Now that I’ve had these dogs for six weeks, I’m starting to see hints of their future personalities. They’re young yet, I know, and things may (and probably will) change as they grow. I have predictions though.

Foxy:

Foxy is the one that Junior picked out. I couldn’t see what he saw at six weeks, but now I can. She is most definitely the alpha bitch of the pack. Nobody messes with Foxy, and nobody is allowed to have something interesting around her if she wants it. And she always wants it.

Foxy has the busiest nose of the pack at this point. It’s always to the ground, trailing something or other. She is the most hard-headed, stubborn beastie that I’ve come across in a long time. She knows her name all right, and may deign to glance at you if you call it, but she will come to you or not on her own terms. Foxy and I are about to butt heads over this for real; they got collars yesterday and as soon as they’re used to them, the long leash will be employed. Dogs will come when I call them, no matter what.

Foxy also has the most potential to lean toward tree fighting, which will get her killed if I can’t break her of it. She’s already cut Cara up pretty badly fighting over some piece of nonsense. Tree fighters are simply not tolerated in our group.

Cara:

Cara is the extra dog. We went intending to pick two up, but Junior encouraged me to get three. We’d have a better chance of ending up with a decent hound with three to pick from, and Maverick was absolutely fine with it. He’d have sent us home with four or five if he could have. The last three females in the litter were all pretty similar to me; nothing stood out about their behaviors. So I went, “eeny, meeny, miney, mo,” and picked the one that I thought was the prettiest. Cara’s ticking and light colors remind me of the bird dogs that I grew up with.

Cara is the one that’s interested in her surroundings the most. She’s the one who always finds interesting bits to play with, which Foxy then normally takes away. Cara learned her name first, and is somewhat better about coming when she’s called. Cara is my prediction of the best hound we have simply because of Foxy’s tree fighting tendencies. She is also slightly better at treeing the housecat.

Fionn:

When I picked them up, Fionn was the last male available. He had a big wormy belly and was a little subdued about it. I didn’t have high hopes for Fionn turning out to be a decent hunter, but I didn’t want to mess with an all-female pack. The dynamics of that make me shudder to think about, so I took him just to keep things a little balanced at home.

After a good worming, Fionn’s coat got shiny again. He’s by far the most timid of the three though, and the first to go yelping away in fear if Pete the cat hisses at him. But if the other two are working, he’ll get in there and help them. He may have potential as a pack dog, but I don’t see him occupying any lead positions. He’s the most pet-like of the three, so if he doesn’t work out, I may be able to find him a loving home. The girl next door likes him a lot. But Fionn is also the barkiest one in the kennel. We’ll be working on that.

As far as training, I’m still at the level of letting them be puppies. They’ve learned their names, and not to jump on me, and sometimes they come when I call them. I intend to leash train mine, which isn’t always done with hounds, just because I may have to handle all three of them at once sometimes and it’s just too hard on me to be yanked around those mountains.

My two cats are thoroughly disgusted. Booger is slightly smarter and just vacates the premises any time the puppies are out. Pete is either dumber or meaner, but he sits in his cat bed on the table and growls at them. Of course, every time they forget he’s there, he reminds them and then they’re all baying again. If they run into him on the ground, the two females will give chase like their instincts tell them to. I never let them come into contact; for one, I don’t want my cat hurt, and for another, I think he could kick their asses. And getting their asses handed to them at this age could very well turn them off of hunting forever. This is an excellent age to ruin a good dog, and I’m going to try to avoid it.

I haven’t been laying down drag scents with them either. There are several schools of thought on that, but I don’t want them to burn out and get too used to the smells. I have a bear hide in the freezer that will be perfect for training; it’s a little too freezer-burned to be any good for anything else. For now though, they can still be puppies. I’m weaning them off of being treated like pets, which is difficult to do with the human kids involved. If they all get too attached, the dogs won’t want to leave those kids who play with them and go hunt, so I’m minimizing that now. They do need to be socialized with people and noise, so I may crate one or two up and let them be in the truck at the trapshoot tonight.

