The Recipe

RAY'S 7-UP GRAVY

Ingredients:
4 tablespoons butter
2 1/2 cups of elk tenderloin drippings
4 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 cans of chilled 7-Up cola
dash of Black Mountain soil
splash of Hunters Specialties® Cow Elk Estrus Urine (add to taste)

Directions:
Stir contents together rapidly in an unwashed cast iron skillet
ladle over burnt, charred biscuits and enjoy

7-Up Gravy

With the Annual Wild Meat Supper coming up this Saturday, I'm debating what wild game dish I'm going to prepare. I'm thinking something all the lines of elk meatballs or venison chili. Of course I still haven't ruled out Bacon Ice Cream. I'm afraid, however, that it would be more of a novelty dessert that not a lot of people would eat. The exception being my five year-old nephew Jake-now that kid can put away some bacon.

Anyway, I wondering what dish my second cousin Ray is going bring to the festivities. For the sake of everyone's health and well-being, however, I'm praying that Ray stays out of the kitchen. Ray is one heck of a hunter, but his culinary skills are lacking.

When it comes to my second cousin Ray Bryson, I’m convinced God somehow got the dates on his heavenly calendar mixed up. Instead of being born fifty-nine years ago in the year 1949, I believe the Good Lord really intended Ray to pop out into this world in 1849 and probably somewhere along the Snake River in Wyoming Territory to boot.

It happens every so often in life, you come across a certain individual where you get the sense their soul was intended for an earlier time and era. Cousin Ray is definitely one of those. Inside the body of my cousin beats the heart of a genuine late-nineteenth-century mountain man. He’s an individual who would have been right at home palling around with the likes of Old Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, or Liver-Eatin’ Johnson and had he been placed on this earth during the correct century, instead of being the skilled plumber and welder by trade that he is today, I believe Ray would have been employed by the Rocky Mountain Fur Company or served as a scout and Indian translator for the United States Army.

He’s also one of the most skilled hunters and woodsman that I’ve ever encountered in my life. Bear Gryllis, Les Stoud, they have nothing on Cousin Ray. He’s a man who’s completely in his element when he’s in the outdoors and it’s as though every fiber of his being rebels against our modern world. He watches very little television if any, he probably couldn’t tell you the last movie he saw in an actual theater, he no concept of text messaging, Facebook staus’s, or Blu-Ray Hi-Definition. And frankly he doesn’t care. Ray is happiest in this world with his trusty Remington 30.06 slung over his shoulder, a light tracking snow and a blank hunting tag in his back pocket. The rest of the world can be forgotten.

Hunting is where Ray finds his passion and purpose in life, and that is especially true when he’s stalking the high country of Colorado in pursuit of elk. When he’s in elk camp, Ray is so focused on the hunt he has little to no patience for anything else. Which is something I found out on my first elk hunt with the man.

It was the third day of rifle season in Moffat County, Colorado. Like the previous days, we rolled out of our bunks in the drafty Korean era Army tent around 4am. While the rest of our party stumbled half asleep around the confines of the tent getting dressed for the coming day, Cousin Ray was already up, fully clothed and itching to get into the woods. In order to speed things along, Cousin ray took it upon himself to start the morning breakfast, which in and of itself was a extremely bad thing, since Ray is not known for his culinary skills, unlike his wife Ramona who is a fabulously cook. But Ray’s trigger finger was itching him severely that particular morning, so while the rest of us struggled to shake off the early morning cobwebs of fatigue from the previous days hunt, Ray went to work preparing us a hearty, well balanced pre-dawn meal.

After several minutes, of banging pots and pans and the occasional obscenity mumbled under his breath, Cousin Ray hollered from inside the cook tent. “Breakfasts ready! Come and get it, we got elk that needs a killin’.”

One by one the members of our camp ambled through the entrance of the cook tent hoping to a delicious hearty hunter’s breakfast awaiting them. We knew we we in trouble right off the bat, when we open the front flap of the cook tent and large lung choking block cloud of smoke rolled out fully engulfing us and constricted our lungs. Inside we found Ray, his rifle slung over one shoulder, furiously laboring over a large cast iron skillet that contained a strange gelatinous substance. “Come on. Eat up, sun’ll be up shorty and we need to get down in that hole. Biscuits are ready and I’m about finished with the gravy.” Ray motioned towards a Styrofoam plate heaped with dark, hockey puck shaped objects that resembled biscuits, yet were severely charred and discolored. It wasn’t the over cooked biscuits that had our attention, since common knowledge that men can not could biscuits and in our we’ve grown accustomed to eating ours crisp and partially incinerated. No it wasn’t the biscuits that frightened us, it was the odd smelling goo that Ray had just referred to as gravy.

It didn’t resemble any kind of gravy we had had sen before. It was strangely discolored and and a fizzy movement to it. Chip Koontz cautiously poked it with his index finger as it were some sort of alien organism. Carl Barnett, who in our camp is known to eat just about anything and has steel plated stomach was the first to grab one of the biscuits. He tossed on an a plated, priyed it open began dolloping large quantities of Ray’s gravy on to.

One by one each we each followed Carl’s lead, grabbing a biscuit and began applying dabs of of the so-called gravy. There was a brief pause as we all once again exchanged cautious glances. Raise our plastic disposable forks and cut into our meal.

The first thing we noticed was the flavor. As expected, the biscuits was burnt and crunchy But it was the myterious gravy whose taste peaked our curiously. It had an overly salty slight yet tangy taste, almost lemon-y or lime. One could detect the hints black pepper, salt, burnt the grease, a pinch of Colorado mountain soil with an over powerering flavor of tropical fruit particularly lemons and limes. After swallowing, the gravy/biscuit menagerai slid down the back of the gullet and landed with a resounding Plop in the pit of our empty stomachs, leaving behind a tart, bubbly carbonated after taste.

“God in Heaven, Ray, “ hollered Ken Calhoun looking up from his plate, his face contorted as if about to vomit on the spot. “What in the world did you put in this gravy! It taste’s like monkey snot.”

Ray who was busy shoveling his second biscuit into his mouth while simultaneously applying a fresh coating of elk urine to the top of hunting hat, looked up and replied sharply, “What, it’s gravy. Tastes fine to me.”

“No, Ken’s right,” Mikey said, struggling to to force his first bite down. “There’s something in this gravy.”

Ray moved to one side and began pointing to the ingredient containers sitting on near the cook stove. “Look, salt, pepper, flour, a little cookin’ grease from last night’ s tenderloin, it’s what makes gravy.”

“Yeah, well what’s that?” retorted Ken Calhoun.

Ray glanced down at the three empty 7-Up cans laying next the stove.

“Oh, yeah, well, I ran out of milk and the water’s froze up,” Ray said very matter-of-factly. “So I just added a little 7-Up. So what.”

Now most of the other members of camp will probably disagree with me here, but I’d like to go on record to say I found Cousin Ray’s 7-up gravy actually somewhat enjoyable. Sure it gives you gas that causes you fart like a horse eating Hormel Chilli, and about an hour and a half after consumption it runs through your colon like a runaway locomotive, but it sticks to your ribs and that’s what’s important when hunting on a cold autumn day in the Rockies. And as an added bonus it gives you lemon, lime and grease-flavored burps for the remainder of the day, which I personally found strangely refreshing.

It’s the meal that keeps on giving the whole day through.

The Invisible Horse

Now of all the antiseptic butt gels on the market, nothing in my opinion, compares to Boudreaux’s BUTT PASTE. Sure there are other brands with more scientific and discrete sounding names such as Bacitracin, Neosporin, or Desitin. But they just don't have the potency that I require. When it comes quick relief of the burning and irritability in one’s nether region that a bad case of chaffing inflicts, I’ll gladly purchase a product with a gay sounding name like Butt Paste.

BourDeax Butt Paste is the original and still the best, hands down. It’s a regular miracle salve: cures everything from diaper rash to jock itch. Heck, I’m even willing to bet it’ll clear up the mange on dogs. I’m sure one of these days some med student over at Duke will find that it even cures cancer or scoliosis of the liver.

Now as far as I know I've never had any problems with mange or scoliosis, I buy Butt Paste for one reason and one reason only: the infamous galded butt syndrome.

“Galded Butt Syndrome” or G.B.S is undeniably the most uncomfortable condition a hunter can endure in the field, second only to being gut shot by a .22 caliber rifle. To endure a bad case of the G.B.S in the remote wilderness without proper medical treatment is a curse from God. Now I can’t quote the exact verse but I’m pretty sure it that G.B.S was one of the afflictions that God gave Job in the Old Testament. It was at the very least one of the 12 plagues that he hit the Egyptians with. I believe the curse of G.B.S came somewhere between the plague of frogs and the plague of locusts.

