Note: After thinking about this for a long time, I decided that I needed to include some of the more gory pictures from the hunt. After all, I don't want to hold back on the realities of hunting for the memoir.
"It's something you're born with, sewed into your soul. That deep desire, that burning fire, man it just goes to show. This ain't a past time. It's how we live our lives. It's like a drug, it's in the blood. It's in the blood." ~ Walt Gabbard.
I woke up at exactly the same time the next morning as I did the last, and got ready the exact same way as before. The only difference being we did run into the hotel manager again, who with the friendliest smile I've ever seen, rejected my grandma's credit card, and gave her a receipt with a $0.00 total. He was a staunch supporter of hunting, and especially of Outdoor Buddies, and wanted to show us his gratitude by letting us stay in his hotel for free. We thanked him profusely for allowing us to stay at his hotel for free, and then headed off for the hunting grounds. We stuffed all of our luggage in the trunk, and I kept my rifle in its case leaning against me the whole drive there.
As we drove, I listened to a country song about hunting. With every lyric, my heart thumped faster, and despite having very little Mountain Dew, my veins were full of adrenaline and I was jittery as hell. For some reason, while I tried to humble myself by reminding myself that hunters aren't always successful, I was convinced I was gonna bring a pronghorn home that day. Maybe it was sleep deprivation, or the hotel manager's kindness, or Walt Gabbard's song "It's in the Blood", which I had on repeat the whole ride. I forgot to eat breakfast as well, and perhaps my hunger triggered some predatory instinct that had been suppressed the previous morning. Whatever it was, I was way more than ready by the time we arrived at camp.
Thankfully, Mike and Tom were in the same boat as me. When we arrived, they were already there with the truck registered and running. All we had to do was sign our names on a clipboard in the check-in tent, which had almost no one in it that morning, and then we could go.
It was still relatively dark outside. The sky was a dark navy blue, but the sooner we got away from camp and into the hunting grounds, the better. We could stalk pronghorn all we wanted, just as long as we didn't use a flashlight, as that's not only illegal, but it would spook the pronghorn anyway. We just had to wait for the sun to fully rise to shoot.
I was mostly worried about visibility, and the possibility of my rifle's scope fogging up. It wasn't windy, but it was cold and very foggy. I assumed that some of the fog would burn off at sunrise, but I knew it probably wouldn't burn off completely. I figured that my scope would be just fine, just as long as I didn't breathe on it. However if it did fog up, I hoped my vision and skills would still be good enough to take a shot without the aid of my scope. Such a feat would be very difficult, but not impossible.
Tom decided we ought to head east, rather than straight north or south. We hadn't had a chance to explore those places. Plus, it would be safer, as the southeastern and far southern hunting grounds had no cattle on them, and probably had no other hunters either. I agreed with him, but I was much more invested in loading up my magazine for my rifle, which was much harder to do with gloves. I was very careful about which rounds I loaded into the magazine. The last thing I wanted was to load a defective round in the chamber, and have another episode like I had during the turkey hunt. It took me about 10 minutes to load in 5 rounds just because of how selective I was, even though every round in the box was just fine. Meanwhile, Tom slowly drove down the dirt road, while Mike struggled to spot any pronghorn. Our visibility had been reduced to only several yards ahead of us in the headlights, and it was a lot less in the dark.
Tom suddenly slammed on the brakes hard enough for me to drop my loaded magazine and scramble to catch the other 25 rounds before they had a chance to pour out of the box. My grandma quickly grabbed the barrel of my rifle before it could tip over, and held out her hand just in case any rounds escaped the box. None of them did. Up ahead of us, a large herd of pronghorn does was crossing the road. They ran together in a tight herd, but had to form a single-file line to cross the fence to the southern hunting grounds. They were very stressed out, and kept looking towards the east rather than north towards us. Something was chasing them, and for a few seconds, we had no idea what. For all we knew, we were about to witness a cougar leap out of the fog and onto the back of a spooked pronghorn. While mountain cougars usually stay in the mountains, sometimes they will venture out on the plains in search of food, with pronghorn being one of their favorite meals.
