First, catie asked some questions about the hunting, which I’ll try to address.

Yes, I hunt other things too. I started with deer. I only originally got into bear hunting because I was taunting Murphy. See, since buying deer tags kept me from actually seeing deer for so many years, I figured that buying bear tags would do the same thing for bears. I was pretty nervous about running into one if I was out in the woods alone, and I wanted to be able to shoot one if I had to without having to deal with Fish and Game fallout.

It was that year that I ran into Don and discovered how much fun bear hunting actually was. He was pleased to find a new shooter, as he does love to get people their first bears (and their second bears too, now!) I still deer hunt; it’s much more peaceful and I like venison. I’ll also bring up my shotgun on the next trip, since Mountain Quail season is now open and I’ve been seeing them everywhere. Also very tasty animals.

catie, where I hunt is near Yosemite. We don’t let the dogs go toward the park, but we hunt to the northwest and southwest of it. This bear came from between Cherry Lake and the Tuolumne River, north of Highway 120. You’ve probably driven through the main highway, unless you go to the park through the southern route.

I didn’t want to waste the meat, but Wild Man was out working in the fields last night and couldn’t come get it. The combination of potential guilt and getting to go to DP found me driving out there last night. Of course, I called Cowboy and told him I was coming, and once I dropped the meat off to Mrs. Wild Man, I went out to the barn.

He and Chris and I had a real nice dinner down at the local steak house. I very carefully refrained from thinking about the condition of the bathrooms the last time I’d been there, which had made me boycott the place for several years. I just wanted to hang with my family. We spent a lot of time catching up; Chris is on the PRCA rodeo trail travelling with another more experienced calf roper. I slipped him some money and told him that I’d sponsor him when I could. I guess there’s a whole procedure to be an official sponsor, which he’s going to look into so I can add my business name to his shirts and write it off as advertising.

I wanted to see the progress on the house, so after dinner, Cowboy took me in the back way to show me the skeleton of the future horse barn, the arenas, and the new baby. He’s built a great arena, with a narrow calf roping run on one side, the return alley down the middle, and a great big roping arena on the other side, just like he’d envisioned. It looks so much bigger than it did when it was bare dirt, but I could always picture it just as well as he could; I guess it sort of became my dream too. It’s beautiful, even in the dark and half done.

I realized sometime last night before I even saw him that while the blowtorch level of fire may have gone out, I still keep a pilot light lit for that man, and may for the rest of my life. He’s not romantic in the least, he’s not terribly communicative, and he’s rarely overtly affectionate, but he remains the one man in the world who can have my entire heart with just a word. I do sort of wonder if what we’ve got going on now is an extremely slow-motion dating situation, but I try not to overanalyze and just enjoy the ride. Should lightning happen to strike from another direction, I may or may not go with it, but I’ve sure been lucky to have had it strike once in my life.

Note: those of you who don’t care for the killing part of my sport may want to click on by at this point. May I suggest Robyn? She’s cute and she cusses and doesn’t kill stuff.

So Saturday morning found us back at the apple orchard, chasing that same big bastard that had got by us the previous week.

I spent a lot of time listening to dogs down by the ranger station.

Finally, they treed, and we hauled ass back out that skinny jeep road that had knocked the shit out of my truck last week. This time, I went farther, with 1/2-inch clearances on either side of the truck at one point. But when you can hear the dogs singing right up the hill, it motivates you to get there as quickly as possible. Todd and Derek and I hauled ass down and up that hill. It wasn’t very far, but it was steep and brushy. I just put my arms in front of my face and pushed on through, which earned me a lovely already-developing case of poison oak. There was a lot of sitting on my ass and just sliding down rather than tumbling head first.

When we got there, the dogs were all barking up two different trees. We looked, but no bear! He’d slipped out without them noticing somehow. We pulled them off, had to coax one up the rocks, and went back home for the day.

