Wait have you read Year 1 & Year 2 yet?
A detailed journal of my 3rd year and my first kill as a novice hunter in the rugged British Columbia Interior.
YEAR 3
Elk Behavior Learning and Hunt Strategy
The summer of 2014 I was ready. I was looking forward to the fall hunt. The story of the one who got away was something of a legend for me by this time. It was a challenge and a meeting that few people ever get, and also something I needed to move beyond. I was after all trying to hunt Elk not watch them.
I spent time in the late summer studying elk calls, elk behaviour, the way they move and migrate, and what kinds of strategies that people used to hunt them. I was nagged, by our hunt the year before. In my mind, Brock should have been below me and further off in the forest to call that bull across my path. At the time, this had occurred to me, but I wrote it off as a novice hunter trying to sound like he knows something. Yet the nagging persisted and as I studied other hunting videos it became apparent that I was onto something.
Callers should draw the elk past the shooter who remains silent but closer than the calling position. Elk can easily pinpoint the location from which a call comes, and won’t often approach closer than 10 meters if they don’t see the animal they expect in that spot. I was determined on the next hunt to try coordinating with the hunter and the caller to get a better shot opportunity.
First Hunt of the Season
Yves, Brock and I made our plans for an early morning hunt on September 7. It was early season during still summery weather in the Kootenays, with high daytime temps forecast at 29 C and lows of 12 C.. It was bow season with two more days before rifle season.
We decided we would hunt a different part of the same mountain that Brock and I had come in contact with the Elk the year before. Only we would start from a cut block at 1600 meters on the north slopes of the mountain, working our way south on the western side of the mountain. It would afford us the opportunity to pass through two or even three bowls on the flanks of the mountain, but still well below the subalpine bowl we called into the year before.
We met up at 4 a.m. and drove through the darkness up to the cut block arriving in the pale pink sunrise. We could see the tops of the all the ranges north, west and east of us. The hike into the first bowl was rugged and thickly treed. It is always in that first half an hour hiking that I question why I am doing this.
Entering the Bush
We traversed the lip of the larger bowl which turned into thick rhododendron giving us a lot of grief and made for slow going. We approached the shoulder into the second bowl were we quickly decided to make for the top of the ridge and avoid the thicker and harder forest hiking. We had seen little more than a deer bed by this time and the older droppings of a moose.
Climbing the ridge we found the turned uproot ball of a fresh dig from a big bear possibly a Grizzly. By the time, we hit the ridge top and started to round with a view of the second bowl we could see the peak of the mountain Brock and I had climbed the year before.
Brock scared up an animal that we figured for a Mule Deer. We setup and bugled for a time in the event we might call him back if he was an elk. We decided that climbing back down into this new bowl and up the other side would be a lot of work and would take a while. Instead, we voted to hike the ridge toward the mountain top, and risk having to turn back if it got too steep. The peak of the mountain peak from our vantage point looked to be a steep a climb. Brock spied a chute he called a ‘butthole’ with binoculars that we might be able to climb to the top.
Ascending the Mountain
The hike out to the ridge and the mountain chute was breath taking. We looked west down into the bowl we had approached spying a small lake hidden in the basin. On the east side, the ridge dropped into a steep drainage and the distant elk wallow, we had hiked through the year before. I could see the steep jagged face of the ridge we had hiked to the top of the year before. This new hike on the northern ridge although narrow was a gentler climb toward peak we thought to reach again this year.
Brock led on as we scrambled over the knife edge ridge, at times no wider than a few feet with only a single large flat-topped boulder to scramble across. Steep shale rock slopes dropped off into the drainage on either side. We moved across the spine of rock pushing through short patches of juniper clinging around the stones.
As we approached the peak, we got a better view of the butthole we intended to climb. Although it looked steep, we figured it could be done. Yves caught up to us with a single comment, “You guys are fucking hardcore”. I said with a broad smile, “I’m only following him.” Brock smiled and led us forward. We came to the butthole, a very steep narrow wet earthen chute between two rocky walls that climbed no more than 30 meters before it looked to spread out again and allow us to approach the western peak.
