by Jay Cassell
Then Jack explained that we could see only the base of what was actually a great L-shaped field. He thought the animal might proceed along a stretch of meadow hidden from us, and perhaps on through a narrow opening into still another field. We faded back into the timber and set about to reach the top of the L.
The trees in the woodland Jack led us through were far enough apart to make travel quiet and easy, but an overhang of wet branches soaked us above the waist, while the low bushes soaked us to our hips. But when Jack finally led us to the edge of the timber our discomfort was forgotten. The stag was feeding placidly a quarter of a mile away.
When the plastic cover had been taken off my quiver, the camera brought out of its waterproof wrappings, and everything else O.K.’d, Jack settled himself to watch. Ron and I edged toward a point of trees that would provide cover well into the field.
The two hundred yards from the last low spruce to the feeding stag diminished slowly as the animal came on. His horns were wide and fully in velvet. The brow horns were paired and gave the effect of a massive, well-balanced head. I judged him for about thirty points, but what he lacked in points he more than made up for by his appearance of solidity and strength.
When the distance had narrowed to not much over a hundred yards, the stag fed for a long time, then lay down. His head was quartering away from us, and unless we frightened him by a noise, or the wind shifted, or some sixth sense warned him of danger, there was a chance that I could get fairly close. Ron and I checked the camera settings against the light reading, and I started moving forward at a half crouch.
I knew that the soft, swampy earth would make a sucking sound if I put my weight on one foot too long and then tried to lift it, and also that the grass would swish if I moved too fast. At any point a stick might snap if I stepped on it. My eyes swept from the ground to the stag and back to the ground again. I moved forward, step by step.
A patch of sunlight swept over me, and I stood stock-still. Unless action took place in the more prevalent overcast, the lens settings we’d fixed would be wrong. The caribou’s head stirred, and he lifted it to test the wind. When it clouded up again I moved ahead. Seventy-five yards is a long way for a hunter to travel in the open toward a wary animal. It gave me a feeling of nakedness, and I kept thinking that the animal should at least be able to sense my presence even though he couldn’t see me. My muscles were tight and my nerves were tense when my right foot sank to the ankle in soft earth. There was no avoiding the sound of air rushing in to fill the hole, though I put my right hand to the grass to help me withdraw my foot slowly. I could see another patch of sunlight coming.
The horned head swung my way and the stag’s muscles rippled for the rise. I straightened, drew the bow, and released my arrow almost in a single motion as the stag came to his feet. By the time I’d fitted the second arrow to the bow he was seventy yards away, going swiftly but in halting strides. The arrow had penetrated his chest cavity, and I knew the wound was mortal.
Then the sunlight poured down. I could only hope the exposure guess, made in advance of the actual shooting, was good enough. Then I started worrying about Ron. Had he started the camera too soon and run out before the action was over? Had his sighting brought both of us into the field? Had he left the lens settings unchanged? He quickly assured me that everything had gone off O.K., and the processed film we previewed later bore him out.
The stag was dead when we found him. Then, using the same clouded light, we built up the story of the stalk to the point of the kill, and continued it through the packing of the head and meat back to camp. The background of a hunt can be filmed easily enough, but there’s no substitute for the actual striking of the arrow.
We still had ten more days to hunt. As a hedge against the possibility of the film’s loss or failure, we decided to go right after a bull moose. If we could bring it off, we’d have the certainty of at least one good kill and perhaps a double-header—a complete bow-hunting coverage of both animals.
The number of mature bull moose taken by modern archers can probably be counted on one’s fingers. Bow-shooting Indians, with no seasons to hinder them, occasionally killed moose bogged down in deep snow, but today’s archers, hunting moose during open seasons, truly have their work cut out for them.
When the rut is on and the bulls are moving, it’s easy enough to see one. But in September’s first weeks the bulls are still lazy. A rutting bull can be called in for a shot, but a drowsy bull, heavy with fat, must be found before he can be stalked. Nine out of ten of them stick to the deep woods.