The next morning, Todd was surprised to get after him again in the same area. Usually they wander a little farther, but this one had a good thing going, what with the apple orchard, the acorns, and Cook’s calves nearby. Don and Hub and I again drove out to meet him and we turned the dogs out. Pretty soon, they were out of range, and we all did some driving in different directions to locate them.

Eventually, they treed the bear and we drove up another one of those tiny jeep roads. Knocked my CB antenna off and my mirrors in again. This time, Don, Todd, Derek and I walked off into the canyon; we could hear that they were partway up the other side. Since I’d already decided to shoot it if it were big, we only brought my rifle and my pistol; all of the other regular shooters had blown us off this weekend.

I was amped up enough to almost keep up with Todd and Derek, and they were still tying up dogs when I got there. I looked at the bear, but when they’re that high in the tree, I can’t really judge size. I didn’t want to mess with it if it wasn’t the big one we’d been chasing, but Derek said that it was. We three sat and looked at it while we waited for Don to get there; we took some pictures and waited for my shaking to subside. He had a nice white spot on his belly that would have been an outstanding aiming point, but he shifted before I was ready.

Eventually, though, it was time. Todd took my pistol to back me up, and I fired when ready. Derek said to aim between the eyes, so I did. The bear flew backwards out of the tree, but was still moving, so both Todd and I kept shooting. That’s what you do, because you really don’t want to mess with a wounded one on the ground.

But it was dead, which was good, because we were both out of ammunition. It was so heavy that we didn’t even consider packing it out without gutting it, so that was the next step.

The flattest way out was through the creek, but the creek wasn’t flowing enough to actually float the bear most of the time, so it was a long, laborious process of Todd hauling on it from downstream and me lifting and shoving every time it got hung up on a rock. Derek has really terrible knees, so he couldn’t risk walking on those slippery rocks underwater. After I took a dunking or two, he took my rifle and radio from me and went on a little ahead. Fortunately, I’d already given Don my camera; a stainless rifle holds up to water a whole lot better than a digital SLR!

Finally, we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Derek came back with a couple of beers in his pack and we took a break and then he spelled me in the water. I was so exhausted that I was shaking; I’d lost feeling in my feet hours before and was just blindly aiming stumps on the ends of my legs at what I hoped would be secure footing. I lost track of the number of times that it wasn’t as secure as all that.

We got to the bank near the trucks, and the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen was hanging there where I almost missed it: the piece of lineman’s pull rope that was attached at the other end to Don’s truck to pull that bear the last hundred (vertical) feet.

It took all five of us a giant heave to get it up on the box of Todd’s truck, and then it was picture time. That bear’s head was probably three times the size of mine! The boys say that it’s the biggest one they’ve seen pulled out of there all season, which includes the other hunters’. When we called for help to get it out, all of the other rigs were mysteriously and suddenly busy when they heard which bear it was. The rancher around the corner will be pleased, as this thing was easily big enough to pick off a few calves.

After I picked up the kids and my dad appropriately oohed and ahed over it (it’s as big as the one that almost took him out before my sister was born,) I got to spend the next five hours in the back of the truck under the spotlights in the driveway, skinning it. I wanted to take the hide off in one piece to have him done up as a half-body mount. If I have a rug made, I’ll lose that spectacular white spot. He’s a good-looking bear too; nice and dark for up there and with a luxurious coat of fur. That and the two inches of fat under his hide make me think he was expecting a cold winter. I can’t quite lift the head and the hide by myself, and had to kind of drag and fling them into my game cooler!

All in all, a very successful weekend. We finally outwitted ol’ Big Bastard and I have a trophy of a lifetime just waiting on the right taxidermist. I’m delivering the meat to Wild Man tonight (and incidentally having dinner with Cowboy, since I’ll be in his town.) I’m not looking forward to the bill for having this thing mounted, but it sure will be worth it. I’ll probably never see another one this big in my lifetime.