My future-predicting skills are fairly weak, and things can definitely change as they age, but I’ve got a good feeling about both Foxy and Cara. I think Cara will be the easier one to train, and she’s a hair more interested in chasing game. Fionn, I just don’t know. I’ll give him a year or two unless it’s completely obvious, but I don’t think he’s going to be anything special. But it’s a ton of fun to watch them go through the range of hound instincts, just in our own backyard. You can see light bulbs going off in their wee little knotheads now and then, and that’s very satisfying. It’s still a ton of work, but at this point, I’m still glad that I tried.

On the day that I met Grey Fox, Bobcat and I were deer hunting. We came across a hound trotting up the road and Bobcat, being an ex-houndsman, stopped to read the collar. Once he saw who it belonged to, he said, “Oh, you’re going to love this.” He got someone named Grey Fox on the radio, who asked us to pick the dog up and meet him up the road.

The houndsmen were after a bear and didn’t have a shooter with them, so they asked if I wanted to shoot one. Actually hunting a bear had never really crossed my mind before, but I happened to have a tag in my possession, as a result of running across one accidentally the year before. I wanted a tag just in case I got into a sticky spot with one.

So my first day bear hunting was spent listening to an exciting race. They caught the bear halfway up the mountain, past a whole drift of poison oak. I was about two hundred yards shy of making it to that tree on time, and they had to let someone else shoot it. The thrill of the race and almost making it got to me. At the trucks, Grey Fox told me that if I wanted a bear to come see him next year.

So the next year, I bugged Bobcat to take me back up there. He found Grey Fox running dogs alone this time, and sure enough, they treed a bear. I made it to the tree that time, and took my very first bear, and from then on, I was completely hooked. Grey Fox liked the way I did as much work as I could, and invited me back up to hunt with him any time. I’m not sure that he expected me to take that quite as literally as I did, but I haven’t missed a year yet since that first one.

He always said that I’d make a good houndsman. Too many things were in the way though; first money and room and then time. Eventually he took my “no” for an answer and stopped asking. He wasn’t surprised to hear that I got puppies this year though. I was kind of counting on bending his ear regarding their training now and then, as that’s what he loved to do; train young dogs and new hunters.

Grey Fox never looked at me and thought that I couldn’t do it. He never once dismissed me for being a woman in a man’s sport. He never thought that I wasn’t tough enough. He always encouraged me and took me under his wing. When he told Junior that he was looking out for me and that he had to treat me right, he meant it. And he did love it when I’d bring him pie; coconut cream was his poison, but he’d eat half of any pie that crossed paths with him. He gave me my call sign a couple of years ago; I am Bird Dog, even if nobody ever remembers to use it. It’s mine because Grey Fox gave it to me.

Grey Fox was diagnosed with all sorts of cancers this year. He sold his dogs and told us that he’d just be riding in the truck with Bald Eagle and Senior. We went to see him a couple of weeks ago, just after the cancer got to his brain. He was doing pretty well that day, ignoring the pain and going through photo albums. Most of the core of our little hunting group happened to show up at the same time, and it was nice to see him animated.

Grey Fox passed away a little bit ago today. I know damn well that he wasn’t ready to go, but I have to think that going this way was a decent compromise. He had a little notice, and got to say what needed to be said, but he didn’t hang on in misery for years like some people do. I’m going to miss him. I don’t think the group will be the same without him; he was the human pack leader for a lot of years, and even after he started to take it easy, he was still very respected.

I hope he’s enjoying himself now, running that giant pack that left out ahead of him. He’s got a bunch of good dogs lined up waiting, and enough coon and bear to keep him busy for a good long time. Thank you, Grey Fox. You made a hunter out of me.

I’ve been hunting with these houndsmen for a long time. For the last six years, they’ve been telling me that I was good at it, that I could do it, that I should get some hounds myself. At first I wasn’t in any sort of place to even think about it; a rental house in town isn’t the ideal place for a noisy pack of bear hounds. And in that town, they’d have probably gotten shot.

