Long Live the Hunt

Along the back trails of my memories I remember some great hunters and the companionship we shared.

Uncle George was a stalking backwoods instructor. I often saw him moving through the woods with no more sound then the breeze that rustled the dry autumn leaves.

He was a man of unlimited patience. Some he learned hunting wily whitetail for a lifetime. Others came from being a Marine fighting in one of those World War II hell-holes in the South Pacific. Though wounded he was so grateful to come home. The lessons he gave us boys out there n’ the woods have never been forgotten.

And my brother Tom. Whenever we hunted it was always together. So like-minded we always knew what the other was thinking. It showed in our success of big bucks every fall. Fresh snow meant “let’s get um.”

He married first and would show up two hours before daylight, sneak in to put snow on my face, what a wake up! He had a bad accident a few years ago and no longer hunts. I feel bad for him.

Steve Niles and I spent a lot of time out n’ the woods together - whether in Alaska falling big spruce or flying in to cut timber on some helicopter logging show or hunting big bulls in the upper Beaver Creek, moose and bucks in the Swan. We had companionship there shared by the experience of the hunt - not always to shoot something. These are the things that count. Steve Niles was a man to ride the river with.

Today men, women, boys and girls find that age-old desire to hunt and all that goes with it. Personally, I no longer have that rabid desire to hunt. I guess it’s age. I no longer buy an elk tag. Just hunt the whitetail. Sometimes with the grandsons and granddaughters or still hunting alone down some old logging road, maybe sit on a blowdown and remember….long live the hunt.