Note: Much like my motocross piece, this will be ongoing, especially since I haven't had a lot of time to write lately. At least my weeks-long episode of writer's block is over. This stuff is also for the memoir. Also, this time I won't hesitate to post some graphic images of my hunts, because I had a discussion with a few of my hunter buddies and they said I ought to expose people to that stuff. I'll make the pictures small, so it isn't too shocking.

Well over a century ago, a man named Theodore Roosevelt was elected president of the United States of America. Halfway through his two-term presidency, Roosevelt established over 230 million acres of public land for wildlife and wilderness, which hunters still hunt in today.

Roosevelt also put values on wild game, forcing hunters to pay for each animal they hunt. On top of that, many people inspired by Roosevelt's love for the wilderness and wildlife helped to protect and breed many North American big game animals back from the brink of extinction, including, but not limited to, North American bison, pronghorn, whitetail deer, and elk. Thanks to their efforts, there are now over 500,000 bison, 700,000 pronghorn, 30 million whitetail deer, and one million elk roaming the North American wilderness today, and their populations continue to grow.

Inspired by the beauty of the wilderness, love for animals, and the need to survive, I became a huntress myself. It was pretty difficult to do, considering neither of my parents or my grandparents are hunters, and I was born and raised in Denver. Only my grandpa on my dad's side was a hunter, but he was forced to stop hunting decades before I was born, due to some major health complications. But I was determined to hunt nevertheless. I had to get the help from distant relatives, who wanted nothing more than to see me hunt for my own food. I also had to seek help from organizations outside of my friends and family, because as healthy as I am, Cystic Fibrosis is just as unpredictable as hunting often is.

My distant relatives were educating me on hunting long before I even knew it. For as long as I can remember, my great-uncle-in-law AKA Uncle Courtney, has taught me as much as he could about the wilderness, wildlife, guns, horses, and hunting through story-telling. Uncle Courtney was a game warden. He retired a few years after I was born. However, he still goes hunting. He has horses specifically trained to be his pack horses during those days-long trips that take him deep into the uncharted wilderness of Colorado's central and northern Rocky Mountains.

I grew up riding his horses. I first started off on an old bay gelding called Pete. Pete was very gentle and almost bomb-proof, but uncle Courtney's other horse, Apache, wasn't so tame. When I rode Apache the first time, I was seven years old. Usually, I could toss a coat around Pete, and he wouldn't startle too bad. However, I learned the hard way that Apache was a different story. I tossed my coat onto the round pen fence, but that triggered Apache's bronc genes. Uncle Courtney said I held on for two of Apache's bucks, before being tossed, face first, into the sand. I was not wearing a helmet.

Luckily, I've always had strong bones, so I didn't suffer more than a few scrapes, bruises, and a couple of knocked-back baby teeth. But, I remember getting up after I got bucked off. I don't remember any pain, and I didn't even start crying until I realized my mouth was filling up with blood. Some lessons are best learned the hard way, and I haven't tossed any coats around any other horses since.

Uncle Courtney also had me shooting BB guns and practice bows ever since I could hold and aim those things. I was pretty proficient with both, especially the BB guns. I ended up taking to shooting a gun rather than drawing back a bow. I was exceptionally good at target practice, and I could beat almost anyone at it by the time I was ten years old. I had a good eye and an even better aim.

To further encourage me to hunt, uncle Courtney gave me a handful of animal hides, skulls, and feathers over the years. Throughout his time as a game warden, uncle Courtney seized many poached animal hides, skulls, and horns, and also found a lot of wild animal remains in the wilderness which he took home. Uncle Courtney has given me a coyote pelt, several pairs of deer antlers, a decent collection of animal skulls, and a young elk rack from his most recent successful elk hunt. Uncle Courtney gave me a handful of magazines and pocket field guides as well, and continues to encourage me to learn as much about the wilderness, wildlife, and hunting as possible. With the internet, that's been fairly easy. Even studying the taxidermy I own has helped me understand the wilderness and wildlife better.

Antlers and hide patterns aren't just for show. Each and every living thing in the wilderness is fighting to survive. Everything from the oldest bull elk to the youngest, tiniest flower is fighting an uphill battle of survival. While there are no words to truly express the beauty of the wilderness, one must understand that the wilderness is only beautiful because adversity makes it so.

When you look closely at the unpolished antlers or horns of wild animals, you will see that they're full of scars, scratches, breaks, and other imperfections. The sole purpose of those antlers and horns is to help the bearer defend himself. If you spend enough time in the wilderness, especially during the rutting season, you will hear sudden loud cracks echoing between the mountains and valleys. Those sounds typically belong to two bucks or bulls battling it out. But if you hear those cracks above your head, you’re probably dead. Cougars and black bears love hanging out in trees!

The rut turns brother against brother, father against son, as they battle to the death for breeding rights. I've personally witnessed some intense rutting battles between pronghorn antelope bucks. The horns on pronghorn antelope are actually made out of hair that is just really thick and strong. Their horns are made of the same stuff as our fingernails. When their heads collide, you don't hear the same cracks and snaps as you'll hear when two deer or elk go at each other. Instead, you'll only see the event.

Pronghorn almost never make any noise, and personally, I haven't heard them call or squeak or anything. However, seeing them battling it out is unforgettable despite there being almost no noise involved. There is no mercy in the fight. They will only stop when one runs away or dies. Sometimes, their horns lock up, they get stuck, and they both die, usually by starving to death, but sometimes predators will move in on the helpless bucks and finish the fight for them. This happens more often with deer and elk, but it isn’t unheard of among pronghorn.

Every pair of antlers has been involved in a rutting fight at least once in their history, and thus have a story. Even though deer, elk, and pronghorn all shed their antlers every year, they use those antlers throughout the year to survive. The older the animal, the bigger their antlers are, and the more rutting fights they get into.

As a buck or a bull ages, he becomes more and more dominant. Even when he can no longer breed his does, he still protects his herd with his life. Often times, these bucks and bulls become problem animals, because they kill and chase away any and every younger bull and buck that tries to breed with one of his does. In fact, this behavior can be seriously detrimental to the health and population of an entire species, if left unchecked. The oldest bulls get to be so big that not even bears, cougars, or packs of wolves can take them down. Only old age, disease, and the cold can take them down, which could take years, because those beasts are built to survive the harshest climates imaginable.

Oftentimes, the survival of a species falls on the shoulders of us. As hunters and huntresses, we are the ultimate gate keepers of the wilderness, and we determine what gets to live and what has to die, in order to make sure the ecosystem as a whole survives. We rely on the ecosystems around us just as much as any wild animal. If the ecosystem dies, so do we.

Thankfully, the vast majority of hunters love the wilderness and wildlife, and want to see them survive for eternity. Hunters work closely with wildlife biologists to determine how many animals should be hunted that season, and if there are any problem animals that should be prioritized. From there, hunters apply for tags and enter a lottery. Whether or not hunters get a tag depends on what, where, and when they apply. If a hunter doesn’t successfully draw a tag the first time, they’ll get a preference point, which basically means they get to be entered into the lottery twice instead of just once. They’ll get another preference point each time they fail to draw a tag, until their name is finally drawn for a tag.

Wild animals technically belong to the public, so a tag represents an animal a hunter has purchased to hunt. Once their name is drawn, the hunter still has to pay for the tag. Some tags are as cheap as $5, and others are as expensive as $600,000, depending on the species, sex, and region of the animal the hunter is hunting. These tags don’t usually single out a single specific animal, but rather specifies a region, species, sex, and season of an animal. For instance, if a tag says “Pronghorn, Doe, Rifle, Unit 9, Season Dates: 10/6 - 10/13”, that means the tag is for a pronghorn doe, using a rifle, in region (unit) 9, and the season is a week long. There are other things that go on the tag, such as the hunter’s basic personal  information, signature, license fees, and hunt code. Hunting seasons are split up into smaller, more specific seasons. For instance, a four week hunting season will allow bow hunters only the first week, rifle hunters only the second week, and then the next two weeks will allow both bow and rifle hunters.

Hunting seasons often depend on the region and number of animals running around. Wildlife biologists only permit so many tags, as to not stress or wipe out a population. Sometimes, if the wildlife is pretty scarce, a season will only last a weekend, if it’s allowed at all. However, sometimes there are so many animals running around, that wildlife biologists open up the season to all year round without any tags, until the number of animals in a specific region is reasonable for the wilderness to take care of.  