When we moved out here, we had more space and distance from the neighbors. We got into it some more, but always sort of felt that we had the best end of the deal, not having to deal with the dogs during the off season. We hunt every weekend from Thursday through Sunday for at least three months with these guys, and by the end of it we’re absolutely frazzled. But still, it’s always been something that I wanted to do, preferably before I got too old to get to all of the trees. I suspected that that day had already come and gone, so I mostly gave up my dream. You can’t make every dream work, after all.

But the other day, someone offered Junior a rig box, the kind that goes in the bed of your truck. He told the guy that he wanted it – hell, we’d sure use it. We move Maverick’s dogs pretty often. But that reminded me that they’d recently had a litter, so it didn’t take much encouragement to get me to text them. All I really wanted were some cute puppy pictures, but what I got surprised me. It probably shouldn’t have.

I was offered a pup or two. Oh crap, did this throw a wrench into our weekend. Now suddenly something that was decided as a “no” was possible, and right away. We went down to look at them. Maverick didn’t want to give me any opinions on the dogs (eleven of them!) except to point out which ones he and Jake had already spoken for. He wanted me to look at them and form my own opinions of them. Sadly, the male that I liked was one of Jake’s. But what did it matter; we weren’t going to get into hounds anyway, right?

I spent the entire rest of the weekend overthinking and agonizing about these stupid dogs. Junior wouldn’t give me a straight opinion, saying that it was entirely my decision. Well, sure it was, but I didn’t want to make it without knowing how it would affect him. I had to make the assumption that his lack of enthusiasm meant that he didn’t want to do it, but also didn’t want to be the one to tell me that I couldn’t do something I’ve dreamed of.

I waffled back and forth between wanting them and to hell with the consequences, I’d be the bad guy in the marriage, and wanting to do the responsible thing. I had an awful lot of reasons both in the pro column and the anti column. Finally, I reluctantly talked myself out of it, rationalizing that I’ve also always wanted a good marriage and that I didn’t need the stress this was putting on it. And besides, I swore off puppies after Jessie’s last litter. They are an enormous pain in the ass, puppies are, and I’m getting a little old and short of time to mess with them.

But I may have misread my husband. He heard me saying no and didn’t like it. He did some more thinking himself, and decided to let me know that he did support me in this project. They would be mine, but I had his buy-in on them. And that was what I needed to tip the scales solidly back into the “yes” category.

After a few more hours of making sure that this was what I wanted, I contacted my friends and told them that we would take two, a little female that we both liked and the last male. That male wouldn’t be my pick of the litter, but he’s obviously wormy and may snap out of his funk once he feels better. I chose that combination over a possibly better female for a second dog because I just don’t think pack dynamics with two females of the same age would work very well. I could go with two males, but I like working with male dogs better. That female is sharp at five weeks though, and I like her already.

So come Saturday, we’re taking another road trip down thataway and we’re coming back with the start of our very own pack of hounds. It will take a couple of years of training and I’ve never trained a hunting dog, but I have good teachers and I feel comfortable that I can do it. It’s going to be an extraordinary amount of work, fun, and possibly heartbreak, but at least at the other side of it, I won’t have to say to myself that I didn’t try. I am going to be a Houndsman.

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.

Right when I started running with these bear hunters, before I met Junior, we caught a bear near Cherry Lake. It had gone way out into the bluffs, much farther north than the roads go and what felt like about a mile straight down. I went down with Grey Fox and Wildman, taking what seemed like an easier route than the rest of the men took, but the three of us never got to the tree. We did get all the way down to the lake shore, near the inlet, and rested there a while. Grey Fox suggested that I take off my shirt and flag a boat down for a ride, but fortunately, one never came by so I didn’t have to go to that extreme.

