In 2008, a couple of weeks after we got married, Junior went on his annual deer hunt in Colorado. I would have loved to go, but taking off a week and a half isn’t easy for me. Maybe someday, but for now, he goes without me. He’d helped on an elk hunt the two years before and the friend that they stay with had promised that it was his turn this year.

So he bought a bull tag over the counter when he got there. They hunted hard for four days, hiking in and sleeping rough. They sat still where the herd usually was for two whole days without seeing a single legal bull. Eventually, they came back in so the host could go to work and Junior set about doing his deer hunting.

One night after the host got off work, he loaded Junior up into his truck to check out another spot. They spotted one lonely bull on a distant hillside, and determined that not only was he legal, he was a very nice bull. They set up and Junior started shooting at it, but they could see that they weren’t hitting him. Now, Junior’s quite a good shot, so something was wrong here. They eventually remembered that they had a range finder, and took a reading on him.

Ah ha! He wasn’t 300 yards away; he was 467 yards away. Yeah, that’ll make a difference. So Junior adjusted his aim and squeezed off another round. Ka-thump, and the bull hunched up and started moving. Crack, and another shot had him down. By the time they got to him, it was getting dark and starting to snow. They field dressed him, not an easy task when you’re dealing with an animal every bit the size of a horse and laying on the ground in the snow. Junior had to give up his shirt to keep the meat clean. They had no way to get him out in the dark without the horses. I got a late-night phone call from a completely exhausted and elated man, and really regretted that I hadn’t been there.

So the next morning Junior and his dad borrowed one of their host’s horses and packed that beastie out during another exhausting day. He boned out the meat and left half of it for their host. We’re almost finished with the other half, and let me tell you, I’ll take elk any day, even over beef. It’s absolutely delicious and I’m hoarding the last few roasts for a special occasion.

Our friend Mike is a taxidermist, so as soon as he got home from Colorado, we took the head and horns over to his shop so he could cape him out. I’d never skinned a head for a mount before and wasn’t willing to experiment on this trophy. Now that I’ve seen it done on this elk and done it myself on a bear, I wouldn’t hesitate, which will make packing things out a lot lighter. As soon as he’d fleshed the fat and meat off the skin, Mike sent the cape off to be tanned.

In December Mike called us to come look through his catalog and pick out the exact form we wanted to use. We picked something a little unconventional in that it comes out from the wall at an angle. We were hoping to cram it into a spot in the living room; as high as these ceilings are, there isn’t a lot of room for really tall mounts. There’s a shelf that runs all along the top of the walls, blocking the best spot.

A couple of weeks ago, he called again. It was time to fit the cape to the form and put things all together. We wanted to watch; I’m fascinated with the process. He’d fitted it once to be sure that the neck was the right size, but he had a little more to do with it.

He left the final fleshing of one of the eyes for me to watch. This shaves down the skin on the inside, letting the taxidermist work in all of the tiny details that make a mount so lifelike.

We also watched as he created an ear out of bondo, like they use for bodywork on cars. Some taxidermists use a plastic ear form but he feels that he can get a better product with the bondo. He did a lot of pinning to make the grooves where the muscles are stand out and let the glue, cape, and assorted clay bits dry out for several days.

We weren’t around to watch the airbrushing, but he was so meticulous with that that the elk looks absolutely lifelike. You can see a touch of red inside his nostrils, as you would with an animal taking a sniff at you. One ear is very slightly cocked back to more closely hear whatever caused him to start to turn around when Mike froze time.

It’s an absolute masterpiece and we honor both the animal, the hunter, and the artist in hanging him on our wall.

It’s a tradition in my little house to go hunting on the Friday after Thanksgiving, if at all possible. Junior’s all for keeping that one up. So after getting up at 4:30 to smoke a turkey (which was too early by the way. 6 AM would have been fine.) we did it again on Friday morning. No, not to catch Black Friday sales. The only thing that could have got me out of bed that early after all of that work was hunting, not shopping.