Pronghorn aren't built to jump barbed-wire fences. They are built to run. Since they're not very tall, they can easily slide under barbed-wire fences, which is much easier for them to do rather than build up the speed to jump the fence. Oftentimes, when pronghorn do try to jump the fence, their rear hooves will get caught in the barbed wire, and they will panic, causing the wire to wrap around their legs even tighter. Pronghorn die of exhaustion, starvation, and/or predators if they are unable to free themselves. It's not uncommon to find bones scattered by barbed-wire fences for this very reason.
Tom slowly drove forward, pushing a younger doe away from the others. She trotted ahead of us, desperately looking for another place to dive under the fence. The fur on her neck and rear was puffed up. Since pronghorn don't have large tails like deer do, the way they warn other pronghorn of danger is by fluffing up the fur on the back of their necks and butts, which makes them look a lot bigger than they really are, and alerts other pronghorn of nearby danger. Out of the fog came a very large and excited buck, which startled the little doe into sliding under a part of the fence she could barely fit under, with the buck practically on top of her.
Mike glanced at me just as he opened up his door, and I followed him. I charged out of the truck with my rifle in one hand and the loaded magazine in the other before Tom had a chance to come to a complete stop. Mike was sprinting just ahead of me, looking after the pronghorn, who were oblivious to us the whole time.
Mike skidded to a stop at the fence and held his arm out for me to hand over my rifle. I didn't even slow down when I handed him my rifle, or when I put my arms together to slide under the fence where the pronghorn just had. I slid further than I intended, so I had to force myself to backtrack to get my rifle while Mike threw himself under the fence as well. He spent a lot more time crawling under the fence than I had, because his backpack got caught on one of the barbs and slowed him down. I used that time to load my rifle, push a round into the chamber, and flick on the safety. Meanwhile, the pronghorn were just ahead of us, and disappeared below a ridge a few dozen yards away as Mike extracted himself from under the barbed-wire fence. Like I expected, the fog was burning off quickly, so I was able to see almost a mile in every direction.
I took several deep breaths to calm myself down while Mike took the lead. We stayed low to the ground as we gently approached the ridge. Mike slowly removed his backpack and set it on the ground, and I quietly crept forward and placed the barrel of my gun on his bag, and attempted to sight something in. I could see the pronghorns' white butts, but other than that, my view was blocked by a twitchy silver sagebrush. I slowly scooted to the left, and sighted in a broadside doe at about 175 yards. She was standing perfectly still. But just as I was about to flick off the safety, the buck came in and chased her off. I desperately searched for another doe to shoot before the buck came in and moved her too, but unfortunately, the grass and sagebrush ahead of me was just too tall. I cussed under my breath and slammed my fist into the sandy soil as the buck got every doe to canter out of range. I watched their fluffy white butts disappear down a draw and into the fog.
Mike sighed with disappointment too, but reminded me that it was only about seven in the morning, and we'd find something eventually. He convinced me that those does were a very good sign. There were so many of them. Surely, we'd come across them again if we followed their general direction. Mike also asked if I'd be comfortable taking a kneeling or standing shot next time, and I figured I could. Just as long as my shot was clear, steady, and locked on my target, I could take a successful shot standing or kneeling. A kneeling or standing shot would be harder than a shot laying down, because of the stability of the barrel. If the crosshairs are even a millimeter off-target, that could cause the bullet to stray away from the target by several feet, if not more.
We slowly trudged back to the truck, and I handed Mike my rifle as I crawled under the fence, and then Mike handed me my rifle back when I was on the other side. I unloaded my rifle and flicked on the safety, leaving the chamber open and empty, while Mike dragged himself under the fence and met me by the truck. We got back into the truck and rested on the heated seats, and Tom immediately wanted to know what happened. Why weren't we bringing back a pronghorn? Mike explained that the foliage was just too tall, and the buck was moving around the does too much for me to get a good shot. Tom's smirk dropped into a frown. Without saying a word, he got out of the truck and came back several seconds later with a tripod. He handed the tripod to Mike, saying that we ought to carry that with us the rest of the day, so I could take a steady shot above the sage and grass if I had to.
Tom then drove us towards the far southern hunting grounds, which were across a set of railroad tracks and on the other side of the barbed-wire fence surrounding the southern ranchlands. Once we were just on the other side of the barbed-wire fence, Tom turned into the grass and started driving up and over the golden ridges next to the fence line. The golden plains stood still that day, while patches of mist gently drifted across the landscape. I spotted a small grove of golden oak trees about a mile away from us, standing between us and the large power plant a couple miles south. To the west, the bluish purple mountains and plateaus towered over the plains and disappeared into the low clouds, and I remembered the storm that hit the night before, and how that likely pushed a lot of pronghorn east into the sheltered valleys and bowls on the plains.