It took the three of us hours and hours to climb back up out of that hole. It still ranks as one of the most exhausting physical efforts of my life, right behind packing my first deer out of a camp seven miles away from the nearest road. As the fat asthmatic woman of the party, I still wasn’t the slowest, which was a good thing. Had I pushed myself any harder that day, they’d have had to quarter me up to get me out.

This was before my digital camera days, but the vivid memories of how the lake looked up close are permanently seared into my brain. I know now that I’m not in any kind of shape to go down that way, although I may have been last year after the diet and I hope to be again someday.

So when we heard that one of the guys had a bear treed even farther in than we’d gone that year, I mentally groaned. He had a client with him too. Fortunately, Junior was out looking for another dog and didn’t get roped into going down and helping out, but Maverick and Jake did. By the time Junior and I got back up to Maverick’s truck, it was time to start thinking about how to get them out. Their handheld radio batteries were expiring, they had four hounds with them, plus the bear, and the client’s knee had given out. It would have taken most of the night if they’d tried to walk out on their own, or been a long cold one sleeping on granite if they’d waited until morning.

But I remembered Grey Fox’s smartass comment about flagging a boat down. We didn’t have a boat with us, of course, but it still sounded like a good idea. Junior’s uncle was in camp, and he only lives about an hour away and is sort of a boat collector. He could go get one and bring it up, and meet the hunters at the inlet.

But first, we thought we might just go down to the launch ramp and see if there was someone there who might take pity on us. Fran and Seamus and I (and her herd of little dogs) did just that. Initially we were disappointed in that there were only empty trailers at the ramp, but I spotted a guy with a little aluminum boat driving away. I flagged him down like a crazy woman, having had the foresight to take my pistol holster off at least, so I didn’t scare people too much. He said that he would have been happy to if his boat had had any fuel, which it didn’t.

I was about ready to call our solicitation off when I spotted a man walking in the parking lot to the trailers. I asked him if maybe he had a boat. It turned out Fran had asked him as well. I explained the situation, and talked to the hunters on the radio to coordinate. He wasn’t too excited about waiting until they got down to the water, another hour and a half, but the more he thought about it, the faster his wheels started turning. He decided to leave the boat in the water and take the rest of his party back to the campground. He’d send off his boat, a party barge, with two of his friends, and be back for it with the boat trailer after they picked up our friends. I went with them to coordinate locating our guys on the radio, since I was the one who’d been down there before.

Fran said she wondered what she was doing, sending me off on a boat with two strange men. Well, she didn’t send me; I did. I sent Seamus off with Junior’s Dad, and she couldn’t have done it with all those little dogs. Sometimes you just have to choose to trust people, and boaters tend to be a pretty good-hearted bunch. These guys certainly were.

I was in such a hurry that I forgot my camera. I wish I hadn’t. This lake is in country so steep that we could nose that boat up all the way to the inlet and tie up to rocks with ten feet of clearance below. The creek trickles into the lake at only a few gallons a minute right now and the water is so clear and green that it’s almost too beautiful to look at. Our rescuers were interested in the rest of the story; how the hunters came to be down where they were and about bear hunting in general, so I filled them in. Between times, I coordinated on the radio with Maverick. When I finally saw people, I climbed up over the rocks so they could find us parked beneath a great granite boulder as we were.

I brought a little bit of their stuff down with me; a drop in the bucket compared to the loads they’d been carrying for as long as they had. Two of the hounds were so exhausted that I had to pick them up and hand them over rocks to Maverick; once they got on the boat, they immediately crashed for naps. Their pads were worn to nothing, and they’ve earned their week off. The client was so glad to see me, and so relieved not to have to go back up that hill that I think he crashed as hard as the dogs.

The ride back was a beautiful thing. Two rescuers, five hunters, four hounds, and me. I wished I’d had my camera for that too. We could not have ordered up a better boat to carry that load all at once. And these guys, these redneck knights swooping in to our rescue, wouldn’t take a penny for their efforts. I know how much that ride was worth to these guys and had a couple of hundred dollars in my pocket alone, but they said they were in it for the adventure, and for the story to tell back at camp, and because one day it might be them who needs rescuing. I knew boaters were good people.