This close relationship between hunters and wildlife biologists ensure that the wilderness remains alive and thriving. Without hunters, wildlife and wilderness often suffer, and animals become a danger to themselves and others. And, as strange as it sounds, hunters prevent animal species from going extinct, because they fund huge game reserves which breed endangered species, many of which are released back into the wild. Sure, these game reserves still offer year-round hunts for wealthy hunters, but these game reserves have raised enough money and bred enough animals thanks to those hunters, to release plenty of endangered animals back into the wild. Thanks to these high-fenced hunting grounds, many species of wildlife have been reintroduced to their native lands, and even taken off the endangered list.

Hunting is pretty amazing for wildlife and wilderness, and that should be recognized and praised rather than ignored and stomped on. Hunting is so much more than just killing animals. Basically, one animal dies, so tens or even hundreds more can live. It’s a weird concept to understand, but it’s the truth.

 

I’ve been eating wild game meat for over a decade. Uncle Courtney was the first to feed me some game. But around the same time, when my mom and Clarke were still together, and my little brother was just a newborn, we lived next door to a hunter. Clarke became best friends with our next door neighbor, who’s name was Doug, who was paraplegic after being in a major motorcycle crash decades before. When Clarke explained to Doug what I went through with Cystic Fibrosis, Doug offered to give me some wild game. He inferred that since I struggled to digest fat and carbs, perhaps I could get the same amount of nutrition from the game without the illness. Plus, Doug couldn't cook the game himself, and his caretakers weren't big fans of it. Clarke decided to give it a shot, and for several years, cooked and fed me wild game, which was mostly elk and pronghorn.

The first time I had some of the wild game Doug gave to us, I wolfed it down like nothing else! I struggled with my appetite when I was that age, because eating always resulted in very long and painful bathroom trips for me. Not only did I devour an entire elk steak and then some, but I did not get sick. At the time, I was still eating other food that wasn’t so great for me, so I still had a hard time eating. I only ate well without my parents’ insistence when I ate wild game.

It wasn’t long before I had wild game coming in from other people. Uncle Courtney, Doug, and a few of Clarke’s friends from the oil rig supplied me with all of the wild game I could ask for. In fact, I got so much meat, that when I was in middle school and my mom moved us to northeast Denver, we bought a large chest freezer for the garage, where we kept the wild game. For several years, most of what I ate was wild game.

However, life unfortunately happened. Clarke lost touch with his hunting buddies from the oil rig, so I lost a third of my wild game. Then, Doug suffered an accident that broke his leg and landed him in the hospital, and three months later he was gone too. Doug didn’t pass on without willing all of the wild game in his freezer to me. Also, Doug left us with a possible route to help me go hunting; an organization which helps the disabled and disadvantaged go hunting. Uncle Courtney still supplied me with a few pounds of wild game, but it barely lasted me a week, let alone a full year.

By the time Doug had passed on, I was ready to go hunting for myself. By then, I had taken and passed my hunter's safety education class with a 100% on the final written test. I was the only one in the room full of mostly adults to get 100% on the 100 question exam. After all, thanks to uncle Courtney, I basically studied for the test my entire life. As a reward, Uncle Courtney found me an ad in the local newspaper, inviting any and all youth hunters to enter an essay contest, which if they won, Colorado Parks and Wildlife would take them on a guided wild turkey hunt on thousands of private acreage in the far northwest Rockies.

Personally, I was pretty skeptical that I’d even have a miniscule chance of winning it. The contest invited every and all interested youth hunters from across the country to enter an essay into the contest. But what made my family convince me to at least try, is that CPW would be choosing essays from a few of the most disadvantaged hunters. I’m not one to willingly use CF as a crutch in any way, shape, or form, but this time I decided to include CF in the list of reasons as to why I should be allowed to go on this hunt of a lifetime. The essay was handwritten and no more than a page long, written on some crinkled scrap paper I found in an old school binder. When I was finished, I neatly folded the paper, put it in an envelope addressed to CPW’s northwest office, and waited. It would be a few months before I found out if I was chosen or not.

To my pleasant surprise, three months later, I got a letter from Colorado Parks and Wildlife congratulating me on winning the essay contest. I hadn't given them my E-mail, so I didn't know right away that I had somehow won, against all odds. CPW chose six youth hunters in total, including me. In total, over 1,000 kids submitted essays. I basically had less than a 1 in 1,000 chance of winning, and yet I still pulled it off. 

Uncle Courtney agreed to lend me his 20 gauge shotgun for the trip. I spent a few hours with my grandpa one evening learning how to shoot the shotgun. We didn't aim at any ground targets, but instead hung out in the skeet yard at Cherry Creek State Park, shooting clay pigeons. I figured if I could hit most of the moving airborne targets, then I could hit a stationary bird in front of me just fine. Plus, who wouldn't spend a few hours at a quiet gun range shooting a few boxes worth of shells and clays with an antique shotgun?

When Friday of the hunting weekend arrived, I packed my crap for the trip into the back of my grandparents' SUV, and we drove for nearly five hours from my home in Littleton, northwest to Meeker. I got to skip school that day, because I had to be at the CPW office for orientation in the mid afternoon, where I'd get to meet the other five youth hunters, meet my guide, learn about wild turkeys, fill out some paperwork, then show off my skills at the shooting range. Then, if we still had some daylight left, my guide would take us to the hunting grounds and show us around. 

The weather for the trip wasn't forecasted to be very nice unfortunately. I was pretty nervous about it. I don't do well in bad weather, especially cold and windy weather. I don't have the best blood circulation to stay warm, and my lungs are less than capable of tolerating a few dust particles. But my grandparents prepared for this weather in advance, and bought us camouflage bandannas, as well as plenty of warm, windproof, waterproof, thorn-proof camouflage clothing, and sunglasses. My first lesson in hunting was to be prepared for anything. And to be honest, this was a pretty easy rule to follow. Only I forgot my anxiety medication for the trip. Damn it!

 

When we arrived to the CPW office, I was pretty surprised by just how many people were there. The tiny little office, which consisted of a main room with a few full-mount taxidermy statues of some local big game, and a smaller conference room, was packed with people. Most of them were CPW wildlife officers, and the rest were kids and their mom or dad. In my case, I had my grandparents with me. 

Class began as soon as everyone sat down. A CPW officer gave everyone paperwork to fill out, as well as their turkey tag to sign. And, to top it all off, they gave each hunter a gift package, which included a turkey slate call, a wild game magazine with a wild tom (male) turkey on the cover, a pamphlet all about turkeys, a pocket survival guide, and a stack of about 20 cards intended to write down the information and signature of any kind land owner who'd gladly let me hunt on their private land. 

Once everyone filled out the paperwork and handed it back to the CPW officer, another CPW officer stood up and introduced himself. I forget his name, but in a booming voice, he briefly lectured us about wild turkeys, asked questions to refresh our memories of the cardinal rules of hunting, took even more questions, and then started a video on a small TV, which explained in detail the language, behavior, and lifestyle of Colorado's wild turkeys. The episode also taught us how to hunt the turkeys. Basically, the best way to hunt those things is to hurry up, sit down, stay still, shut up, and wait. 

Wild turkeys are actually pretty complex animals. They have incredible hearing and eyesight, and are especially sensitive to bright colors. If they see anything that is white, blue, orange, pink, etc, they will assume it's a threat and get the hell out of dodge! Thankfully, turkeys don't have a sense of smell. If they did, hunting them would be almost impossible. But turkeys are pretty dumb compared to a lot of animals out there. Alpha tom turkeys will attack turkey decoys set out by hunters, which is pretty entertaining to watch, just as long as you stay low and silent in the blind.

Sometimes, if a hunter shoots a turkey in a rafter (group) of turkeys, the other turkeys will just stand there and watch as the chosen one flaps and twitches until the nerves run out of energy. When a turkey gets shot, they flap and twitch for about a quarter to a half a minute after, not because they are alive. In fact, they die instantly when the shotgun fires. But they flap because their nerves freak out when it dies. Basically, the nerves are pre-programmed to do certain movements, such as close the turkey's talons when it goes to sleep, but they still need a leader (the brain) to call the shots. If the nerves lose their leader, they literally lose their mind, as I'm sure any decent company would if their main boss died suddenly. 

Also, just FYI (I didn't know this until I attended the orientation a day before the hunt), wild turkeys can fly! They are certainly not very graceful at it. But because they roost in trees for the night, they have to be able to fly at least to the top of the trees. In fact, their instinct to roost in trees is so strong, that hen turkeys will leave her chicks behind to fend for themselves on the ground. Luckily, wild turkeys breed and lay enough eggs to compensate for the chicks lost to predators. In fact, hens can lay up to 17 fertile eggs at a time!

Still, wild turkeys would much rather jump or run from place to place rather than pick up their fat, fluffy bodies off the ground for any longer than a few seconds. They can fly because unlike domestic turkeys, they have almost no fat on their bodies. They rely on their feathers to keep them warm, which are very effective at keeping the heat in and the water out. However, all of that fluff is not very aerodynamic, especially if the turkey tries flying in any direction other than against the wind. 

