I stood up, swearing, as I watched the buck I’d been tracking all morning finally catch my wind and sprint for the private land downslope. The does that were with him scattered, bouncing downhill and out of reach. The buck bounded over the barbed wire and then, as if he understood the meaning of the property line he’d just crossed (he probably did), he stopped and looked back at me, smug and handsome. Eight tines gleaming in the sun.
I was exhausted. It had been eight hours since I’d pulled into the trailhead at four o’clock that morning, and the heat of the late afternoon sun beat down relentlessly. Sweat stung my eyes, and my rifle felt heavier than normal. For the past four hours, I’d stalked the buck and his small herd of does. I was on the nearly treeless south-facing slope of a drainage near where I lived in northwestern Montana, and I was defeated.
I trudged back to the car, and as I slipped my rifle off my shoulder, I caught the sunwarmed scent of the worn leather of the rifle strap. I immediately recalled my first ever hunt, one with my grandfather in our home state of New Hampshire.
I woke up early and drove through snow-covered back roads to my grandparents’ house. My Grandma greeted me with a hug and a plate of biscuits. My Grandpa was already down in the workshop waiting for me. His workshop, which was located in the basement, was clad with taxidermied deer, hunting photos, and a library of Louis L’Amour books. It always smelled like leather and gun oil and books and old wood. As a child, I stared in awe at the photos and antlers, enthralled by stories of his adventures. To this day, I can’t clean a rifle or read a Western without remembering my grandfather.
That morning, Grandpa was fiddling around with a backpack in the workshop, shuffling here and there, comparing different boxes of slugs and handing me orange vests to find one that I liked. He selected a walking stick from a pile of them leaning in the corner, and then he handed me a shotgun to see how it fit my shoulder.
My grandparents’ house backed up to nearly a thousand acres of patchworked conservation lands managed by various state and local entities. Grandpa explained that we were going to walk out into the back woods, as he called them, until we found tracks in the new snow. He’d sit down by a tree as I followed the tracks for a while to see if we could scare up any deer.
Excited, I pulled one of the orange vests on over my coat, and we set out into the forest. Every few steps, Grandpa leaned on his stick, scanning the trees for tracks or deer from beneath his orange-brimmed hat. I followed, heart pounding and trying my hardest to keep noise to a minimum while we snuck through the snow-muffled forest.
We soon found a couple sets of fresh deer tracks leading further into the woods. Grandpa whistled softly, gesturing for me to follow them. He leaned back against a tree and cradled his shotgun in his arms. I followed the tracks for a while, over a frozen bog and through thick stands of birch. Eventually, the woods opened up, and the tracks continued into a large clearing. I found a boulder at the edge and sat against it, scanning the edges of the clearing and listening hard. I could feel the day warming up slightly. Squirrels skittered and cackled in the trees above me. With every sound of the waking forest, my adrenaline rose, and I clutched the shotgun. I peered through the low-powered scope with hope thudding in my heart.
After an hour or so with no deer, I hung my head and followed my tracks back to Grandpa. When I found him, he looked like he was a part of the forest, as if he’d always been there and always would be. Yet, his bright orange and dark green flannel stood out against the backdrop of snow and birch trees. He raised his hand in a silent wave.
I told him about my morning, and he laughed and said something like, “That’s usually how it goes. What a beautiful morning out here. We should head back anyway, I think your Grandma has some more biscuits and ham that she needs help with.”
We crept through the trees at Grandpa’s steady yet fluid pace. Following his steps, I felt more attuned to the forest instead of like something that didn’t belong there. On the walk in, I had been so nervous about making noise that I only paid attention to myself. Now, I noticed everything–a faint smell of woodsmoke through the cold, the way the snow on the south sides of the trees wilted under the late-morning sun, the low, heartbeat-like thrum of a grouse.
When we got back to the house, we shared biscuits and coffee with Grandma, recounting the morning. I realized that, for the first time, I was part of one of my grandfather’s hunting adventures that had so captured me as a child. I was hooked.
Back at the trailhead in Montana, I looked up from the car and, for the first time since spooking the deer, forgot my frustration. The view was spectacular–golden grass-covered hills and deep ravines dark with thick stands of spruce, all rising to snowcapped mountains in the distant haze of early sunset.
I unloaded my rifle, looking closely at it. It was a gift from my grandfather, in his early years of dementia. He’s no longer here, but for years he’d carried the same rifle with the same tooled leather strap, imbuing it with his sweat and effort and hope, as I did now.
I didn’t fully know it on that morning in New Hampshire, but that hunt was the first of many. Since then, I’ve hauled that Winchester rifle all over the place–high sagebrush country in south-central Oregon, towering larch and ponderosa forests in Montana, the frozen hills and thick, wet woods of New Hampshire. Some hunts ended with meat in the freezer; most haven’t. Regardless, each has added chapters to the hunting stories I’ll tell my own children and grandchildren, stories that, one way or another, will always include Grandpa.
I laid the rifle on the backseat and jumped in the car, creeping it down the dirt road. Dusk-cooled air streamed through the open window. Maybe that buck would be back in the morning. Either way, I’d be there to pick up the trail.
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