As we drove, Mike scanned the wilderness with his binoculars, while Tom told us a story about a woman who used to hunt pronghorn on that specific plot of land. Instead of actively pursuing the pronghorn like everyone else, she'd sit down on a blanket and read a book until the pronghorn came to her. She loved to hunt, but she loved to read just as much. Surprisingly to me, she successfully hunted a pronghorn nearly every year. While that might seem like the best day ever to some people, I feel obligated to explore the wilderness whenever I hunt, because it increases my chances of finding my prey and experiencing other amazing things the wilderness has to offer.
Mike interrupted the story to point out about three or four pronghorn grazing in a bowl just below the railroad tracks about a mile away from us. Mike said at least three of them were adult does, while the fourth one was a yearling fawn. Legally, all pronghorn fawns are considered does, whether or not they are actually bucks. If we could sneak up on them before another hunter or mature buck found them, I would have a great chance at a successful shot. We just had to stay calm and collected, which would be the hardest part.
Tom stopped the truck at the crest of a hill about a mile away from the herd, and kicked me and Mike out to sneak up on them on foot. Tom and my grandparents would use binoculars to watch us as they sat in the heated truck and listened to the radio, while Mike guided me to the pronghorn in the cold.
For the first half a mile or so, Mike and I jogged across the plains as fast as we safely could, avoiding holes, cacti, and yucca plants. We both occasionally stumbled, and I did fall once. Somehow, we stayed quiet enough to not alert the pronghorn of our presence. The pronghorn were grazing in a bowl, several hills away from us, so for most of the journey, Mike and I would be invisible. The only time we'd have to be careful was when we reached the final hill, which flattened out ahead of a ridge. The flat part of the ridge was a few hundred yards long, but as long as Mike and I took our time and made slow movements, we'd be virtually invisible to the pronghorn.
Unlike us, pronghorn see things in terms of movement, rather than objects. They don't care about investigating a plastic barrel like bears and coyotes usually do. Pronghorn are very attracted to twitching flags and plastic bags caught on the barbed-wire fence, and will almost always come over to investigate it. They can't really see depth, because their eyes are so far apart, which makes it hard for them to differentiate shadows cast by sage from shadows cast by animals. Pronghorn are also colorblind, and can only see certain shades of yellow and blue, making my blaze orange hat and vest invisible to them. While my blaze orange is visible from miles away to people, it looks just like grass or a rock to pronghorn.
During the rutting season, while the bucks are oblivious to any potential danger around them, the does are extra nervous. Every twitching blade of grass could be a buck trying to sneak up on them, and pronghorn does work hard to avoid being impregnated. This meant that we had to be extra cautious when approaching the does, so they wouldn't get spooked thinking we were a buck. I can't say I wasn't a predator. I was planning on having Pronghorn sirloins for dinner that night.
Like a stalking mountain cougar, I stayed low to the ground, and spread out my weight on my hands and feet to avoid making as much noise as possible. It was a very difficult task, because Mike and I were surrounded by crunchy sagebrush and cacti, and I had a rifle in one hand. My right arm was on fire from supporting most of my weight for the entire time we were on the ground, and I had to watch myself take every small step forward to avoid stepping on anything that could make a loud noise or pierce my skin.
I accidentally stepped on a sagebrush, which made a loud crunch halfway to the edge of the ridge, and the closest pronghorn snapped her head up from grazing to stare in our direction. I didn't breathe, and neither did Mike. For about fifteen seconds or so, we maintained eye-contact with the alarmed doe, but she relaxed and went back to grazing when she saw no movement. I glanced at Mike for guidance, and we continued prowling forward towards the edge of the ridge. My heart pounded harder and harder as we slowly inched towards the edge of the ridge. The wind picked up considerably as the sun warmed the frozen air, which helped to disguise our movements as the wind whispering through the grass. At the same time, it whipped my hair into my face, and I had to resist the increasing urge to brush it away from my face.