Brock pushed forward to take a look. As I was climbing up, I asked, “Why do you call this a butthole” He said, “Because if you fell it would shit you out down there.” I spared a glance 60 + meters down onto the broken jumble of rocks that formed a shelf below us and decided I wasn’t much for getting shit out today.
We made the peak just after noon and looked down into the bowl we had hunted the year before. Only now, we looked on it from the Western lip instead of the eastern one. Brock bugled into the valley sporadically as we ate some lunch and listened to the mountain. Silence replied as we ate and the day grew hot with exposure to the noon sun.
We talked a bit about what to do, I noted the obvious, “No elk are here.”, Brock said, “Yea, but I can’t help think they always are, but they just won’t talk.” I nodded. We decided we would go a bit further along the western lip, calling off into the western slope where Brock had shot an elk two years before. The same area where I had helped hike out that elk to the switch back logging road far below.
First Contact With a Bull Elk
We shouldered our packs and moved down the ridge when off in the distance we heard the faint high pitched triple chirp of a response call. Yves said, “What the fuck was that?” in disbelief, I smiled, “That’s an elk”. Brock fist pumped and said a gleeful ”Yes.” We quickly decided to move down slope and find an open area that would give us a shooting lane. We didn’t want to go too far down into the bowl in the event that he would circle around upwind of us and get a sniff. As it was, the wind was going perfectly up the mountain taking our scent back the way we had come.
We found an open meadow that sloped down into the bowl as the elk called back from down in the bowl. I picked a spot between a large tree on my right and tiny tree on my left that I could shoot sideways and down if need be. Yves set up close to me as Brock went behind us and began bugling and cow calling. The Elk was closer, though still in the bowl below us he called back with raspy and throaty high-pitched challenges for us to show ourselves.
I whispered the kind of prayer a shamanically inclined Atheist would say to an Elk archetype and realized I sounded ridiculous. I reflected for a moment and said, “Would that kind of stupid prayer ever convince me to give up my life for someone else to eat?.” I dropped it and instead focused on the experience, focused on the moment, focused on what was happening right then on the top of the mountain.
At the moment the experience was man, mountain, and animal. I was aware of the passage between now and how I might change my perceptions when I took an animals life. How I could honour the animal regardless of whether it’s biological body and life were part of some other cosmology that included archetypes, ancestors and elk spirit grounds.
Brock bugled, rolled stones, and thrashed branches while bleating softly with the cow call for more than an hour a half. Meanwhile, this Elk came no closer than what I guessed was a couple hundred meters behind a band of trees in the bowl below. I broke my position upon hearing the elk call again from farther off down the bowl. Approaching Brock and Yves and I said, “He isn’t coming up here.” Brock said, “No.”, Yves put in, “It’s too hot. He doesn’t want to come up here.”
Descending Into Elk Habitat
I looked down into the bowl and said, “What should we do? I don’t think I want to go off down into the bowl as it’s starting to get late.” Brock and Yves agreed. Yet I couldn’t help but want to check it out a little more even though I felt full with the experience so far. Brock suggested we leave our packs where they were and go down into the bowl a little ways taking no more than an hour to check it. We all agreed and began hiking down into the bowl.
Immediately we found a sloping trail leading into a stand of trees smack in the bottom of the drainage enclosing a very homey elk bedding site. Crisscrossing trails came too and from the site with large fresh piles of dung and the smell of elk in the air. We bugled from the home site answered back right away from much farther down the bowl, He was moving away. Then we heard an even more distant call and realized a third animal was calling!
We had checked the area for a bit before we decided to go. We moved back up the slope and found our meadow with our packs waiting for us just after 2pm. We pulled some snacks and began collecting our gear. Suddenly the elk we had been in a pissing match with for the last 2 hours called again from much closer. Brock decided to answer the challenge as we gathered our packs and called back.
