In the ’90s we hunted like men possessed. And we were possessed. The hunt owned us and every move we made. Horses were bought or raised from babies with the hunt in mind. Thinking of that horse and the places it would go in the fall. Always the hunt either coming or going and the mountains on our horizon. We grew our camp a piece at a time, our herd a horse at a time. Sometimes a mule. Tarps those first years instead of a good wall tent, then a wall tent, then abandoned for a light expedition tepee. Only a handful of horses early on, horses that made trips up and down the trail when we were successful, packing out game. One year three bull elk and a bull moose. Up and down the trail, meat in the panniers, then back empty, then back down and then back up and finally back down with camp. The trail as familiar as clothing, the smell of September willow in the stream bottoms, the clack of hoof on cobble, the stiff leg muscles that had hiked and hefted and hunted, then sat astride a good mountain horse for mile after mile after mile. And always in sync, always feeding off the same magic that drove us up the mountain in the first place, living the same ethic. And when the hunt was over and we were back at the trailers, the stock standing tied and heads sagging from hard work, the hunt done, we stopped for a moment, not hopping into rigs and looking in mirrors for the first time in days, but instead sitting on coolers, drinking one last beer, reliving the hunt, the time in the mountain, the way the moon rose full and fat over the meadow, or the way the big grizzly rambled up and down the trail behind our camp every night and left his print there in the mud for us to see. Only one time did he come in, knocking over the tack pile, then moving on, leaving us alone because we left him alone. One last beer down and then goodbye. Home again to do it all over again next year.
One year, up on that mountain, the sun tipping away from the day, we hunted a series of ridges laid out like the knuckles of the hand of a god, and Dave went after a herd. Over the knuckles, down and up and down again until atop the last knuckle, with the sun now giving its last chance for a shot, a big bull paused and Dave’s crosshairs found him. By the time the knife work was done, he was miles from camp and on flashlight. I heard the shot and the signal shots, code for “game down,” and I waited at the horses, feeding a large fire and tucking against an old log, coat edged up tight on the ears. Waited and fed the fire, and just before midnight, Dave stepped into the firelight with a grin and relief on his face, bare hands covered with the dried blood of success. We pulled the cinches tight and rode to camp, thinking about a good elk up there on a ridge that we’d pack out the next morning. Thinking about hunting wild country, grizzly country, elk country.
THE HERD IS CLOSE NOW and the snow has slacked into the gentle soft fall that seems to suck every bit of sound out of the day. Every sound except those elk. Cows now. Talking to one another and to their calves. Soft mewing noises, birdlike, kind, loving sounds of mother talking to offspring. Then a bull from a bench above us, directly above us, and another answering from farther back and another from farther south. No tracks yet, though. Just the snow falling lightly, adding to the depth with flakes as big as quarters. I press on, not sure where Dave is, not really wondering, because I know he’ll be where he needs to be and Al too.
Twenty years ago, on another September hunt with the weather shifting from autumn to winter and back again, Al and I dropped down another mountain in another mountain range, a bighorn sheep in the panniers on a good bay filly I had raised from a baby while I rode her mother, the best mountain horse I ever owned. The sun had left the sky and we were farther from camp than we had planned to be and so when it got dark and it started to rain hard, we found the one big lone Engelmann spruce that had been spared by the fires and we unsaddled those good bay horses. To move in a dark forest without even a star to guide us would be to invite ruin and blood. So we stopped, shared a tin of smoked oysters, started a hat-sized fire between us, and rolled up in sweaty saddle blankets. In the morning, we rode grins into camp and whiskey in a coffee cup handed up while still in the saddle.
Life has a way of shifting by like a mountain dissolves into a stream. Marriages and families and new jobs and new homes to build, and suddenly a decade slips away.
Through the monochrome of snow in the timber, I see a blaze orange spot. The mountain has regurgitated Dave, and we see each other at the same time, separated far enough to use binoculars; then we move on. The herd is closer now, and there are tracks, fresh, and brown-yellow splashes of urine, and little snow tunnels where hot droppings melted their way to earth through the blanket. Very much closer now. Then the shot comes.
A shot that in the cover of deep woods sounds more like a kernel of popcorn in the microwave than a magnum. A bull bugles again.
I turn 90 degrees and work toward the sound, and there is Dave with his hand on the herd bull. A bull bugles again, and I nod at Dave a statement: You got this, I’m going after the herd.
At dark, as the snow comes down harder again, I step out of the woods below the meat pole just as the last quarter from the herd bull is hoisted up. Dave looks at my hands. Smiles.
In two days, we will be down out of these mountains, three good bulls packed on the backs of good stock. We will ride horses through snow and slop, dropping to the valley where the trucks are parked, moving with a practiced ease of the weeks over the years. We will step from the saddle and carry the panniers to the pickup trucks, make sure everyone is loaded and done. The trucks will be warm and inviting, promising to dry wet wool and warm stiff fingers. But we will dig around in the cooler for the beer that we left on ice a week ago. And we will toast to not letting another 10 years pass.
Tom Reed lives with his family on a ranch outside Pony, Montana. He is the author of several books, including Give Me Mountains for My Horses.