I’ve got the bug, that’s for sure. I’m going back up on Friday, even without a tag. No more shooting for me, but I still have that camera, and I owe those boys some major pie!

After a very disappointing day on Saturday that mostly consisted of waiting on dogs to come out of the Cherry Creek canyon (the last one finally came out the next morning) we were off and ready to go at daylight on Sunday. Todd had finally come up, so we had both of our experts.

We changed terrain, and went down into some oak-bottom land near an old ranger station. The boys took their Toyotas up into an abandoned apple orchard while I stayed down below with my fat Dodge.

As soon as Todd got to the top, his dogs lit off like the bear was trying to crawl into the box with them. He turned them out, and the game was on. All four of the guys were out of the trucks, standing and listening to the race, while I listened from below. I was all prepared to be disappointed every time they crested the ridge away from me, but they kept circling back and I could hear them loud and clear again.

Then Todd called me on the radio:

“We see him! It’s a big one, and he’s on the ground! Don’t let him get by you! If you see him, kill him!”

So I raced down the road a little bit, hoping to intercept before they crossed it. I estimated a little short, and Todd flew on by me. As I was standing there, a deer hunter drove by; I warned him that there was one more bear hunter coming and to watch out.

The dogs got by Todd, so he told me to get on the road below; I hauled ass down there and sure enough, got slowed up by that deer hunter again. It took a minute or two for him to find a wide spot and let me by, and then I turned onto the side road, put the hammer down in four-wheel drive, and hauled ass. My eight-foot wide truck was barrelling down a nine-foot wide jeep road, knocking my mirrors in and my CB antenna off the roof, and pinstriping the sides, but by god, I was going to get to that bear!

I hit the end of the road, and I could hear the dogs right there. I jumped out, shoved my ass through the brush toward them, and had my rifle up, safety off, and aimed. And it was dogs popping out; I had missed the bear by no more than ten seconds crossing the road I’d just come in on. I could hear one dog up with him; I was so close that I caught them in the middle of the pack.

Todd and Don meanwhile were hauling themselves down the next lower road, so I got out of where I was and raced down there too. Of course, we got hung up by that same damn deer hunter; that guy cost us that bear three separate times. The bear slipped by Don, but he was close enough to catch up the dogs; sneaky ol’ bear had gone down into a really rough canyon and the gate on the only road was locked, so we called it off.

From the time we turned them out until the time we caught them couldn’t have been much more than an hour. All of the guys saw the bear, but none of them had their rifles out of the trucks with them. They said he was so big and black that at first they all thought he was a cow, so he was probably in the 400-pound range, with a big hump on his shoulders.

And that, my friends, is what this sport is all about. Even though we didn’t kill the bear, we all got a hell of an adrenaline rush that morning. Standing by myself in the middle of the brush with a pissed-off 400-pound bear running right towards me (I thought) sure got my blood pumping! I was grinning from ear to ear for the rest of the morning, and so were they. That one run made the whole weekend worthwhile, and I can’t wait to do it again.

I’m always so impressed by the density of the stars when I go up there that I thought I’d try to capture some of it with the camera.

I brought my tripod and the wide-angle lens up specifically to play with at night.

At first, I was fiddling with the settings at the campfire.

With this second one, I was trying to capture the slight glow of the trees reflecting the campfire, with the stars shining brightly between them. That didn’t work so well; what looks like a star is a speck of dust on the lens, and the trees didn’t read red to plain eyesight.

After that, I walked out past camp to the road, right at the little-one lane bridge. I was trying out different exposure times, but since I was running on bulb, I really had to guess.

This first one showed as completely black on my LCD screen, but when I lightened it at home, it was this beautiful blue. Still, it doesn’t capture the intensity of the stars or the luminosity of the black sky.