Galded Butt Syndrome, in short, is the act of rubbing one’s groin region and inner thighs to the point of rawness by excessive hiking and walking. It occurs from a lethal concoction of the following: excessive perspiration in the groin or anal region, the persistent elastic friction of Hanes Cotton Classic briefs on the soft flesh of one’s nether regions and the dry, chapping air of the the Colorado mountains.

When those three key factors collide simultaneously in your pants, you have the makings of THE PERFECT STORM. And once G.B.S sets in, you’ll be walking the next several days like John Wayne riding a wide-backed invisible horse.

To simulate a bad case of being chaffed, for those who have never had the misfortune of being subjective to this horrid affliction, line your underpants with 16 grain sand paper, and go for a three to four mile jog. At the end of your run, squeeze an entire lemon (or lime, whatever is your preference) into your shorts and enjoy. Not a pleasant sensation to say the least, and for some odd reason it’s a condition that seems to affect me more than most folks.

During my first trip to elk camp in ’97, I suffered from an attack of G.B.S so bad I thought they were going to have to amputate me from the waist down. The first day of the hunt, Dad walked my rear end off- over the top of Mount Oliphant and down through Roaring Fork Creek. After we failed to turn up any elk, Dad decided to try a different are the following day. The next morning, we dropped off the road under Bears Ears and hunted our way down the 1144 Trail to Saw Mill Creek. I have no idea what the actual distance was, but it felt like we march over a hundred miles that day. And it was hot, really hot and by mid afternoon I was sweating like an open spigot through my long underwear. By time we got back to camp, late in the evening the inside of my thighs and groin were as red as raw hamburger meat. I rummaged through camp, desperately searching for anything to relieve my discomfort, but the only thing I can find was a dusty jar of Vaseline that looked like it was originally purchased during the Johnson Administration. Beggars can’t be choosers and I was in dire need, so the next morning, at first light, just before we left camp for another long grueling excursion into the mountains, I snuck around back, promptly dropped my trousers, scooped a large gob of Vaseline from the jar and slathered on a thick coat right between my butt cheeks and inner thighs.


Needless to say I didn't see hide nor hair of an elk the entire day. Heck for that matter, I didn't see any four legged creatures of any kind. It was no wonder,I smelled like a walking petroleum refinery. But at least my rear end felt better.

I learned an important lesson that year, which is G.B.S is not something to take lightly. It can cripple an hunter in the field just a fast as a frost bite, hypothermia or explosive diarrhea brought on by a pot of Carl Barnett’s homemade chili. So after years of extensive field research, trial and error and scientific experimentation, I ultimately found when it comes to clearing up a bad case of Galded Butt Syndrome nothing beats Bourdeaux’s Butt Paste.

After a disastrous rookie season in the elk woods, I returned to camp the following year wiser and more experienced. As the ancient native American proverb said “That which does not kill us, makes up stronger.” And let’s be honest, that first bout of galded butt did about kill me. I learned to strip out of my long underwear around mid-day before I started sweating too much and at the first sign of discomfort, no matter where I was, I dropped my pants and applied a generous coating of paste. And that's another great thing about Butt Paste, it's virtually odor free. That second season, I had zero problems with G.B.S what so ever. The same could not be said however, of newest rookie in camp- Mr. Dale Sorrells.

Dale is a long time family friend, roughly the same age as my father. And although Dale had traveled and hunted extensively through the West in his younger days, this was his first experience hunting the elusive wapati.

After the first day of hunting, Dale limped into camp and collapsed on his cot, obviously in a great deal of discomfort. Immediately I detected the onset of G.B.S.

“You got the galded butt, don’t you?” I asked discreetly.
“Yeah, I've got it bad” he moaned.

“Here, try this,” I said, handing him a fresh tube of Butt Paste. “Stuff works wonders.”

Dale looked it over and handed it back to me. “Looks like something for babies. No thanks.”

“Well, I’ll agree with you there, it does have poor package design, but I guarantee if you use it, you’ll be able to walk properly in the morning.”

“No thanks, I brought some Mole Skin with me for blisters on my feet. I’m sure that will work just fine.”

Big mistake, I thought. Huge. But he’ll just have to learn the hard way. And did he ever. The following day, Dale decided to hunt the bottom of a large slide where the terrain would be steep and rough going and he planned to covered a lot of ground that day.

Around dusk that evening, Dad and I drove the truck to spot where Dale had told us to pick him up. There was another hunter's camp situated next to the trail that Dale would be traveling, so in the spirit of fellowship, Dad and I climbed out of the truck and chatted with gentlemen camped at the trail head. It wasn't long before the three of us were engaged in a lively conversation.

Right around dark, we saw a figure slowly and gingerly making his way up the trail. We of course knew it was Dale, but to anyone else, they may have mistaken him for john Wayne from his odd, bow legged gate. The expression on his face pretty much said it all- Mole Skin doesn't work for Galded Butt Syndrome.

The old man with whom we were chatting, took one look at Dale walking promisingly down the trail. “Hell son, looks like you’re riding a horse, but I don’t see the horse!”

Four Generations

Undoubtedly one of Dad’s most valuable possessions is my great grandfather’s deer rifle. Papa Bryson was rumored to have killed over 100 deer with the rifle in his lifetime and in our family the gun has taken on a somewhat mythical status. In fact in my entire life I can count the number of times I've actually gazed upon the gun on a single hand. When my grandfather was alive he kept the rifle hidden from public view and after it passed on to my father after his death, Dad has cared on the tradition of stashing the weapon away from prying eyes. Now it’s not as though the gun is particularly valuable in monetary terms, but it’s the sentimental value that makes it priceless. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, deer hunting toes the line of religion to us Bryson’s, and in our denomination, Papa Bryson’s rifle is a sacred historic artifact. It’s a relic that is so revered in my family, I never thought I’d be given the chance to fire it, must less to actually take it into the field and hunt for game.

A couple of years ago, I worked a second job, teaching part time at an advertising school here in Atlanta, in order to buy a new hunting rifle. After three long months of lecturing a bunch of future over paid creative directors, I finally earned enough cash to purchase my the weapon I had spent the better part of a year drooling over online – a Remington 700, bolt-action, 30.06 with synthetic stock and detachable magazine. I picked it up at the Bass Pro over in Lawrenceville on a balmy September Saturday afternoon and I couldn’t wait to try it out in the deer woods. Hunting season couldn't get here fast enough. Unfortunately due to my hectic work schedule that particular year, the first chance I’d get to test it on an unsuspecting whitetail wouldn't be until Thanksgiving.

The week before Turkey Day, I was in the People’s Republic of Santa Monica, editing a television commercial for one of my agencies clients. After spending a week in ground zero for liberalism and left-wing kooks in America I was about to gouge my eyes out with a wooden spoon. I was literally counting the hours until I could climb into a deer stand and breathe in some good old fresh western North Carolina mountain air. I had had about all of the LA smog and the liberal smugness that I could tolerate. My return flight touched down back in The ATL around 6PM the day before Thanksgiving, so the plan was for Danielle to pick me up at the airport with the car fully loaded and then head straight for the mountains. The night before I boarded my plane I called my lovely bride from my Ocean Boulevard hotel room to remind her to pack the new love of my life- my new Remington.

“Be sure to grab my rifle,” I said. “It’s under the bed in the guest room. It’s very important that I have Vasilli.” (I had named my rifle after Jud Law’s sniper character in the movie, Enemy at the Gates.)

“Don’t worry, Honey.” She answered in a loving tone. “It’s already taken care of.” That’s just one of the many things I adore about my wife, she’s so thoughtful and always on top of things.

Twenty four hours later my flight landed, Danielle picked my up at the MARTA station and after a welcome home kiss, the two of us were off into the night, headed for turkey, dressing, pumpkin pie and hopefully a soon to be deceased whitetail hanging upside down in the wood shed. Three hours and one pee break later we arrived at my parent house. But as we began unloading the luggage from the car, I soon discovered my wife’s mistake.

“What’s this?” I asked irritably holding up a canvas rifle case.

“Your rife,” she replied.

“No, this is a shotgun.” I fired back.
“Rifle. Shotgun. What’s the difference?” She asked innocently.

It was all I could to restrain myself from launching into a heated ballistics lecture in the middle of the driveway at ten o’clock at night. Instead I simply bite my tongue, kissed my wife on the cheek and walked inside the house.