So dawn found us rolling into camp. The bears are really getting slim around there, so the houndsmen are working on switching the dogs over to varmints. They’ll hunt either, but during bear season, we’re pretty focused on that. It’s important to find an animal or a track so they know what we want them to do now.

Bobcats are a little tricky to hunt with dogs. They don’t leave a whole lot of scent in their tracks, so the trail has to be really hot for a dog to be able to work it well. With bear, we can intercept a track from the night before and have a reasonable chance of finding the bear at the end of it. Their scent lingers. Even I can smell them, and have when one’s popped out in front of me. With bobcat though, you’re pushing it if you find a track that’s half an hour old.

Crawler had spotted a big one in a field and took a shot at it, but missed. He called the houndsmen at the same time I was trying to catch up to them. Grey Fox showed up first, but it had been that half hour. Even though we’d had visual contact, it took a long time for Shady and Pete to find a trail they could follow. That bobcat had tromped all over that meadow, leaving what scent he left all over the place, so it was hard for the dogs to find the one spot that went out. Eventually, they thought they did, but nothing ever came of it. Such is the way of varmint hunting.

It had snowed in the high country on Friday night, so come morning, we all convoyed up to the high country near our deer camp. The snow on the ground was promising, as even those of us without hounds would have a reasonable chance of spotting a fresh track if we all split up.

So that’s what we did, working our way higher and higher in elevation. The wind was crazy, even though it had stopped snowing. It didn’t feel like it if you got caught under a tree when a gust came up. It wasn’t a constant wind either. The trees learn how to deal with a hard wind blowing in one direction. No, this one was gusting and swirling around capriciously, making one tree in a stand wave wildly while the others held stock still.

So when Grey Fox calmly called on the radio that he could use a little help, I suppose it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise. He’d gone down a side road looking for tracks, and when he turned around, there was a downed tree on the road behind where he’d come in. While he was hooking his winch up to get it out of the way, another one came down. This one landed right on the cab of his truck, narrowly missing his daughter-in-law, who was getting back into the truck at the time.

Nothing upsets Grey Fox. He’s seen it all. He called for help to get it off the truck, and we all converged on him. It turned out that it wasn’t two trees down; it was three. There was an even bigger one in the road blocking us from getting to him. Since we were in the front of that line and had the biggest truck anyway, save Crawler’s – he doesn’t like to scratch his up though - Junior whipped it around, wrapped the chain around the log, and pulled it out of the way.

The one on the truck turned out to be a little rotten. Junior and Maverick were able to lift it a little and roll it off the truck without too much damage. He’s got a dent in the cab and in the corner of the door that saved Inez, but no glass even broke and nobody was hurt. We all pitched in to move the one he was originally working on, and then hurried on out of there. The trees were still waving around and another could come crashing down at any minute. It was a little spooky.

That seemed to be the excitement of the day. Maverick later found a bobcat track that also proved to be a little too old. We saw a fresh pair of coyote tracks, but we don’t hunt those with hounds and we weren’t carrying an appropriate gun anyway. We were all a little shy of the trees and the wind, so we moved back down into the lower country where it was a little safer.

This upcoming weekend, we’re going to sight in one of the varmint rifles and pull the trailer back home. Varmint hunting is done more at night and the camping is a little more flexible. We’ll put the camper shell and the bed kit back on the Ford, which will now be the primary hunting vehicle. We’ll also be cutting back our hours to every other weekend, because I’ll be damned if I’m sleeping in a truck bed in the snow with three children. Besides, it’s been a long season and it’s time to get ready for Christmas and for trapshooting season.

Hunting was a little slow on Saturday. They’d got a bear on Friday, after a lot of work, but they’re pretty thin on the ground where we are these days. Maverick and Dean looked all day long for a track for their client while the rest of us looked hard in the morning and started to slack off a little around our usual quitting time.