A Bull Elk Approaches
Brock said, “Holy Shit, Look over there” as he pointed across the bowl to the eastern lip. I scanned the edge looking for something. Yves said in his thick french accent, “Fuck there is one, he is coming!” I said, “Where?” I was struggling to scan and spot the animal. Yves got close and had me follow his finger direction. Woosh all at once I saw the bright reddish brown of a Bull Elk walking the bowl and coming in our direction and I was all nerves.
Brock said, “Wait till he is behind the trees and run across to that tree.” Eight meters away from us was a Spruce with a clear view above below and across to where we saw him. Brock noted from there I could shoot up slope if I had too, although he might smell me and it would suck shooting up slope. Hopefully, he would come in below me in the meadow we had been working all day. I told Yves, “If you end up with the shot you take it.”
The elk moved behind some trees and I crouched down running to the tree with only my crossbow. I sat down and gauged the distance below me to a patch of trees tapering off into smaller ones and the open space that followed to no more than 25 yards. I turned and looked up the extremely steep up slope and realized it would be a horrible shot. Then scanned straight across giving me a site down a narrow lane between the trees to the other side of the bowl from where we had last seen him. I hoped not to see him down that lane. That would mean he was going above us.
My heart rate was high my breathing up and my limbs shaking. I took a few minutes to slow my breathing, calm myself, and prepare, it was in this space that I came back to that ridiculous prayer. From a quieter place I said, “If this is the place, the time, and the moment then let it be a good one.” Here was a living creature who didn’t want to die and be eaten who was crossing with the will of a man who wanted to. Everything else was just an idea or a belief about his spirit dancing with mine. Whether there was such a thing as giving of himself then this is what I welcomed. What I realized though was belief was unnecessary, regardless of a belief I was in a dance with this animal no matter what. I was open and being taught be it straight science or mythic hunting grounds.
The First Shot
Within minutes, I suddenly caught a glimpse out of my peripheral vision in the tapering stand of trees below me a rack of antlers paused just behind the trees. I turned slowly and raised my crossbow. This was it. This was the hunt. This was the meeting I had prepared for.
I fumbled through my head counting antlers, trying to make sure he was 6 points. Although it was open for any bull, I still wanted this rapid fire training to recognize the right animal in a hunt while I was full of adrenalin. I calmed my system, steadied my hand and lifted the safety off on my crossbow. I watched him through the scope, remembering he is 25 or 30 yards down slope.
Brock bugled again from his vantage point. The elk stepped forward just enough that I could see his majestic head as he chewed and flicked an ear looking toward the source of the call. He was perfectly broadside to me, but his body was still behind the smaller trees and not safe for a shot. He looked directly at me for a moment, and I thought he saw me as I sat still in the shade of the tree.
Brock called again and he looked toward them and stepped forward giving me a full shot. At that moment everything happened, I was dancing the dance, I inhaled slowly, took aim, exhaled slowly cross hairs steady in my scope as I squeezed gently at the bottom of my breath. The bow fired and kicked back while I heard the bolt hit, but not seeing the shot. The elk pivoted away from me and bolted down slope in a direction toward Brock and Yves but away into the bowl below.
Personal Revelation
In that single moment when the bolt hit I had a transcendent experience, a revelation, a deep and visceral learning. The dream I had where I was compelled to learn hunting was not a statement or a command, but merely a question. The moment my bolt left the bow I was given the answer. Every single living thing in this world is in a contract with life. Life taking life to live. It’s a contract that birth binds us too, while humans are the only ones who question or avoid the contract. Yet humanity lives off the avails of that biological agreement, while choosing not to be responsible for it. I recalled how often I have heard people say, “I did not ask to be born.” Yet here we all were living. As I shot I felt the bolt touch like a pen stroke on that elk and I consciously agreed to the contract. It was part of what I came to do. The act of taking a life to feed my family and my community was a sacred agreement and it would be asked of me some day to give the same.