Now if you know my farther, you know that he owns a collection of firearms and high-powered rifles that rivals that of a small African military dictatorship. Finding a substitute rifle to take into the woods behind my parent’s house to shoot an 80-pound slink doe shouldn't have been a problem. But that wasn't the issue, the issue was that I wanted I hunt with my new toy.

Dad could tell I was bummed about not having my new rifle and that not just any old rifle would do.

“Come with me, “ he said with a wry grin.

We walked downstairs into his den, or what I refer to as his Man Cave. It’s small dark room, that’s basically a finished section of the basement. It’s where he keeps his gun safe, his gun bench and his old television set where he cheers for the Braves and curses their bullpen every night during the summer months. He walked around the corner next the gun safe and knelt down and began feeling along the wood trim, as if searching for something. Suddenly he removed a section of paneling from the wall revealing secret passage. Holy Cow, I thought to myself where did that come from? I mean, I helped build this house during the summer I turned sixteen. I nailed just about every sixteen-penny nail in this house and put on just about every other shingle on the roof but I never knew that secret passage existed.

Dad reached inside and began fumbling in the darkness. For all I knew he had the Ark of the Covenant in there. Eventually he pulled out a dusty old gun case and motioned for me to follow him over to the pool table. Dad placed the case on the green felt of the table and slowly unzipped it. Inside was Papa Bryson’s legendary 32.20.

“Tell you what,” he said. “How ‘bout you take this over to the Gillespie stand and shoot us a doe for supper in the morning.”

I couldn't believe it. Papa Bryson’s 32.20 and I was actually being allowed to hunt with it.

The next morning, I climbed out of bed around 5:30, careful not to wake Danielle who was snoring sounding, and quickly got dressed. I left the house a half hour before sun up. A faint breeze whistled through the treetops, the frost crunched under my boot soles and tucked gingerly under my arm was my Great Grandfather’s rifle.

Fifteen minutes later I was lounging in the Gillespie Stand twenty feet up an old maple tree on the far western end of the property. We called it the Gillespie Stand due to the fact the stand is strategically situated fifty yards from the Gillespie family’s property line, in order to catch deer crossing over from their land onto ours. Over the years it’s been a fairly successful spot in putting deer on the supper table.

Now, that morning, while watching the sun come up over Forge Mountain, I wasn't expecting to kill anything wall worthy. Heck, I wasn't even expecting to see a buck. My parents forty acres of mountain land isn't exactly what you’d call a big game preserve but over the years we've manage to keep a fairly healthy deer population fat and happy on the property. But like the rest of the Mills River Valley, large bucks are few and far between these days. Our land is far from King Ranch status. But on a good day when the deer are moving, you’re likely to see several good sized does and maybe a small forked horn or two. On that day, I didn't really care what came out, I just wanted to see something of shooting size, heck even a little 80-pound slink would do. It would make a nice batch of tender jerky. I really didn't care, all I wanted to do was take a deer a Papa’s rifle, since this would be to only chance I’d ever get to hunt with it.

Never in wildest dreams did I expect a beautiful wide-racked six-point buck to make an appearance that day. But that’s exactly what happened.

Around 9 AM, a couple of does came into a thicket to my right and began milling around munching on acorns. As soon as the biggest one stepped out into the open, I planned on putting another notch into Papa’s rifle’s legacy. But just as I was about to raise the rifle, I heard footsteps directly behind me. I turned my head slightly and out of the corner of my eye, through the twisted, gnarled limbs of the mountain laurel; I saw the rack of a nice buck. I couldn't believe my luck! My first and possibly only chance to hunt with Papa Bryson's 32.20 and good sized buck decides to pay a visit to my stand.

The buck was standing less than fifteen yards away and was looking directly at me. I knew if I was going to get a shot off, it was going to have to be quick. I whirled my rifle around, placed the iron open sights directly behind his front shoulder and fired.

The old rifle cracked in the still morning silence like a cheap firecracker. I was initially shocked at it's lack of volume-I forgot how small a caliber a 32.20 actually is. The buck leaped into the air and disappeared back into the brush. I had no idea if I had made a clean shot on him or not, or even if the old gun was shooting straight.

But the deer instead of disappearing over the ridge, like I expected him to, made a semi-circle around my stand. He was running pretty fast through thick cover, which prevented an immediate follow up shot. I could just catch glimpses of his body through the trees. Eventually, however, his erratic path brought him back out into the open, just fifty yards down the hill from me, we he paused as if the catch his breath. I clumsily pumped another round into the chamber and fired a second shot. The buck again leaped into the air and broke into a full sprint down the hill towards the creek. I watched him disappear into the laurels, and after several seconds, I heard the sound that every hunter loves to hear: a loud crash followed by silence.

I knew immediately that the buck was down.

One thing Dad and Paw taught me, was to give a wounded deer time to die-just because he's on the ground doesn't necessarily mean he's headed for that Big Bait Pile In The Sky. The last thing I wanted to do was chase a gut shot buck all over the county. So after several minutes of calming my nerves and listening for any additional sounds from the bottom of the hill, I climbed down from the stand. The smell of gunpowder hung thick in the air. I immediately found a good blood trail from the second spot I had shot the deer and just as I had hoped, I followed it to the creek where I found his lifeless body laying curled up next to an old red oak log.

He was a beautiful 8-point buck, with wide, tall rack. His antlers were perfectly symmetrical-each tine a mirror image of it's opposite. He was most defiantly the nicest buck I'd ever taken up to that point in my life.

As I stood there in the cold morning air, my breaths coming out in white, frozen puffs, and the glorious sunshine warming my back, I prayed a silent Hunter's Prayer. I thanked God for the opportunity to kill such a magnificent animal and promised that his death would not be in vain-he would feed my family throughout the coming winter. But I also thanked God on that morning, for the chance to take a buck with my great grandfather's rifle. I imagined that somewhere up in heaven, Papa was smiling down on his great grandson-proud that four generations of hunters had taken a deer with that old rifle.

I hope to be there one day with Ridge, when he makes it five generations.

Tree Porn

High in the mountains of northwest Colorado, grows a unique strand of tree. I suppose the tree is in the Aspen Family, yet it produces strange and somewhat seductive patterns in it's bark. I first encountered this odd form of flora when I was just a novice elk hunter on a pre-season scouting trip with Dad.

It was the day before the start of rifle season and Dad and I were on horseback checking for elk sign. That particular morning, we were heading to the head of Roaring Fork Creek, to survey the area around Mount Olyphant and Buck Point-two places that have been heavy used by large elk herds on past hunts.

About an hour into our ride, we topped a steep ridge and paused to give the horse a quick breather. We were in a beautiful little aspen grove, with millions of tiny, translucent, golden leaves quaking against a clear blue sky. In the distance the the snow capped mountains glinted in the sunshine. I sat in the saddle, inhaled the clean, alpine air into my lungs and thought to myself, "This is surely what Heaven will look like when I get there one day."

I gazed about taking in my surroundings-the vibrant blue autumn sky, eagles gliding on the thermals, the majestic mountains, the warm sunshine on my face, a naked, spread-eagle woman reveling her crotch.

Wait...What? I did a double-take and sure enough, there carved in explicit detail, into the white, alabaster trunk of an aspen tree, was the figure of a naked woman. And she wasn't just naked, she was contorted into the kind of erotic pose usually reserved for magazines published by Larry Flint. Dad must have noticed that my jaw had dropped nearly to the saddle horn.

"Sheepherders," he said with a laugh. "I recon they get pretty lonely up here in the summer."

Lonely. That was an understatement. Whoever carved this was a just a flat out pervert.

I soon noticed that the X-rated carving wasn't just limited to one particular tree. In fact nearly every aspen in our immediate vicinity were engraved with smut. Dozens of trees featured lurid, sexual poses that would make Hugh Hefner blush-all carved in explicit detail with the talent of Michelangelo.

Dad went on to explain that the wealthy ranchers down in Craig and surrounding towns, head down to South America and recruit native sheepherders to come up in these mountains every spring and summer to tend their flocks. These guys are usually completely alone for months at a time watching over the ranchers investment of livestock. Typically there only companion during that time is dog of some sort, that's used to round up sheep and keep away bears and coyotes. Of course, they probably run across the occasional hiker or mountain biker, but for the most part they have no contact with other human beings, just their trusty dog and several head of sheep.

Now I could make a tone of juvenile "sheep/sex" jokes here, but I'm going to take the high road here and not go there. But in my opinion, it's no surprise that the cowboys in Brokeback Mountain where working as sheepherders when they had there gay love affair. Just saying.

Anyway, I suppose I feel sorry for these guys-cut off from their wives or girlfriends for six months out of the year, but come on, that's no reason to treat the forest like some bathroom stall in a St. Louis truck stop.