Finally, sometimes tom turkeys don't have beards, but hens do. People commonly believe that only tom turkeys have beards. Apparently, that isn't the case. While most toms do have beards, and most hens don't, there are enough hermaphordite wildlife running around, that most tags either have "bearded" or "not bearded", rather than "tom" and "hen". Same goes for most deer species except for pronghorn. You either get a tag that says "antlered", or you get a tag that says "not antlered". Pronghorn are an exception to the rule, because they're one of the few game animals that have enough male/female characteristics besides their horns, that having a pronghorn doe that looks just like a buck is pretty much impossible. 

 

After learning all about wild turkeys, we were introduced to our guides. I ended up being paired up with an older CPW officer called Tom. Tom was probably the most experienced guide out of everyone else, and was more than happy to take me out on my first turkey hunt. Turns out, he was preparing several weeks before. He was testing out decoys, blinds, and counting the turkeys wandering around on the 50,000 acres of hunting land he lived on and managed. He also worked on his side-by-side so it was ready to take me around the property. Tom knew about me well in advance, and knew of my health issues, so he was more than prepared by the time I met him.

He was very kind and helpful, though Tom was also very blunt. He wasn't afraid to tell us the truth, no matter how cold and hard it was. This included reassuring me that the weather was gonna be much worse and more intense than the weather was on that Friday, so I better dress warm and heavy, and be prepared with my pocket survival pamphlet in case I had to build myself a shelter out of branches and soil. Also, predator activity was pretty high where we were hunting, so I better have a decent plan of survival in case we encountered a hungry black bear boar (male), fresh out of hibernation. However, at the same time, Tom promised to never be further than arms reach from me for the whole hunt, so I wasn't gonna have to fend off any bears alone. 

Finally, we were told by a leading CPW officer to drive to a gun range not far away, and meet our guides and the other CPW officers there. CPW had shotguns for us, but were perfectly happy with people using their own shotguns. My guide took one quick look at the antique 20 gauge I brought along, and decided that I'd have an easier time shooting his shotgun instead. Unlike my shotgun, which used an old, worn-down bead sight and was another 5 pounds heavier, my guide's shotgun had glow sights and was built as lightly as possible. Basically, the sight was made out of three plastic parts. There were two red plastic cylinders on either side of the barrel, and on the top of the muzzle there was a single plastic green cylinder. The sights didn't need batteries to glow. They just captured any and all light and reflected it throughout the plastic to make the illusion that the sights were glowing. When the green sight was perfectly in between the two red sights, that's when the shotgun is aligned perfectly and ready to be fired.

Down at the shooting range, I positioned my guide's shotgun on a tripod uncle Courtney provided for me. He said that would make it much easier to aim and shoot. Ahead of us was a target with a turkey head printed on it. If I had a decent cluster of pellets anywhere on the head or neck, even if I missed the black box (which was the bullseye)on the center of the target, I had myself Easter dinner!

But there were things that made it harder to shoot than I was used to. The kids around me were about as excited as squirrels at a rave, and I could just see one of those trigger-happy kids forgetting The Cardinal Rule, and shooting someone in the leg or worse. On top of that, the weather was getting to be exponentially worse as dark clouds rolled above us, and the wind blew hard to the right, which meant I'd have a harder time hitting my target.

All I wanted was to get away, and retreat to the safety and shelter of the warm hotel room with some warm food and hot chocolate. I guess that whole experience at the range was God's way of making sure I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. Hunting is full of anxiety, surprises, risks, and bad weather. I just had to bury my face in my camo bandanna, aim for the turkey's neck, not forgetting to take wind and distance into consideration, ignore everything else, and shoot to kill. 

I shot the shotgun just a couple times, delivering a fatal shot to the turkey head target both times, although most of the pellets were carried to the right with the gale. After that, I decided I had enough. The kids around me were getting more and more twitchy and excited each time the officers instructed them to shoot, and I was getting cold. 

Before I left, I went with everyone else to gather our targets. One kid didn't hold his target tight enough, and it blew away. The kid then thought it was a good idea to try and jump the barbed wire fence separating the gun range from a grassy valley, against his father's suggestion to just go though the gate that was standing open several feet away. The kid jumped, almost cleared the fence, but ended up catching the end of his pant leg on the wire. The kid fell on his face, but was so determined to fetch his target (which was bouncing off further down the valley with some speed), that he just pulled his leg away, got up, and wiped dirt off his face as he sprinted to catch his target. I don't know why that memory is so vivid, but I guess it was a warning to not let buck fever get in the way of my logic and listening skills.

Before I could finally retire to the warmth and safety of the hotel room, Tom offered to take us in his truck to show us around just some of the hunting grounds. The hunting grounds were off the main highway, somewhere between Meeker and Rifle.

They were deep in the mountains, which were blanketed in green, brown, and golden stubby grass on top of reddish grey and brown soil. Barren aspens, dark green ponderosa pines, and silvery blue spruces towered over the rest of the wilderness, making me feel small and weak compared to the rest of God's creation. Willows grew along creeks and rivers, decorating the valleys in fiery reds, oranges, and yellows, though their roots always faded to a smokey, purplish grey. The land was also dotted with clusters of red cedar shrubs growing along steep mountainsides, which had twisted, reddish brown and dusty silver trunks, topped with a thick layer of forest green needles. They looked fluffy and soft from a distance, but looks are deceiving. Finally, everywhere else was topped with twiggy, purple and grey, barren bushes, as well as chocolate brown brambles, and these very annoying patches of  burs that stick like velcro, but are about as spiky as a porcupine. In the summer, those burs are actually bright magenta flowers, but they die and dry out to be the most painful plant to sit on besides a cactus. They're fun to flick at your friends when they aren't paying attention, but they're not so fun when they stick to you. 

It was the ugliest time of the year, yet the wilderness was already full of beauty and awe.

As Tom slowly rounded a bend, he stopped and rolled down his window. There, strutting around in a boggy floodplain, a tom turkey was showing himself off to a rafter of hens. None of the hens seemed very interested in him though. They were busy pecking at the ground. But, the tom kept on strutting around, puffed up and ready for a mate. As the tom turkey did this, Tom, my hunting guide, laid on the truck horn a few times. Rather than running away, the tom turkey stretched out his neck and gobbled back. My guide did it again, and again the tom turkey gobbled back. Apparently, when turkeys hear loud noises such as car horns, they will gobble at it rather than run. I'm not exactly sure why they do this, but it's fun to watch to say the least. 

After we gawked at the turkeys for a few more moments, Tom drove us around some more, just to show off a few more acres of his property. Everywhere we looked, there was beauty to be admired. I was simply in awe. The wilderness was beautiful, even when most of the leaf-bearing trees and shrubs were barren and grey. Even the saddest, blandest twigs were somehow beautiful in those woods.

Honestly, I didn't realize how cold and tired I was until I got to our hotel room, and sprawled myself out on my bed. As I did my treatments, I ate some food, drank some hot chocolate I stole from the hotel lobby hours before, and spent the remaining time on my phone, checking social media and texts. Finally, I took a quick shower, got into some warm PJs, and prayed to God that I wouldn't end up dead or unsuccessful the next day.

I was nervous, but excited as well. I didn't really know what the next day held for me, and I worried about my safety. I remembered what my guide said about the weather and predators, and even with my bowie knife (which I ended up forgetting in my duffel bag at the hotel room anyway), there was no way in hell I was winning a fight against a starving black bear. And a 20 gauge shotgun blast would do nothing but further enrage the bear and turn it into the most dangerous apex predator in the universe. I also worried about my accuracy. While my aim was deadly at the range, I was hard on myself, because I only got two puny little pellets out of 200 on the bullseye. I was no sniper that time.

At the same time, something within me kept on reassuring me that I was gonna have the best day of my life. Though that inner voice was small and quiet, compared to the nagging thoughts of worst case scenarios and self doubts that often come with anxiety.

I somehow fell asleep, though I kept waking up every hour because I'd fall asleep thinking about black bears, and the next thing I know, I'm standing in the middle of the wilderness in the shadow of Old Slewfoot. I just hoped 4:00 AM would come quickly, so I could get the next day over with.

 

When our alarm finally did go off, I was already in the bathroom in most of my camo clothes and a toothbrush in my mouth, before my brain actually bothered to start recording. I thought about doing my treatments, but decided that I didn't need them that day. My treatments would be running around outside for the next 14 hours. I just took my morning pills with a few sips of Mountain Dew and a bag of beef jerky, and a half hour after the alarm went off, my guide was at our hotel door. My grandpa opted to go with me that day, while my grandma stayed at the hotel and slept in. My grandpa Lyle is no hunter, but he's getting there. 