When we were just a few dozen yards away from the edge of the ridge, we dropped to our bellies. We both winced and immediately pushed ourselves back up into a plank position. Mike yelped very quietly, but it was still loud enough to attract the attention of all four pronghorn. We were surrounded by the spikiest prickly pear cacti I've ever seen. Their spikes were longer than the cacti themselves. We stared up at the pronghorn, which were all staring back at us. We didn't even blink. Within a few seconds, the pronghorn relaxed and went back to grazing, and once again, I stared at Mike seeking guidance.
We both pushed ourselves back onto our knees, careful not to sit on any of the cacti. We made sure to pick out any of the cacti spikes that stuck into us. Again, we got onto our bellies, only this time, we made sure to not lay down on any cacti. We army-crawled the rest of the way to the edge of the ridge, doing our absolute best to avoid getting pricked by cacti.
After what seemed like hours, we finally made it to the edge of the ridge without scaring off the pronghorn or filling ourselves with cacti needles. Mike carefully set up the tripod, and guided my rifle onto it by hanging onto the barrel as I slowly slid it onto the tripod while I pushed myself up into a kneeling position. I tried to lay down again, but Mike immediately stopped me and signaled that I was surrounded by those extremely spiky cacti, so I settled on taking the shot from a sitting kneel.
In order to fold my legs under my body, I had to lean on my left hand while keeping my right hand on the stock of my rifle to keep it steady. I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek as my left hand was skewered by two to three inch long cacti needles. I tasted blood, and Mike stared at me wide-eyed and mouthed "Are you okay?" I was in pain, but I reassured Mike with a nod that I was alright. I was adrenalized, so the pain was mostly numbed. However, it was still very painful to rip my hand out of that sticky situation. I checked on my left hand and knew I couldn't use it to hold the barrel stock steady. My entire palm was full of cactus needles, especially below my pinkie finger where most of the weight of my stock would rest. But, I had to ignore the pain and trust that the tripod could hold my rifle's stock for me.
Mike pulled out his binoculars and began naming the positions of each doe. We could see three does, all broadside to us, but we could only see the fourth one's ears, since she found a ditch just below the train tracks to graze. I sighted in the middle doe, who was also the largest. Mike used his rangefinder on her, and determined she was about 230 yards away. To put that into perspective, that's over two and a half city blocks away (a city block is 88 yards). I had to take the wind into account as well, which was blowing at a steady ten to fifteen miles an hour to the east, possibly gusting to twenty miles per hour. While that doesn't seem like much, a crosswind like that still affects the trajectory of a bullet, especially if that bullet is traveling over a long distance.
I knew it would be difficult and risky to take such a shot, but I wasn't about to abandon such an opportunity. My rifle could easily take out a pronghorn from 230 yards away. I had practiced enough for my rifle, in both windy and calm conditions, for it to just be another appendage to me. I knew exactly how and where to aim my crosshairs on my target doe. While Mike continued to mumble positions and distances of the other pronghorn, I steadied my sights right on the old doe's front shoulder, hoping the wind would push the round inward toward's the doe's vital organs and arteries just behind her shoulder when I fired. I wanted to ensure that my prey wouldn't suffer.
I flicked off the safety and exhaled. My vision tunneled through the scope. Mike's voice became indistinguishable from the wind in the grass. I slowly started putting pressure on the trigger while keeping my sights perfectly steady on the doe. Just as I was about to fire, the young fawn walked between me and my target doe. I immediately sucked in a breath and released the trigger. I watched without blinking as the little fawn took its time to cross between me and the doe, before stopping to graze behind her. The older doe looked back at the fawn for a few seconds, before putting her head back down to graze. She was still standing perfectly still and broadside to me.
Again, I made sure the crosshairs were on the doe's shoulder as I exhaled and slowly put more and more pressure on the trigger. Mike was silent. Even the wind stopped for those few vital seconds, as I put more and more pressure on the trigger, watching through the scope as the doe silently grazed. My heart was pounding in my ears. I was fighting to stay still as my veins overflowed with adrenaline. I watched the doe lift her head slightly one last time as she chewed on a mouthful of sage, and then I felt the rifle kick back.
