Elk People

I was in an old ground blind made of gray, dead wood. I had built the blind up higher to give me extra cover, enough to hold my bow vertical without my arms showing. I worried that the slight change in scenery would be detected by the wildlife. Not so it seems. The blind was situated about 15 yards from the nearest corner of a square constructed pond. The opposite corner was easily 100 yards away. I figured my effective bow range for about 40 yards. I had arrived early, by most people’s standards, hiking in about a mile and a quarter at around 3:30pm. It gave me plenty of time to scope the place out and build the blind up. There was also plenty of time to get bored and discouraged. I’d only seen elk in the wild a few times before. The previous day, when I spooked a cow elk out of her bed was the first time I had seen an elk whilst holding a weapon and a license to kill it. So my expectations (after 4 consecutive seasons of fruitless elk hunting) were low. Boredom was easy.

Several hunters approached the pond on ATVs and before they saw me wave, had plenty of time to plan out where they were going to sit, talking and pointing this way and that. Eventually I got their attention (good, I thought. The camo is working). Then they just disappeared. I got everything as ready as I could; rehearsed scenarios of various kinds. What if the elk enter through this gate? Or that one? How much can I turn my body without being noticed? I sorted out my best arrows, knocked one and left the number two arrow within easy reach. I donned my ghillie suit , something I had rarely felt necessary.

I waited. I conducted small scale warfare against the carpenter ants who competed for my space among the dead wood. At about 10 minutes to seven, 40 minutes before the sun officially set, I looked up on the opposite bank of the pond and was surprised to see a man, older but fit, wearing civilian clothing. He too seemed oblivious to my presence (or to the fact that it was hunting season). He was watching the sun set, apparently. Hopefully he was not waiting to see elk. Hopefully he was not a representative of PETA. He was positioned so that if the elk had entered from my left, I would not be able to shoot at them safely because an errant arrow could kill the innocent bystander. Just as I was about to lose patience with him and stand up to ask him to leave, he rose and padded off as quietly as he had come in. Luckily he walked to the East. A few minutes later the elk walked in from the West.

There were 6 or 7. My adrenaline was pumping too hard to count. At first it was all cows, then two calves. They stood outside the fence which formed the Western opening to the watering hole area. They sniffed the air cautiously. My surprise at seeing them would not have been greater if Cernunos himself had walked by. I had been waiting for them of course, but my expectations were so miserably low that actually seeing them hadn’t entered into my imagination in any concrete way. Oh my god, I thought, there they are. Right on cue, I realized as I looked down at the clock on my GPS. Twenty minutes before sunset, the end of legal shooting time. Twenty minutes for one of them to move into position, if I were to be so lucky. The wind, which had been shifting some, was luckily blowing in from the Northwest, the perfect angle. As it had been to the men who had come before, my concealment seemed to be 100 percent effective. After a moment the cows walked in through the gate in a loose huddle. The lead cow, darker and older most likely, stopped again to sniff the air. The others waited for her approval. They relaxed and ambled toward the water. I expected, that like cattle, they would stop and drink from the water’s edge. Instead they jumped in as if it were a backyard swimming pool and they were a hot tired family on a Saturday. They seemed to be really enjoying themselves, scooping up mouthfuls of water and swimming about playfully.

The pond was deeper than I thought, too deep for the calves for sure. There were two elk I had my eye on. The older one got out of the pond and walked into the meadow directly to the West. She grazed casually at about 46 yards. My range finder shook so badly in my hand that I wasn’t sure I could trust the readings. I could barely make them out anyway. My heart was pounding. The physiological excitement felt totally unnatural, as it was so much greater than anything I had experienced in memory. My heart was out of control, louder to me than any other sounds. I breathed with my diaphragm. No effect. I tried again. Ok, a little bit this time.

The other elk was about 40 yards away, but she was almost completely submerged in the water. She quartered forward but wouldn’t give me a safe shot. She was still on the other side of the pond when I heard her talk. It was the first time I had heard a cow talk. And that’s truly what it is too, talking. I suddenly understood why some Native Americans had called them the Elk People. Sentient beings that I was about to kill. She made several different utterances directed at one of the calves. I felt like I could understand her. She was saying, come here, now, do what I tell you youngling, don’t worry, it’s safe. No its not, I thought.

After long minutes she moved without determination toward my edge of the pond. With shaky hands I now ranged her at 36 yards. She was still in the water but now her vitals were showing. She turned this way and that, then stood still at a perfect broadside, 35 yards. If my shot was a pass-through I’d lose my arrow in the water. So what, I thought. I didn’t want to have to pull her body out of the stinking pond though. More of a concern was the calf who was romping and playing in the water just beyond her. It moved off and left an open shot.

I raised my bow, pulled back without a sound, set my 35 yard pin on her. Surprisingly my bow arm was still, rock solid. My head was cloudy. I was barely conscious. I breathed again. Ok, a little better now. I rolled my eyes skyward and asked myself, do I really want to do this? All my training, all my disappointment, and now it seemed too easy. Everything, every last detail had come together and I was at that critical moment, to take a life, a precious life. I didn’t let myself think beyond that. In fact, I stopped thinking at all. My right hand just let go, on automatic, as if I were shooting on the target range. I had aimed but somehow the act was not as deliberate as I had always imagined. My mind was blank. So blank that I think I missed a few seconds. I remember the sound of the bow snap, but my brain couldn’t record any more information immediately after that instant. I didn’t see the arrow fly or strike. The next thing I remember, all the elk were moving away from me, as if one of them had issued a rallying call. Water splashing, hooves pounding, all moving in slow motion. At first I couldn’t see the arrow. Then the blood oozing out of her side made clear where it had gone. It was still in her, and not very deep. It was too high, a possible shoulder blade shot. Shit. I forgot to calculate the difference in altitude. She was at least 15 feet lower in elevation at only 35 yards. I should have used my 30 pin.

