Opening day is always a rush of emotions for most hunters. Even if the weather looks like crap, hot and dusty and no animals in sight, the potential is there lurking right under the surface.

The night before the opener, it burbles up into your dreams, if you can get any sleep at all. You chase bucks in the night, thinking at the time that you really have to remember where you are so you can find them in the morning. You tree the biggest bear you’ve ever seen, in your sleep, and getting it out is no effort at all in dreamland.

I had to take a sleeping pill this time. I had five days of hard hunting ahead of me and couldn’t afford a sleepless night. I’ve never been able to take a vacation to hunt before and it had me so wound up that I dreamed of does and bucks all week long. Opening week wasn’t the best time to take a hunting vacation this year, as they was the most miserable of conditions that our early season could throw at us. But I didn’t know if I’d get the time later in the year; the way my luck runs, I won’t even be able to sneak away for a day if we have a storm.

The nightbucks were almost the only deer I saw for five days. A young friend killed his first buck, which was the only one I saw.  A few does here and there, some leading fawns just losing their spots, and that totalled our deer.

Bear, however, were another story. For as little feed as there was in the area, no choke cherries, no acorns, and damn few manzanita berries, we were lucky to get in on two chases on opening weekend. They must be passing through in search of food, but we intercepted two. One was a beautiful black phase, somewhat rare in our forest, and well-muscled too. Neither were fat animals, and I’m afraid that if we have a hard winter the bears are going to take it in the shorts.

Five days was both a little long and way too short. I was just learning how to relax on day three, but by day five the lack of deer was becoming frustrating.  But we’ll give it time, and hunt hard this year for as long as we can. Junior’s on his way back up there and I’m going tomorrow. Three kids will make the experience somewhat challenging but we’ll settle into our hunting season routine.

All is as it should be; frantic and busy and exciting. I live for Fall.

I’ve spent a lot of time working for other people, thinking that this side had to be easy. I’m learning that it’s not so.

The latest lesson has been in hiring and firing. My part-time backup operator is moving, so I had to get someone to replace him so I could take weekends off now and then. It’s too small of a job to advertise for, and we’re a pretty small industry anyway. I figured I’d put the word out on the good-ol-boy network.

The one guy I really wanted wasn’t allowed to do side work by his regular employer. Nuts. So another local operator gave me a reference for a younger guy that just got laid off due to the economy. What the hell, he’s licensed and comes with strong references; I’ll give him a shot. He interviewed fine and did a good job when I had him come in to work with me for a day. I had no qualms about his technical competence. I hired him. I gave him a set of keys to the site and to my truck, as he was going to have to use that when I wasn’t around.

But to do this job, one must have specific training to drive on the flightline. Someone fairly high up the food chain has to give this class, which takes about two hours and for which I was going to pay him. The first two times I tried to schedule him, he had other obligations – job interviews – and couldn’t make those times. That’s fine; I completely understand that a full-time job has to trump a part-time job. He gave me a week that he was free, so I had the airport manager rearrange his schedule to fit this guy in on that week. I called him and let him know that date and time, and requested confirmation that he would be able to attend.

Of course, this is when he dropped off the face of the earth. No calls all weekend, no calls or response on the day of the class, nothing. So my last call to him right before the class was to start was that this obviously wasn’t going to work out and that he needed to contact me to bring back my keys. I would have had no hard feelings had he simply called me and explained a conflict. I wouldn’t have hired him, but that’s the way it goes.

But no, he’s still missing. At this point I’ve escalated through polite voice mails, not-so-polite voice mails, and have called his father, an operator at a neighboring system from whom I originally got his phone number. Still no response. I know he’s not in the hospital or in jail or anything as the kid’s googleable and has been active all week. He’s just avoiding my phone calls. This kid has the keys to my system, which is a huge liability.

I don’t know what to do next. I talked to his father, which is unprofessional, I know, but I am running out of options, and also called the guy who originally gave me the reference. I wanted him to know what was going on in case he decided to hire him back again. The kid has just shot himself in the foot as far as working in this industry in this county goes, as we’re all fairly well connected. Do I send a certified letter? Do I talk to the sheriff’s department and see if they’ll do a civil standby with me to pick them up at his house? Do I now have to get a lawyer, and spend some more money? Re-key everything, which includes some county property? I can see that I should not have given him keys until he was fully trained, but this could have happened at any time even if he’d been on the job for a year. I’m just lucky that I hadn’t had him on-call when he decided to stop answering the phone and let the water tower overflow or something.

I was going to have him work for me while I went on vacation. That’s obviously not going to happen, but I desperately need the vacation, so I’m taking it anyway, I just can’t bill that time to my client. So he’s cost me a significant amount of money right there.

How does one handle staffing issues when one is as small-time as I am? At some point, I have to trust people. I guess I’ve been lucky in my employees so far, as the one I’ve got is great. But all I would have to go on with future people is character references from others in the industry, and I think we’ve just seen what that can get you. It’s got me nervous and unsettled about starting all over again, but I have to. I can’t do this job seven days a week for the next however many years uninterrupted and not go insane. I need the mental break sometimes. So when I get back, I’ll call another number I’ve got in my pocket, of another operator willing to do side work, referred by another business acquaintance. And we’ll start this whole circus all over again.

