Sue still has some reservations.  Their fat is more marbled into the meat so it is harder to get it out, but I do enjoy a good whitetail steak.  Bear meat is probably the mildest of them all.  At least spring bear.  While cutting it up it has no smell to it at all.  A little on the tough side but it has a wonderful taste.  It makes great roasts and hamburgers. 

 And then there is bear.   Spring bear is just great.

When it comes right down to it, it all tastes better then anything that we can get at the local store, which is very minimal .  I’ll have to admit if I didn’t love the meat, it would take a lot out of the joys of hunting as there’s nothing better and better for you.  Eat Wild!!

Benji’s was about an 8″ Crappie

Todd’s was a 17″ Rainbow Trout

And Tom’s was a fairly well squished 3.47″ Bass

Great memories are made, you just have to get out and make them!!!

Fishing with the Kid!

By Benji Sorenson

It’s about the best thing in the world for a dad to see your kids smile. And one way to make sure that happens is to take them fishing. This first picture is after about an hour of casting from a dock and catching nothing. Note the size of the smile still on his face. Proof he is a true fisherman.

Finally I figured we may as well move to a new spot since nothing was happening off the dock. On the first cast in the new spot with the 2 foot long “Cars” telescoping fishing rod the bobber starts dancing. I happened to still be holding the rod at this time as I had just cast it out there for him, so I quickly handed him the rod and he muscled this crappie in.

After that fish I pretty much handed him the rod right after I got it cast out there and he did the hooking and the catching. It was pretty much automatic after that. He had about 10 fish close enough to the bank that I counted them caught over the next 20 minutes. We both had a good old time, whooping it up with high fives, and fist bumps after every fish. These are the moments I wish I could bottle up forever. Thanks for taking me fishing son!

Sue was the one carrying the tag,  and I was along to eat the noon sandwiches, and Zack, our eleven year old friend was along to show us what young legs and lungs are capable of.  Zach’s parents are not hunters but Zach picked up the bug somewhere as he was one enthusiastic puppy.  I had been wanting to take him for some time but it seems like it never was the right situation.  Looking back I can’t say this was ideal either but it worked just the same. 

Zack was a trooper – his first hunt and he found there are a few things out there that are just as dangerous as the bear we were hunting.

The snow was a problem alright as it seemed to have chased all the bear back into the sleep mode.  I don’t think any of us had a lot of expectations when we saw the snow, but what the hey, we’re ready to go so lets do it.  The last we saw Tom and Todd they were sitting under some bushes doing some calling.  Us three were about a half mile away and still in ear shot of the calling when we round a hill side and there is a coyote at 356 yards and going away from the calls.  I’d say he had been educated because he took one look at us and was out of sight within two seconds.  When we got to the point where there was 8 inches of new snow over the top of old drifts we decided maybe we should just call this a picnic outing and have lunch.  By the time we started hiking again the snow conditions were deteriorating and the overweight dude (me) starting breaking through, so my eyes started wondering pickup way more then looking for wildlife.  I can still go down hill quite well so that worked out fine.  I could almost keep up with Zack. 

Our pickup is at the base of the far ridge.  We were just going through the head of this draw and even though it doesn’t show the steepness, it was pretty.

On the way down we ran into about a dozen turkeys so that was rather exciting.  I saw one set of tracks head over the hill the other way so gave him a crow call and sure enough he wanted to talk turkey.  Played with him a bit before we continued on down.  We hit the pickup at 4:00 PM and 2/3 of us were totally beat but Zach was still going strong.  We did see a huge flock of turkeys on the drive out and they had it figured that they were safe for another 10 days before that season starts, so they did some real parading around for us.

I never cease to be amazed what I find out there.  These little buttercups are growing on a verticle stone wall four foot up from the snow level.

We enjoyed the day, especially watching the enthusiasm of Zack out there making new discoveries.  Hopefully we can have him along again, only when there might be a little more action involved.  I also had fun telling Zack where I had run into bears in the past and of course all the stories that go with them.  The family gets a little tired of hearing these stories so its kind of nice to have a fresh new pair of ears along.