I seriously feel that the state of Colorado should at least put up some road side warning signs at the entrance to the national Park. WARNING: SEXUALLY GRAPHIC TREES AHEAD. CHILDREN UNDER 17 SHOULD BE ACCOMPANIED BY AN ADULT. I can only imagine what the local boyscout troop must have thought as they hiked along this trail.

"Congratulations little Johnny. This past weekend you earned merit badges in fire-starting, knot-tying, and Karma Sutra."

But, I suppose the more I think about it, maybe the handiwork of these perverted Peruvian shepherds can one day be of some use. When time comes for me to give the dreaded "Birds and The Bees," talk to my son Ridge, he'll be about ready for his first elk hunt. I suppose I could kill two birds with one stone.

Tagged Out

After getting my elk application in the mail yesterday, I haven't been able to stop thinking about the upcoming season. And it's still over seven months away. So in the meantime, I've decided to post an old story I wrote several years ago, about the most successful elk hunt I've ever been apart of. I submitted the story to Bugle Magazine, but unfortunately they passed on publishing it.


TAGGED OUT

The three of us crouched next to the small mountain stream and began cleaning the blood off our hunting knives. Almost entirely hidden by the tall grass, the stream felt refreshing as it gushed over my dry, chapped hands. The sun had reached the highest point in its daily arc across the Colorado sky, erasing all evidence of the hard frost that earlier blanketed the valley floor. I could feel the tingling sensation of sweat soaking through the fibers of my thermal undershirt as its rays beat down on my back like an anvil. Dark wet patches were already visible on my Dad and brother’s wool button-ups as they scrubbed at the blood stubbornly caked on their hands and fingernails. Behind us lay a vast meadow, the size of three football fields, completely barren except for a small cluster of pine trees, which sat like an island amidst a sea of grass. Lying in the protective cool shade beneath their branches were the bodies of four freshly field-dressed bulls.

Dad was the first to finish the post -surgical scrubbing. He stood, stretched his back and wiped dry the blade of his Case Hammerhead on his pants leg.

“It’ll be a couple of hours before Gary and Darren get back with the horses,” he said, mopping the sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief. “ We might as well eat us some dinner before we start skinnin’ and quarterin’ up those bulls.”

My brother Joe, who lives in a state of constant hunger, sprang to his feet. Together he and Dad began the long walk across the meadow to the clump of trees where our lunches of smushed ham sandwiches and crushed cheese crackers were waiting in our fanny packs. I remained on the hillside, allowing the cool water of the stream to trickle over my fingertips, while the events of the early morning swirled through my mind. To say that it had been an eventful opening day of elk season for the six members of our hunting camp would be an understatement. Besides the four bulls lying in the shade trees behind me, two more lay a half-mile up the trail waiting to be quartered.

Our elk season began only a few short, hours ago; when we heard the bugle of the first bull.

We dropped off the mountainside from the logging road a good two hours before daylight and gingerly made our way down through the rocks. The world was silent except for our hollow footsteps on the loose stones and the howling of a brisk northern wind that whipped through the tops of the spruce pines. The entire north face of the mountain we were descending was made up of an enormous natural rockslide of limestone and shell- a vertical ocean of treacherous frost covered stones. Silhouetted against the moonlit sky, our small platoon of six delicately navigated through the frozen minefield, each footstep carefully calculated to prevent a life-ending tumble. My father served as point, since he had scouted this route a few days before the rest of us arrived in camp, and we followed him blindly from one precarious stone to next. After what seemed like an eternity I eventually felt the welcome crunch of pine needles beneath my feet. Miracously we had reached solid, level ground without a single casualty.

At the base of the slide the terrain began a dramatic stair step effect; leveling out for short distances before plunging straight downward. We made our descent with one hand clutching our rifles and the other grasping frantically for anything to keep us from plummeting into the abyss below. Our final destination lay several miles below us; the 1144 trail, a long narrow, dusty path that snaked it’s way through miles of some of the best elk country in Northwest Colorado.

We continued down the steps, journeying through dark pine tickets, open meadows and small aspen groves, all the while Dad confidently leading the way, never once pausing to rethink the route or retrace his steps. After a better part of an hour of scratching and clawing our way around the mountainside, our small hunting party emerged from a strand of trees and onto a narrow outcropping. Below us the valley sprawled like a giant oil canvas- the moonlight bathing the entire landscape in a deep cobalt hue. In the distant south, the predawn lights of the tiny metropolis of Craig twinkled in the darkness. To the East, the horizon burned with the first glow of daybreak.

“We’re about half-way down,” Dad whispered. “Let’s take a breather.”

I glanced at my watch. 5:30 AM, still another hour before daylight. We propped our rifles against the nearest tree and slumped down beside them. Being a notorious over-dresser in cold weather, I was dripping wet with sweat. I stripped off my thick, insulated hunting coat and frantically began shedding the layers of undershirts. I was literally overdosing on one too many grams of thinsulate. I packed the steaming, sweat-drenched shirts into my pack and settled down next to my brother.

The wind, which had blown steadily as we made our descent, had now strangely calmed. The tops of the lodge pole pines no longer swayed and creaked. The aspen leaves stopped their quaking. The only sound came from the heaving of our chests as our lungs desperately searched for oxygen in the thin mountain air.

And then, we heard it.

That high, lonesome wail that haunts the dreams of every living elk hunter. A primal, harmonious tone that simultaneously causes a hunter’s heart to race with excitement and chills the very blood that courses through it. A sound distinctly unique to only one animal on God’s earth, the cry of a bull elk. The bugle drifted up from the valley floor and rolled up the side of the mountain sweeping over us like an ocean wave, and then, as quickly as it had begun, faded into the early morning.

No one said a word. Snatching our rifles, we were back on our feet, rushing down the slope like children descending the stairs on Christmas morning. The bull called to us repeatedly as we made our way down the mountain; each new bugle met with a silent grin of anticipation. Off to the East the fire on the horizon grew with intensity. It was a race against the clock now; it was crucial that we strike the trail before daylight.

Night was quickly receding from the landscape and the first gray swatches of dawn began to dapple the sky. The bull bulged again, this time much closer. We were heading straight into him. Then as we topped as small hill, there below us was a faint, pencil-thin outline etched into the mountainside. It was the 1144 trail.

The plan, devised earlier in camp around the breakfast table, was that Gary and I, who had both hunted this area before, were to take the trail to the right and hunt the eastern side of the mountain. My Dad was to lead the rest of the party and hunt the western slope. They included my brother and my father’s business partner James and his son Darren, all of whom were rookies to the elk hunting game.

Just as we stepped into the shallow indention of the trail, a bugle roared from the trees below. We instinctively froze. A second bugle instantly followed the first, about a quarter mile down the trail. We stared at each other with wide-eyed excitement; phantom elk were combing the dark timber all around us. We each chambered a shell into our rifle, whispered “Good luck” and were off. Game Time.

I followed Gary up the trail, glancing back over my shoulder in time to see Dad and the others disappear around the bend. Part of me wished I were going with them; when it comes to elk hunting my father is a seasoned professional. He possesses an uncanny knack for always being in the right place at the right time. He is unquestionably the greatest hunter I’ve ever known. But I felt confident to hunt with Gary this morning; he was one of my dad’s closest friends and an experienced hunter.

We made our way up the trail at a brisk pace, the frozen earth crunching beneath the sole our boots as we hustled along. Gary suddenly stepped to the left pointing enthusiastically to something in the middle of the trail. Elk droppings, still steaming in the cold morning air and fresh tracks cris-crossing the trail. He stopped and motioned that he was turning off the trail in order to follow the tracks up through the timber. I nodded and watched his blaze orange swiftly vanish into the shadows. Cradling my 30.06 under my arm, I turned and continued on up the path alone.

The trail wound around the barren mountainside for several more yards where it eventually flowed beneath a dense canopy of spruce pines. As soon as I stepped into the trees I could smell them. Their sharp, pungent odor hung in the air like a thick soupy fog. To my left I heard the muffled rustling of leaves. My entire body seized up, afraid to twitch a single eyelid. Slowly, I turned my head and peered down through the trees into the dark hollow below. There, walking among the pale, white trunks of the aspens, was a large herd of elk-the cows bleating softly as they casually made their way up the draw towards the trail.