I snapped back from revelation only a moment after the shot to the sound of the elk running out of my view below my shooting tree. I heard him fall crashing into the underbrush below and between myself, Yves and Brock. I silently asked him to stay down and die even as I heard him get back up and begin running again. I looked back to see Yves stand up and point and call out, “He is down.” I signaled him to be silent as the Elk got up and ran again into the forest below.
Emotions Run High
I ran across the open space to Brock and Yves, sat down on the ground put my head in my hands and sobbed quietly as the guys congratulated me. Within a few moments suddenly I heard his death rattle, The growl and throaty release of his life and the sound of another crash somewhere in the forest.
Yves was a superb spotter. He kept his eye on the Elk the whole time. As I sat there shaking and breathing heavily with emotion he told me that he and Brock couldn’t tell if I saw him when he approached and that he had been ready. He said he saw my shot and that I hit him perfectly.
Emotions boiled and flooded over me. A mixture of elation, joy, grief, and a sense of tragic purposefulness. There was no bravado, no macho manly shit, no tough guy, just a profound sense of growing up in some new way.
Honoring the Kill
After five or more minutes we decided to go look for him, I re-cocked the bow, loaded another bolt in case he was still alive. We set out down but traversing the western side of the bowl no more than 50 meters from the ridge line. Yves spotted him, he pointed and called out “There he is. He is dead.” I came around some trees and saw him laying on the edge of a rocky slope his tongue hanging out. Yves called to Brock who quickly joined up and we made our approach. A six-point elk was dead on the side of the mountain, and I had taken his life in a good way.
I gently touched his eyeball with the point of my bow to be certain he was dead. I then took a moment of silence to thank him and to wish his spirit off, or to dissipate. I lit some tobacco and blew the smoke on his forehead. Whispering to him and asking him to forgive me, thanking him for his body, and wishing him swiftness on his journey to the other side. I invited him to live on through his meat and in us at our family gatherings when we ate. I blew smoke on his heart and his belly, along his spine and smudged him down in strong fragrant tobacco. Once I snubbed the cigarette. I talked with the guys about how to butcher him. It was after 3pm and it was hot, He was dead on a steep rock outcropping no more than a few feet high hanging off the side awkwardly in death. We decide to drag him down a few meters into a shaded stand of trees. Yves and Brock pulled his hind legs while I lifted him by his antlers and guided his head and neck into the small clearing.
Butchering An Elk
There were several flies gathering around him as we opened our packs and got our butchering gear out. I used the gutting hook on my knife, the first time I would use this knife. I cut into his sternum and then ran the gutting hook down to his genitals and up to the top of his throat by his head. His stomach began pushing out of the incision immediately as we worked to open him, and suddenly a hundred flies came from all around the forest at the scent of him being cut.
Yves and I had never butchered and animal and Brock had only done a few. We were new to this as we worked. Brock used a bone saw to cut through his rib cage and carved a stick to pry the ribs open so we could work to free the organs from the diaphragm and chest cavity. Yves and I cut around his ankles and into his armpits to began peeling his hide back from the crackly white fat that protected his organs in life.
We took only a short water break in which we discovered that Yves was out, and Brock and I had only a few swallows left. We passed around the remaining water and wetted our throats before we continued over to his throat and cut through his trachea and his esophaphogus. I stopped for a moment to feel my own throat, This was real biology, we were both mammals and this creature, however much we seemed different, was my distant cousin. I felt the same structure of the cartilage rings in my own throat as his.
With the windpipe cut and pulled down to the spread ribs we worked to free the last of the diaphragm being careful not to pierce the stomach. We cut away the deeper attachments close to the spine on the inside of the chest cavity. We tied a leg up in the air to allow better access while we were covered in sweat, blood and harrassed by hundred of flies that swarmed around the kill.
