My Page: Bruce Smithhammer

Mouthful of Feathers Feature

There are few books written about hunting chukar, and even fewer that are really well-written by someone who has dedicated a significant portion of his life to chasing and learning about them. Maybe this is a result of the fact that the group of people who really go off the deep end of chukar obsession is pretty small to begin with.

Maybe it’s because many dedicated chukar hunters, much like those who really get into chasing carp with a fly rod or mountain goats with a bow, tend to be a bit different; a hermetic lot, who feel their experience has been hard won (and rightly so) and are content to let others figure it out on their own, as they did.

Mouthful of Feathers Feature

It starts in February, with being notified that you’ve been lucky enough to draw a spring turkey tag for our local, limited lottery. You know people who have put in for it for years and never gotten it. For two months, you persevere through exponentially accumulating snowfall, uncharacteristically optimistic that, by late April, it will mostly be gone.

You spend too much time pondering the merits of various decoys and turkey calls online. Your spouse walks in on you watching an instructional video of three good ‘ol boys sitting on a porch, demonstrating calling techniques. She lifts an eyebrow as if to sardonically say, “Really?” and closes the door. You feel a bit sheepish, but quickly become engrossed again in the finer points of yelping and purring.

The opening date approaches, and you start scouting. Most of this involves futilely post-holing up to your waist, and you truly begin to question why you ever thought you’d find turkeys in our valley.

Mouthful of Feathers Essay

I feel cheap. I feel like I owe him a lot more. I feel like I’m trying to explain sex to my son, and I just copped out and bought him a blow-up doll instead.

But it is March and the snow continues to fall and another season is so goddam far away that I have no choice but to focus on more immediate distractions and put the thought of it out of my head. I imagine that his approach is not much different.

Mouthful of Feathers Essay

I have to be honest – I rarely ever think about you.

Which, I suppose, is the ultimate testament to how good you are at what you do. At times, however, I know this may come across as ingratitude and, for that, I’m sorry. You’ve accused me of being a fickle S.O.B. and I know there is a certain amount of truth to that. I expect a lot in a lamentably short period of time, and offer little more than neglect the rest of the year. I’ve smeared you in various pastes, oils and creams, seeking to improve upon perfection. I’ve even experimented with others, and you keep taking me back without question. 

New West Series

The previous evening ended with a reception for the Congressional Sportsman’s Caucus, of which Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) is currently chairman. It is a fun affair, where conversations come easily and common interests seem to abound. After a day spent crisscrossing from one office to another, back and forth across the Capitol lawn, lobbying on behalf of responsible energy development, it is a welcome change of pace.

There is a rumor that the senator will make an appearance, but with Congress as hectic as it is at the moment, we know this isn’t necessarily a given.

Before the pot stickers and shrimp have fully disappeared, a man built like a cross between an NFL linebacker and a pile of bricks enters with a small entourage, and I recognize his face, of course. 

New West Series

I empty my pockets of everything, take my jacket and belt off, slide everything through a metal detector, walk through a larger one myself, and I’m in. Standing in the rotunda of one of the Senate office buildings, I’m now on my way to the first meeting of the morning with a representative from the state of Idaho, tagging along with a few other Idaho residents to present the case for responsible energy development.

Other teams from Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development representing Colorado, Montana, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona are simultaneously doing the same thing.

The building is humming with purposeful activity. We crowd into an office and wait our turn. The Congressman’s schedule is overbooked and we will be meeting with one of his staff instead, which becomes a familiar theme throughout our time here. It quickly becomes apparent that these young staff members are the real key to getting anything done here. Every member of Congress is dependent on a cadre of generally young, smart, up-and-coming aides to handle the myriad of responsibilities and commitments that one person alone could never accomplish.

New West Op-Ed and Series

When do you decide, despite how easy it may be to feel that your voice is insignificant, that it’s time to leap across the chasm that can sometimes seem to separate individuals from the decision-making process? When is it time to remind yourself, and others, that our elected representatives are public servants who work for us, and that it’s time to go talk to them?

Over the next few days, I’ll be traveling to Washington, D.C., with a group of dedicated hunters and anglers, including the individuals described above, and members of Sportsmen For Responsible Energy Development, to find out.

Mouthful of Feathers Essay

We have come to refer to rivers and forests, trout and elk as “resources.” They have become units that inhabit still other units. We now frequently hear the act of hunting referred to as “harvesting” or “collection,” or other, similarly clinical terminology. We have abstracted and reduced one of the most real, visceral experiences we have left in this modern world to the language of the bureaucrat and the commercial extractor.

There has, of course, been necessity to this. In order to converse with the bureaucrat and the extractor, to be taken seriously and to have a seat at the table, it’s become necessary to adopt their language, for this is the language that gets things done in our time. But in this linguistic shift, I believe something at the heart of this whole thing is lost, stripped of greater significance, reduced to the soulless level normally reserved for inanimate product or commodity.

Mouthful of Feathers Essay

It wasn’t a conscious decision; we had merely started moving in slightly different trajectories, and in this sort of country that means that before long we were almost a mile, and a deep gorge, away from each other. I look across the rim at the small figures, the even smaller brown and white dots that represented the dogs. Even at this distance, it is obvious that they are covering 10 times the amount of ground the humans are.

I find reasonably stable footing amidst the slippery skateboards of sandstone talus piled atop each other and look over the rim. Even in February, the creek flows assertively. Yes, people would have lived here, and probably would have done pretty well at it, considering the harshness that lay to the horizon beyond.

New West Column

In logic akin to being caught in the act of shoplifting a television and then arguing that the shoplifter should be allowed to keep the TV until found guilty by a jury, Rammell has maintained that IDF&G had no right to confiscate the elk, since he has not yet been proven guilty (though he admits to having the elk in his possession and to not being properly licensed).

To date, Rammell has taken no personal responsibility for the incident, and he entered a not guilty plea to the charges at the end of December. He places the blame instead on the employee at Sportsman’s Warehouse in Idaho Falls who sold him the tag. Rammell claims the employee told him he was purchasing an elk tag that would allow him to hunt in any zone in the state that he wished. It is worth noting that no such elk tag exists – when hunters purchase elk tags in the state of Idaho, they must specify the zone they plan to hunt in, and are limited to that zone. This is not a recent change in the regulations, and the employee who sold Rammell the tag has been a licensing agent at the store for 10 years.