My vision and hearing left for a few seconds. Everything was blurry and in slow motion. My vision returned to me first, just in time to see two does hauling ass towards the east full speed, and then disappear behind a hill. I didn't see where the fawn went, and for a brief second, I thought I had missed my doe. My ears were ringing so loudly that I couldn't hear Mike. But as my hearing slowly returned to me, I heard Mike say in a normal voice, "Stumbling...Stumbling...Down! She's down!"
I looked up from my rifle and gazed at Mike, who had an ear-to-ear grin and his binoculars pressed up against his eyes.
"You got her! You got her! She's down!" Mike announced as he took the binoculars down from his eyes, chucked, and grabbed me by the shoulder.
"Ohhh, Lord." I mumbled as I exhaled into my hands, relieving the soreness from my lungs that had held my breath for almost too long. All I could do was sit there for a few seconds as I caught my breath and waited for the adrenaline to flush out of my system.
"You did it! You freakin' did it!" Mike giggled as he shook my shoulder.
"Did I?" I asked as I looked back towards the truck and made several gestures for Tom to drive down. We couldn't see the truck, but everyone in the truck could see us.
"Yes! You got her! She's down!" Mike repeated as he checked through his binoculars, "Chamber another round. We'll wait for a few minutes."
"Why?" I asked as I pulled the bolt back, releasing a hot, empty shell and replacing it with an unused round. I pushed the bolt forward again, securing the new round in the chamber with a click.
"Well, while she is down, there's always a chance that she's just playing dead. Sometimes pronghorn will play dead, but our movement will spook her back to life. She probably died the second the round entered into her shoulder, as such a shot usually severs a number of important arteries and organs, killing the blood pressure in her body. When pronghorn lose blood pressure to their brain, which happens immediately, they are unconscious. But there's always a chance that they still have some fight in them, so it's best to let the blood drain and settle before we approach them. We will approach her very slowly, and if she still appears to be moving, I'll ask you to put another round through her skull. But that was a good shot, Maya! That was a really good shot." Mike explained as he looked at her through his binoculars a few more times.
I sat silently for those few minutes. I noticed the wind first. The wind whispered and whistled as it gently brushed through the grass and sage. Then, I felt a stinging soreness in my left palm where nearly a hundred cactus needles were embedded. Ahead of us, I could see the power plant towering over the rest of the plains and into the silver sky. Patches of fog gently drifted across the landscape in transparent, wispy clouds at almost the same speed as the low clouds above us. I watched as my hot breath escaped my nostrils into the freezing air in short, small bursts. I was hyperventilating with excitement. It would take me awhile to regain control of my breath. It was serene. Just behind us, I could hear the truck approaching, and Mike took that as a cue for us to start walking towards the downed doe.
Mike helped me to my feet, and I gathered up my rifle as he picked up the tripod. Slowly we made our way down the ridge and into the valley below, where I saw something white laying in the grass. As we got closer, I finally saw the doe. She was on her side, and her white fur just behind her shoulder was splattered in blood. But the bullet had been perfectly placed. There was a small blood trail leading up to the doe, which indicated she only stumbled about twenty feet before falling over. Mike explained that such a shot killed her in literally less than a second, and the reason why she stumbled was because her nerves were just shocked. She unconsciously stumbled twenty feet, like a zombie, before falling over dead into the dry golden grass.
I stood just above her as I carefully peeled the gloves off my injured left hand. I brushed the back of my bare and bloody left hand against her snout just to make sure she was gone. Then, I carefully set down my rifle against her side, and sat down with my knees against her back. She was still warm. I pulled the gloves off my right hand with my teeth, and slowly pulled the visible spikes out of my left hand. My left hand still had plenty of tiny cactus needles I wouldn't be able to get to without tweezers, and many more that were simply invisible, so I just dealt with the itchy pain that would last for a couple of weeks.
For a few moments, I shared some emotional silence with the doe, while Mike stood just behind me as the truck slowly approached. I felt the strong sting of death as I gently stroked the doe's hide. The sting of death is different from all other emotions. I felt no remorse, nor did I feel sadness. I wasn't at all ashamed. It was just a heavy feeling, knowing that my actions resulted in the death of a beautiful and unique animal. Yet, that feeling was balanced with pride. I was proud knowing that I could finally fill my freezer with some of the most nutritious and healthiest food the world has to offer. I was also proud that while one doe had to die, the money and effort I put in to hunt her would benefit the lives of dozens of other pronghorn, as well as the wilderness as a whole. Plus, she was an old doe. She had a few years to raise up the next generation of pronghorn. If I hadn't hunted her that fall, surely that winter would've taken her.
I mumbled a prayer, thanking God for providing me with such a large and healthy pronghorn to fill my freezer with. I also thanked the pronghorn for her sacrifice. She'd feed me for months. That was what made the hunt worth it. Having such valuable meat in the freezer meant I could eat without getting sick for as long as the pronghorn lasted, was what made everything worth it. Not only that, but pronghorn has always been one of my favorite kinds of wild game. I liked it more than elk.
When the truck was just a few yards away, Tom and my grandparents stepped out. For about ten minutes, we reminisced about the moments leading up to the shot that took that doe's life, and I posed for a few pictures as well. Some people believe that taking pictures with a recently killed game animal is disrespectful, but I see it differently. For thousands of years, humans have been drawing pictures of their hunts and kills as a way to celebrate and remember the hunt. For thousands of years, we've been dressing up in the hides of our animals, and holding ceremonies where we celebrate the animals' lives by wearing their skins and mimicking their movements around bonfires to music. Technology changed, so the way we honor the lives of the animals changed too, but the reason has always stayed the same. Today, we take pictures with our kills to honor those animals. We smile not because of the death of the animal, but because that animal will feed us and our families for months. Then, we'll send parts of that animal to the taxidermist, or work on it ourselves, so that animal can remain useful and preserved long after the meat is gone.
Our work was far from over though. We had to fill out my tag, and then bring the pronghorn back to camp to be butchered. Once the doe was butchered at camp, I had to bring her home, and proceed to clean and cut the meat into smaller pieces, to be wrapped in freezer paper and packed in the freezer to be eaten. Not only that, but I planned on preserving the hide and the skull, which would take even more work. Hunting the pronghorn was not even half of the job.
Tom picked up the doe's front legs, while Mike and I each took the doe by one of her back legs. We carried her to the truck, and then I let the guys lift her into the truck while I stood back.
I unloaded my firearm, and then joined my grandparents in the truck. Again, I excitedly recounted the final seconds leading up to the doe's death, and told them just how excited I was to cook some of the pronghorn on the grill that night. My grandparents couldn't express just how proud of me they were, and shared my excitement about grilling up some pronghorn. I offered some pronghorn to my grandparents, but they both declined, saying that I earned all of it, and I needed to eat it all myself.
It was a short drive back to camp. We were no longer stalking the pronghorn, and the fog had lifted, so we could drive quicker. Plus, we had to get to camp as quickly as possible to cool down the meat in the cold air. The meat would stay good for just long enough for us to cool it, but it couldn't stay warm forever.
Back at camp, Tom immediately made me go into the check-in tent to warm up next to the propane heater. I was shivering violently, and my hands were so cold that they were too stiff and numb to move. Tom was worried that I was in the beginning stages of hypothermia, and wanted to make sure I got warmed up as quickly as possible. I stopped shivering with a few minutes once I was out of the cold, and everyone else used that time to get ready to butcher the pronghorn.
As soon as I was warm again, I walked in the cold to the skinning rack, which was about fifty yards away from camp, just as Tom backed his truck towards the rack with my pronghorn in the trunk. Mike opened the tailgate and pulled the pronghorn onto it. Mike instructed me to hold up her tail while he went to work at her rear. Before we could get to the meat, we had to remove the waste and close off the pronghorn's rectum so no meat would be spoiled. If any waste touched the meat, that meat would be immediately contaminated and unsafe to eat, even if the waste was rinsed off. There are a lot of diseases found in the waste of animals that are highly contagious and immediately spread to everything it touches. The five-second-rule is a myth!
Meanwhile, Tom sharpened his best knife for Mike to use later, and a couple of guys worked on a small buck on the rack next to ours. Whoever shot the buck used a round that was way too big, destroying the edible guts and leaving a giant gaping hole in the buck's ribs. Luckily, the main cuts of meat were not damaged on that buck.
Once all of the waste had been removed from the doe and her rectum had been properly tied, Mike and another volunteer dragged her off the tailgate by her rear legs, and then hung her upside down on the rack by a metal hanger. They hoisted her up and tied the rope to the A-frame, so she hovered above the ground.