I held this one a little longer, and I think it does a better job. It was amazing how easy it was to see out there, with no moon at all and away from camp. I could make out the white gravel road and the silhouettes of the trees were plain as day against the sky. The only true black up there was the shadows of the trees; the sky itself glowed as black does on a computer monitor, as if there’s a light behind it and it’s just trying to fake being black.

This last one was the best. I held the shutter open for three minutes, until my finger got tired. I caught an airplane going across the sky at the top, and the exposure was so long that you can see the paths the stars took.

None of these images portray what I wanted them to, but I like them anyway.

After I put the camera away, I noticed that Don still wasn’t around. He’d been trying to get that one last dog in and we couldn’t reach him on the radio. So I drove up to where he was sitting on a point, and that’s when the whole bowl of the universe slammed me. I sat there and contemplated the immensity for an hour and a half; that would have been a much better place to play with the camera. I saw four meteorites, and really wished that I had someone to share that sort of thing with. Don’t get me wrong, Don’s a good sitting partner; nice and quiet unless he has something to say, but there are times when that’s not quite the sort of companionship that I crave.

A warm and pleasant evening; contemplation just makes me a little lonely sometimes is all.

Last time I left camp, I almost ran a kid off the road who was driving up too fast and not accounting for the fact that those roads are about a truck and a half wide. You have to slow down for the curves! But I was on the outside of the really steep part and dragging the trailer, so I just let him roll his tires up the bank on the inside and no harm done. I had nightmares about being run off and rolling down the mountain the whole rest of the way home though.

Of course, you know what I’m leading to, don’t you?

One corner away from the turnoff to camp, I met a truck coming downhill a little too fast. He zigged and I zagged, and the trailer, which was already a little inside the radius of the truck, grabbed the ditch with its wheels and yanked over hard to the right. Right into the side of the mountain. I was stopped within about six feet, but I had to yank it back out of there to assess the damage.

The poor guy stopped too, absolutely white-faced. “I had nowhere to go!” he kept saying (although he sort of did; we weren’t on the steep part.)

I think he was more terrified that I would start crying, but all of these sanity trips recently must have left me saner than usual, because I was remarkably level-headed. We looked it over and I started to take care of the sticking-out parts; got out the black tape and the pocket knife, and we went to taping. The awning arm was completely ripped off and hanging, so I had to secure that before I could roll at all.

It smashed in the front corner, breaking the support inside for my bed and cracking across the front. It smashed in the storage compartment which contained the tools I needed to unhitch. Smashed the door in but good; I had to get out both the tire iron and the rubber mallet to get that open. Scraped all the way down the side and pulled off the edge of the siding in the back. I pried and hammered and cussed, and it was a good thing nobody else was in camp. I got in, got my stuff, and left a note that I was OK and went hunting. I ran into Don coming back, so I turned around and we all had pie and commiserated.

The door only shuts (sort of) from the outside, because I have to pick up the awning and roll it over the door to hold it closed. That doesn’t work so well when I’m inside the trailer, so at night, I had to bungee it sort of shut and try to prop up cushions and towels to try to conserve my heat. It was a little chilly in there this morning!

It was sort of sickening, but really; it’s just stuff. I’m insured, and hey! Maybe now I can get that dry rot taken care of. And I did manage to keep the truck completely out of it, so I wasn’t a complete failure. $8,000 (once upon a time) trailer with dry rot sacrificed to save the $40K truck? Good call.

It’s going to be a pain in the ass, but not right away. I can turn the insurance in, but only with pictures. I left it up there for the week, both because I’m hunting again next weekend and I want to use it and because I have to take that awning completely off before I can put it on the road. The boys say they will help me; I knew they would. Good bunch of guys up there, but they’re part of the next story. Or possibly the one after that.

You know, I really think I hit the jackpot with that scrawny wee under-the-shed beastie. He’s grown into a ten-pound monster at only six months old. Sure, he bites, but he’s only drawn blood by accident. When he leaps with fangs of doom out from dark corners to frighten stray feet into submission, he never uses his claws. Thoughtful of him, as well a promoting longevity.