Junior and I were driving to listen to dogs the one time we turned them out, but Grey Fox had picked them up in the road at just about the same time, so it wasn’t urgent that we be anywhere in particular. So when I saw a fat grey squirrel sitting on the side of the road taunting us, it was shooting time. I was all for jumping out and waving my arms at it to make it go up a tree, but Junior said we might as well shoot him on the ground, so he did. Squirrel stew, here we come; I only need a couple more to make a real big batch to share at camp next weekend.

The next time, the squirrel treed right away and clung to the side of a scrub oak trying to be invisible. It was my turn to shoot, and invisible he wasn’t. So when we were next in radio contact with Grey Fox, Junior was giving me shit for trying to bird dog the first one.

And that’s all it took. Grey Fox dubbed me Bird Dog.

A radio handle has to come out of a story like that. You can’t pick one for yourself or you get laughed out of the county. Maverick won his in a poker game. Grey Fox was always after the foxes when another hunter would see him. Polecat got tangled up with a skunk one time. I’ll have to ask Bobcat where his came from, but he’s probably lucky he already had a handle when that mountain lion pissed on him from a tree that one time.

Bird Dog’s not a bad one, as handles go either. I made the obligatory fuss because Grey Fox does love to torment me. If I just let it drop, it’ll eventually go away, but if I grumble about it but answer to it now and then, it’ll stick. Nevermind that I don’t have pointers or retrievers and that I don’t hunt birds; bird dogging is what I was doing to that squirrel. I don’t mind it so much, and it’s pretty cool to have a handle after all of these years. They could have picked one that was truly unbearable, but this one, I can live with.

Normally when we hunt, we start the tracks from the trucks. There are a lot of logging roads around for access, so up on the box the dogs go and we slowly drive around hoping to get a scent or a track where a bear crossed the road in the night. We can cover a whole lot more ground that way than walking, which we absolutely need to do, considering how much ground those bears can cover in a night.

But come Saturday morning we had four rigs scattered out around for miles where we hunt, and nobody was getting any strikes. Finally, as a last resort, Maverick suggested walking the dogs off into the Lumsden canyon. Now, that’s a place we hate to go; it’s rugged and steep and there isn’t any access to the middle to pull a bear out even if you got one. But the bears know that too, and there’s a little bit of feed down in the middle by the Tuolumne River.

There is a trail there, mostly for fishermen, that parallels the river from the road on the west and runs eastward to the Cherry Creek Powerhouse. Maverick and Dusty and Jake were getting ready to go down it; packing packs, gathering leashes, and cutting dogs loose. I looked over the edge at the trail and thought, “Well, why the hell not?” Junior would totally have gone if he’d been there (he’s in Colorado) and it’s not like I had kids to look out for. I was unencumbered for once, and felt in good enough shape to get it done. If there hadn’t been a trail, I wouldn’t even have considered it, but I figured that if it was too rough for me, I could either come back up to the truck or go on forward without making them wait for me.

So I left my truck keys with Bobcat; he and Crawler and some guy riding with Dusty would shuttle our trucks over to the powerhouse to pick us up. And off I went, foolishly thinking I could keep up with three physically fit men, all my age or significantly younger.

It wasn’t too bad at first. It was mostly downhill. The dogs caught a track and went on ahead of us; hearing them always gives me enough adrenaline to get there in a hurry. Looking back up at the trucks, I decided that if I had to split off, I’d go forward and not back up that trail. I’m fine on the flat and just plain quick on the downhill, but even the slightest uphill slope kicks my ass hard.

A couple of miles in, we got to where the dogs were. They were milling around down by the river. Queen and Dance were wet, like they’d gone through the water following the bear, but the rest were dry. Maverick figures the rest of the were barking at the river and confused the two who were on the trail, pulling them off. So we gatherered them up and went on further down the trail.

