Thank You Tom! In these days of instant gratification and superficial values you have no idea just how much our recent hunting trip meant to me. It was refreshing and enlightening to take a step back in time away from the prepackaged, made to order, “have it your way” world!
We had a week of early rising, tough climbs, good luck, bad luck, opportunities earned, and opportunities blown. It was a week that demonstrated that there is nothing wrong with hard work at all! Because hard and honest effort yields both rewards and disappointments that are appreciated!
Lately, I’ve been getting a little tired of the marketing blitz that has been associated with “hunting”. Everything is For Sale. For the right price I could make myself invisible, scent-free, comfortable, and armed with a range finding, light gathering, heat seeking, super ballistic firearm, over a high yield, mineral enriched food plot so that I could harvest my trophy!…. which I then could retrieve with minimal effort with my high powered, turbo-charged all terrain vehicle (which if purchased now) comes with Warn Winch.
I suppose if I just wanted to harvest an elk, I could have booked a week at one of those ranches out there with a guaranteed success rate and just shot one.
But that is not why I enjoy hunting with you in Colorado. I enjoy being able to buy an Over The Counter archery tag and having access to millions of acres of federal and state land open to the public and giving it my best effort. Period.
The views are more spectacular when I’ve climbed myself to the vantage point from which they are seen. The opportunities we experienced are more meaningful when we’ve worked our asses off climbing hundreds, maybe over a thousand feet at high elevations and paying very strict attention to wind direction, time, and terrain as we put ourselves in position for perhaps one shot with a bow. I know that I will have only a limited handful of chances at something like this in my lifetime. I know that if I screw this up, I won’t simply be shrugging it off because another one may just walk out in front of me tomorrow. This is it Baby!… Right Now!
And I had my chance. And it hurt real bad when you called that 5×5 in and he was RIGHT THERE!
Nine (9) Friggin’ yards! It happened so fast! He came in from the absolutely wrong direction! I never heard him. I didn’t see him. BUT HE WAS RIGHT THERE! But only for a few seconds and then he was gone. I never even got an arrow off. Oh Man! That hurts! But,… that’s the way I want it to be.
Because……. A week after I left, Darrin was out there with you. And you two pulled it off! CONGRATULATIONS! Ten minutes left in Darrin’s trip! A week of hunting hard! I know what that is! I know some of the climbs you made. I know how precious those opportunities are. And you two pulled it off!
HOLY SHIT BROTHER! What a story! What a memory!
There is nothing wrong with hard work. Everything is intensified. The bitterness of failure. The appreciation of success. Even the sweetness of an apple that I’d carried almost a thousand feet up which I enjoyed as we waited for the wind to shift as you knew it always does up there…. in the high country as evening neared.
And we prepared to make our move. A hard earned chance that was going become a cherished memory no matter how it turned out.
Time to move! The wind shifted, did you feel it?
Thanks Brother. YOU are the Mountain Man!
Adirondack Camp Journal 