Now that he’s large, I don’t worry too much about the dog getting too rough with him. It’s more of a concern that he will get too rough with the dog, actually.

Isn’t he pretty?

I went out to grill tonight, and those two cracked my shit right up with the fierceness. I had to get Seamus to sneak me out the camera to capture Jekyll beating up on poor Angus, who only wanted to chase his ball.

Dogs bites cat: fairly normal scenario.

Cat bites dog: not so much!

I throw the ball for the dog, and he has to detour around the terror to get it back to me.

Finally, he gives up, and just stares at the ball for a while, wondering if that damn cat is looking.

The cat is always looking. Perhaps the children can distract him? No such luck; they’re too busy laughing at him. Finally, the dog’s wore out, the cat’s wound up, and the burgers are done. I drag his frightfulness back into the house where the kids pop a laundry basket over the top of him and he turtles it around the kitchen like an evil clawed white vinyl tank. That cat’s a good sport; the kids torment the shit out of him and he just comes back for more. I tell the kids that if they tried that with my old cat, they’d have had their faces ripped off long ago, but they just giggle.

He does keep the mood light around here. As long as you don’t step on him following from in front in the middle of the night at least. Overall, I guess this cat-having thing is working out OK. As long as my landlady doesn’t find out, that is!

The boys and I went to the Northern California Renaissance Faire today. Just squeaked in on the last day too, but I’d been promising all year. We had so much fun at the last one that I had a dress made and Seamus especially was all jazzed about going.

Since they were so enthusiastic, I rented costumes for them. Now that I’ve seen boy’s costumes up close, I bet that I can make some before next year, but at the rate they grow, it would probably be cheaper to just keep renting them. They had so much fun getting dressed up; I really didn’t think John would get into it, but he surprised me. They’ll remember this for the rest of their lives.

We did all sorts of stuff:

John climbed the rock wall

Seamus drank his breakfast like the good Irish throwback that he is

They went through the maze, but came out the other side, and after the barker teased me with the potential of finding entirely new kids in there!

Seamus and I went on the Maypole ride

They shot crossbows

And then the highlight of their day! The turtle races! (Well, we’d checked that out first thing, but they reluctantly believed me when I pointed out that turtles are in fact reptiles and not likely to make a very exciting race when we’re all goose-bumped in the morning.)

We watched a fire eater/juggler guy

And we watched my favorite, the jousting. Too bad I couldn’t get any good pictures from that! But the kids had a ball and really, so did I. It would be fun to go with a girlfriend or two some year, but that would have to be in addition to the kids’ trip, not instead of. I mean, really. There’s lots of eye candy walking around there, and the experience would only be enhanced by drinking more than a breakfast Guinness. Motor the trailer on up there to the RV park, and spend a weekend getting rowdy with a whole bunch of other people getting their freak on. What’s not to love about that?

Both of the kids asked to spend Friday night at their Dad’s this week, so I took shameless advantage and got myself a three-day weekend by burning four hours of vacation time. Not to relax, of course; you know me.

Nope, I got up at oh-my-god-it’s-early again and hit the road at 4 AM with my day-hunt partner in crime. Since we forgot that dawn’s a little later than it was two weeks ago, we had to sit and wait for a while when we got there, but it finally came. As soon as we could distinguish colors, we were off.

We were road hunting, since I’m having a small problem with asthma this week and even the smallest walks are killing me. Saw a couple of deer, which made me feel better than last weekend when I was cursed.

Marv had me stop to look at a deer, and we both realized that it was a buck. He hopped out of the truck and I stayed in, waiting for the shot. When it came, I was expecting to see him dragging something back up the hill in short order, but not so. He’d been scoping it to see if it was legal (it was) and once he saw that fork, he moved the scope to the body. Just a hair before he pulled the trigger, the buck jumped, and he missed it entirely. And right then, the noise made a second buck pop his head up to see what was going on. That one was a nice four-pointer (or eight for you whitetail people; we count ‘em differently out here.)