When I stepped outside, I was immediately hit with a massive gust of frozen wind that pushed me back a step and felt like a punch to the face. It was more or less God's way of saying, "Wake up! You've got a turkey to hunt!", which, to be honest, was a good wake-up call. But a wind like that just made me want to retreat back into the room and curl up under my warm bed covers for eternity. I was already shivering by the time I got in the truck, which was about 30 seconds from the door of my hotel room to the heated backseat. I warmed up pretty well as I wrestled with the wind for a good minute to get my door shut. As soon as I shut the door, Tom glanced over his shoulder at me and said, "Don't worry, it's completely calm at the hunting grounds. The wind is just rushing off the leeside of the mountains here."

I guess he somehow read my thoughts at that moment, which were something along the lines of, "Nope! Screw it! I'm not dealing with this! I'm just gonna go back to bed until 2 PM, and the wilderness can keep its turkey!". I expected rough weather, but I did not expect to be turned into a popsicle and deprived of any breathable air within just a few seconds of going outside. That's just ridiculous!

But, Tom was right. The wind was only that strong in Meeker because the town's in a flat valley several miles away from the steep slopes of the western mountains. Our hunting grounds were about 20 miles into the forested mountains to the east, so it was very sheltered. The wind warnings that were posted that day didn't really apply to us. 

I sat in silence in the backseat, sipping the rest of my Mountain Dew and watching as the bright lights of Meeker, Colorado faded away in the rear-view mirrors behind us. Pretty soon, it was just me, Tom, and my grandpa, on a pitch dark stretch of highway in a huge, warm pickup truck. Tom and my grandpa engaged in small-talk, and I let my mind wander once more. I wondered if I would be successful that day, how well I'd weather the weather, what to do if I actually encountered a predator, how my grandpa would do in all of this, if my aim was accurate enough to do the job right, and other stuff like that.

Hunting is more genetic than not, and my grandpa wasn't born with that irresistible urge to hunt. The only game my grandpa ever hunted was a pheasant he ran over when he was my age. He threw the pheasant in the back of his pickup and his mom cooked it for dinner. My grandpa's always been a good fisherman, but hunting is much different than fishing.

He left hunting up to his brothers, which really just fell on my great uncle Delton, because my great uncle Gary was more interested in studying physics and mathematics in a pretentious university so he could work for Boeing, than shooting anything in the wild to eat it. Even today, he's spent most of his life by now living in the hippie city of Seattle, and has a soft heart for wildlife. So I don't expect to see uncle Gary hunting anything anytime soon. My uncle Delton's a different story though. He still goes deer hunting on his 800 acres of pastureland in North Dakota every fall, and is very proud of his hunting adventures.

 

About a half hour of driving later, Tom turned onto the dirt county road that led us into the thick mountainous woods. It was still pitch dark outside, and Tom still insisted that when we got out, we had to walk with nothing but a very dim flashlight, and keep our mouths shut. He also told us to walk very carefully; roll our feet on our heels and walk with one heel against the other, so we wouldn't make any noises and could feel for twigs that might snap under our weight.

In other words, we'd act as though we were trying to raid the fridge at 3 AM in a room full of spilled potato chips on rickety hardwood floors, while trying to not wake up the family guard Rottweiler sleeping under the kitchen table. We'd communicate telepathically, because there were no stars or moon that morning, we couldn't talk, we couldn't see, and we couldn't even let our clothes rub against ourselves. Basically, we had to complete an impossible task, even though people have been successfully doing this long before people actually looked like people.

I was amazed by just how silent it was out there. It wasn't a silence that most people are use to. It wasn't the kind of silence that makes your ears ring. It was the kind of silence that cleared my mind and made it possible for me to hear the worms below our feet. When Tom turned the lights off in his truck, it was almost as if I had fallen asleep. Only our breathing and my conscious thoughts let me know that I was not sleeping, and my eyes were still wide open. 

Tom, in the tiniest whisper he could manage, mumbled, "Let's go", and I heard only some movement as he walked away. I followed, and I stumbled and fell multiple times, but within a few minutes, my eyes had actually adjusted. The darkness was equivalent to a pitch dark basement, yet I could see everything around me. It was very strange, but I was happy that I could avoid the holes and roots in the path that kept catching my feet. 

Tom had a blind high up on a mountain, overlooking a valley and towards another, much larger mountain. He had seen the turkeys roost in the trees on the other side of the valley from the blind for weeks, and made sure to set up the blind and decoys where he assumed those birds would fly in that morning. The blind is really just a square camo tent, and decoys are just fake plastic turkeys designed to distract the real turkeys from the hunters in the blind.

To get to the blind, we had to follow a very steep and narrow path that seemed to be frequented by elk. There were elk hoof prints in the soft soil, as well as signs on the trees that the animals were rubbing against them. The path wound around the mountainside and deep into the wilderness for a bit, before finally spitting us out at the blind near the crest of the mountain. 

One by one, we entered the blind, doing our best to not rustle the plastic material too much. I sat in a camo folding lawn chair to the left, my guide to the right, and my grandpa just behind us. Tom helped me set up the shotgun on the tripod, which he, by law, had to carry for me, and then it was just the waiting game. Tom briefly checked his watch, which read 5:30 AM. The sun wouldn't start to come up until about 6:30, which meant it would be awhile before the turkeys woke up. 

In the meantime, I sat in silence with my thoughts, enjoying the cool mountain air and the absolute silence. I wasn't bored at all. It was much different than sitting in a boring waiting room with nothing to do. I didn't even consider messing with my phone, which I had secured in one of my pockets along with a basic flip knife, my wallet, and my hunting tag. I was perfectly content with sitting there with the butt of the shotgun resting firmly against my right shoulder, and just staring out the blind into the pitch dark abyss, thinking about all of the adventures the day had to offer. 

I don't know how much time passed, but I was nearly startled by the sound of some loud crackling just behind me, that sounded awfully like firecrackers. Tom and I looked at each other, and then we glanced behind us to see my grandpa attempting to unwrap a mint. My grandpa stopped midway as Tom and I stared at him, and stared back at us like a deer in the headlights. 

In a low whisper, Tom joked, "I think there's a squirrel in here."

I smiled and nodded in agreement.

We all stifled our laughter, and my grandpa finished unwrapping his candy. I looked back outside while the very first hints of the sunrise began to show. The sky was still mostly black, but a little bit of navy blue was beginning to tint the sky just behind the spruce and pine trees on the right side of the mountain ahead of us. Pretty soon, the whole sky was this deep, navy blue, except for the sky just below the mountain, which was a very pale yellow. Slowly but surely, the sun began to rise, and with it, the woods came alive. 

Several species of songbird began to sing, including robins, sparrows, woodpeckers, and larks. And just below all of that, we heard our first longbeard gobbler hammering in the trees. Tom quickly took out his box turkey call, which worked by moving the striking piece against the wood to imitate several turkey hen calls. The tom turkey we heard just seconds ago fell silent as my guide imitated the call of a hen who was looking for a mate. Turkey hen calls are a unique sound, like the mixture between a squeaky door and nails on a chalkboard, only much more pleasant. Kind of like how salt is perfectly safe and good to eat, but the ingredients that make up salt probably taste terrible and can easily kill you. The call of a turkey hen is music to my ears, just like the calls of the songbirds singing around us. In fact, I think it's the prettiest call a wild bird can make. 

Tom and I waited for a few minutes. It was silent again. Outside, I could see the other mountainside through the brush around us. The sky was a pale white, and the wind had picked up to a gentle breeze. Tom used the box call again and again. But, there were no signs of the turkeys anywhere. The birds fell silent when they hit the ground to avoid attracting predators. At 7:30 AM, Tom gave me a choice; we could stay in the blind and just wait for the turkeys to come to us, though that may not happen, or we could get out there and start looking for the birds ourselves. The Mountain Dew was finally kicking in, and I wanted to get outside and stretch my legs. So I decided that we should start walking.

But first, we had to wait for my grandpa to relieve himself. My grandpa had drank a huge cup of coffee on the way to the hunting grounds, and nature was calling. Those two minutes of waiting felt impossibly long, compared to the two hours we had just spent sitting in the blind doing literally nothing. Ahead, I saw the trail that led us to the blind, and I wanted to follow it, but I had to restrain myself and wait for everyone else to get ready. So, I just paced around in circles near the blind until everyone was ready to go. 

Finally, my grandpa returned from the wilderness behind me, and Tom led us down that path. It T-ed off not far from the blind, and instead of going left back towards the truck, Tom led us right to follow the path to the other side of the mountain. Along the way, we came across plenty of animal scat, fresh tracks, fur, and even a turkey feather. Tom spotted the turkey feather and gave it to me, declaring in a low whisper, "That's a good sign."

