Hunter Gatherers

I always wanted to be the great hunter, bring home the game so that we could have meat to survive. It is not really that important for me to be a hunter in our present lifetime. It is now a sport. I have a brother who is an excellent hunter. He has given us different kinds of meat during our marriage: deer, antelope, and elk. One of the problems I had becoming a great hunter was that my wife didn’t like game meat.
We got a lot of venison our first year of marriage, but by January she was expecting our first child, and the smell of venison cooking made her sick. I would open the window just above the stove, but it didn’t seem to help. The antelope and elk meat were a lot better. I really liked them, but Joy was less than enthusiastic, but since we were poor students, she was willing to eat them, especially the elk.
When I started teaching at Orem High there were a couple of teachers that went deer hunting every year. One was Vance Calder the other one was Frank Stratton. These were two of the people that roped me into river running. Frank was one of the owners and Vance managed the warehouse for Tour West Inc. They were going hunting during the fall deer hunt and wanted me to come along.

Deer Hunt number 1
The only time I had ever been hunting before that was when I was about sixteen, and my Dad took me hunting along with Frosty Traasdahl and a couple of other guys. It was to be a grand adventure. We went up to the Ruby Mountains in Nevada the night before the hunt was to start. At daybreak, with some peanuts and a canteen of water, we took off. I went with my dad, and Frosty and Jerry Morley took off up the other side of a very large mountain. After hiking until my legs were worn out and my body was aching, we saw a deer and my dad shot it. We then needed to get the deer off the mountain. We had to go back and get a deer cart because the deer was too heavy to carry. I thought at the time, if this is a Grand Adventure, I really wasn’t all that anxious to have another one.

Photo byYathin S Krishnappa / CC BY-SA
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

Dear Hunt number 2

Now back to the rest of the story. I really liked some of the guys I knew from the school that were going hunting, so I decided that I would give it another try. One afternoon before the hunt was to start, we all started up Diamond Fork to set up a camp. The next morning was beautiful. We ate some breakfast and took off looking for a good place to hunt. We were pretty high up the mountain and had settled down to look over the valley. I was with Vance, and he decided to go up a little further and wanted me to stay where I was. After a few minutes there was a lot of guns firing off lower in the valley. I just sat there on the trail listening. Then it seemed like out of nowhere a deer came running up the trail right towards me. I was getting the rifle lined up, but I wasn’t fast enough. I was lucky, I thought, to just jump out of the way as it ran past me. I finally got a shot, but missed by probably three or four counties.
Vance came running up and said, “Did you see him? He is one of the largest I have seen up here.”
I said that I had and that I almost got a ride on his antlers. Vance then asked, “Did you shoot him?” I said I took a shot, but I missed. Vance asked how far away was he when you saw him?
I said “I must have been at least five or six inches.”
Vance said, “And you didn’t shoot him?” I said I had not, but I shot at him.
I got a little ribbing that night after we were all back at camp, but then I knew that tomorrow would be another day. Vance had taken his trailer up the hill, and that is where he and I slept, if you can call it sleeping. There was one nice big bed in the trailer that would have been fine, but Vance seemed to kick me about once or twice an hour.
The next morning, we took off again, pretty much the same area where we had been the day before, but Vance stayed where I had been, and I headed up and around the mountain. I was only about a block away from Vance when a beautiful buck came out of the trees and was going down the mountain. I took aim and shot the dear. It dropped in its tracks. Vance heard the shot and came up running and asked what I was shooting at. I pointed to the four-point buck that was about forty or so feet away. I didn’t get any more ribbing from any else. I was the only one that got a deer that trip. We did all share it.

Deer hunt number 3
The next time I went hunting I went with Dee Allred another teacher from Orem High. I’m not sure, but I think that Carl, my oldest son, was there too. I shot another beautiful buck. The first shot didn’t kill it, but it did drop it so it couldn’t run off. I went up to where the deer was. It turned its head, and with those big brown deer eyes, looked up at me. I felt like the deer was asking what had I done and why had I done it. I had to go ahead and finish it off. I decided that I would never go hunting again. I had a hard time thinking about the whole thing. I thought that I might be a better gatherer or gardener. So, after that I just used spray to kill maggots. Which we did not eat. It was way too hard to clean them.


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