I quickly scanned the terrain in a desperate attempt to devise a strategy. I noticed that the trail continued through the trees where it eventually emptied into a large open meadow surrounding an old, dried beaver pond. If a bull decided to cross the trail there he would expose himself to a wide-open shot. A few feet away, just inside the trees, I spied an enormous fallen aspen overlooking both the trail and the beaver pond, providing an excellent location in which to set up. I had to move fast; in a matter of seconds I would literally have elk crawling all over me. I willed my stiff, wooden legs to move and headed for my ambush.

Once I reached the log, I immediately knelt to one knee, shouldered my rifle and took a rest off of its gnarled, weathered trunk. My breathing was erratic, my muscles twitched and convulsed from a combination of adrenaline and the chill of predawn; my body a tightly coiled spring, ready to explode at any instant. I locked my eyes on the distant trees, clicked off my safety, and waited.

Suddenly a large brown shape exploded from the brush into the frosty meadow. My index finger instinctively tightened around the trigger but through my scope, I saw that it was only a cow. She walked nonchalantly through the grass into the dry bed of the beaver pond. Though the corner of my eye I caught another shape step from the trees. I whirled my rifle, my heart drumming inside my chest, but in my cross hairs was yet another cow. Another shape emerged from the timber and then another and another. In a matter of seconds the entire field was littered with elk-all cows.

And then there he was.

Perhaps it was the fact I was momentarily distracted by the lead cows, but I never actually saw the bull step from the trees. He just stood there in the tall icy grass like a grand, chiseled statue-his frozen breath billowing from his nostrils. Through the scope I counted a total of nine tall points perched upon a wide, symmetrical rack. I placed the cross hairs of my Nikon scope squarely behind his left shoulder took a slow, steady, deep breath and squeezed the trigger.

The shot shattered the still silence of daybreak. A thick shroud of gun smoke hung in the frosty air, momentarily blocking my vision. As the smoke dissipated, I saw that the bull had stumbled and turned back towards the tree line. He was hit, but still on his feet. I pumped another 180 grain Remington into the chamber and fired just as he broke into a run. His front legs buckled beneath him, sending his massive body crashing into the timber headfirst. He was down.

I ejected the empty cartridge from my rifle and immediately chambered a fresh round- the spent brass tinked and pinged as it bounced on the stony path. I approached the bull’s motionless body with caution and as I drew closer I realized my good fortune. As luck would have it, he had fallen on his side directly in the middle of the trail, meaning easy field dressing and even easier access with the packhorses. I stopped a few feet short of the bull and looked him over, making sure he wasn’t preparing to jump to his feet and high tail it for the Colorado state line. When I was convinced that he had breathed his last breath, I sat my rifle down and pulled his head up by the main beam of his antlers and admired my trophy. He was a beautiful 4 x 5 with long curving brow tines that ended in smooth ivory tips. He’d never grace the wall over Jim Zumbo’s fireplace, but in my mind he was ready to be inked into the pages of Boone & Crockett. He was a magnificent animal.

But amidst my triumph, the sad realization of what had just happened suddenly swept over me -only two short hours into opening day, my elk season had officially ended. The months of meticulous planning, organizing and preparation were over. I thought back to the infinite hours spent pouring over an endless stream of mail-order hunting catalogs, the countless boxes of shells consumed honing the sights of my rifle on the backyard firing range, and the late nights spent shackled to my office desk in order to cumulate enough vacation days for this one brief, fleeting moment. An entire years worth of sleepless nights, anticipation and daydreaming had come to an abrupt and sudden conclusion with one simple squeeze of my index finger.

The sound of clicking hooves caught my attention, snapping me back to reality. I turned to see a second herd of elk running up the side of the mountain behind me. A shot rang out and a plume of smoke boiled up from the opposite hillside. It was Gary, firing into the herd as they made their way up the draw. He fired a second shot and I saw a good size bull stumble and drop.

Then, as if on que, directly following Gary’s second and final shot, another shot rang out. This one from the valley below, a good half mile back down the trail-precisely the same area Dad and his band of rookies were headed. A second and third shot thundered out of the valley, followed by a fourth and a fifth, each shot from a different rifle. When the rifle volleys ended, I had counted eight shots in all; I didn’t know it then, but each of their bullets had found their mark. By 7AM on our first morning, every man in our camp had filled his bull tag. Our elk hunt was over, almost before it even began.

So now, four hours and six field-dressed bulls later, here I sit, beside this hillside stream watching my dad and brother enjoy their lunches beneath the shade trees and celebrate a successful hunt. I feel fortunate that all six of us were each able to take a bull on our first morning. We’ll return home with enough meat to pack our freezers full all winter long and more than enough tall tales to spin around the dinner table. In many ways this was the perfect elk hunt. But in other ways it was one of the worst.

Like any true hunter, my passion for elk hunting extends far beyond the actual kill or the mere size of the animal’s rack. Elk season is about freedom. Its about roaming unfettered and carefree under the western skies in a world that has yet to be touched by the cold, creeping fingers of concrete and asphalt. It’s about leaving behind, if only for a brief moment, the worry and stress that plague the everyday world. For these few precious days each September, I’m able to step back to a simpler time and a forgotten past, to walk in the footsteps of my heroes. Today I am Jim Bridger. I am Kit Carson. I am Jebidiah Smith. At least for a short while.

But I know my time here is fading, with our tags filled, we’ll leave my beloved elk country three days prematurely. It will be twelve long months before I’ll again see the blue skies of Colorado, feel the chill in my lungs or smell the spruce pines in the cool morning air. In less than two days from now we’ll have broke camp, packed our gear and put the tires of our Chevy pick-up back on the black top, heading home, all tagged out.

Anxiety Attack

One of the biggest days of the elk hunting calendar is here, and as always I'm freaking out. Today I received my official hunting license application from the State of Colorado. It came by mail and Danielle called me at work today to notify me of it's arrival.

I immediately broke out in to a cold sweat.

The cause of my high anxiety and elevated blood pressure levels is that the Colorado Division of Wildlife holds a public lottery for anyone intending to hunt big game within it's state borders. Only a limited number of licenses are awarded each year and in order to be granted the right to hunt and kill an a wild wapati, mule deer or other big game animal, you to have to be selected. So essentially, my annual elk hunt rests firmly in the hands of Lady Luck. And some times she can be a down-right cruel, heart-breaking b**tch. A couple of years ago, I missed out on a hunt, simply because my name wasn't drawn in the lottery. Talk about a depressing twelve months.

As one might expect, I tend to get somewhat anxious and freaked out around this time of year. And to make matters worse is the fact that the process of filling out your tag application is just plain confusing. It's like taking the S.A.T exam all over again. I'm not kidding. You need a degree from M.I.T to fill out this thing. The application comes in a twenty page booklet, riddled with different regional codes and numerical sequences that you have to fill out perfectly with zero mistakes. One slip of a misspelled word or an incorrect number in the wrong box and you're screwed. You're immediately disqualified and your application is discarded. In the words of the Soup Nazi,"NO HUNT FOR YOU!"

Now that I think about it, maybe the bureaucrats in Colorado make filling out the application difficult on purpose, thereby weeding out all the idiots and mouth-breathers out there. The less morons we have running around the woods with high-powered rifles the better in my opinion.

As usual, Dad and I will fill out our applications in unison. That way we can check each others work for mistakes. It's sort of like the scene in Crimson Tide, where Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington both have to turn their launch keys at the same time in order to launch the nukes. Well, okay, maybe it's not exactly like that, but you get the idea.

Now how do I get my hands on some Xanax?

Awesome-ness

Last week I made a road trip, along with two of my fellow co-workers, up to Pinehurst, North Carolina, for a two-day photo-shoot for of our golf clients. On the way up, we made a quick pit-stop at a small Mom 'n' Pop gas station in the rural metropolis of Locust, NC. I had just paid for my Sun Drop and Zero Bar and was heading out the door when a crude, poorly designed kiosk caught my eye. Upon closer inspection, I discovered a product of sheer genius.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Deer Caulk.

That's right, its a deer attractant contained within an everyday, ordinary caulk canister. Without even batting an eye, I quickly pulled out my wallet and plunked down the necessary cash to purchase one. The best seven bucks I've ever spent.

The ingredients on the tube, states that the actual caulk is a mixture of corn, molasses and peanut butter. So even if the deer don't like it, I figure it will taste pretty good on a Ritz cracker. Of course, one may ask, how do you use Deer Caulk? Fortunately for the consumer, the Deer Caulk point of purchase kiosk featured full color photographs of a curvy young blond in a pair of Daisy Dukes demonstrating a detailed step-by-step process.