However, what I didn't consider good signs were the bear scat and tracks we came across quite often. They were pretty fresh too; no more than a few days old at most. I figured that the predators would leave us alone as long as we were together. Tom was a pretty tall and muscular guy. He was older, in his 60's, but he seemed like the kind of guy who could successfully fight off a grizzly with one arm tied behind his back, so I figured we were safe from bear attacks as long as he was around. 

We eventually came to the other side of the mountain, overlooking a ridge. We could see the county road winding around several more mountains, as well as a small log cabin and white wooden stable hidden in a flat valley. Tom patted my left shoulder and pointed out a mountain directly across the road from us. There, bounding uphill through the barren grey shrubs and red cedar clusters, was a decent sized herd of elk. It was nearly impossible to tell the cows from the bulls that time of year, since the bulls didn't have more than velvet nubs for antlers, which were invisible to the naked eye three quarters of a mile away. But it was still a neat sight. We stared and watched until the last elk clambered to the crest of the mountain, paused for a moment to briefly glance over its shoulder towards us, then trotted down the other side.

The elk were especially skittish due to the high predator activity, which further strengthened my anxious thoughts about getting mauled by a hangry black bear. It was springtime after all. Those bears were awake and they were hungry! I don't fear anything in the wilderness except for bears, as you can probably tell. I'm ok with moose, cougars (just as long as they're not juvenile), bull elk, tom turkeys, snakes, tarantulas (yes, there are tarantulas in parts of Colorado), and birds of prey, but I've heard too many hunting stories about pissed off bears to feel comfortable with them. It actually hits close to home. My grandpa's cousin almost got mauled by a black bear while deer hunting in the Rockies. He shot the bear just as it was rising on its hind legs to tackle him, and the bear fell over and died at his feet. The game wardens allowed my grandpa's cousin to take home the bear, where he butchered and cooked the meat, and tanned the bear's hide to use as a rug.

It turns out most black bears are delicious, as most hunters will tell you. In fact, any predator meat is delicious and highly sought after, just as long as the predator didn't spend most of its time eating rotting carcasses. Bears who eat lots of fish tend to smell and taste like fish. Bears who eat mostly berries have purple fat and a sweet taste to their gamy meat. Bears who eat mostly moose and elk tend to taste like moose and elk. Learning about that really made me think about what I've been putting into my own body. You literally are what you eat. 

My guide tapped my right shoulder to get my attention again, and motioned me to follow him down the path. About halfway down the mountain, Tom looked back and said, "We can either continue to hunt on foot, or we can go get the ranger (4x4 side-by-side) and use that to go from place to place instead." I opted to go fetch the ranger, so Tom led us back the way we came to his pickup truck, which he left parked on the county road. Just as we got into his pickup truck, Tom noticed a decent rafter of hens being led around by a tom. The tom was puffed up and strutting around, hoping to attract a hen in heat, but none of the hens seemed very interested. There was a small path going up the mountainside, and we watched them as they slowly ascended the path. 

"They're headed up the mountain." Tom quietly pointed out, "Let's get the ranger and go up the other side. Hopefully we can meet them in the middle."

Tom lived in a cabin high up on a barren mountain, overlooking the property in nearly every direction. A quarter-mile down the mountain from his cabin was a tractor shed where he kept his ranger, as well as a tractor, and a few of his metal art projects. Tom was in the middle of working on a life-size metal elk silhouette to use as a shooting target, which stood proudly in the center of the shop surrounded by scraps of metal and heavy-duty tools. 

Tom loaded the 20 gauge into a plastic gun case bolted to the trunk of the ranger, and then the three of us packed inside. The ranger wasn't all too impressive. It wasn't like the $50,000 side-by-sides you see racing around in off-road competitions. It was black and forest green, had a backseat and a front seat, basic lap seat belts, and a roll cage but no windows or doors. Tom didn't drive too fast because he didn't want to freeze me to death or make a wrong move, but he did drive between 30 and 40 miles per hour down the county roads, and up to 20 on the rougher paths within the mountains. He just told me to wear my hat backwards so we didn't have to worry about it blowing away, and to bury my face in my bandanna if it got too cold and/or dusty for me. 

I snacked on some beef jerky as Tom drove. We rounded a bend on the county road and turned into the driveway of the little cabin and stable. Though, instead of turning left over a cattle guard and onto the cabin's property, Tom turned right, and onto a narrow, unkempt path that wound around the side of another mountain. There, he gave it hell.

My grandpa later admitted that he was holding on for dear life, clutching to the roll cage bars on either side of him in the backseat. Meanwhile, I sat comfortably in the front passenger seat, grazing on beef jerky and watching as the valley just below us grew more and more distant. As unnerving as it would be to most people, I was pretty confident that Tom knew what he was doing, and even if he made a wrong move, at least we were in a titanium roll cage. Tom ran over 8 foot tall aspen saplings as if they were nothing but grass, and a dusky grouse almost committed suicide on the grill of our ranger, but darted away just in time. 

Eventually, the trail leveled out, and Tom parked. There was a large grove of aspens just to the left, in a little bowl surrounded by the mountain. They were barren, but the ground around them was still blanketed in rotting aspen leaves from the season before. We dashed into the aspens, and Tom quietly called for the turkeys while I sat among the trees with the shotgun resting on the tripod and my shoulder, patiently waiting and hoping for the turkeys to come up the trail and meet us. Unfortunately, they didn't. Even when Tom and I made our way to the trail where it sloped down the other side to call, nothing responded. Not even a yelp. 

 

I felt a little discouraged, and followed Tom back to the ranger. As usual, Tom drove us down the mountain and towards the main county road. We drove back to where we originally saw the turkeys, and Tom took out his box call and called a few times. Seconds later, we heard a gobble. I thought it was coming from the mountains to the left, but Tom and my grandpa thought it was coming from the mountains to the right. The wind distorted the sound, so it could've come from anywhere. Tom and my grandpa led me to the mountains on the right, where we took shelter under a pine tree and sat waiting and straining our ears. 

My guide used his box call again, and we got a distant reply. My hearing was correct. The turkey was hiding in the mountains to the left. So, very quickly, we got up and moved to the other side of the county road, across the boggy floodplain, and up the trail we had previously seen the rafter of turkeys. The floodplain was really starting to smell, which I didn't really care to know why. It smelled like death mixed in with pine needles and mildew. 

There was an abandoned cabin halfway up the mountainside. After Tom called to the turkeys a few more times, and determined that the turkeys were somewhere around that cabin, slowly and carefully, we crept up an overgrown path once used by the cabin owners. Tom got us right up to the turkeys, and helped me to set up the tripod as quickly as possible just off the path. We had to be extremely careful, because there were twigs and dead leaves just waiting to be crunched, ruining my chance of getting that tom turkey. My grandpa crouched down just behind us, and we all stayed painfully still as Tom called for the turkeys. The turkeys called back, and they sounded closer each time.

After awhile, the calls stopped. But the turkeys were very close. A few minutes in, I could hear rustling in the brush just to my right, that sounded like it belonged to a turkey or two. I didn't dare to move though. I stayed perfectly still, and hoped that the turkey would strut right in front of my sights. Apparently, that tom turkey we had seen earlier scored a mate, which is why he fell silent. He was really having a good time. When he was finished, he came closer to us, and was less than 4 feet away from me at one point. I could see his iridescent bronze feathers gleaming in the sunlight in the far corners of my peripheral vision, while he stood under an evergreen. But he saw my grandpa, and immediately darted off into the woods never to be seen again. 

Even if he hadn't been spooked by my grandpa, I wouldn't have been able to shoot the turkey. That old longbeard was smart enough to come around behind me, and was so close, that if I even twitched, he would've seen me. Still, I glanced back to see why he had spooked if my grandpa had been so still. It would've been awesome to be within reaching distance to a wild turkey even if I couldn't safely shoot it. Maybe then, I would've had the chance to harvest a turkey in a less conventional, more primitive way. My grandpa was allergic to the trees, and kept pulling out a bright white tissue, and pulling down his bandanna to wipe his nose. The bird had seen his white tissue and ran off. I scolded my grandpa for that, pointing out that turkeys can see all of the colors we can see, actually have sharper vision than us, and are incredibly skittish. After that, my grandpa agreed to just let his bandanna deal with his allergies for him. 

