Missoula Notebook

A Walk in the Woods With Guns

By Sutton Stokes, 11-16-08

	Photo by Flickr user WireLizard. Some rights reserved.

Considering that hunters are supposed to be a dying breed, there sure were a lot of pickup trucks jammed into the pullouts along route 200 east of Missoula last Tuesday, and a lot of men in camouflage-patterned orange vests standing around next to them.

It was Veteran’s Day, and my neighbor Vin and I were headed out to some Forest Service land near Nine Mile Prairie Road to hunt for deer.

Or Vin was going to hunt for deer. As there was only one rifle in the car, I would just be observing. From moving quietly in rough terrain to cleaning a kill, I figure there is a lot to be learned about hunting even if I am not the one who pulls the trigger.

It’s been a warm fall, of course, so there wasn’t a scrap of snow on the ground. Hunters treat this as bad news, because it means the deer have no particular reason to descend from their safe mountain redoubts. Even if some deer do venture down, lack of snow makes them harder to track — and makes it easier to hear the trackers.

Perhaps this is why the season has gotten off to such a slow start. During the first week of big-game season, the hunter success-rates at local game-check sites were only around 6-8 percent. And considering that this calculation doesn’t include any of the empty-handed hunters who drove by without bothering to stop and report not having shot anything, even this rate is probably inflated.

Still, there we all were, game to try anyway, which tells you something about either our math skills or our stubbornness.

Vin and I turned west onto Nine Mile Prairie Road and made our way over a series of successively smaller and bumpier dirt roads, first curving along high above the Blackfoot, then, at Belmont Creek, taking a fork to the right that led up from the pasture lands into the wooded hills.

We parked near two pickup trucks where a gate blocked the road and climbed out to assemble our gear. Gaiters against the wet underbrush, bear spray hanging within easy reach. We had gained some altitude since leaving Missoula, and the air felt damp and chilly, so I pulled a fleece sweater and a windbreaker over my turtleneck.

Vin loaded four .280 cartridges into his Ruger M77, holding the top one down with his finger while he slid the bolt closed so that the chamber would remain empty.

We put on our orange vests and shouldered our packs.

Past the gate, the road curved to the left. As we followed it, Vin saw a good hilltop vantage point but just as quickly spotted two orange-clad figures already sitting on it. We left the road and climbed a steep hill to our right. Soon I was sweating and I stopped to take off the fleece and windbreaker. Eventually we sat down to stake out a small meadow, and fifteen minutes in I was shivering and pulling on my layers again.

After about an hour, we were too cold to sit any longer and decided to walk down the base of a long ridge, then climb to the top and loop back along its spine. While we moved, we thought about the wind: which way it was blowing and how to get around downwind of a spot that would offer good sight lines and a safe backstop for a shot. Quite a puzzle to solve, considering that, even if you get all of that right, a deer still has to decide to come walking along in front of you.

Near the top of the ridge, Vin spotted the remains of a deer that seemed to have died of natural or at least non-hunter-related causes. That was the only explanation he could think of for why a splendid four-point spread of antlers would have been left lying on the ground. I picked it up and carried it for the rest of the day, and after a while I almost forgot it was attached to a piece of skull with a few remnants of skin scraps here and there.

As dusk neared, we hunkered down in a small copse of trees on a hillside, facing different directions so as to be able to see as much of the surrounding woods as possible. We sat in silence and watched, and as the sun sank my eyes played tricks on me. A wind-touched branch would bob and I would strain to see the shape of a deer materializing behind it, willing the animal into existence. My anticipation was so keen that, if a deer had appeared, I might have been too frozen with surprise to say anything.

The woods grew still darker, and the only sign of life was a red squirrel that suddenly rushed out of sight between two trees and found something worth scolding there. With just a few minutes of shooting light left, Vin chambered a round for the first time all day and carried his rifle ready in front of him as we made our way downhill toward the road where we had parked. But in the last stretch of woods where it might still have been possible to take a shot, we spotted a bobbing fleck of orange moving through the gloom.

Vin opened the bolt of his rifle, took the cartridge out of the chamber, and slung the rifle by its sling over his shoulder as we walked the last quarter mile to the car.

Once we had stowed our gear, I laid the antlers on a tarp in the back.

It was the closest we’d come to seeing a deer all day.

For more like this, read the rest of the Missoula Notebook.

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