Step 1: Locate a good hunting spot
Step 2: Place Deer Caulk tube into caulk gun
Step 3: Squirt Deer Caulk on a tree, stump or ground a few days prior to hunting
Step 4: Replenish Deer Caulk the day before or day of hunt

It is absolutely brilliant in it's simplicity. Definitely better that toting fifty pound bags of shell corn on your back through the woods, especially if you're stopped by the local DNR. Just peel the camo layers off the tube and the game warden will never be any more the wiser.

"Why no sir, I'm not illegally baiting deer."

"What's that you say? Why do I have thirty tubes of silicone caulk in my pack? Well, you never know when you may run across a ceramic vanity counter-top in the middle of the woods, in need of a good caulking."

Any way you can stick it to the man, I'm all for it.

I can't wait to try this stuff out this upcoming deer season. Even if it doesn't bring in one single doe, I salute the inventive spirit of it's creators. Why do I get the feeling that the guys who came up with this are in the construction business?

For more information, checkout www.deercaulk.com.

The Next Jim Zumbo?

As an avid elk hunter and outdoorsman, nothing makes me happier to see Ridge following in his Daddy's footsteps. He loves to make animal sounds, especially elk, deer, and coyote. I have to admit, his elk call is pretty darn good. I'd even go as far to say it's fairly accurate to one of those expensive Primos game calls that you order out of the Cabela's catalogue.

He's also got a fairly impressive collection of plastic big game animals, that he loves to place on his toy train track and run over with toy trains and Hot Wheels cars. With that much road side carnage, I'm assuming Ridge is simulating the rut.

But the best example that I may have the next Jim Zumbo on my hands is Ridge's page choice in his coloring book. We bought him a wild game coloring book at Bass Pro, back before Christmas. The book is chock full of animals ranging from big-horn sheep to grizzly bears. But the only page he wants to color is the one featuring a bull elk. I think he's going to be an elkaholic like his Daddy and his Pappa. It's a disease that apparently runs in our family.

There Will Be Blood

Today is Friday the 13th, and Hollywood has just released a remake of the 1981 horror classic of the same name, featuring everyone's favorite hockey mask-wearing, machete toting, backwoods psycho. That's right, folks, Jason Vorhees of Camp Crystal Lake fame is back- bigger, badder and bloodier than ever! I'm hoping to catch a showing of it this weekend if Danielle lets me out of the house.

As a child of the '80's, I grew up on cheesy horror movies, like Friday the 13th, the Halloween series, and the Elm Street flicks. Mom always said watching those types of movies would warp my psyche in some way, but so far I haven't noticed anything. The thing about all those movies, were they simply were not scary to me. Sure the had a few "jump" moments but overall they were, badly acted, horribly written and poorly directed. They were just fun. As far horror movies go, there are very few that I would label as truly terrifying and disturbing. Movies like, The Shining, The Exorcist, and the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now those are a couple of films that really mess with your head, get under skin and cause you to sleep with the light on.

But I would have to say that one of the most gruesome tales that I've ever heard in my life was one that was told around a campfire in elk camp.

The year was 1997. I was fresh out college and as a graduation gift, Dad had paid for my bulls tags on my very first elk hunt in the mountains of Colorado. Everything about that first hunt was intimidating to say the least. Every aspect of that country was so much bigger than what I was used to back home in North Carolina. I remember walking into camp that first day after stepped off the plane in Hayden and just staring out into the vastness of those mountains. For what seemed liked hundreds of miles, there was nothing but remote wilderness and dark, foreboding forests. To a greenhorn like myself, even though it was beautiful and awe-inspiring, the land also had a loneliness to it, that sent a cold feeling of dread through my bones.

I began thinking that soon I would be out there wandering those vast expanses, possibly alone. I had heard stories from my father and other members of our camp, about elk hunters becoming lost and nearly freezing to death in these hills. And what kind of creatures lurked in those dark forests-bears, coyotes, mountain lions, Sasquatch, the Blair Witch? My overactive imagination was once again beginning to get the best of me. Elk season hadn't even started yet, and I had already begun to psyche myself out.

Just before dark on that first day, a dust-covered Dodge pick-up pulled into camp. A robust man resembling an elderly teddy Roosevelt climbed out of the cab and was immediately greeted by my Father and my cousin Ray. It turned out that this gentlemen was a local boy from back home, who had moved to Craig several years earlier to try his hand at being a professional outfitter. He was on his way to his base camp at Roaring Fork Creek to meet his clients, when he decided to stop in and say "hey" to us Mills river boys.

He stood by the old propane stove inside our tent, attempting to keep the cold off and for the better part of an hour, he spun hunting tale after hunting tale to the members of our party. He had a very pleasant nature about him and was a natural story teller. If the outfitting business didn't work out for him, I thought, he could make a killing at public speaking. After listening to one humor us elk story after another, my mood began to brighten and I felt less anxious about the upcoming hunt.

But then from out of nowhere, our guest paused and his light-hearted tone changed and his facial expression became very serious. And as if he were speaking directly to me, he proceeded to tell undoubtedly the most gruesome tale I had ever heard in my life.

His macabre tale began like this:

A couple of years ago, a local young man from Craig decided to head up in the mountains to do a little elk hunting. It was late October and by that time of the year, the Elkhead Mountains were already blanketed in several feet of snow. The man left his house well before dawn that morning, but after he failed to return home that evening, his wife hysterical wife called the sheriff. Soon, search teams and volunteers were scouring the mountains looking for the man. But the deep snows and frigid temperatures slowed their progress.

Our guest, who was relaying this story to us, was also called by the authorities to aide in he search, since he was a local outfitter and knew the terrain. Well, it turned out that our guest was indeed the individual that found the unfortunate hunter. He found the man, lying face down in a pool of frozen blood, twenty feet from a dead bull elk. It didn't take a CSI unit to piece together what had happened. Apparently, the young man had shot and killed a bull elk, but at some point while he was skinning the animal, his knife slipped and severed his femoral artery in his groin.

The man died of severe blood-loss within seconds.

Now, as if that was not morbid enough, the story kept going. Due to the fact that the hunter was found in such a remote and inaccessible area, the only way to return his body to Craig for a proper burial was by horseback. But due to the fact his corpse had been exposed to sub-zero temperatures for several days, it was too frozen and stiff to lay over the back of a horse. So there was only one option for out guest: he sawed the corpse in half at the base of the torso and tied the halves to the side of a pack horse.

Good. Lord. In. Heaven. What did I just hear? What he had just described to me was something I would expect to see in some B-Grade horror flick on late-night cable. Not something that actually took place in the same area I was now "on vacation." I mean good grief, I was literally camping where frozen dead men are hacked to pieces and stuffed into panniers.

Fortunately, nothing as gruesome, as that story has yet to befall me or any of the other regular members of our elk hunting party. We have had a couple of accidents involving horses, but that's a story for another time.

The DeerSlayer

I've been intrigued by the look and feel of the Ruger No. 1 ever since Chip Koontz brought his to elk camp over ten years ago. The weeks and months following that hunt, I literally became obsessed with the No.1. There was just something about a single shot rifle. Something that that forced you to become a better hunter and be patient for just the right moment to take the shot. It was an exquisitely designed rifle that was a throw back to the rifles of the frontier days. And I just had to have one. Apparently Dad caught on to my subtle hints and the following Christmas, he brought me me my very own No.1 chambered in a 7MM caliber.

Now for those of you unfamiliar with the Ruger No.1, here's a brief description from ChuckHawks.com.

Introduced in 1966, the No. 1 single shot rifle was one of Bill Ruger's pet projects. It was the first of the modern single shot rifles, and sparked the single shot revival which has seen the likes of the Browning 1885, Dakota 10, Mossberg SSI-1, Remington Custom Shop No. 1 Rolling Block, and T/C Encore (not to mention the various Sharps and other replicas) emerge in the market place.

The No. 1 uses a completely modern but classic looking Farquharson-style hammerless falling block action of great strength. The barreled action is finished in a polished deep blue, and the satin finished walnut stock is hand checkered in a borderless pattern. The No. 1 is Ruger's premium rifle.

Like any single shot rifle, the absence of a long repeating action makes the Ruger No. 1 about four inches shorter than a bolt action rifle with the same length barrel. Or, to look at it another way, the No. 1 can have a barrel four inches longer than a bolt action rifle of approximately the same overall length. This maximizes the ballistics of modern high intensity and magnum calibers, and is a considerable advantage for the long range shooter.

The Ruger No. 1 single shot is a high class rifle. It is for the connoisseur, the rifleman, and the traditionalist. The late Bill Ruger was all of these, and he has left us the No. 1 as part of his legacy.