It didn’t take them long to pick up another track, and off they went. It sure is a different ball game following hounds on foot. Once they get around the corner, you just can’t hear much of the race, and it’s a lot harder to catch up to them at the tree. The guys were really pushing it at this point, and I found myself jogging on the flats and the safer downhills to try to keep up with them. They didn’t need to wait for me – I didn’t want to slow them down – but these rough men are also pretty much gentlemen, and they did. Of course, every time I caught up with them, they’d push on again, so I didn’t get too much in the way of breaks, but that’s OK. I made it without having an asthma attack, which I couldn’t have done last year. I know my regular hiking pace is about two miles an hour, and we were in there for two hours. since we were going so much faster than we usually do and with fewer stops, I really don’t know how far it was. Maverick thinks about three miles, but I’m guessing closer to four. I’ll have to drag out the maps when I get back up to camp.

When we were getting close to the end of the trail, Maverick was in radio contact with Crawler. He’d seen the dogs and a treed bobcat right at the powerhouse, but by the time he went back to the truck to get his rifle, the bobcat had bailed and the dogs hadn’t seen it. So the pressure was off. We’d beat Bobcat back with the second round of trucks, so we all piled into the two that were there, as Dean had a little race going up the hill. Dusty’s little Toyota had twelve hounds in it and two men, and that thing was yawing around the corners like crazy.

Bobcat finally caught up to us with my truck at Dean’s tree, which turned out to be a sow and a cub really close to the road. We took our pictures and left them alone, but at least I got to see something after all of that work.

Poor Bobcat didn’t get to see anything but roads, and it wasn’t even his truck! He didn’t want to hike in anyway, so he was fine with that. I’m really glad I did; I rarely get to do the really physical hunts, as I slow them down too much. This was up at the high end of my comfort level, but it had the potential to be something really exciting. Even though nothing much happened, I still got to see some new country and push myself a little harder.

A good bear race can often run for miles and miles. If you’re lucky, it stays up in accessible country. If you’re not, down into the canyons they go, and you spend hours getting the dogs back, if not a night or two camped out where you turned in, honking and waiting for them. Junior and Todd had to hike into the Emigrant Wilderness Area last year to retrieve three; they thought one might be dead from the way the locator collar was acting, but he was fine.

But every once in a while, you catch a sprinter who shoots up a tree immediately. When something like that happens and you hadn’t seen a track, it makes you think it might be something else. Bobcats and foxes don’t run nearly as far as bears tend to, so the races are a lot faster.

On Saturday morning we got after a track near one of the canyons. The dogs thought it was a hot one, but we couldn’t find a footprint. Todd turned some out anyway and away they went, fortunately up the hill in the better direction. Since Junior and I were at the back of the convoy, we turned around to go to the saddle to listen, which was maybe a quarter mile down from where they started. We passed them on the way.

They were so close to the road that the echoes made it sound like they might have crossed the road in front of us, but the second time we stopped, it was obvious that they hadn’t, that they were still uphill and really close. Even though it was very early, they sure sounded to me like they were treed. Dean pulled up and he thought so too, enough that he had the shooter headed up the hill before everyone got to the trucks.

I’ve been missing a lot of trees lately, and this one was close, so I took off after them, leaving Junior to deal with the kids. For once, I got there in plenty of time to take a lot of pictures. Everyone got there, kids and all. After pulling the dogs off and making sure the kids were in a safe spot, the shooter lined it out. I was behind him, which is a good vantage point for photography, but we were both right downhill of the tree. Not the best place to be if the bear comes down wounded, as they usually go downhill.

I made sure that the bear had an obvious opening without people just to my left. There was just one guy there; all of the rest were to my right, with the dogs. Bears will usually run from a trapped feeling. I was pushing it being on the edge of the funnel.