And of course, they both took off. We lurked around there for a while hoping that they hadn’t gone too far, but another asthma attack made me fairly useless. Came back in the evening to stand hunt and still didn’t see them. The game warden said that they’d been hanging out there for a month and that the big one had been shot at and missed too.

So it was mostly driving; 250 miles worth of it in 17 hours, mostly at around the 5-8 mph range. We went on some new roads, took some pictures. It was an awfully long day, and peeing every fifteen minutes due to a bladder infection didn’t help. I better get that cleared up before next weekend, because it’s a whole hell of a lot harder to pee with eight men around than just one!

You do realize, don’t you, that this makes 23 years of friendship? Two more and we can retire with a pension… oh wait. But still! Congratulations!

Oh, and I may have learned a lesson or two about frosting cupcakes with marshmallow fluff; you might want to refrigerate them if you don’t want them oozing off the counter under cover of darkness like a white toasty swamp thing. So you got the only pretty one (and it tasted good too!)

On Friday, by the time I found my guys (Wrong-Way Charlie had gone right around them) they were done hunting for the day and it was still early afternoon. So we all went back to camp; they to kick back and play poker and me to go off deer hunting. Derek told me where he’d killed his buck on Wednesday and that he’d seen two more up there, so there’s where I went.

I hit a gate about halfway up the road, so I parked and loaded myself up with the neccessaries: the rifle, the camera, and my little fanny pack with the kitchen sink in it, and I went walking.

I like to look at tracks as I go, so I had my head down more than I probably should have. The first half was gravel, but still, every now and then I could see something interesting in the dirt at the side of the road.

When I hit the true dirt road though, that’s where it got interesting. I knew I’d been following cows, but it became as plain as day that I was following a cow and a calf right down the road, weaving from side to side as they checked things out.

I was taking pictures of things that interest me, as usual. I like to take pictures of tracks. The guys might find me a little weird for that, but I know that I like to show them to you all, and they don’t know that. It had rained a couple of days before, so instead of a highway of overlapping, undateable prints, what I had was all fairly new and well-defined.

So I stopped when I found what I think was a raccoon, and took pictures. I took one of the only clear bear track I’d seen, although there was plenty of poop.

I stopped and snapped one of a neat looking tree.

And then I came upon a nice puddle; not too wet, but damp enough to hold prints in stark relief. Cow, calf, doe, lion… wait, what? Lion? Oh, crap. And me without my pistol. So I took a picture.

The big prints to either side of the lion track are from a big cow, to give you a sense of scale.

I might not be very smart, because even though the hair on the back of my neck prickled a little, it wasn’t really prickling that much. After all, I was behind him, and it looked like a small one anyway. I kept on hunting, but I watched my back a little more and wished that I’d packed my pistol with me.

The next day, I told Don what I’d seen, and he told me some lion stories to get me good and spooked. One time, he’d walked off into a bluff with Dean and his son. The younger men went on and Don went back when it got rugged. He brushed up against something and hit the squelch button on his portable radio, and something right behind him spooked and ran off. A lion’s the only thing that will both follow you like that and be spooked by weird noises.

The boys say that the first thing you know of a lion attack is when he lands on your back. No time to get a pistol out. They suggested that I might not want to walk alone right there.

The next evening, I went back up there, planning to stay in my truck and do a little driving. Dean and the Wild Man met me on the road and kept me company walking though, which was awfully nice of them.

I might need to remember that I’m not invincible. They all knew where I was hunting, but it would be a real bummer if they had to set the dogs to find my body or if I had to walk out all chewed up. It’s pretty unlikely, but gets more and more possible as the lion population grows as it’s been doing. Fish and Game, how about opening a season up for a year or two? It’s been decades, and they’re overrunning us and wiping out deer left and right.