Even the experts agree, the No.1 is a rifle of the finest class. It has legendary accuracy and can "drive nails" as they say, which makes it one of the straightest shooting out-of-the-box rifles that you can purchase. Now I'm not what you call a "gun-nut." I can't sit here and talk about ballistics, trajectory and all that mess. All I care about is does a gun work- does it consistently get the job done and put meat on the ground. I can now testify that my No. 1 does indeed get the job done.

But I wasn't without my doubts. Even though I have owned this rifle for some time now, up until this last fall, I had never even fired it in the field. I was beginning to think the rifle was cursed or unlucky in some way, since every time I carried it, the local deer population went into hiding.

But that all changed on our latest trip to the Bluegrass State, where I killed two of the biggest whitetails in my life with the rifle.

I have to admit, several months ago, I was considering trading in my No. 1, since my wandering eye had suddenly become enamored by the new fancy Thompson Encore single shots that all the rage with the celebrity hunters on TV. Not anymore. After two "wall-hangers" on the ground in less than 24 hours, I now know that my Ruger No.1 is a certified deerslayer.

Buzzard Puke

For about three years, I hunted on a deer lease just outside of Madison, Georgia. Madison is a quaint little Southern town filled with Pre-Civil War antebellum mansions. But unlike some of the other small towns in the area, Madison was spared the fiery wrath of General Tecumseh Sherman on his infamous March To The Sea. the despised Yankee general had a mistress who was from Madison and she begged Sherman to keep his troops from burning it to the ground.

That little factoid has nothing to do with the following story, I just though is was interesting.

Anyway, we had this old boy on our lease, who hunted out of a decrepit, broken down old box stand stand on the property. He called it the "Buzzard Stand," due to the fact that a flock of turkey buzzards decided to make the stand their nest. The stand was consistently covered in buzzard poop and smelled to high heavens. No one else in the hunting club would even go near it, except for this old boy. He said the smell of the buzzard feces masked human scent and kept the deer from winding him. Personally, I never grasped the concept of sitting for hours on end breathing in the foul stench of buzzard crap, but the lengths some hunters go just to kill a deer never cease to amaze me.

Well one day in late summer, with Bow Season just around the corner, this old boy went down to the deer property to do a little scouting and check his stands. He took with his .22 rifle, just in case he ran across a rattlesnake or a copperhead while walking through the brush. We he got to the infamous Buzzard Stand, he climbed the ladder to the top. When he opened the plywood door and peaked inside, he found a large female buzzard sitting smack dab in the middle of the stand with a brood of buzzard chicks surrounding her. Naturally, momma buzzard immediately started hissing and carrying on a the site of the intruder in her nest.

Well, the old boy, took his rifle and shooed the momma buzzard off her nest where she flew out of the one of the windows in the stand. He then climbed up and kicked the little baby buzzards out of the stands with his boots.

After he had adequately cleared the debris out of the bottom of the stand, the old boy climbed down again. At the base of the ladder, he found the baby buzzard chicks flopping and rolling all over the ground. He noticed that the old momma buzzard was circling over his head, obviously still trying to keep an eye on her offspring.

"I'll put a stop to this," thought the old boy, so he aimed his .22 and shot the old momma buzzard out of the sky. She landed with a loud thud in the middle of the logging road. Be she wasn't dead, he had apparently just wounded her. She flopped and floundered in a heap of dirt and feathers. Eventually she stopped and sat upright in the road and quietly faced the old boy. He approached the buzzard slowly with his gun raised, with the intention of shooting her in the head at point blank range. But just as he got to with in two feet of her, the old momma buzzard raised up, cocked her head back and spit all over the old boy. Actually the word spit is too tame of a word, the word vomit is more probably more accurate. Apparently it turns out, puking is some sort of strange buzzard defense mechanism.

Whatever it was, that momma buzzard projectile vomited, Linda Blair-style all over that old boy. He was covered from head to toe- literally dripping with buzzard puke. Now obviously, I don't think I need to describe what buzzard vomit consists of, you probably have a pretty good idea, but in the spirit of creative writing I will. It was a mix of decaying deer entrails, putrid, rotten road-kill and a strange green bile substance- quite possibly the most horrendous stench ever conceived by God. (With maybe the exception of my cousin Ray's lucky elk hunting hat, but that's a story for another time.)

Needless to say, that was the end of that old boys scouting trip that day. He sprinted back to his pickup, dripping in buzzard stomach juices and made a beeline to his house where he was said to have taken ten consecutive showers and soaked in a steaming bath of tomato juice and Clorox.

If there is a lesson to be learned here, it's this: Don't mess with crippled, momma buzzards, because they can hock loogies from Hell.

Meet The Parents

Today is my beautiful wife's birthday. I'll withhold printing her age, since that is strictly off limits according to the Husband Code, but let's just say she is still much younger than I am. It's hard to believe we've know each other for almost ten years. It seems just like yesterday I was standing outside her apartment door with a bouquet of flowers about to take her on our first date. How time flies.

Last September, we celebrated our five year anniversary, and I have to say, it's been five of the best years of my life. We've laughed together. Cried together. Fought over the TV remote together. We've traveled even traveled a small portion of the world together; from the tropical, sugar-white beaches of the Caribbean to the frigid, wind swept tundra of Alaska. We've had a beautiful child together, who brings even more joy and happiness into our already fruitful lives. I'm not sure if there is any kind of Top Ten List for great marriages, but I'd like to think we'd be somewhere at the top- squeezed in between Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

Now I was never the most suave guy around the ladies. I always felt awkward and clumsy, never knowing exactly what to say or do, which was probably the reason I was a bachelor until I was thirty years old. This was especially true went I met Danielle. I was head over heels when I first laid eyes on her, but if I was to win her over I knew I had my work cut out for me. We were not exactly, as they say, two peas in a pod.

If you were to go online and Google the term opposites attract, the first thing that would pop up right behind that god-awful Paula Abdul song from the '80's, would be a picture of Danielle and myself. We are the quintessential odd couple.


She was raised in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado- a city girl, where her idea great outdoors was sun bathing at the community pool. She lived with her family in a quiet little neighborhood, where she spent her teenage years frequenting the local malls for deals on brand name shoes and lounging in the urban watering holes of gourmet coffee chains. I on the other hand was reared on the butt end of a gravel, dirt road in a rural farming community with no post office and only one stop light. I sometimes feel that our marriage is like an episode of Green Acres-she's Eva Gabor, I'm Eddie Albert, and I supposed our dog Kasey plays the Arnold Ziffer role.

Needless to say, deer hunting was about as foreign to my wife and her family as a Sonny's Real Pit Barbecue would be to the residents of Kabul, Afghanistan.

After dating for several months and everything going as smooth as clock work, I felt that it was time for her to finally meet my parents. Now up till them I was doing my best to subdue my redneck/hunter tendencies around her, by acting as smooth and sophisticated as George Clooney in an Ocean's movie. I had also been purposely editing my numerous hunting yarns that I spun on a regular basis by keeping them "family friendly," and strictly Disney G-Rated material, so as not to frighten her off. In her mind, I had painted a visual image that deer hunting was a harmless, non-violent sport, in which the noble stag willingly gives up his life for the mighty hunter and passes peacefully and painless away without shed a single drop of blood.


That image was about to be completely shattered.

It was late autumn back in '99. Danielle and I had been dating for several months at that point and I figured it was time to take her home to North Carolina for the ceremonial "meeting of the parents." We had planned to stay the weekend in Mills River, taking in the fall colors and cool weather, and to give Mom and Dad a chance to meet my girl from Colorado that had been talking so much about.

I picked Danielle up at her apartment in Greenville after work on a Friday afternoon. As she exited her front door, I was a little taken back by her attire. She was dressed to the hilt-adorned in black designer pants, over top of black leather boots with high heels with an ornate fur overcoat. She looked as though she was ready for the night life of Manhattan. Don't get me wrong she looked gorgeous, but in my opinion a little over dressed for South Mills River.

Obviously, she was wanting to make an impression on my parents, which made me proud. She climbed in to my Chevy pick-up and after storing her bags in the back seat, we headed up the mountain into beautiful November sunset.

It was a good hour after dark by time we pulled into my parents driveway at the tail-end of Wolf Pack Trail. As we were unloading our luggage, I noticed there was a faint light on in the woodshed at the top of the hill and it being black powder season at the time, I immediately knew what that light signified.

"Somebody's done killed them a deer, " I exclaimed in my worst backwoods grammar, which I tend to resort to when I'm back home in my rural surroundings.

"Come, on, let's go see how big he is." My slick George Clooney facade was beginning to quickly crumble.


"Umm....okay...I guess." Danielle said tentatively while struggling to retrieve her designer Coach bag from the back seat.