But I told the first guy who went in that I’m not going to be able to conjure up another boat if he does this again. My support-staff magic only works for so long!

Ol’ Seamus has always wanted to hunt. There have been times that he’s been sort of lukewarm about it, but it’s always been true that he’d be my hunting kid. I started taking him camping when he was just an infant, but he didn’t really go hunting with me until he was seven. It was just a little too risky to be hunting by myself with two small kids – what would happen if I got off a bad shot and had to track something? What if I got hurt? I couldn’t leave him and his brother back in the truck, and hunting alone most of the time didn’t leave me with a lot of options, so I mostly had my fun every other weekend.

Once he got older though, and I was running more with other people, I started bringing him with me, more often every season. When he was ten, he worked his butt off to get his hunting license even though we’re not much for hunting the small game that was allowed to him at that age.

But this year is the golden year. He’s twelve now, so he’s got his first big game tags, both deer and bear. He’s been so excited that I suspect all his friends are tired of hearing about it. Two weeks ago, we went and re-sighted in some rifles, and had him shoot both my .243 which he wanted to carry and a 30-06 in a rest, to see if it kicked him too much.

Last weekend was a scouting trip for just the two of us, as Junior had to work. It was opening day for squirrel and quail, so we spent the whole time driving around looking for them, looking for deer, and talking about hunting. He’s fascinated by tracks, so I showed him a lot of those and gave him a book to read at night.

On Saturday, we happened to come across a big four-point buck, as nice as anything I’ve seen in this state and certainly nicer than anything I’ve ever shot. This buck knew it wasn’t season (although it was still archery season, we didn’t have bows) and stood and posed for us to glass him for a good long time.

Up until then, Seamus was more excited about bear hunting than deer hunting. After all, that’s what we do the most of, so he’s seen much more of it. And it is very exciting. But this buck really had him going, and he wanted to deer hunt on opening morning, so that’s what we did. I told him that we were really unlikely to see that buck again and that he should just shoot a decent legal one if we saw it. There are years when we don’t see anything legal, like last year, and forked horns are perfectly legitimate shooters around here.

So we got up way before the crack of dawn. We had to get down to the other side of our area early enough to walk in off the road before daylight. Ironically, all of our friends who camp down there were up every bit as early to come bear hunt up by our camp. We got there in good time and walked off in the dark down a tiny little track I know. He was a little intimidated to be walking off into the dark, but I knew where we were, so he followed without kicking up a fuss.

That 30-06 that I’d had him shoot was sneaky of me. We’d decided to give each kid a hunting rifle of their own on their very first opening day, and he was surprised as hell about it. Of course, part of that was sheer confusion at being awake at 5 AM, but he was thrilled with it once he woke all the way up. He still chose to carry my smaller .243, but kept fondling his gun throughout the day.

When it came to be dawn, we were far enough off the road to be good. We crept along, sat for a while, and crept some more. We heard a shot or two near us, and sincerely hope that it wasn’t that buck. We jumped something in the brush, but it could as easily have been a doe; we never got a look at it. We looked at tracks some more, and found a skull with an old, regressed forked horn rack on it, so I carried that back for him. We were quiet enough that the squirrels and birds got used to us, and that’s all I ask of a first-timer.

A kid’s got sort of a short attention span though, and I didn’t want to burn him out. We walked back to the truck after a couple of hours and drove around a bit. But hearing the bears hunters on the radio was too much for both of us, so we headed back up the hill to join them. I told him that we were as likely to spot a deer stirred up by the commotion as we were to walk across one sneaking through the woods. He’s much more likely to get a bear this year even if he’s not first on our houndmen’s lists, so he was ready to move over to that.

All in all, I had a great time with my new hunting partner. He wasn’t too noisy, he asked intelligent questions, and he was just plain excited to be there. Taking a buck would have just been gravy; but as I told him, the sport’s called hunting, not killing. We had a successful time hunting, even without filling a tag.

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.