One of the things that I’d forgotten in nine years of renting is just how much work owning a house is. At the old place, the landlord handled the major renovations and I’d hired a guy to mow the lawns. I did small stuff, like fixing toilets or gardening, but the big stuff wasn’t my problem.

I’ve owned houses before, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it has been. We bought a reposessed house, so it wasn’t exactly turn-key, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Replacing a few appliances and cleaning up hasn’t been that much of a back-breaker, but now we’ve dived into yardwork.

Junior’s been mowing the lawns, which we started watering when we moved in. They’ve sort of come back; we’ll see what they look like in the spring. We trimmed up some Liquid Amber trees along the driveway so I wouldn’t get bopped in the head every time I tried to get around the truck. We’ve pulled weeds, sprayed round-up, and plotted future actions.

I have to admit, Junior’s done most of the heavy lifting. Mowing gives me a killer asthma attack, so I stay away from that, and he does most of it during the days when I’m not around anyway.

This weekend was Fruitless Mullberry tree weekend of doom. They’re those trees that you have to cut all of the branches off each winter, leaving ugly knobs waving in the air like a mutant fist. We each hate them, but for different reasons. I think they’re repulsively ugly when they’re trimmed up, and Junior hates working on them every year. Two were blocking the access along the shop into the back yard, and we agreed that they were coming out. He’d trimmed one of them a few weeks ago but life sidetracked us and I’d been climbing over the stack of now-dead branches to get to the trash cans for a few weeks.

I should have known that it would be a big job when he brought the flatbed trailer home. We had to put the kennel together to corral the dogs before we could unscrew the temporary closure on the gate to the highway; the lot’s narrow and we can’t get a vehicle down the side of the shop. The gate’s just barely big enough to get a truck through, and is on a later list of fix-its.

While Junior de-limbed the other tree by the shop, John and I stacked the previously trimmed branches on the trailer, along with all of the other yard waste we’ve accumulated. I thought we were just going to cut these things down, but Junior asked me to bring the Dodge around back. We hitched it up to the tree with a couple of chains and started applying tension. The truck was sitting on concrete though, and even in four-low, I was spinning all four tires. Tires are expensive for that truck, so that made me twitchy.

 

  

Junior had a Plan B though. He wanted me to give it a little slack and then gun it so we’d throw the truck’s weight into the tree. I did, but it made me nervous and wasn’t really getting us much farther. Every time felt like I was slamming the truck into a wall. Plan C involved digging out the roots a little bit and getting into them with an axe. Once a couple of big roots were cut through, the truck made a perfectly fine tractor. We dragged that stump out of there and cut it up and put it on the trailer. Repeat for the next two trees.

 

  

The last and biggest tree was in a little weird corner of the lot, resting on two fences. It was hanging way over into the neighbor’s yard, shading the garden, and just generally being a pain in the ass. It had to go, but no amount of yanking on it was budging it. We decided to take it down one major branch at a time, but Junior had to be up underneath it cutting with the chainsaw while I put slow pressure on it with the truck. I didn’t like that part, pulling on a tree my husband was working on, but we did it.

 

  

Now, feeling the branch give way and pulling it off the tree was rather satisfying. This one tree made a second dump load all by itself, and we were wore out by the end of the day. Pizza was in order. We didn’t even stop for lunch; John fixed mac-n-cheese for the rest of the kids.

 

 

I’ve done my share of hard physical work, and yardwork won’t ever be my favorite, but it’s so much more rewarding to be making improvements to our own place. Seeing the progress makes lifting every branch up above my head worthwhile. But man, does my back ache.

This has been a long hunting season. I’ve spent more time up there than any other year. Junior’s used to going every weekend during deer season, but it’s been my habit to only go every other weekend. I couldn’t juggle two kids by myself, one who definitely isn’t into hunting, and actually get any hunting done. We’ve taken three of them up a few times now, four the weekend we got married. While it’s easier to manage three kids with two parents than two kids with only one parent, it’s still exhausting. Now that deer season is over and the big camp full of lovely distracting things like grandmothers and piles of sand to play on are gone, I don’t see making many more trips up with the whole family. It’s just too wearing on me, and I’m working way too hard during the weeks to be able to cope.

It’s not just emotions that are getting ragged. We’ve each had a case of poison oak and I’ve somehow tweaked my knee. Junior’s been clean exhausted after some of the really difficult hikes to get dogs or bears or whatever.

The equipment is suffering too. We moved my trailer down to bear camp when deer camp shut down, flapping tarp on the roof and all. It’s a good thing we had it, because the next two weekends it poured and the trailer stayed nice and dry. Dry enough for a family of mice to find it irresistible; they’re all over the place in there. Friday night, I kept waking up to the scritching and scratching, thinking I could catch one out in the open.

Something’s up with the electrical system too. I have brake lights but not trailer brakes, turn signals but no running lights. That’s not something we wanted to mess with up there too much, so we pulled it home on Saturday afternoon during the daylight. We’ll work in the roof and the electrical and the mice this weekend, clean it up, and take it right back up there the next. We’re not done with this season yet.