Our best chance of locating a bull was from the air in the Meelpaeg basin. Since my plane carries only two persons, Ron and I hunted while Jack scouted close to camp for a bull whose habits he could observe and whose routine would permit a planned ambush.
Ron and I found that game would come out of the woods periodically, and that in as short a time as fifteen minutes an apparently empty area would have several animals in it.
Several times we made long stalks only to find the bulls gone or so well hidden that we couldn’t find them. We spotted at least a dozen animals placidly feeding in areas too far from suitable landing water for us to attempt to reach them.
A week passed and the weather was holding mostly fair when we saw a pair of big bulls lying in a small meadow flanked by rocky ridges. The field was in an area where an old burn and strong winds had taken out all but scrub trees and spilled blown-downs over the half-covered rocks.
We landed on a nearby lake and secured the plane. Our approach brought us out on a great boulder overlooking the glade. One bull was on his feet, stretching to reach a young birch. He soon settled back. Both animals were in their prime, well-fed, heavy, and strong. Their antlers were massive and still in velvet. Typical with Newfoundland’s bulls, their palms spread upward rather than outward. One bull faced us, the other faced away, and the distance was over a hundred yards.
Ron readied the camera and then ducked down at the rear of the boulder and waited. I worked down the hidden side of the ridge, then swung around to try an approach across the level meadow. The only cover consisted of some small and feathery larches.
When I knew that only half a dozen steps would bring the two bulls into sight, I became aware of movement just ahead of me. For an instant I thought one of the moose had decided to travel or that both had spooked. Then a doe caribou followed by a fawn walked from behind the low bushes and headed toward the moose.
The setup had been complicated enough without the caribou. Now a stray gust of wind could take my scent to them where they’d stopped less than thirty feet away. The caribou moved on into the meadow.
One bull let out a guttural rumble. A few seconds later doe and fawn returned as they had gone, their eyes ahead, failing to notice me. When I could move forward again both bulls were on their feet and looking in my direction, but in five minutes they settled down in the grass. Only by walking across thirty yards of clearing, in full view of one bull, could I reach the far side of the meadow where low cover might hide me.
If they had time to wait, so did I. The sun was high. Ron was comfortable on his perch. The minutes ticked away. Finally the bull facing my way shifted his head.
I moved swiftly across the opening, then more slowly behind a screen of larch branches. I glanced up from time to time to see Ron’s head partly exposed atop the big rock. Finally I was within forty yards of the nearest moose.
Two spindly larches stood between us. Through their lacy branches I could make out a bulky form and the spread of great palms, but I took time to study the situation. Stalking two animals is many times more difficult than stalking one. One or the other, or both, might discover me or decide to move. I went to my belly and crawled to the feathery larches.
I nocked an arrow as I rose to draw, and I could hear and see the bulls rising to face me. For an instant the near bull stood still, startled and alert, big as a horse, and topped by towering antlers. My arrow struck him with a solid chunk, and he w
hirled out of sight. The second bull, also dark and heavy, vanished in timber sixty yards away. Without setting another arrow to the bow, I raised my hand to Ron on the rock. I was sure my arrow would kill.
Half an hour later I was ashamed of that vain gesture. We picked up the arrow’s shaft where the bull had first staggered through the branches. It had snapped cleanly at the head. The depth of blood on the shaft was only five inches.
We found blood on the trail only where the bull had brushed against fallen or dry timber with his left shoulder. The truth was plain. At thirty feet I’d driven a shaft directly into his shoulder, into the heavy bone blocking off his chest cavity. Foolishly, I’d centered my aim on the usually vital area, thinking of deer and light-boned animals, of the certainty of a hit, of anything but heavy moose bones. I should have shot at the neck, fully exposed as the animal stood quartering toward me. Second thought told me that no arrow could penetrate the chest cavity at that angle. It was a lesson learned the hard way. In shooting an arrow into a heavy-boned animal’s vital organs, aim from the side or rear.