So of course, this bear wasn’t dead when it hit the ground, and of course, I had the camera out and not the pistol. Dean was in front of me as the backup shooter, and he got two shots off into it; it dropped for good about six feet to the left of where I’d been standing. The one guy that had been on my left got moving so quickly that he yanked me down with him, so it was a very good thing Dean hit that bear well; I would have been the closest one to it if Dean hadn’t put himself between us. That bear was dying though; I don’t think I was in a ton of danger. The adrenaline rush had me shaking for a while though.

The shooter had the biggest grin I’ve seen yet. I think that guy is seriously hooked, and I think his dad was pleased with the hunt too. They were very nice people, and it was good to be in on a successful hunt for them.

I’ve dabbled in lots of things in my life, with varying degrees of immersion. Some things you just scratch the surface on and some things become a part of who you are.

Quilting was like that for me for a few years about a decade ago. I threw myself into it. I lived and breathed fabric. I designed quilts in my head – some were completed, some only started, and some never saw a stitch. I’ll have to find some pictures, but the few unfinished objects I still have around, I still remember exactly what my vision each one was. If I choose, I could go find the raw materials (the challenging part after a move) and get right back to it. I choose not to mostly because quilting was something I did at the most unhappy point of my life, and touching it reminds me of those days. As much as I loved it, and as much as it helped my sanity at the time, I don’t want to go back there again right now.

Roping had the potential to become everything to me. I eased into it slowly, learning better horsemanship before I ever started to swing a rope from the ground. I really enjoyed it and let it define me to the point of inspiring the name for this journal, which has long since become slightly irrelevant. Long-time readers know why and how I was suddenly thrust out of that world. Losing the hobby was as much or more of a blow as losing the relationship that spawned it. It’s certainly had longer-lasting repercussions for me. I miss the horses and the cattle and the sport, but obviously not the man.

Of course, there are things that are strictly entertaining but not defining. I like the photography a lot, but I don’t claim to be a photographer. I haven’t taken class one to enrich that branch. I enjoy doing it because it’s fun, is all. I like to mess around in my garden and eat my tomatoes, but I’m no expert. I’m good at training dogs but have no inclination to make an agility competitor out of one of them.

Cooking falls somewhere between the two extremes. Of course, I have to do it, a lot, and I get to resenting it for that. Sometimes though, it’s just plain fun. I like to make my jams and smoke my sausages and trout, and cooking for a party is really satisfying. I’m good at it, but it’s not one of my top passions.

No, that spot has been reserved for hunting for the last decade. I wanted it so badly that I drug an inexperienced ex-husband into the sport when I was 23. I resented like crazy the gap of years when life kept me from hunting, even though I’d never killed a thing. I had the drive years ago; something slightly unusual, I gather, for someone who didn’t grow up in the sport.

I met some enablers right around the time I got divorced. A good group of guys who didn’t mind an apprentice tagging along. They got me started on a path that I’ll be following for the rest of my life. One hunting buddy and one way of hunting led to another, which led to another, which led to a consuming passion. I live for hunting season. I think about it all year. I already hunt for at least three months a year and would like more. It exhausts me, but I’m willing to make that choice. I’m extremely fortunate to have found someone who shares that passion.

The bear hunting in particular is a black hole. I got exposed to the adrenaline and it’s done nothing but suck me in further each year. I went from running with them one time to talking my connection into doing it a few times the next year. After that I just dove in. I was drawn in more each year until bear hunting was what I did, with a little deer hunting in the afternoons.

Grey Fox has said for years that I’d make a good houndsman. Well, maybe so, but it seemed like a bit much to do by myself. There’s a lot to it in the off-season, and I just didn’t have the resources. I was sort of waiting until Seamus was old enough to drive and become my partner in crime, but then I met Junior.

Having a partner whose passion is also yours is a mixed blessing. It’s fanstastic to be able to share your activities with someone else who also gets the draw and it’s great to be able to spend so much time together, but it can be a little hard on the checkbook. Where I would have waited a few years and so would he, suddenly we’re a team with complementary skills. I’m not great at getting to the dogs in a deep canyon or pulling the bears out, but he is. He doesn’t much care for taking care of dogs at home, but I’m good at that. We egg each other on higher than either of us might have gone alone.