The trucks aren’t coming out of it unscathed either. Junior’s been very careful with his Ford, but he took it down a narrow spot that scratched it up. It’s nowhere near as bad as the Dodge, which needs a major buffing out. I hadn’t even buffed the racing stripes off one side from the year before yet. The brakes on the Dodge went out, and Junior replaced them in camp in the rain. One of my mirrors popped off and that had to be replaced too. Both trucks are filthy and we’re not keeping up with the trash on the interiors very well. I shudder to think what we’ll find in late December when we call it a season. Or possibly late February – we would like to go varmint hunting after all, and that sounds like an excellent excuse to procrastinate on the truck cleaning.

 

 

   

It’s been a fun year though. I’ve really liked being able to spend so much time up there, and it’s been incredible to do it with Junior. I like it so much that I was going on my own, but having a partner is squaring the fun. We only hunted for a day this weekend, but had a great time doing it.

 

 

  

I was the last one to the tree as usual on Saturday morning. It was a great setup for photography; no branches in the way and a clear shot of the bear. It was low enough in the tree to get detail without the giant lens, which I hadn’t packed down the hill. But just as I got there and aimed the camera, the bear looked straight at me and decided it had had enough. Despite there still being a ring of dogs baying around the base of the tree, that bear was coming out of there. Maverick was right there, trying to pull dogs off, and didn’t hear us shout that the bear was coming down. He must have noticed the rain of bark or something, because he ducked out of the way a second or two before it landed claws-out on his head and used him as a springboard.

 

 

   

The bear took off down the hill and the dogs followed. We kind of all stood there and listened for a minute, and then made our way back up to the trucks and went on to where they’d treed it again. This time, it didn’t come out until they told it to, so it was a successful hunt after all, and I got some great pictures out of it.

 

 

  

I was pretty ready to go home and try to get an evening of relaxing in, before I had to go do some jobs on Sunday. I’ve got a load of stuff to do next weekend too, but I’m already planning for the weekend after Thanksgiving. Even if the houndsmen don’t get up there until Saturday, we’re going up after work Friday night. We have to get our fix in of the mountains while we can, after all.

It’s not my story, but since I was stuck at home working my butt off and getting progressively lonelier by the day, I’m going to tell it anyway.

Junior and his dad go deer hunting in Colorado every year. They stay at a friend’s place and usually each bring home a nice buck. Last year, Junior went on an elk hunt with the friend and his son-in-law. He got hooked, even though it wasn’t his elk. The friend promised that it was his turn next year, so when they went out, he bought an elk tag along with his deer tag.

The season opened on a Saturday, so on Friday they walked deep into public land, bringing a pack horse but otherwise roughing it. They ate backpacking food, slept on rocky beds, and sat and watched for elk all day long. The herd of 300 or so that usually hangs out there wasn’t on time this year; they saw about seven or eight, not a one a legal bull. The next day they hiked in a little farther to try to find some animals, but still were alone out there. Since the herd obviously hadn’t moved in yet, there wasn’t much point in continuing to beat themselves up, so they came out on Sunday. He was clearly disappointed when he called me, but ready to get on with a little deer hunting, although the big deer were scarce too.

But the friend is stubborn and wasn’t going to let Junior go home without at least trying one more time. They moved out to a different area and spent a lot of time glassing the hills across from them. Finally, Junior saw a flash of what looked like rump, and when they pinned down what it was, it was obviously a nice legal bull, trotting along the hillside across from them. He laid the rifle down and took a shot. The bull didn’t even react, and the moisture in the soil meant that they couldn’t see where the shot had actually gone. Junior knew he’d missed, but didn’t know how he’d missed; high, low, or what. A couple more of those and they dragged out the range finder. What he’d thought was a 300 yard shot turned out to be a 465 yard shot, so that explained the miss. He laid the rifle over a rest, took good aim just above the beast’s back, and let him have it.

This time, it was clearly hit, but he pumped another bullet into him just to be sure. The bull folded his legs and dropped right there, and was dead by the time they got to him, with two perfect lung shots.

By then it was getting dark and starting to snow. It took them a couple of hours to field dress and remove the cape and horns from a horse-sized animal, on a slope in the dark. There was no way two men were going to pack out four hundred pounds of meat, so they made sure the offal was far away from it and left it to get the next day. Junior hoisted the head and horns, a good hundred pounds, up onto his back and they made the trek back out.

 

 

  

I got a very excited call late that night from a cold, wet, exhausted man. I hadn’t known he was going out for elk again, but somehow it didn’t surprise me. I had a feeling that he’d get a good one, and he sure did that. This was a mature six-point bull, a once-in-a-lifetime trophy for us.

 

 

 They went back the next morning with a pack horse to get the meat. It was perfectly fine out in the snow all night; Junior split it with the friend and brought the rest home to me. They rolled home with two four-point bucks and that elk rack in the back of the truck and a freezer full of meat. 

 

 

   

We’re going to be on a heavy rotation of wild game for the next year, with two hunters in our family alone. In fact, as they were packaging some of the deer for freezing on Saturday, I slipped in and took a couple of pounds, added a pound or two of elk, and made a fantastic stew. This venison doesn’t have a whiff of that gamey flavor that’s sort of put me off it in previous years. I don’t know if it’s the Colorado deers’ diet or the way they process it after the kill, but either way, I like it very much.