We gambled this year, and we might have lost.

See, we leave the trailer up at camp every year until mid-December. Several of us do it, and it’s always been fine. Camp’s at around 5,000 feet, and doesn’t usually get snow that sticks more than a day or two until January. But it’s been a weird year. Two weeks before, Seamus and I were up there in shirt sleeves. Last week, there were two snow storms that dumped several feet on us. We hadn’t been up since Seamus and I were hunting – we banged up the truck and then I had a test, and two weeks got away from us. Weeks that we really should have used to break camp and bring everything home.

So when a friend who works in the area posted some icy and snowy pictures, I got worried. Jeff said that the main road in is plowed, but that the snowplow is dumping piles right across the road that camp’s on. He didn’t think that we’d be able to get in, and that there was probably at least three feet of snow on the trailers. His is in there too, along with a couple of others. All of the trailers are at risk of having their roofs collapse, but since ours has a slide-out that I left out (having no particular reason to roll it in,) it’s got the biggest chance of being totalled.

So we spent Wednesday night preparing for the rescue. We were going to go get it whatever Jeff said. We packed up shovels and tire chains and come-alongs and what winter clothes we have that aren’t in the trailer itself. Junior made an extra set of chains for his truck. We’d have to take both of them, as his is the one with the gooseneck hitch to pull the trailer but mine is the one with the winch to get us out of sticky situations. It’s safer to have two trucks in a potentially dangerous situation anyway.

Thanksgiving was sort of low-key, but this Friday trip was hanging over our heads the whole time. We got up early and set out, and the roads sure were icy. Once we got halfway down the main road, we started seeing barricades and “road closed” signs. We went around, alarming some of the water workers who own the road.

But finally we came to a barricade that we couldn’t go around, and which explained all of the other ones. There’d been a landslide the night before, and a boulder the size of a truck cab was parked right in the middle of the road. Dirt was spilled all over the road, with several more enormous boulders hanging over our heads waiting to come down.

The water worker who’d seen us go in pulled up shortly after we did. We told him what was going on, and he sympathized. That was nice, as he totally could have written us a ticket. A couple more guys pulled up to evaluate the situation with an eye towards clearing the road, and they made it plain that it wouldn’t be that day. We may have been able to squeeze a truck around the blockage, but there’s no way the trailer would fit coming back out. And the instability of that slide really made me nervous.  I didn’t even like standing there looking at it.

So we couldn’t even get close enough to walk in and roll the slide-out back. It’s too bad, because the snow on the roads wasn’t as bad as Jeff had said, and I feel sure that we’d have been able to pull it out if we could have gone through that road. But now we have to go back up another time, taking another chance that it’ll be stranded there until March, risking a roof collapse.

We’ll try again next weekend, but it’s storming up there right now. We might get through; we might not. I hate that it’s in this situation, but there’s nothing that we can do about it for now.

When Seamus turned twelve and got his first big game tags, I warned him that it’s pretty unlikely that he’d take a deer this year. People go years in California without getting a deer. I thought we’d be fairly likely to get him a bear, running with the houndsmen as we do. But the season wore on and they were busy with clients, so I tried not to get his hopes up too much.

But last weekend saw Saturday and Sunday without clients for once. We still hunted, but it was like old times; just for the joy of it. We spent all day Saturday chasing nothing, and come Sunday morning, dogs were scattered all over the country. We thought we were in for another day of rounding up hounds. And we did get some of them. They’d run for miles over rough country, and some of the older dogs dropped out of the race and were picked up.

It was about that time that Junior had to go to work, so we broke off and went back to camp and packed all of our stuff up and started to convoy out with both trucks. But we were still listening on the radio, and when we heard that the remaining hounds were on a bear after all, we couldn’t stand it. We went to a high spot where we could get phone service and Junior called off to work.

We got back into the race with two trucks, all of our stuff, and Junior in work clothes. The guys thought the dogs had the bear treed in one spot, and had walked off to get to it. But they were unusually mistaken in the location, so after some serious four-wheeling through slick roads, we picked them up and the race was back on.

They’d decided that this was Seamus’ bear, and it was his day in a lot of ways. Since Junior also had a truck, Seamus got to sit in the front seat with me while we raced through yet another slicker-than-snot road trying to get to the dogs. It turns out that you don’t get stuck in the mud too much if you go fast enough to only hit the high spots on the road, although we did come awfully close a few times, and close to sliding sideways into logs and off edges too.

When we slid to a stop and all jumped out, Maverick and Crawler and Jake took Seamus with them. They’d crossed the road and could hear the dogs above it, so Junior and I went back to move a couple of trucks up closer for the retrieval. They’d hoped to wait until we got to the tree for the shooting to start; after all, it was our kid taking the bear and we’d like to be there.

But that wasn’t to be. We were on our way up the hill, Junior about 20 yards from the tree and me a little behind, when the bullets started flying. We hit the deck, although with the steep hill we were on, any lead was way above our heads. And the shooting kept going, which was weird.

It turns out that the bear had already come out of one tree and grabbed a dog, but fortunately treed again nearby. They let Seamus have the first shot, but since it was coming down again, they couldn’t wait for us. He did connect, but it wasn’t dead, so Maverick and Jake backed him up. That was one stubborn bear, and an athletic one too!

So it was all over by the time I got there. You never saw such a happy kid. He’d gotten to see things that I haven’t even seen, and taken a shot at a bear on the fly. Considering this was his first shot at a big game animal and only his third or fourth through a high-power rifle, I’m quite proud of him. He made a decent shot, although the bear moved a little, and held his fire when dogs and people were in the way. Maverick and Jake had stepped in between the wounded bear and my kid, but that’s the kind of people they are: absolutely trustworthy. I wouldn’t have sent my kid off without us with anyone else.

It turned out not to be a very big bear, but it’s an awesome color. The true black phase is sort of rare in our neck of the woods. And it must have been crossed with a Greyhound; that bear ran faster and farther than any other bear we’ve been after in years.

It’s a very big deal to take your first animal. Junior had something ready for the occasion, and presented him with his very own skinning knife as he taught Seamus how to field dress an animal. Seamus did lots of calling on the way home too. We couldn’t get a hold of my folks, but I hear that a proud Grandpa was bragging on the fact that while everyone else’s grandchildren were out trick-or-treating, his was killing a bear! And Junior’s folks came over to the house to admire it, which was fortunate, as they ended up staying and helping bone out the meat and pass out candy while I skinned it in the shop.

It’s not every kid that gets to take an animal when they’re twelve, and I think Seamus is truly appreciative of the opportunity he’s had. This is a hunt that he’ll remember for the rest of his life. I hope we’ve started a tradition that he can hand down to his kids. And I’m extremely proud to have a new hunting partner.