2 Attachment(s)
My Favorite Hunting Story (Warning: VERY LONG POST!)
We got to high ground just as dawn began to shape the rocks. October in the minimalist sage scrub of Eastern Montana is a fickle season. It easily could have been ten degrees and snowing sideways, but it went the opposite way: lows in the forties and no serious weather.
Antelope (more specifically North American Pronghorn) season is the first rifle hunt. Soon after come elk and deer. There will be knee-deep snow, grindingly steep terrain, and the shadow of an expansive rack (was he a shooter?) just over the next rise. But first there are antelope.
For me, antelope hunting is about stalk and flesh. I get to belly crawl though prickly pear cactus before putting the first purple medallions in a hot pan. Some say antelope meat makes poor table fare, I say leave them for me. Antelope is my favorite: tender, flavorful, rich in iron and protein.
By the time the sun poured depth on the land we had been perched on the rock outcropping long enough for a granola bar breakfast. We glassed the basin, facing west. The landscape creased and stretched in a series of crumbling buttes, parched steppes, and deceivingly deep creek-beds.
There was one pair feeding on a flat, open expanse about a mile and a half away, the only animals in sight. We spotted them at first light, their flanks glowing with the low-angle sun, little more than beige blips.
We waited for another hour. In this country, life often emerges tentatively, as if by spontaneous generation, from invisible folds in the earth. Nothing else appeared. The pair of pronghorn fed and took delicate rambling strides but they stayed far from any of the topography that would allow us to put an easy sneak on them.
“What do you think?” I asked my hunting buddy Drew who had already filled his tag the weekend previous, “It’ll be tough if they don’t move.”
“That’s true.”
“I don’t see anything else. You?”
“Nope.”
“I think I might have a shot if I can get to that far oxbow.”
“Maybe.”
“I’m going to go for it.”
“Okay.”
In my mid-twenties I took an interest in harvesting my own meat and Drew, my closest fishing buddy, agreed to show me the ropes. I suspect he did this for his own amusement as much as anything else. He once watched me chase a heard of antelope across several miles of prairie, them at a comfortable trot, me at a full-out coughing sprint. He told me later that he kept expecting me to give up and turn around but I just kept going, a lanky strip of camouflage and futile exertion. “I knew you’d figure it out eventually.”
We scrambled down into a dry creek-bed that would give cover but prevent us from seeing the animals if they moved. Several hours of boot stomping later, I crawled up the wall of the arroyo, trying to slow down and control my breathing. The sun was high and the day had turned Indian Summer hot. I slid out of my pack and pressed my body to the baked dirt, keeping my profile below the line of sage brush on the rim. Slowly, or at least thinking about going slowly, I pushed my head up, put the field glasses to my eyes and scanned. Nothing.
I elevated my head a little further, looking around for the red rock butte that I had claimed as a landmark. I found it, and realized that I was further north than expected and not nearly as far west. After re-calibrating my sense of place, I craned my neck further and altered my angle. They were still there, though they had rambled a few hundred yards. They were now in the dead center of the only bit of truly flat ground in the area.
When people think about Eastern Montana prairie, they think flat. This is only true when compared with the dramatic heaves of mountains in the west that give the state its name (Montana is mountain in Spanish). The prairies of the central and eastern parts of Montana are deeply contoured and studded with hills and valleys. Very few areas are truly static plains. These, however, are the safest places for antelope to be and they know it. Their binocular vision allows them to pick out a crawling hunter over a mile away. These animals had moved themselves into the most open, exposed country around, ironically, the safest place.
I ranged them from where I lay, my belly resting softly against cactus spines. 550 yards, too far. I slid back down into the drainage where Drew stood patiently sweating.
“They moved out onto that flat. The creek goes north from here, away from them. I don’t know what to do.”
Drew shrugged, sat down against a rock, took off his hat, and lay his head back in the sunshine. “It’s a hell of a day man. And we’ve still got tomorrow.”
I was not going to be so easily placated. There was meat out there, and the freezer in my unfurnished basement was empty. The taste of blood was already in my mouth, that coppery flavor of ragged breathing and dry air.
I couldn’t be certain because he was wearing sunglasses, but I’m pretty sure Drew’s eyes were closed, his face soaking in some of the last heat of the season.
“There. I could go south and cut out around those hills over there. If I backtracked far enough I don’t think I’d be exposed much and if I got behind those hills I might be able to get to that red rock butte over there. They’re pretty close to that, maybe in range.”
Drew shaded his eyes with his hand and craned his neck in the direction I was pointing. He was quiet for a long moment.
“Maybe. It would be a hell of a walk to get there and I’m not sure you’d have a shot, but if you want to go, I’m up for a walk.”