Occasionally one of us would look up and remind the others that we were still in Grizzly Bear country and to be ready. Always listening for some approach over the din of the flies, and our work. We spilled the gut pile out at the base the trees in the little grove and pulled the elk a meter away to begin quartering him out. The majority of the flies stayed with the offal pile which suited us nicely.
It was tedious work skinning him, quartering off the haunches and gathering the rest of the meat from the ribs, and neck into Game bags. Our knives dulled within minutes of cutting through the fat and hide away even without making the mistake of touching our blades against the pristine white bones and tendons of his body.
Brock stopped when our dull blades became unbearable and ran through a sharpener he had brought. It was not the last time I was thankful for that little hunting detail. Whenever a quarter came off, we bagged it and carried it a few meters away.
Just before 6pm we had butchered the elk. I took a red cloth I had prepared, filled with a Tobacco offering tied with red string and said a final thank you before placing it gently within the cleaned rib cage that we would leave. We left the grove and moved our pack out stuff to higher ground farther away from the gut pile.
Hiking Out
We planned to leave the quarters for the night. We decided to tree the meat tying off the game bags and hoisting them into a tree. After some difficulty, we got a rope through the saddle and with a lot of grunting, pushing and pulling got the meat pulled up into the tree. It was no more than 4 feet off the ground. We accepted that a bear would be able to get it here, but we could do no more.
We loaded up two bags of meat, one in Brock’s frame pack, and one in Yves’s pack. I tied off the Head and said I would carry it, Brock and Yves insisted that I leave it for now and just alternate carrying Yves pack when it got too heavy. I was grateful I had left it less than an hour later. I shouldered my own pack and both crossbows and we started up to the top of the ridge. Reaching the top as the Sun hung only a few inches from the top of the mountains to the west of us.
The hike down grew humbling quickly. After the long hours, the hard climbing, the excitement of the hunt, the difficulty of the butchering, the hike down was nothing short of gruelling. Every heavy pack carrying step hurt, my knees ached, my ankle flared up, and the sweat streamed down my face. We marched straight down the mountain toward the same switch back I had had helped Brock hike an elk out two years before.
It was a 650 meter descent according to the GPS that would take 2.24 kilometers. The sun set, and the exhaustion was setting in. The first quarter of the descent was still easy sub-alpine Elk country where short trees and open bear grass areas made for relatively easy hiking. Yet by the time the sun set we hit the steeper sections, with the thicker rhododendron and the fallen snags and bigger obstacles such as steeper 1 to 3 meter cliffs sprung up to meet us.
Yves and I began switching packs every so often. Going down hill was little relief, we sweated, and our throats dry. There had been no stream in the bowl. The slope we were on wouldn’t afford us a chance to drink for a while as I recalled there was a stream close to the logging road.
Dusk set in quickly and everything got more difficult. Walking became even more treacherous in the gloom, seeing a hole or a log under brush was hard enough during the day, but in twilight it was impossible. Yves collapsed at some point while carrying the meat pack and simply unbuckled and said, “It’s your turn” as he gushed sweat breathing heavily. This would become the way the pack was changed for the rest of the hike down. We all took the opportunity to pull out our headlamps and get ready for the hardest part. Brock informed us we were half way after an hour and a half of walking.
I couldn’t help but question myself as I laboured through the dark forest with a heavy pack on my back. Why had I done this thing? Why had I even wanted to go shoot and elk up there on the top of a fucking mountain and put myself through this whole hike? I felt humbled and exhausted, sheepish and questioned whether I could even finish this thing. There was still so much descent still to go. Someone made a joke, “Whose idea was it to shoot an elk up there.”. We had just enough energy for a chuckle and to switch packs again. The canopy of the denser forest closed in over the top of us turning it pitch black on the forest floor where we labored slowly toward the road below. The road that we knew but no one mentioned was many kilometers away from where we parked the truck and hiked in that morning. I avoided thinking about that. After all, I was busy working without exaggeration the hardest I had ever worked in my life.