I was again discouraged by this, but Tom told me to keep my head up, and he was gonna get us a shot at a tom turkey if it killed us that day! We trudged back down to the ranger, and Tom decided to drive us back to the truck to get warmed up and radio for some advice. There were two other turkey hunters on that land that day. They had nothing to do with the CPW youth hunt, but they also had turkey tags for that land. They were two guys from Chicago, and they had come down to hunt turkeys. Turns out, neither of the guys liked wild turkey meat, but knew that their friend, my guide, loved it. So, they went through all of the trouble of buying tags and flying down from Chicago to go turkey hunting that weekend, just so they could leave the birds behind for Tom.

Once we got back to the truck, Tom made sure I ate and drank something. I was running on a Mountain Dew and 10 ounces of beef jerky. Even though I didn't feel like eating or drinking, if I didn't, I was bound to crash, and Tom didn't want to carry my unconscious body down a mountain. While I snacked on some pretzels and chugged down some water, Tom radioed the two other hunters on the property and asked for guidance. 

The guys responded, saying they had a successful hunt earlier that morning, but decided to stay for the rest of the day to scout for turkeys for us, hike around, and look for sheds (antlers) left behind by the bucks and bulls that winter. They gave us two locations to look for wild turkeys. The first location was on the other side of Tom's cabin from the area we were hunting before, and the second was the valley on the other side of the mountain where the little cabin and stable were. The guys were on a ridge overlooking the valley with the cabin and stable, and said they hadn't seen anything yet, so we ought to check out the other location first. 

The first location was a range of mountains that was almost completely barren of any brush. It was mostly covered in aspens, barren twiggy willows, brambles and burs. It didn't help that the sun was out and wind was really picking up, making it much harder to avoid getting stuck by the brambles and the burs. I made sure to keep my sunglasses and bandanna over my face. The last thing I wanted was to get a mouthful or eyeful of burs. I tried to avoid the burs as best I could while keeping up with my guide and grandpa. 

Eventually, after stumbling around through the brush for awhile, we made it to the crest of the mountain. Up there, the wind whistled through the twigs, making a sound that was just like distant cougar screams. I felt the cold wind biting at my face, so I buried my face into my bandanna even more. I knew it would be that cold and windy, so I made sure to dress for it, and thankfully my layers did stop the wind from chilling me to the bone. Eventually, we came to a small ditch, where Tom had us all crouch down as he called for turkeys. While he called for turkeys, I used a stick I found on the ground to get rid of the burs and brambles that stuck to my clothes. I knew if I tried to just pull them off with my gloves, I'd have even more issues, so I just slowly and carefully flicked them off with a stick. 

We were up there for a good 20 minutes, hoping to hear and/or see some turkeys, but all we could hear was the wind and our own breathing. Tom decided that we spent enough time up there, and clearly the turkeys had sought lower ground in the weather. The turkeys would be exposed to predators and the wind in the sun, and were probably busy picking at roots and seeds in the shaded valleys below. 

Tom had us hurry up, and I was practically sprinting by the time we made it down to the base of the mountain. I dove into the truck, and the men weren't far behind. I had a quick reality check when I sat down on a bur I had picked up along the way, so I had to take some time getting that off before I could actually get in the truck. Meanwhile, my grandpa sat in the front passenger seat, and my guide called over the radio. 

Our scouts quickly called back, excitedly announcing that there was a huge rafter of turkeys in the valley near the cabin and the stable, and we had to get there right then, but to bring the ranger! So, Tom threw his truck into drive, spun around, and got us to the ranger. Once in it, he ignored the 35 mile per hour speed limit on the road, and drove the ranger about as fast as it could go. I'm not sure how fast we were going, but it was probably close to 50. 

Once we got to where we could see the valley, there were a few trees blocking our view of the whole valley. Tom got out, and instructed us to follow. For a brief moment, I was distracted by the distinct scent of death, which seemed to be coming from a blind the two hunters were hunting from. Sure enough, hidden in that blind were two older tom turkeys, laying there being cooled off. Tom noticed I'd been distracted, and sharply called my name, beckoning me to follow him and my grandpa. He led us to the left, away from the blind in the valley, and up a draw. On top, there were two men in casual flannel clothing. They'd left their hunting gear behind in the blind once they filled their tags. One was standing on the edge of the ridge with a pair of binoculars, and the other came over to greet us. 

He told Tom about the turkeys they were seeing. The turkeys were slowly following the valley up into the mountains. From where we stood, we couldn't see anything, so the man with the binoculars came over, and then passed the binoculars around. Tom had his own pair. My grandpa looked through the binoculars first and located the turkeys, then it was my turn. One of the guys threw his arm around my shoulders and pointed in the general direction of the turkeys. Sure enough, there were dozens of turkeys, and I counted seven puffed-up toms!

Tom quickly thanked them, and the three of us bounded back down the draw into the valley and across the road. Tom led us into the mountains rather than through the valley where we'd be exposed. The wind was still rushing through the trees as dark clouds gathered to the west above us. This made me nervous, because I don't do well in the cold, and feared that this possible storm could cut the hunt short. But I did my best to ignore it as Tom led us across the steep mountainside in the shelter of the red cedars, blue spruces, and ponderosa pines. 

The thing that caught me off guard where the number of bones we were stumbling over. The mountainside looked like an above-ground graveyard. Dry, sun-bleached bones, belonging mostly to elk, were scattered everywhere, creating the illusion of snow in some places. I crushed many ribs and skull caps under my boots as I did my best to stay quiet without letting Tom get too far away, or losing my balance on the very steep and slippery mountainside. Suddenly, Tom motioned us to immediately drop to the ground. So, I did as he motioned and squatted down, putting some of my body weight on my right fist while I rested my left arm across my knees.

It sounded just like thunder, though it was constant and distant, and kept getting louder and louder. I began to shake with anxiety, because I was certain that thundering sound belonged to the storm system headed for us, and Tom wanted us to brace for it. Instead, straight ahead of us, no more than 15 yards away, dozens of elk came charging up the mountainside. Elk never looked bigger to me up until they were charging up the mountainside, just mere feet from us. They were so close, that I could see the whites in their eyes, snot dripping from their nostrils, and patches on their hides where they had shed their winter coat. I noticed a single bull among the cows. He had a few nubs of velvet antlers that were just starting to grow. I could tell he was an old bull because of just how large his antlers already were. But as quickly as I saw him, and the rest of the herd, they charged over the other side of the mountain, and were gone forever.

I was just in awe. I just crouched there with my eyes wide and jaw hanging open, unable to move for a few moments after the last elk disappeared. I wasn't afraid, but I wasn't off-guard either. It was just a new feeling. Something within me had been triggered at that moment, and suddenly all of my anxieties about the weather and predators left my mind, and were replaced by a deep, burning passion for hunting. Suddenly, I was motivated and optimistic. Suddenly, I just knew I would hunt for the rest of my life, no matter what. Rain or shine, sleet or snow, wind or calm, illness or health, I was gonna hunt every chance I had until the day I died. Even then, I figured heaven's got some pretty great wilderness too.

Needless to say, we didn't get any turkeys to come up to us, but being no further than 50 feet away from an elk stampede was almost better than bringing back a turkey. I ended up picking up a small vertebrae from the piles of bones on the mountainside, just to serve as a reminder of what happened. I'm not sure what it belongs to. It's smaller than an elk's, but too big to belong to a coyote. It probably belonged to an early fawn, or something like that. Whatever it came from, I still have those bones on my bookshelf. 

Rain began to quietly drizzle the ground as we made our way back to the ranger. As usual, Tom got in the driver's seat while I got in the front passenger, and my grandpa got into the backseat. It was about 2:30 in the afternoon, and Tom finally decided that it was time to get us some lunch. My grandpa couldn't wait for that moment, and as soon as we had cell service, he called my grandma to tell her to meet us at a historical restaurant in Meeker called the Meeker Cafe. 

Tom drove us to Meeker in his truck. I was pretty silent while my grandpa and him talked. The adrenaline I was feeling was allowed to wear off in the truck, and by the time we got to Meeker, I was so hungry that I felt weak and shaky. Once we got there, we ordered our food quickly. I had a chance to use the restroom and wash off the mud and dust that turned my face a dark shade of reddish grey. 

Finally, shortly after I sat down, our food arrived. Tom was quite impressed by the number of pills I take before every meal. He joked that he struggled to take two little advil pills, let alone the handful of horse-sized medication I take. I laughed and dug into my food. I barely had time to taste the bison burger I was eating. My grandparents gently teased me for it, asking why I was in such a huge hurry. The thing is, Tom was eating his food about as quickly as myself, so my grandparents ate their meal fairly quickly too as we discussed plans for the last two or three hours of daylight we had left. 

Tom kindly paid for our order, rather than splitting the check, and we agreed upon a plan; my grandparents would follow me and Tom to the hunting grounds in their SUV, park on the county road, and Tom would lead me through the wilderness in hopes of finding some turkeys preparing to roost. If we didn't get anything, at least we'd have an idea where the turkeys would roost for the night, so we could meet them there early the next morning. 

