Hunting the Gros Ventre Mountains

I recently moved to "the best of the old west" Jackson Hole Wyoming. A truly wonderful place up in the Rocky Mountains. Jackson Hole is a place where Cowboys have genuine dung on their shoes, dust and sweat marks on their hats, it has bars with brawls, and clear mountain lakes, mountains that serrate the skyline, and Elk that populate them, It has Deer on the buttes, and Moose up the canyons, Mountain Sheep on the peaks, and Bald Eagles nesting above the rivers, Antelope on the flats, and Bears hiding behind the trees, Buffalo wandering from here to there and Trophy Trout in the rivers waiting for a fly.

On the down side in January it is colder than a mother in-laws kiss, and spring and fall bring financial hardships rougher than a half round bastard file. Thunderstorms in summer bring winds that blow so hard I have to put the saddle over my horses ass to keep the bit from blowing out of his mouth. All this diversity makes a person feel alive. A place so colorful made me want to become a part of it. So I bought myself a Resistol hat and a horse and I tried to blend in the best I could.

I rented me a log cabin on Chancy Wheeldon's Mill Iron Ranch and proceeded to learn about western living by trial and error. Chancy is a character of true western tradition. He was a pro rodeo finals saddle bronk rider in 75 and 77. He is quick of wit and quick to laugh, hard working and hard playing. Eager to tease a greenhorn but good enough to teach him a few things. He hired me to help out around the ranch, probably so he could laugh at my antics. His father Clark was cut of the same cloth. He was a master of country rhetoric and couldn't really remember if he went to Penn State or state pen.

Hunting the Gros Ventre Mountains

I could have bought a tamer horse, but I couldn't have bought a prettier one. Besides after getting bucked off so often I walked like a cowboy, kinda slow with an imperceptible limp. But, I suppose I might have blended in better had I spent more time on my horse rather than flat on the ground at his feet. But after a while we developed an understanding, he understood that I was green and I understood he was spooky and that my life depended on developing a death grip on the saddle horn.

Then I got to see some country. The Gros Venture wilderness behind my house, I rode all over it that summer and never saw a soul, what a feeling. Looking around me I felt as if I were in a Coors Beer commercial. Jackson Hole is hunting country. It has the biggest elk herd in the Rocky Mountains and nobody could hunt them better than Clark and Chancy. Their family has been guiding hunters in those mountains for four generations and that summer they told me a lot about hunting. So I figured, come hunting season I would give it a try.

If I was going to shoot an elk, I was going to need a gun so I borrowed one from my grandfather, a model 1895 Winchester 3006 with a peep sight. With a peep sight I would need some eye glasses. My brother Gene is an Optician so I called him and told him I needed some glasses and what my prescription was, 20-20 in my left eye and 20-60 in my right eye? He told me I didn't need glasses, I just needed to learn to shoot with my other eye. Big help he was.

Peaking bull elk

When I went to get a license there weren't any bull permits left so I bought an antlerless elk license. Chancy told me he would take me out and help me get a good cow elk. I figured that I would like to get one by myself to prove I could do it. After all, I was learning the country and I knew quite about hunting now that I had been talking about it all summer. And If I hunted every morning on foot for a couple of hours before breakfast I could lose a few pounds. A lot better than my 1982 bicycling for beer program, I would think!

September brought an abrupt change in the weather. An early snow hastened the onslot of the fall colors, a dazzling display of golden aspens, yellow cottonwoods and scarlet mountain maples. On opening morning I got up At 5:30 and went to hunt the hill outside my cabin. It was a frosty world that met me at the door that morning so I dressed appropriately, after ten minutes and 500 vertical feet I found myself carrying my jacket, down vest and pendelton. I hiked, panted and sweated up through golden aspen groves, spruce thickets and fir forests. The magpies keeping all the creatures of the forest posted of my progress, then I saw it. A fine cow elk walking along a ridge 100 yards to the east, the morning sun behind her, was in my eyes to the west. I raise my gun, then she disappears into some trees, with my gun leveled I follow what I thought would be her path of travel through trees, Then I see it standing their head on looking at me. I shoot, A buck deer sized elk calf falls to the ground. OOP'S, I really need those glasses. It was all gone in one shot, the chance to prove myself a hunter, my ego, and my exercise program. And for what? The best tasting wild meat I had ever tasted! I guess I would have been out of character had it turned out any other way.

I guess that you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear!