Hunting a Dead Man’s Hotspot

Hunters protect waypoints like PIN codes, no matter how helpful a person’s nature. Just ask Jaren Larsen at onX Hunt. He said sharing waypoints beyond buddies and brothers typically involves “some ass-hat selling hotspots on Craig’s List or Facebook Marketplace.”

But just when you nearly lose all faith in your fellow man, you meet Logan Hyrkas of Dickinson, North Dakota. Hyrkas is one of those neighborly guys you quickly trust to hold your wallet, retrieve your kids from school, or sell you a used truck at a fair price.

Though Hyrkas still works in sales, it’s been a while since he worked for an auto dealership. He liked that job, and can’t forget the day he scribbled turn-by-turn directions to a hunting hotspot while talking to a mule-deer fanatic he’d just met. He recalls his eight-hour shift had reached late afternoon on August 9, 2016, and no one was browsing the sales lot or calling to explore a trade-in.

When Hyrkas glanced toward the lounge by the dealership’s garage, he saw a man he judged to be in his 60s. The man was nursing a long-simmered coffee while a grease monkey wrenched on his Chevy. Hyrkas wandered over to visit. He’s good at that. He finds most people interesting, probably because they sense his sincerity.

Their talk soon turned to hunting the brushy draws and rolling prairies around Dickinson. Naturally, that spurred talk of mule deer, a passion that pushed Hyrkas and his young family westward from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula months before.

The man told Hyrkas he loved hunting muleys in the Rocky Mountains about a day’s drive to the northwest, just south of Canada. He said hunting is especially good up there once early-season blizzards seal off the high-country meadows from anyone lacking grit, snowshoes, and iron legs.

The man told Hyrkas: “When they get all kinds of snow up there, usually after mid-November, bucks migrate in from the surrounding forests and play in those meadows like little kids. I hunted up there all my life, and I’ve dragged out some 30-inch muleys. It’s beautiful country and it’s a long, tough climb. But it’s the best muley hunting I’ve ever seen and ever will see.”

The man must have liked and trusted Hyrkas because he paused, backed up a ways in their conversation, and suggested Hyrkas start taking notes. Then he specified an access road in the distant national forest, and even suggested where to turn off and park beside a locked Forest Service gate. Just behind the gate, an abandoned two-track trail sneaks into the forest. The man told Hyrkas to follow that rutted trail up the hillsides and around switch-back turns all the way to the mountaintops miles away.

As Hyrkas transcribed, he wondered whether to doubt the man. Though his eyes looked true and his words seemed honest, Hyrkas hardly knew him. Plus, who kills 30-inch muleys and then shares the “whens and wheres” with another hunter?

As if sensing Hyrkas’ doubts, the man explained his generosity. He said he would never again see that country. He was 63, and waging a futile fight with an aggressive cancer. He would be dead within months, likely before Thanksgiving, but Christmas for sure.

Soon after, the man stood, said, “Good talking to you,” and walked to the service counter to pay his bill and leave.

Hyrkas never saw him again. He kept wondering for the next couple of months if the guy had been toying with him. The man had looked and sounded healthy, and nothing in his manner suggested he was a prankster. Hyrkas reread his notes, studied online maps, and found the forest roads the man specified. He traced the roads with his forefinger and paused at the symbol indicating a gate. From there, his finger continued along on the parallel broken lines of a two-track trail meandering uphill into the mountains.

Everything aligned. Plus, Hyrkas is a serious hunter and he knows mule deer. He believed the man shared those traits. Hyrkas also trusts his B.S. filter. Everything the man said and gestured came through as authentic. “When we talked about mule deer, his eyes lit up,” Hyrkas said. “He didn’t tell me about his cancer until after we talked awhile about mule deer.”

Hyrkas is also thorough. He rechecked his notes to verify he had saved the man’s name. In late October, Hyrkas found that name atop an obituary in The Dickinson Press.

“After reading his obituary and thinking about our conversation, I believe he was a serious outdoorsman who put hunting ahead of a career,” Hyrkas said. “Dickinson is a long ways from where he spent most of his life, so I assume he didn’t move down here until something financial forced it. I doubt he would have shared his spot with me if he had any hope of hunting there again.”

Lawyers use a Latin term — “donatio mortis causa” — for such deathbed gifts. It’s a legal principle, tracing to ancient Roman law, that requires a dying person to be able to ponder their impending death and deliver “dominion” over it to a specific person. Not that the man consulted an attorney, but the man satisfied those conditions by telling Hyrkas to take notes as he dictated details about his hotspot and how to get there.

But then eight years passed before Hyrkas wrangled the time, tags and opportunity to hunt the site; finally wedging the trip into a two-week window of five overlapping schedules from brothers, his father and father-in-law.

Looking back, Hyrkas wishes they had enjoyed a fairytale hunt. He would love to report they arrived at the locked Forest Service gate on a gray November day, strapped on their old-school rawhide snowshoes, and trekked into the high country’s mule deer playgrounds.

But in real life, nonresident hunters can seldom align their fixed schedules with ideal weather and hunting conditions. Hyrkas’ hunt featured more mud than snow, and though he saw muleys cross those high-country meadows miles above his truck, they weren’t 30-inchers and they weren’t playing like kids. The biggest buck he saw carried a 4-by-4 rack whose spread fell 8 inches shy of 30. And it didn’t tarry long enough to tempt Hyrkas into shooting.

“I felt like things were getting close about when we had to leave; about the time I’d be getting serious if I lived nearby,” Hyrkas said. “The rutting sign was picking up, and it felt like I was close to crossing paths with something big.”

Hyrkas also wondered if the dead man would have urged him to stay, to hold out for real snow. The deeper the better.

“That was his deal, needing snowshoes to get in there,” Hyrkas said of the dead man. “Deep snow moves muleys down from the higher elevations and reduces hunting pressure from the day-trippers hiking up from below.”

Still, throughout his hunt, Hyrkas thought often of the man who sent him there. Had he sat and glassed from the same bald knob, and pressed his back into the rocks jutting from its crest?

How many sunsets did he admire from here? Did he get here before sunrise?

Did he take that shortcut uphill through the woods, shaving at least 10 minutes off the trail’s longest loop?

Which meadow was his favorite? How much had it changed as loggers made their cuts, or aspen pockets grew old at its center?

How much had things changed since the man hunted here as a teenager in the late 1970s? How much more would it change when Hyrkas’ grandkids hunt here in November 2075?

“I want to hunt there again because it’s been nagging me ever since I came home,” Hyrkas said. “I learned so much there, and not just about the deer. I thought a lot about the guy who sent me there. I didn’t expect to think so much about being in the same position as him someday. What will I pass along? What information will I share? Will I have time to share it? What happens to all my favorite hunting spots, and what I learned about hunting them?”

Likewise, Hyrkas can’t stop wondering what more the dead man might have shared, had their paths crossed again during his final days in 2016. Perhaps more importantly, which regrets did the man take to the grave, driven there on cancer’s schedule, not his own?

“Hunting that high country can get lonely,” Hyrkas said. “I hope he had loved ones, and that they cried when he died. But that’s something I’ll probably never know no matter how many times I get back there to hunt.”