The drive back to the hunting grounds was tense and nearly silent. I knew what to do as soon as we got out of the truck. I watched my grandparents behind us through the rear-view mirror, and occasionally glanced up to stare at the great outdoors as we sped past it. The wind had died down considerably, though it was still howling. The sky was dark shades of blue and grey, and pockets of white sheets of sleet poured down on the silver and green wilderness below. 

The air felt different. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I was excited and hopeful. I prayed to God in my thoughts, hoping He'd provide me something to eat before dusk arrived. I had two hours. If I didn't get anything within those two hours, I would have to return to the hunting grounds early the next morning. However, there was always a chance that I could score something that evening instead of the next. 

According to Tom, all of the other youth hunters had successfully gotten their turkeys. I was the last one on the field. Some kids got their turkeys within the first hour of daylight, and others had gotten them just as we made our way back to the hunting grounds from the Meeker Cafe. Most of those kids, if not all, had gotten tom turkeys that were no older than two years old. Most of them would be considered jakes, which are just teenage turkeys. I hoped that I didn't just spend 11 hours hunting, only to bring home a jake. I wanted something bigger, not for the trophy, but for the food. 

My heart was pounding a million miles a second as we turned onto the county road that led into the hunting grounds. It pounded even faster and harder when Tom parked the truck and asked me if I was ready to get myself a turkey. I nodded, and together we stepped outside, carefully closing our doors so they didn't slam. 

Tom retrieved the shotgun from the gun case in the truck bed, and rested it on his shoulder as I trailed just behind him. He led me to the edge of the boggy floodplain, and then across it to the woods on the other side. He then looked back at me and asked, with a little bit of orneriness in his eyes, if I was ready to keep up. We had less than two hours to cover a quarter-mile of steep wilderness, call in a turkey, and kill it. I nodded, and he took off in a jog. 

I followed him up the mountainside through the woods, and then along a very narrow "path", that I honestly don't even think was a path. It was just a lip of soft soil that lined the mountain near the crest. I started to slow down, while Tom didn't. I thought about calling out to him to slow down, but I knew that was a great way to ensure no turkeys would be shot that evening. So instead, I dropped to my hands and just started charging. To be honest, I have no idea what compelled me to drop on my hands and run like a bear, but I had an easier time breathing, my legs didn't feel like they were engulfed in flames anymore, and I was catching up to Tom. 

As I ran, sweat dripped off the bridge of my nose as sputum filled my windpipe and mouth, making my breaths sound like tiger growls. Luckily for me, the wind had actually picked up a bit, and was rushing through the trees and drowning out my growls. Tom looked back briefly to make sure I was still alive, and decided to pause for just a few breaths to give me a break. 

"From now on, I'm calling you Wildcat!" Tom declared rather loudly, though his voice wouldn't scare away the turkeys in that weather. 

I was actually flattered. I couldn't deny it either. I was galloping on all fours, making noises that could easily be mistaken for a pissed off mountain cougar, with sputum and sweat dripping off my face like rain. Plus, if the sun shines on them right, the irises in my eyes do look like gold, which has led to some pretty awkward staring contests with curious strangers. So, I accepted my new nickname, and then nodded my head to let Tom know that I was ready for the final stretch. 

Tom jogged ahead of me, as I continued to run on all fours. At one point, my back legs slipped out from under me on some mud, and I found myself dangling off the mountainside by my arms. Tom stopped and looked back as I pulled myself back up, but I was already sprinting at him full speed before he could help me. So, we just kept going, and going, and going, until finally the thick green woods gave way to a gully of aspens, which descended to the floodplain below. And, just across the floodplain, was my grandparents' SUV, where my grandparents sat and watched. They couldn't see me, but I could clearly see them. 

Tom and I crossed the gully, and I sat just behind one of the aspens. I didn't bring my tripod, but instead used a broken branch as my tripod, which jutted out from the base of the aspen. I aimed my shotgun into the thick wilderness ahead of us, and Tom handed me a yellow 20 gauge shell, which I carefully loaded into the shotgun and closed the chamber. 

"This is it." I thought to myself as I gazed into the empty woods, "It's now or never." 

Tom used his box call to call any possible turkeys. Nothing. Silence. We sat there for ten minutes while Tom mimicked various hen calls with his box call and a diaphragm call (which is a small plastic piece you put into your mouth and blow into to mimic turkey hen calls.). Still nothing. A few more minutes go by, and I started to feel my heart sink a little. 

"Please God." I thought, "Just give me one shot." 

Just as I ended that thought, a huge lone tom turkey came strutting towards us, proudly displaying his fan and feathers for us to admire. He gobbled in response to my guide's calling, and continued to show himself off. He was a strange turkey. He was old and alone, and later on I found out Tom had no idea that turkey was even living on his land. Maybe God just materialized a wild turkey just for me to hunt, though chances are the bird actually came from the wilderness across the highway, knowing that those 50,000 acres had more than enough hens to breed. 

But what was even stranger, is that the bird did not leave no matter what. 

Right as he came up, I had a good clear shot on his outstretched neck. The world fell silent as my vision tunneled through the sights. I had the little green dot right on the bird's neck as I slowly squeezed the trigger. 

Click. 

Nothing happened. The trigger gave way, and the forestock came loose. I more or less died inside, knowing that I'd probably scare the tom away if I tried to move, but Tom motioned me to open the chamber anyway, and then slip it forward again with some force to make sure the chamber was actually closed. Meanwhile, Tom used various hen calls to keep the tom turkey calm and distracted. 

Once I had the shotgun locked and loaded, I had to wait. The turkey had moved behind a few shrubs, but he was still clearly there. He moved up the mountainside to my left, slowly strutted across the gully no more than 20 yards away, and then descended the mountain on the other side. For about ten minutes, he disappeared and was not responding to my guide's hen calls. 

I thought we had lost him. Maybe he found a rafter of hens nearby. Maybe he got spooked somehow. Maybe he just gave up and flew away. Whatever happened, for about five minutes, I was convinced he was not coming back. I took advantage of his disappearance to turn around just in case. But, just when I thought to nudge my guide to ask if we should pack up and leave, the tom turkey came back. 

He was still puffed up, and he was gobbling; clearly trying to locate the two hens Tom was mimicking. The tom crossed the gully below us this time, and then strutted just ahead of some brambles less than 15 yards away. Tom helped to slowly guide my shotgun to another broken branch to use as a rest for the barrel. The tom turkey was right there. All I had to do was keep the green dot between the two red dots, as well as keep it on the turkey's neck. 

Again, the world fell silent, and my vision tunneled. It was just like a dream, only real. I slowly began to pull back on the trigger, and I felt it click, but again, nothing happened. 

This time, neither myself or my guide fooled around. Our tom turkey was beginning to grunt with suspicion. Normally, when tom turkeys do this, they're seconds away from taking off. Yet, my guide mimicked the chirps of a grazing hen to calm and distract the tom turkey, while I changed out the rounds. 

Finally, I figured I actually had a good round in the chamber. So, one final time, I focused my sights on the bird's head, slowly squeezed the trigger, and this time the shotgun kicked back into my shoulder. 

I was pretty dazed and confused. Both my hearing and vision went for a few seconds, and slowly faded back to me. When I could finally start to figure out what just happened, my guide had already taken the shotgun from me, and was down by the bird. The tom turkey was flapping around, but he was dead. 

I tried to stand up so I could go over there and wrestle my turkey to the ground, but I immediately fell over. I was sitting on my left foot the entire time, and I had been sitting there while my guide communicated with the turkey for a good hour before I finally had a successful shot. So, while Tom continued to try and grab my turkey, I scooted over to a tree and starting to beat the hell out of my left foot against it. I figured that if I could just gain a little bit of feeling into my foot, then I could limp down to my bird and carry it over to my grandparents'. My foot started to hurt pretty badly, but I was relieved that I at least had some sort of feeling, got up, and limped down to my turkey. 

The tom turkey had come to rest on his back in some brambles. My guide congratulated me and instructed me to reach down and pick the bird up by his legs, which were sticking straight up towards the sky. I did, and I was honestly amazed by how much that tom weighed! I then threw it over my shoulder, and followed Tom back down the mountain, across the floodplain, and right over to my grandparents, who had heard the shot and seen everything unfold, and were already ready and waiting outside of their SUV. 