After we lost the moose trail we cruised over the area for hours in the plane, but we never saw either bull again. I’m convinced that my arrow gave its victim little more than a sore shoulder. The embedded point would work its way out or the flesh would heal over it.
The hunt might well have ended then had it rained, for the chances of downing a moose seemed slimmer than ever; but, surprisingly, two more good days followed. From our seats in the sky we sighted a bull’s shining horns as he fed atop a ridge.
Oddly enough, the stalk was again complicated by roaming caribou, this time a stag, a doe, and a fawn. We came on them suddenly and feared they’d spook the moose, but they passed us by. When we finally topped the ridge and found the bull, he was ambling slowly down the slope and away from us. Then he lay down.
The setup was perfect—sun was high, sky clear, wind blowing in little gusts that would hide all but a careless footfall. The stalk could be made with the sun behind me and with enough cover to get within twenty-five feet of him. Meanwhile Ron could perch on a bush-topped rock not sixty yards away and take his movie sequences while I crept forward on my belly.
All this was done. I rose from behind the last evergreen and drew and loosed an arrow that drove swiftly, straight, and hard into his vitals, cutting a corner of his heart before he was aware that I existed. Ron started the camera when I drew the bow and kept it going as the great bull reared up and moved crazily out of our sight. We found him, stone dead, three hundred yards away.
It was dream stuff, except for the solid satisfaction of having moose steaks broiled over coals, for the antlers strapped to my pontoon fittings, and for the viewing of the processed film in which those moments come alive again. The 1939 film shows a darkhaired young hunter killing a caribou and then a moose, each with a single bullet. The new one shows the same man, now gray-haired, kill as good a stag and a better bull, each with a single arrow.
If I were required to duplicate that film, I’d want at least five seasons’ leeway to do it—and I’d want Ron Callahan along with his luck, his work, and his prayers.
Reprinted with permission of Joan Wulff.
A Day Out
CHRIS MADSON
The sound filtered slowly down through the layers of sleep, and I contemplated it awhile with what little consciousness I had, wondering whether it was part of the dream or something from the outside. It held steady under my attention, not very dream-like, until it seemed real enough to be worth investigating. I drifted back up into the real world and opened one eye.
Waking up in the cabin in the wee hours of the morning is always a little disorienting. The blackness is nearly perfect—it’s hard to tell whether you’re looking at the room or the back side of your eyelids. At last, I picked up a few cues to locate myself. Over in the direction of the wood stove, Kuntz started snoring, and in the cot next to mine, Obie stirred in his sleeping bag. The chill in the darkness settled onto my face like snow.
I sorted through the small noises in the night, for the one that had roused me. In a moment, it came again, the quick soft concussion of wind against the glass of the invisible window and the rattle of sleet on the roof. I shivered in the warmth of the down bag and tried hard to be thankful for the change in weather as I drifted off again.
The alarm came a couple of hours later. I groped for it on the windowsill, killed it, and rose up on one elbow, the first step to dragging myself out of bed. Somebody’s feet hit the floor, and I could hear the steps across the room toward the kitchen. Then the “plunk-plunk-plunk” of a Coleman lantern being pumped, the hiss of compressed gas, and the pop and roar as light flooded through the cabin.
Obie put the kettle on the stove and limped back to bed.
“Snowing,” he said.
“Sounds like the wind’s gone down, though,” I offered. “Should be a good day.”
“Mmmm,” Obie commented with about as much enthusiasm as I felt.
The Professor swung his legs over the edge of his cot and put his feet gingerly on the deck. “Time for the other boots,” he said to himself; then, as he ransacked his duffle bag for moleskin—“Whatayou nimrods want for breakfast?”
The smell of antelope sausage and pancakes infused the cabin with a new sense of purpose. While the Professor put the finishing touches on breakfast, I built sandwiches; Obie and Kuntz fussed with equipment, and Cosetti sat at the kitchen table, intent on swathing both his feet with band-aids.
Kuntz eyed these proceedings with amusement. “You need another partner, Cosetti,” he commented. “The Professor’s gonna wear your feet off to the knees.”
“Yeah,” Cosetti grinned, “but he gets results.”
Kuntz shook his head with a show of pained tolerance.
“He doesn’t play fair, though. Just walks ‘em ‘til they surrender. They all draw straws to see who’s gonna give himself up for the good of the herd. Hardly sporting.”
“Jealousy,” the Professor commented without looking up from the frying pan.
We sorted out the day over the second stack of flapjacks. The Professor and Cosetti had decided to start on North Crockett Ridge—not even the Professor knew where they would end up. Kuntz had it in mind to look at the south side of Horse Creek Basin, and Obie and I were bound for opposite sides of Lava Rim. With the breakfast dishes out of the way, the time had come. I stuck an extra pair of socks into my pack next to my lunch, wished the crowd luck, and stepped out into the last of the night.
The wind had faded almost to nothing, and a light sifting of snow settled down out of the pines. There was a faintly luminous quality to the darkness, a sign that the clouds were very low, which was hardly surprising with two inches of fresh white on the ground. The cold cut right to my skin—nothing half an hour of walking wouldn’t cure but a stern test of resolve at 6:00 in the morning. I thought about grabbing another layer, then cancelled the thought and headed for the timber.
With the overcast, it would be a solid hour before there was light enough to shoot by, which was alright since I needed nearly that long to get the breakfast table conversation out of my system. Bit by bit, I could feel the silence of the predawn settling into my head. Where I was going started not to matter; where I was from second to second began to be the issue. The unique background of tiny sounds emerged—the drip of meltwater from the branches overhead; the small, inanimate creaking and crackling of twigs settling under the weight of the snowfall; the breeze stirring the treetops; my boots packing the snow; my breath; the tiny seashell rushing of blood in my ears. With any luck, there would be another sound sometime during the day, the difference almost impossible to describe, yet recognizable, the nuance of purpose behind it. The dainty, almost imperceptible stirring of 500 pounds of bull elk in the deadfall. No matter how many times I had heard it, that sound never failed to amaze me with its smallness.
The light came on by slow degrees. As I broke out onto the edge of Duck Lake, it occurred to me
that I could see across it, that it was time to chamber a round. The clouds were snarled in the treetops across the lake, and the snow fell like down, settling on the huckleberry leaves with a faint rustling. I could feel the weight of my wet Malone pants beginning to gather at my belt. Of course, the sensible thing to have done was put on rain pants as soon as I left the cabin.
“Except I can’t stand the noise,” I thought. And, anyway, you could almost convince yourself that sopping wool pants are comfortable if you worked at it. “Just a good thing they aren’t Levi’s—I’d be freezing to death.”
I was almost around the lake when I struck a trail. The little ridge of snow in the middle of the first track stood up crisp and sharp; the place in the bottom where the snow had been packed thin was dark with moisture but hadn’t melted through. No fresh snowflakes there. Worth following.
The trick, of course, was to see them before they saw you. Easily said. Somewhere out there in that tangle there were four cows with a bull trailing along behind. Five sets of eyes and ears, five very suspicious natures. They had played some version of this game every day of their lives and were on a long winning streak. I was an amateur.
The internal coaching started. Check every line of sight through the trees. Hard to tell how far you can see down those little corridors, forty yards, maybe fifty or sixty now and then. They won’t be in a clear spot where you can see them. Look hardest where it’s hardest to see. Keep an eye out behind—they may loop around to look at their back trail. Listen. A cracked twig with some life in it. Pine squirrel. You knew that; the sound was too big for an elk. Suddenly, the heavy musk in the air. Elk scent. Must be close. Must be. Anyway, they can’t hear you moving. You can’t even hear you. Moving slow, though. You suppose they’re walking this slow? Maybe they’ll bed down. Maybe not.