But he won’t get my keys until he can actually do the job.

It’s the same thing, really, from either side of the desk.

You want someone to do things with, so you go to bars or lurk online or hit your friends up for good dating material.

You want someone to work for you, so you write classifieds or lurk online or hit up friends for good employee material.

You’ve had a good long relationship and then suddenly everything goes to shit. They don’t love you any more or they go get another job or they get caught with their fingers in the till, or worse, in someone else’s till.

Then you’ve got to stress over losing that relationship, and finding a new one, and what if you don’t? What if you’re the one doing the firing, what if you’re the one looking for the new job or the new boyfriend?

It’s hard from any of the perspectives.

This new guy looks good on paper but turns out to be completely boring. This new guy has all the right certifications but isn’t allowed by his day job to branch out. That new guy needs way too much training. Do you put the money or the time into the relationship?

I suppose you don’t have to. You can get used to being alone, you can get used to doing the job entirely by yourself. It wears poorly on your sanity either way, and you really want someone to fill the hole the last guy left. You have a life to live, and can’t do it without help.

So you take a chance on a new guy, give him some time to see if he will work out. You let your heart or your career become influenced by someone else’s actions. You have a huge potential to get burned, but there’s hope for something good there. This guy turns out to be the love of your life. That guy can be entrusted with your business on the weekends. Maybe one of them can help you make the business better, but you won’t ever know unless you try, unless you risk.

Risking the business seems scarier than risking the heart did. Maybe that’s coming from the perspective of having emotional safety now, but dating never involved the potential of destroying your livelihood, not the way you did it back then. This though, this hiring of someone new to replace someone dependable, this is terrifying. Having the only candidate be somewhat inexperienced is unsettling. Having this all happening now, at the start of hunting season is directly related to Saint Murphy.

The training of the new guy starts tomorrow. It was supposed to start today, and didn’t. This is not a good sign.

We’d planned to hike down to the top of Yosemite Falls this weekend from Tioga Road, but with a big fire in Yosemite, that wasn’t going to happen. Thwarted by the nasty trifecta of road closures, smoke, and holiday weekend crowds, we spent a couple of evenings happily poring over topo maps to pick a new destination.

I am every bit as fond of the Emigrant Wilderness as I am of Yosemite’s backcountry, so I was leaning that way. Junior’s dad has taken some hikes that sort of hit both parks, and suggested one of those. The trailhead to Kibbie Lake also contains a trailhead to the south end of the Emigrant, but the lake is actually inside Yosemite. It looked like a good distance for us, 4.2 miles each way. We might be able to squeeze in another short hike that day too, or go sight in a rifle or check out camp.

So we planned for that one and got up early. Might as well start getting used to that part of hunting season too after all. After breakfast on the road, we found the road to the trailhead closed off for firefighters, and went around the long way. But we weren’t that late for a day hike, so we got on with it.

The first mile of the trail was a good uphill pull. I think I’ll root for uphills at the start of a hike on the basis of them being downhills at the very end. The hike to North Dome the other way was the opposite way and it liked to have killed me by the time we got back to the truck.

Most of the trail was very easy walking. A little up and down here and there, but lots of flat. I wouldn’t hesitate to bring the kids on this one once they can go eight miles without complaining.

We saw bear sign on the trail and what I think was a lion turd, but not much else. We jumped a doe who just moved over a few feet and went back to bed. There were a few other hikers too, but it certainly wasn’t crowded.

The smoke from the fires to the south could have been a problem. I fight asthma anyway and a smokey day can make life pretty miserable for me. It didn’t help, and I was sucking on the inhaler a few times where I didn’t have to touch it at all on a more strenuous hike two weeks ago. That wasn’t a ton of fun.

Once we got to the lake, it was lunchtime. We walked around on the granite and noticed what looked like a trail through the water to an island. So we took our boots off, hitched up our shorts, and waded over to it to have a picnic. I just barely made it without getting my shorts wet and it wasn’t anywhere near as cold as you’d expect a glacial lake to be. We sat down in the sun and had a beautiful meal and then poked around the lake some more before we decided to head back.

The asthma was getting to me by the time we finished so we didn’t go on any more hikes, just drove around and checked out camp, admired some deer, and had dinner at the casino on the way home. It was a great trip, but one of the best things about it is that it was the last non-hunting trip of the season. The hiking this summer was all about getting ready for hunting season; it’s been fun in its own right, but the actual purpose of it is just about upon us. We’ll have a head start on adjusting to the exercise and elevation of bear of deer hunting. Quail and squirrel season starts next weekend and we’re going to bring the trailer up to camp then too. We both always start getting excited at this time of year and actually being up there really gets the anticipation going. Five more days and we’ll be back!