Once there, we worked on filling out and signing the tag, taking pictures, and telling the story of the two failed shots. Tom pulled out the round that didn't fire, and it was damaged. The firing pin had made its mark on the round the first time, but didn't have enough power to actually cause the round to explode. So, when I loaded the shotgun with the same round the second time, the firing pin hit the round, but it wasn't able to trigger an explosion because the primer was already dented. The third time, a new round was loaded into the shotgun correctly, and the primer wasn't dented before the firing pin struck it with enough force to fire the shotgun.  

It was a miracle that tom turkey stayed around, even throughout all of that! In pretty much every other case, the turkey would've been long gone before I even had a chance to load the shotgun a second time. Maybe the bird had some instinct issues. Maybe he was just desperate and stupid. I'm willing to bet on the latter, because the tom was alone, older, and clearly looking for a mate. He thought he had scored two desperate hens, when in fact we were just fooling him. 

Whatever the reason though, I was just relieved that I reached my ultimate goal, which was to get a tom turkey. However, I must admit, shooting the tom wouldn't make it to a top ten list of highlights from the whole experience if I made one. Being out in the wilderness, participating in nature like our ancestors have been doing for millions of years was what I'll ultimately remember. Nature is not a spectator sport. In order to get the full experience of nature and the woods, and help out nature the most, you have to be a participant, no matter how strange that sounds. 

And, also, there is a level of sadness that comes with watching an animal die, especially when you're the one ultimately calling the shots. It's not sadness that comes from a place of remorse. It's just the sting of death that brings a tinge of sadness, but the joy of the whole experience, topped with the satisfaction of filling out the tag and bringing home meat for the freezer, ultimately over-rides that sadness. It's still never easy to pull the trigger, but as hunters, we know it's our duty to do so. 

Hunting the turkey was only half of the work. Shortly after pictures were taken, my guide sent me off back to the truck with the bird over my shoulder. The truck was about a half mile down the road, and to be honest, that tom turkey felt a lot heavier than 30 pounds by the time I made it to Tom's truck. 

I gently laid it down in the truck bed, and then sat down in the front passenger seat. Tom was not far behind me. He checked to make sure the tom turkey was safely in the back, before getting the driver's seat and heading off towards his cabin, with my grandparents just behind us. As we drove, heavy sleet began to fall. I didn't realize it until then, but I was actually pretty cold and damp. I just didn't bother to notice it earlier, because I was hellbent on getting a shot at a tom turkey before dusk. 

Tom drove us all the way up to his cabin, and then opened up his garage. He had a large garage, which had a smaller pickup parked in it. Tom used the tailgate of that pickup as a table to start butchering the turkey. Tom gave me a filet knife while he also held one, and together we butchered the bird. I decided to take as much as the bird home as possible.

Unfortunately, I only had a small baggie for the iridescent bronze feathers that blanketed most of the turkey's body, but I had enough room in the cooler to take the feather fan, beard, feet, and a couple of wing feathers. I also took the breasts, carcass, thighs, and heart of the tom turkey. I would've taken the neck, but it was full of lead. Thankfully, none of the best meat had been touched by any of the shotgun beads, so I was able to take home everything else that I wanted. 

Tom made sure that I knew what I was doing. He told me to not cut directly into the bird with the knife, but rather slowly and carefully skin the bird first to expose the breasts, before taking a lot of time and care to remove the breasts. The innards of a wild turkey are full of overpowering rotting smells because a wild turkey's spring diet is mostly made of bugs and rotting roots. 

As gross as that sounds, it doesn't actually give the meat a bad taste. The meat just has a bit of an earthy taste, along with a rich taste of game. 

Before I could leave, Tom had just a few more things to show me. He led me and my grandparents into his cabin, which was really nice and modern. There, we met his wife, who was very kind and invited us to have dinner. Unfortunately, we couldn't stay for dinner. We didn't have ice for the cooler, and we had to rush back to Meeker to get some ice before the stores closed. Plus, 14 hours in the wilderness exhausts a person, and I needed to clean myself up and lay down. 

Tom's cabin was decorated with amazing taxidermy of nearly every North American animal. But Tom's pride and joy was upstairs in the loft. My grandma and I walked up to the loft, and were greeted by a full body mount of a 300 pound mountain cougar. I didn't even know they could get so big, but they can. It was mounted as if it was crawling down a mountain and hissing. It had to be 20 feet long from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail. I was certainly a beautiful animal, but was something I would definitely not want to meet in the wild. 

Thankfully, older cougars avoid humans for the most part. It's the younger, smaller cougars that often cause the most trouble. 

As a final farewell, Tom gave me three more wild turkey fans, along with my own. He said I could use them as references for when I'm setting my own wild turkey tail fan. 

I got in the car with my grandparents, and we slowly drove away from the cabin, passed the tractor shed where the ranger sat parked, and then down to the valley where fiery willows grew along the creek in the ditch. Sleet rained heavy down from the darkening sky, and I watched the wilderness go by one final time as we followed the dirt county road to the highway, and from there sped straight to Meeker. 

Back in the hotel, I slowly shed my layers. I had picked up a number of tics and burs along the way, but nothing that was dangerous to my health. I don't think I've ever had such a long, satisfying shower before. 

Just before I went to bed, I helped my grandparents clean up the meat before putting it away in our makeshift freezer. It still had some feathers and dust all over it, but was otherwise clean and ready to be cooked. There was no more than 15 pounds of meat that came from the turkey, but that was still a lot considering what I hunted. Usually, wild turkeys don't provide more than 10 pounds of meat. The fact that I had 15 pounds was something to be very proud of. 

The next day, we woke up at 4:00 AM to start heading home. Bad weather had finally settled across the state, turning the roads slick and making it hard to see. Our five hour drive turned into a seven hour drive, but I did not care. I was proud of what I had accomplished the day before. I wouldn't have complained if we had to stay a night in another mountain town hotel. I was just so full of joy from the turkey hunt. 

When I finally made it home that afternoon, I waved my grandparents goodbye, who would take charge of the meat for me. The turkey breasts were for Easter dinner the following weekend at uncle Courtney's house. My grandma found a wonderful recipe for the wild turkey. 

My grandma marinated the turkey in buttermilk for two days, and then at uncle Courtney's Easter Sunday, tossed it around in some flour and mild spices, and then pan-fried it. While she cooked it, uncle Courtney let me ride his best horse, Smudge, who was really just young and wild and needed to get some exercise in. I rarely get to actually ride horses, so it was nice to get back in the saddle again before dinner. 

Everyone, including my mom, wolfed down that turkey. I was surprised that my mom actually enjoyed the wild turkey. She's not a fan of wild game, and probably would be against hunting if it wasn't for me. I was pretty glad to see her, and the rest of the family, enjoy what I had provided for them, or more specifically, what God provided for us, since it took a few prayers and miracles to bring that tom turkey home.

That's ultimately why hunters hunt these days. Food for the table is extremely important, and there are laws in place that make hunters eat the wild game that they kill, except for if it's vermin, such as a ground hog or a coyote. Even then, those things can still be prepared and eaten, though they often have diseases and hidden parasites.

Poachers are the ones who just hunt to kill, or hunt just for a set of antlers. Hunters hate poachers probably more than anyone else, and we actively fight against them and their actions constantly. It's ok to brag about the size of the antlers of your kills, just as long as you ate what you hunted too, or at least gave the meat to someone who would eat it. 

The two guys that were hunting on Tom's land gave Tom their wild turkeys. They didn't like the taste of wild game, but they came all the way from Chicago for the adventure, and in the end, gave the meat to someone who would eat it. They didn't hunt for the feathers or the fan. They didn't even hunt for the meat. They hunted because they loved the adventure of hunting, and were extremely grateful that Tom allowed them to hunt on his land. Just the adventure of hunting is worth the trouble of training and studying, buying tags and gear, and withstanding the elements. Tom's wife said her favorite game was wild turkey meat, and those two turkeys wouldn't last a month at her house. 

To be honest, I can eat an entire pronghorn in two weeks if I don't control myself, but I decide to let it last at least a month, because like all wild game, pronghorn is precious and rare. As for the turkey, it lasted a lot longer than a month because my grandparents had the meat in their freezer. Plus, I wasn't used to cooking wild turkey, and didn't want to ruin the meat, so I let my grandparents handle it and turn it into food we could all enjoy.

Aside from frying up the turkey's breasts and heart, the turkey's legs were turned into soup, and its carcass was used to make a few gallons of bone broth, which were amazing in so many ways. The turkey soup tasted like nothing I've ever had before, and I loved it. And I love drinking a mug of hot chocolate during the cold winter evenings, but nothing can beat a hot mug of wild turkey broth when it's cold and snowy outside. 

Finally, the turkey feather fan, beard, and legs, all turned out nicely. I keep them all displayed on shelves at home, except for the legs. My grandpa liked them so much that I gave them to him, and they're currently set up on a shelf in his garage. 

....