We’ve been talking about it, and somehow it’s gone from maybe getting a hound next year to thinking about buying a dog rig that’s for sale. I thought we’d just continue outfitting the Dodge, but it is a little big and cumbersome to get everywhere it needs to. We’re fortunate to have these mentors to work with right now too, and don’t want to blow that chance. And I’m getting a little old to be starting a physical sport; if I want to get a good ten years’ worth out of this, I’d best start pretty soon. I’d hate to miss this and have it be on my list of regrets. I should have jumped into the roping more when I had the chance, and I don’t want to make the same mistake with the hounds. Besides, it’s not like it’s an irrevocable decision; hounds and boxes and trucks are all marketable commodities if we decide we hate it. We can get out of it as easily as we can get into it if it doesn’t work for us.

So don’t be too surprised in the next year to see a Walker Hound or two of our own pop up here, or a tracking box, or another vehicle. It’s not a done deal yet, but we’re sliding towards another degree of passion, one that will consume us for much of the year. I predict a lot more poison oak in my future, some kennels out back, and a whole lot more dog poo. But with that comes a whole hell of a lot of fun. It will be an adrenaline-fueled ride, that’s for sure.

It’s been a hard year of hunting so far. It’s been unseasonably warm, except for one snow storm that only stuck around for a day. There are hardly any deer in the area – our camp usually has two or three bucks hanging by the second weekend, and this year it took until three and a half weeks in before the first one was killed.

And the bear feed is non-existant this year. Usually one source of feed produces well. One year it was acorns, last year it was choke cherries. There’s usually something to draw them in and hold them in the area while they stuff their faces to fatten up for winter. This year though, it’s lean. There are hardly any cherries or acorns, and even the manzanita berries are thin. There aren’t as many deer gut piles for the bears to supplement their diets with. The few bears we’ve killed haven’t had any significant fat at all.

They’re still here, the bears, but they’re not staying put. We catch them travelling through looking for more feed, and we’re catching far fewer than in years past. This weekend was the first one I remember that we got absolutely skunked on. We didn’t even tree a sow and cubs to let go, like we did last weekend. No, this one was spent entirely looking for tracks, putting dogs out on marginal strikes, and then spending hours rounding up dogs.

We did have one bit of adventure. Senior had taken the three kids up to our camp while we bullshitted down at bear camp. On his way up, he came across some hunters that had run their Toyota off the road. Nothing they had could pull it out, his hooptie sure wouldn’t do it, and they were having a language problem with AAA.

So he called us on the radio to come lend a hand in the big Dodge. Now, if it were snowing or on a dirt road, we’d have thought twice about it, not being willing to risk having our truck go off the edge too, like happened to my friend Jeff a few years back in a storm. He’s still known as the guy who was hanging off the side of the mountain. Everyone who hunts up there has heard of him, and it’s not a flattering story.

But it was on dry pavement, and I carry a nice assortment of tow straps and chains, so Junior and Senior hooked one around the guy’s frame and chained it to my hitch. A few minutes later and he was out up on the road again, and very grateful. We didn’t even do any more damage to his truck getting it out; a different pull-point would have had the nose end swinging down into the trees. His front panel was wedged into his tire, so again we hooked a chain to it and gave it a little pressure with the Dodge, and it popped right out. He had only damaged his windshield washer reservoir, so he was even free to roll again.

The ladies with them were so grateful. It was very cute. They didn’t speak much English but were trying to push money at us. We didn’t accept; sometime it might be us needing help. It was nice for the help to be appreciated though, and it was also nice to have something to take photos of for the weekend at least.