We found a small stream at 2/3 of the way down and took a break to drink and drink and drink again. Passing the bottle in the forest and refilling them as we slaked our thirst in silence and in the dark.
The last part of the pack out was a dream. I left my thoughts and became just a tired body trudging through the forest, no complaints, no care, just quiet and resigned purpose. Stumbling along and occasionally tripping and falling down where another body would take up the burden and we could carry on. At some point, Brock stopped and told us, “The GPS indicates we should be at the road.” The canopy was thick and in the dark it was clear that there was no logging road here. He said we should stop and rest and he would carry on and look for the road. He descended into the forest as Yves and I sat down in the forest silently. I turned off my headlamp and washed away into the deep darkness watching the dim light well of Brock’s headlamp fade away into nothingness.
Within 10 minutes he was calling out and we were calling back. He climbed up to us with good news, the road was less than 50 meters away. We shouldered up for another push and stumbled through the darkness to the broken naked edge where the forest gave way to the logging road.
Returning to Civilization
Lowering ourselves to the road we dropped our packs and confronted the monster that lay before us. The truck was about five kilometers away up the logging road. Up being the operative word. I suggested we just leave our stuff and walk back together. Brock said he would go and we should stay, he proposed to jog and walk back up along the road. I was amazed at his determination to tackle this thing, and reluctantly agreed to it.
Yves and I got water and lay by the road for an hour before we saw the lights topping the trees above. Within minutes we were loaded and driving like ghosts down 20 km of logging road back to town. Even in that exhausted and utterly spent zone there were plans to be made, texts to go out to gather hikers, and stuff to be done to prepare for the hike back in the following day.
Within an hour, I was in the shower with a plan ready for the next day. It was the elk I shot that was with me most of all. The memory of when I first saw him, his ears flicking at bugs, his jaws working a cud, the light in his eyes. That unmistakable light that living beings have in their eyes. All of the sentiment, the beauty, the life and how in less than three minutes that afternoon I had taken that away from him. I was sad, tired, and needed sleep.
I thought, “I brought death to another being today and somehow it has affirmed my own life, made it sweeter, made it less easy to take for granted.” I realized in the hardship of the hunt I never once got angry. How could I bring anger to the sacred space of the hunt, this was a lesson for me too as I lay down for sleep. If I could carry that grueling work into my everyday life without anger or making it personal then the elk hunt was truly messianic in nature. His death, a sacrifice that brought more than just meat to the table, it brought a gift to my own soul, whatever that was, and for that I was deeply grateful. I turned the lights off with tears in my eyes and lay down for a dreamless sleep.
POST-HUNT NOTES:
It took two extra people to hike the rest of the elk out the following day. No bear had touched the meat although the gut pile had been disturbed overnight. Noah came up to help the next day. I think it was amazing for him as well. He had to deal with some hard feelings about not being able to carry the hide all the way out. We had him drop it in the forest with Brock and I agreeing to come back and get it later in the week.
When it was all said and done, we had gone up and down the mountain 3 times for a total combined ascent and descent of 2396 meters.
We hiked 7.9 km on that first day with a 446 meter ascent to the peak of the mountain. With several miscellaneous meters in ascent and descent during the hunt. Bookended with our eventual 650 meter descent to the logging road which rounded out our day at 15.25 hours. Tack on to that and extra hour and a 5.4 km iron man jog back up 280 meters to the truck for Brock. (He did a total of 13.3 km of walking, hiking, packing, climbing, and running on this day). By the end of the day, we had been up for 20 hours straight.
When Yves and I were on the road with the packs, I checked Brocks pack weight. Yves and I had been switching packs all the way down believing we had a heavier load, but not alleviating Brock of his pack burden. It turned out Brock’s pack was heavier than ours and he never shared the burden. Next time we hunt I’m checking his equipment and making sure he trades off..