I grabbed her hand and pulled her up the steep driveway. She struggled to keep up to my fast pace since her high heels were having a hard time getting traction in the loose gravel.

As we reached the top of the hill I noticed a large Dodge Ram pickup was parked next to the woodshed. I immediately recognized that the truck belong to Chip Koontz. Still holding Danielle by her delicate hand, I opened the woodshed door to find Dad and Chip standing next to a freshly skinned deer carcass with blood up to their elbows.

"Hey Chip! Hey Dad! So who got this one?," I asked.

"Hey Bud, " said Dad, "Chip here busted this one. Pretty nice little buck."

"My first shot hit him a little too far back, " Chip said matter-of-factly. "Gut shot him, so I made a mess of his innards. Lord I hate that smell."

The putrid smell of guts, blood and deer feces hung heavy in the air and mingled with the delicate fragrance of Chanel perfume. It was then I suddenly realized with some embarrassment that I had forgotten to introduce my new girlfriend.

"Dad. Chip. I would like for you to meet Dannielle Crout."

Chip slip his arm out of the buck's chest cavity and plopped a portion of the deers right lung into the gut bucket at his feet and reached to shake Danielle''s hand. Danielle stood frozen, her mouth agape and looked as though every once of blood had drained from her angelic face.

"Nice to meet you Danielle," Chip said as blood and wet lung tissue dripped from his outstretched hand. Danielle stepped back in horror and simply waved politely in his direction.

"Nice...to meet...you." She said timidly.

Dad was busy cutting off the bucks tarsal glands and waved in Danielle's direction.

"Good to finally meet you Danielle," He said while sawing vigorously through the deer's gore-soaked hide. "Rick's told us a lot about you. By the way, you know what these are?" Dad held held out two furry lumps of deer hide in front of her. "These are tarsal glands. They're the bucks scent glands. I'm cuttin' them off for my cousin Ray. He likes to tie them to his boots when he goes hunting. Says it attracts other bucks and hides his scent."

You remember the movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Remember the scene where the heroine first encounters the inbred, mutant, cannibal known as LeatherFace? That's pretty much the exact expression my future wife had on her face at that moment. In fact, looking back on it, I often wonder how she ended up marring me at all. I can't imagine what was going through her mind as she watched Dad and Chip, skin and quarter a deer right before her eyes.

It wasn't exactly the first impression I had in mind, but looking back, it was probably for the best. Right then and there, she knew what she was getting in to, if she decided to stick it out with me. Ultimately though, I think what really saved the relationship, which was still in it's delicate infancy, was the next morning when Mom prepared some fresh venison tenderloin biscuits for breakfast. Danielle took one bite and that's all it took. The rest as they say, is history.

War Paint

I never got into the whole fraternity thing during my college years. I didn't understand it really. Coughing up large sums of money each year just to pay a bunch a guys ro sit around a drink beer with me in a big run down house was something that was completely foreign to me. I felt there was a better way to spend my parents hard earned cash. But when I really think about it, I believe what frightened me the most about frats were the initiations. Now granted, my perception of fraternal induction ceremonies came mostly from early 80’s cinematic comedies such as Animal House, Back to School and Revenge of the Nerds, probably not the most accurate representation. According to Hollywood, these proceedings usually involved dark, torch lit secret chambers, surrounded by ominous hooded figures, and involved wooded paddles, some sort of farm animal and life threatening consumptions of alcohol. No thank you, I think I’ll stick to making friends the old fashioned way.

So when I was eleven years old, on the cusp of killing my first deer and entering into the Fraternal Order of Hunters, I was well aware of the it’s ancient and gruesome initiation ritual- that of drinking the blood of your first kill. At least that was the rumor that was running rampant among us young aspiring hunters in the sixth grade. It was a rumor that was fueled by John Milius’s Red Dawn, the classic film about a group of Pepsi-Generation Colorado tenagers led by a pre-Dirty Dancing Patrick Swayze who fought a guerrilla war against a Soviet Invasion of the United States. To thousands of red-blooded American pre-adolescent boys like myself, Red Dawn held the title of GREATEST MOVIE ON THE FACE OF PLANET EARTH, until it was dethroned a year later by Rambo: First Blood Part 2. But for that one year, when it held the title, I must have watched Red Dawn over thousand times.

My sixth grade buddies and myself used to break out in loud war cries of “WOLVERINES!” on the playground during four square matches and dodge ball games on a regular basis. We could recite every line of dialogue from the film from memory and each of us truly believed that we could succesfully repel an actual communist invasion were one to happen in Henderson County.

But of all the scenes in the film, the true stand out had to be the infamous “blood drinking” scene. In the scene, C. Thomas Howell, who would go on to later cinematic fame in IRON EAGLE, kills a buck high in the Colorado mountains. He’s informed by Swayze and younger brother Charlie Sheen, that since the deer is his first kill he has to drink it’s blood. If he refuses, he’ll be cursed and will never again make another kill. “Every hunter has to do it,” they tell him. With his knife, Swayze slices the deers jugular and fills a metal cup with the animals hot, steaming blood. Relucltantly, C. Thomas, grasps the cup and glugs down it’s warm, viscus contents in long repeative gulps. The excess blood trickled down his chin and neck like a two year old consuming a bottle of milk. It was one of those scenes in movies that was so grotesque and revolving you want to look and away but can’t.

And this is what I believed lay in store for me as Dad And I drove home that Chrismas Eve with my first deer.

We pulled up to the garage about an hour after dark. As Dad unloaded the deer from the back of the truck I ran inside the house as fast as I could go, to call my grandfather to tell him the good news.
“I’ll there shortly,” he said.

I then grabbed Mom by the wrist and drug her out to the garage where Dad already had my little buck suspended upside down from the gambling sticks and was busy removing the deers internal organs. He had placed a large aluminum wash pan under the deer which was collecting a steady flow of bright red blood and contained a twisted wet mound of guts and intestines. Steam rose off of the wet, slippy pile into the cold air of the garage.

I shuddered in the knowledge that soon I’d be forced to swallow the liquid inside that bucket.

Mom gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Congratulations son, he’s a nice one,” she said enthusiastically. She then shot Dad a quick glance that translated to: I can’t believe you tow went hunting tonight. Now. Get. That. Deer. Out of my garage on the double, because I have party guests that will be arriving any minute.

Dad obviously knew the translation to this glance and simply answered “Yes, Honey.”

“I guess my little boy is now officially a man.” Mom said emotionally.

“Well, not quite yet,” Dad replied. “He’s still got to be initiated.

Oh Crap, I thought this is it. Here comes my big glass of deer blood.

“Believe we’ll wait till Paw gets here before we start the ceremony.”

Whew, I thought. I brief respit. Unfortunately Paw only lived a half mile away down South Mills River Road and was before long his old two-tone brown and beige Chevy pickup was pulling into our driveway.

Paw slowly climbed out of the truck cab due to his arthritic knees; too many years a hoeing gardens and stalking whitetails through the mountains. He mosey into to the garage adorned in old faded khaki work pants, flannel shirt and worn out Alyis Chambliss hat. He stopped a few feet from the deer and studied it for several seconds in silence.

“Well, that’s a nice little buck,” Paw said patting me on the shoulder. “He’ll be good eating. Nice and tender.”

Other than my Dad, my grandfather was the most important man in my life. He was larger than life to me, like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood rolled into one. Having his approval on my first buck meant more to me than anything in this world.

“Doesn't look like he’s been painted up yet,” Paw said to my Dad.

“We were just getting to that.” Dad shot back.

Oh know, this is it. Here it comes.

“So is this where I have to drink the blood?” I asked nervously.

“Drink the blood,” Dad asked almost laughing. “ What are you talking about?”

“Well in Red Dawn, C. Thomas Howell had to drink the deer’s blood when he shot it. Is that What I have to do? I’m not sure I can do it, Dad. I might throw up.”

“Good Lord Son! Nobody’s drinking any blood.” Dad said. “I’d be the one hanging here instead of this deer if your mother found out I was having you drink deer blood. No, no, we just have to paint you up a little.”

I let out a sigh of relief. I wasn't sure what “painted up a little meant” but it sure sounded much more pleasant than chugging warm, half congealed deer blood.

Dad then dipped three fingers into the aluminum bucket and silently wiped them across both of my cheeks. I stood like a marine at attention during this momentous occasion.

Dad backed a way and stood next to Paw.

“There you are,” he said.”You are now a true hunter.”

I caught my reflection the tinted windows of our 1984 z-28 Camaro. That was parked next to our gruesome operation. I resembled a Comanche warrior on the war path.