There’s a storm rolling in tonight that should have both the deer and the bear milling around nicely. Junior’s going up Wednesday night and I wish I could too. But I’ve got a new hire working backup for me starting this weekend and I don’t get to leave early any more. But hey, at least I get to go. I’ll take two days over nothing any time.

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.

Seamus has expressed an interest in taxidermy. He’s a really artistic kid and he loves hunting, so it seems like a natural combination for him. Even before touching a knife, he thought that he might want to go to college for it. I’m not so sure there’s a taxidermy major anywhere, but there sure as hell are some good wildlife management and other outdoorsy majors, and I’ll take any excuse to get that kid engaged in his own future.

So for Christmas, I talked to our taxidermist friend, who gave me some recommendations and said that he’d be happy to show him a thing or two. Mike’s already got a 15-year-old under his wing and he’s really patient with the kids. I bought Seamus a kit to completely do a squirrel, and you never saw a kid so thrilled to get a box full of chemicals and some knives. I was hoping that either he or one of us parents would shoot a squirrel for him to work on, but they were a little thin up there this year and we didn’t take one after I’d decided to do this. The skinned one in the freezer sure isn’t going to do him much good, except maybe with dumplings.

When we were fox hunting the other weekend, Junior spotted a road-killed grey squirrel on a corner. He joked, “There’s your squirrel for Seamus.” I took him at his word and asked him to stop the truck. I hopped out and it didn’t look too bad; fresh and only a little squished, so I scooped it up and threw it in the back of the truck with the fox. The guys spent the rest of the day poking fun at me for collecting roadkill, but that’s fair; so did I.

A roadkill squirrel was perfect. If he messed up, it wouldn’t devastate him as much as if he cut a hole in his first trophy. I put it in the freezer when we got home, and when he came home later in the week, proudly showed it off to him.

He was a little confused. Mom was giving him a frozen dead animal why, exactly?

Once he figured it out, he was all for it. As soon as he got home this Friday, he asked if this would be a good squirrel weekend. I thought it would be (I also thought I would be over this crud by now) so we took it out to defrost. It’s a good thing we have two fridges going. I don’t mind game in the drinks fridge, but I don’t think I’d be too cool with fine fluffly hair wafting over the butter.

So after the girls went home and the distractions were minimized, he and I got the tools out. We looked at the instructions, since I’ve never caped anything myself, and certainly haven’t worked on something this small and fussy. I made the initial cuts, but after that, I just held skin back out of the way and kept pressure on it while he did the cutting. I tell you what, it takes a lot of trust to let your ten-year-old wield a scalpel a quarter inch from your finger which he can’t see.

He did fantastically.  All 20 of our fingers are still intact; he listened and paid attention, and learned a lot of anatomy without being aware of it. All of those little nitpicky areas we took very slowly, but he did them perfectly. Getting the face skinned was an adventure, partially because it turned out Mr. Fluffly died of a squashed head and we didn’t have a lot of reference points. He did it though; got teeny little eyelids removed intact and itty bitty nostrils removed perfectly. We’re only a little hung up on the tail; it’s not pulling like it should. We’ve put it up for now, and we’ll get back to it tomorrow if he gets all of his homework done in time. I think that’s an excellent incentive.

It was oddly some great mother-son time too. This is something we’re learning together. I may know a little more about the basics, but I haven’t ever caped a squirrel either, and he liked figuring it out with me. I think it more than made up for mama being too sick to take him shooting today; he can beat me in trap another day.

Although deer season closed several months ago and bear season closed early last month, we didn’t want it to be over. Varmint season is still open around here, varmints being small fur-bearing mammals like bobcat and raccoon. We trekked on down to the DFG in Fresno at the end of the month to buy us each a set of bobcat tags; you don’t need a tag for fox or coon.

I’ve wanted a bobcat for a long time. I think they’re gorgeous animals and would love to have one on the wall. Our houndsmen friends look forward to varmint season as a way to train young dogs and keep the older ones in shape. The races tend to be faster than bear races, as the animals go to tree more quickly. It evens out though; sometimes a fox will take a flying leap from one tree to another and the dogs won’t catch it and are left baying up the wrong tree.