When we got to the high ground my shirt was soaked through and I could feel the itch of sunburn brewing on the back of my neck. The antelope were still standing out on the flat below. From a safe perch behind a boulder I ranged them at just over 400 yards. I wanted to get closer. Staying hidden was almost impossible. Going straight over the top of the rock outcropping would expose me for sure. In order to advance, I had to press my body against the western face of the rock formation and inch forward. Even pressed against the rock I was visible. If I drew their attention, damn good meat would disappear over the horizon in a plume of dust.
I gained ground, winced as I pressed my boots into the crackle of crumbled rock, froze. The antelope browsed. I could see them clearly now, a decent buck with a doe.
As I crawled over a wrinkle in the rock face I saw a small cave, an indentation in the side of the hill barely big enough for a man to crawl inside. There was a slide of dirt, a small stream of erosion that had spilled out of it. Perhaps it happened last spring during the rains, perhaps well before that. Perched atop the tongue of scattered debris, just slightly buried at the back end was a human skull, bleached but intact.
Beyond recognizing that, without a doubt, this was definitely a human skull, I had no reaction. The antelope were still there, still peacefully standing ten yards apart, nibbling. Drew followed ten paces behind me.
“Drew.”
“Yeah?”
“There’s a human skull right here.”
“What?” Disbelief, incredulity.
“There’s a human skull right here.” Slower this time, enunciating through the whisper.
“Just a skull?”
“Yeah. I think so. That’s all I can see.”
“Holy shit. That is a skull.”
Drew was beside me. We were both tucked into the fold of the cave, hidden from view.
“What do we do now?”
I was thinking the same thing but my question was about getting closer to the antelope; Drew was talking about the human remains.
“I think I can back out and get over there without them seeing me.” I pointed to another rock outcropping, further west and lower. It had been hidden by the red rock butte before. It was less dramatic but studded with small boulders that I could use to hide myself.
“Okay, I think I’ll stay here.”
“With the skull?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
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It took me half an hour to back track and then crawl out to the far end of the other rock point. The boulders worked well as cover and I slid myself behind the one furthest out on the edge of the drop. I eased my head over the precipice, finding the buck in range but bedded down. I settled in to wait.
I spent awhile getting my rest sturdy, making sure that I was rock solid when the time came. Then I just stared at her through the scope alternately enjoying his sleek grace and willing him to stand up so I could kill him. Heat stretched the time across the arid basin and there was only the sound of wind, an east wind. I was sheltered by the red rock butte where Drew sat beside the empty shell of a human head. But I couldn’t think about that, not yet. I had to stay sharp, stay focused on the task at hand. There was killing to be done. The killing has to come before the dealing with death and the trappings that death leaves behind.
I’d been prone for a long time and I could feel the tightness in my right knee where I’d pulled out some prickly pear spines. The same secretion that makes them painless going in makes your joints ache after awhile.
And then the buck was standing, staring hard in my direction. I wasn’t thinking about skulls and death but bullet drop and wind speed and reticle positioning and I exhaled slowly while squeezing and the sound of slug on meat echoed through the shallow basin.
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Later we drove into the nearest little town and called the Sheriff’s office to tell them we had found human remains. They told us they were kind of busy and asked if we could call back tomorrow. I couldn’t help but wonder what could be more pressing than a this in a town of 400 people? We told them we were headed out, back across the state, and if they wanted us to show them the skull, it would have to be that day. They asked if we could wait an hour, so we got lunch in the local diner while we waited for the deputy.
We must have interrupted a family function because he showed up in his cowboy best—crisp denim from head to toe with a shiny belt buckle and a “going out” wide-brim hat. The deputy couldn’t have been older than 25, but he was clearly not keeping up with his cardio. By the time we walked him up the hill to the skull, he had sweated through his clothes and was badly winded. After examining the bleached bone for a moment he declared, “Yep, that’s what it is alright.”
Then he turned on his heel and started back to the truck. We caught up quickly.
“Aren’t you going to do something about that?”
“Gotta call the lab in Billings.”
He didn’t say much else except to shake our hands as he was loading into the air-conditioning of his pickup. The whole thing felt very unsatisfying. I stopped him from closing the door and pressed a piece of paper with my contact info into his hand.
“If you find anything out, can you please let me know?”
Drew and I spent the four hour drive home musing on the origins of that dead person. Did someone get caught out in the weather and climb into that cave to try and wait it out? Did someone stuff a body in there decades ago? Or was it older, pre-historic, a remnant of the native people who used to occupy these lands?
The deputy never did call.
Post Script: Ten years later an archeologist friend of mine called to tell me he’d found the origin of my mystery skull. He had recently taken a new job at a regional field office near where this story took place (he’d heard me tell the story before). His new boss was the lead archeologist for that whole area and clearly remembered being disturbed on a Sunday by the Sheriff’s office. Turns out we found one of the most in-tact Native American burial sites in all of Eastern Montana. The skull belonged to a woman estimated to have died in her 30s. Along with her body they found numerous culturally significant artifacts, including an eagle-bone whistle. I don’t have any pictures of that, unfortunately, but this remains my all-time favorite hunting story.