The elk gathered high on the opposite bank forming a circle of protection just in front of the gate. They were all quiet, each one looking in a different direction. One stood very close to the wounded cow. Her guard licked her wound for her. She presented a wall between the wounded one and I. I had already knocked my other arrow, but they ranged at 96 yards. My highest sight pin is 50. They were bunched together, and based on the lousy penetration I got with my first broad head, I was afraid all I would do was spill more imperfect blood. All the ground between my blind and the elk was completely open. No cover. They were now keenly alert. There was no way. I had to wait.

The wounded elk held her right front leg up. She didn’t want to walk at first. She stood there for a long time while the other elk guarded her. Eventually she tried to walk, in tight woozy circles. Just at about sundown, the bull that claimed this harem showed up. He never came inside the fence, not that I would have shot at him anyway. After a soundless consultation the herd slowly moved back out the gate and gently moved away to the south toward Mt Taylor with the wounded cow in the lead. The Bull took up the rear. I lost sight of them in the trees before they were 50 yards from the gate.

It was moments before dark. If I moved I risked spooking the herd into a run. If I waited I would lose the blood trail in the dark. I opted to move, looking ahead with binoculars, carefully trying not to alarm the now invisible herd any further. I found the blood trail but lost it almost immediately. This only added to my anxiety that she was not too badly hurt. She will likely live, I thought, suffer most likely. If my arrow did take her it would be a slow painful death from infection. This was not what I wanted. I would lose the meat and make this regal, sentient being suffer.

I wasn’t sure what to do. To blindly follow a blood trail that wasn’t long enough to establish a trajectory in the dark was sure to spook the unwounded animals. To quit and wait till morning would mean I would still likely never find the animal, and if I did it might be too late to save the meat. The thought that won me over was the fantasy that she might return to the scene of the crime the next morning. I was thinking like a criminal. My guilt was making my decisions for me. I headed back to camp with the intention to call friends to help me find her. I would return before sunrise the next morning and do my best to reestablish the blood trail. I was broken hearted, but not as much as she. As I slowly returned to my conscious self my guilt grew deeper. By the time I got to camp I was ready to pray and make amends to gods that I did not formerly believe in. Cernunos, I prayed, please make a swift end to the elk, the mother of calves now orphaned. Let her suffering be light, and free her mind (yes, her mind, she could talk after all) of fear. Let her calf be cared for and let someone, anyone, feast on her body that her death may not be in vain.

To the extent that I could verify it, most of my prayers were answered. My penance was that my family would not eat elk this winter. Another hunter’s family would. All that I found was a gut bag, all bones and meat carefully removed. I found it around 11 the next morning. The guts did not yet smell foul, though the vultures and crows had led me to her. I may have missed the hunters by as little as an hour. My arrow was nowhere to be seen. However the blood trail that I had reestablished had led me right to this spot. It’s possible that the hunters had seen her the previous night heading away from my torment. If they had been properly hidden, they could have downed her with a second well placed arrow (still an illegal shot as it would have had to have happened after sunset). More likely, I realized later as I thought through more of the details, my arrow had killed her. It had likely missed or perhaps broken past the shoulder blade. It was at a sufficiently obtuse angle, pointing downward from the point of impact, that it could have punctured her lung opposite the entry point. The blood trail ran steady every few feet for 300 yards before it had petered out. She only made it a half mile before she lay down to die. The hunters, more likely, came upon her early in the morning before light. Most certainly an unethical thing to do, but at least the meat didn’t go to waste.

The next weekend I returned for one last chance to fill my tag, convinced by this time that my elk had been removed from the National Forest with another hunter’s tag in her ear. But before I went I touched base with family and friends as I would be alone and out of cell phone range for several days. So when I called my vegetarian brother in California, he wished that I would have a good time, but he also hoped I wouldn't kill anything. I didn't want to argue with him about it so I just politely got off the phone. I tried to let it go but it nagged at me for the next day. Walking all over, seeing no elk sign, nothing but time to think, I gradually returned to myself and remembered why I do this. Another vegetarian friend had, not too long ago, spit her venom at me about my hunting, judgmentally claiming the moral high ground for sparing animals' suffering. Then I remembered the white tail deer of Iowa; the ones that are gut-shot by farmers every year so that they will stop eating the corn, go off in the woods and die a slow painful death where they won't stink up the fields (Richard Manning). And how about the millions of rabbits and field mice who are unceremoniously chopped up by wheat combines all over this country each fall (Michael Polan)? And how about the millions of acres of habitat that have been thoughtlessly stolen from the wildlife in this country... millions of acres stolen, bloodied with the bodies of gut-shot deer, antelope, rabbits, field mice and god knows what else, all so that the majority of 27 million vegetarian Americans can drive their gasoline powered cars to the supermarket and claim the moral high ground. Ah, yes, that's why I hunt. Because I refuse to lie to myself about where my food comes from (and where my fuel comes from for that matter), and I am therefore compelled to do the best I can to fill my children's bellies with honest meat, fruits and vegetables. I then remembered the priests of old, who slaughtered animals with reverence. They were connected to the food they eat, they knew it personally, and they took responsibility for the never ending cycle of life and death. When they plunged the knife in, they did not do it with malice. They did it with the grim acceptance that they are part of the cycle of life, not above it. They were filled with gratitude and no small amount of compassion for the animal. They were not alienated from the source of their nourishment, their source of life, and therefore they were truly alive.