So this, our first free weekend after the holidays, found Junior calling on his way home from work to wake me up. It was before 3 AM; did I mention that he was working graveyard? Once I got over the confusion, I got ready and we hopped into the truck and left. I drove, he snoozed; it had been a long night already for him.

We met up with Maverick well before dawn, but with a bright full moon to light the way. After picking up some other friends, Maverick started roading the dogs to pick up a track.

They didn’t do much for a long time. Queen wanted to chase so bad that she was working extra hard to find something. When they hit a somewhat cold track, we got our hopes up. It turned out to be colder than we’d thought, so we had to retrieve dogs. Maverick had his pup Gypsy out with the older dogs, and she wouldn’t come in. Eventually he tracked her down on the other side of the ridge, but since someone else we hunt with sometimes had a fox treed across the highway, he sent us over thataway.

They weren’t treed too far off the highway. We waited for Maverick to throw his dogs in and went down the bank into a little draw to the tree. A small grey fox was in an oak tree, looking down at us. After some pictures, Dusty poked the fox out of the tree with a pole, so we could turn the dogs loose for another race. The fox ran right down the trunk, between Junior and Maverick, and off down the hill.

It wasn’t long before it was treed again. Dusty happened to have a 4WD gator, so we all piled in and got as close as we could to this second tree. It turned out to be a brushy, tangly site. We could see the fox in the clear sunlight, but had to crawl in under manzanita and buckbrush to get to it. At the tree, we five people and about ten dogs were crammed in like sardines. It was difficult to get far enough back to take decent pictures, especially with dogs using me as a convenient step to get higher up the tree to the fox.

We wanted to knock it out again, but hadn’t brought the poking stick. The tree wasn’t quite straight up and down, so the houndsmen took the traditional option of sending up the youngest and most bouncy member of the party to get it out. Jake shimmyed up that tree, shaking the fox’s branch, and the fox got nervous. It scooted out until the branch wasn’t big enough any more and then reconsidered. Even with the ring of crazy dogs and people, it decided that down was the path of least resistance. Down he went, springboarding off Jake’s hand, and disappeared back into the brush.

The dogs were right behind him and instantly, we were alone again as they tore off back down the hill. This time we had to drive around to get to a different angle, so it took us a little longer. Eventually we closed in on the tree again, some of us from the east and some from the west.

Another oak tree, and this one was getting dangerously close to the really big canyon. Nobody wanted to chase dogs all night, so it was time to end this game. Often, they just let the foxes go, the better to play with another day. This time though, I wanted one. It’s not something I’ve ever taken, so they let me have it.

I had to shoot dang near straight up, and hit him right in the chest, right where I intended to. A .22LR doesn’t kill all that quickly, so he was still kicking. They didn’t want it to get stuck in this highest tree yet, so they had me keep shooting him. I took another couple of shots and down he came. As their reward, the dogs got to go after the carcass. It makes them feel like they killed it and encourages them to want to hunt. There were a lot of young dogs there, and every time I tried to pick up my trophy, they decided that it was alive again and must be killed. I had to have sharp words with one dog who almost took my hand for fox parts, but he looked appropriately ashamed of himself.

We’ve got big plans for this pretty little beastie. I’d like get an oak branch from my folks’ house, and Junior thought of mounting him out on it, but with the branch overhanging the room from our big display shelf. I spent this afternoon skinning it out down to the delicate parts for Mike, our taxidermist friend. I’m not good enough to cape out something this small yet, and don’t want to practice on something I’d lke to keep. Junior will deliver the skin later in the week and it’ll go into Mike’s waiting line, but eventually it will grace our wall.

The best part though, was having season not being done yet. We got to drive around in our favorite place, smell the cedar, see some snow, and look at some big deer along the way.