Mike skinned her, starting at her thighs and then worked downwards. I watched Mike like a hawk. He worked very slowly and carefully, only slicing the hide with one motion of the knife each time, like he was trying to paint a canvas by only stroking the brush in one direction. He worked slowly so he didn't put holes through the hide or get more blood on the fur than there already was. It took him fifteen minutes to skin her before he could just pull the rest of the hide off her torso like a sock. Once the bulk of the meat was exposed, Mike stopped working on the hide and went straight to work on the meat with a couple more volunteers. As beautiful as the hide is, the meat is by far the most important part of any game animal, and must be put on ice as quickly as possible.
When you see pictures of hunters with antlers sticking out of their backpacks, those hunters have meat in their backpacks, as well as several other bags that they have with them. Some people see those pictures and think, "Well, that guy's only got the head in there and nothing else", when in reality, the meat is stuffed into the bag first because it is the most important part of the animal. The head and hide don't get to be put in the backpacks first, because they are not nearly as important. If the head and the hide are put in first, not only does that hunter not have his priorities straight, he'd breaking the law and putting the edible meat at extreme risk. Most, if not all states make hunters harvest the meat from what they kill, unless that meat was somehow contaminated or belonged to a diseased animal, or that hunter was going for vermin. Even then, most vermin animals (except for rodents) can be safely turned into food.
Back at the dressing rack, Mike and a few other volunteers first cut off the backstraps, which are arguably the best part of the pronghorn, or any game animal for that matter. The backstraps are the muscles running from the base of the neck to the base of the tail on the pronghorn, and they're usually cut up into steaks. Because of how valuable the backstraps were, Tom had me pose for a picture while holding one of the backstraps, before I shoved it into ice.
After the backstraps were harvested, the shoulders were harvested. Mike put them on ice as they were. I agreed to de-bone and cut them into smaller pieces at home. They cut out the rounds, which was the meat just ahead of the hips, which could be made into more steaks or roasts depending on what I was hungry for. The sirloins were cut out and quickly put on ice, as was the rest of the neck meat. Finally, the flanks were harvested, and attached to one of the flanks was the doe's udder. I had to take the doe's udder with me, along with the tag, on the way home, so if we found ourselves at a hunter's checkpoint on the highway, the authorities could quickly and easily determine that I went on a legal hunt. If I harvested a buck, the same rules would apply. The genitals of a game animal must be attached to the meat itself for it to be considered a legal kill. The genitals can only be discarded once the animal has been fully butchered and put into the freezer.
Eventually, all that was left was the torso. There was hardly any meat on the ribs, so we didn't bother to take them. However, I did want to eat the liver and the heart, and Mike reluctantly volunteered to get them for me. Heart has always been one of my favorite cuts of meat, aside from the backstraps.
I stood upwind from the torso with the rest of the volunteers, as poor Mike got down to his knees and stuck his entire arm into the warm torso. The torso was starting to smell, which made Mike gag while the rest of us giggled at his suffering. In reality, we weren't actually laughing at Mike. We were laughing with him. Mike narrated his experience as he desperately felt around for the liver and the heart, which made us all, including Mike, laugh and gag even harder. As Mike moved his arm around in the torso, he forced a lot of gases out, causing the torso to sputter and spew out blood from various holes and cuts. Mike eventually found the heart and threw it at me, which I almost didn't catch because it was a low throw. He then found the liver, which was a lot more fragile, and carried it over to the plastic box full of ice. We put the heart and liver in a bag, and buried it in the ice along with the rest of the meat. I threw in the bright green tag with the meat, and my grandparents closed the box, while Mike heaved the inedible pronghorn carcass into a massive gut pile.
Mike came back from the gut pile and helped me stuff a second box of ice with the hide and head, so I could preserve the skull and hide. When we were finished, about twenty minutes had passed, and we could finally relax and socialize. My grandpa took out two boxes of Mountain Dew from the backseat, and everyone who helped with the hunt grabbed themselves a room-temperature can of the caffeinated soda. It wasn't bad tasting at all. In fact, in the thirty degree weather, it was actually very pleasant.
After a half hour, my grandma stepped out of the SUV, book in hand, and pressured me and my grandpa to end our conversations and start heading home. The ice wouldn't last forever, and we still had a lot of driving and work to do. Hunting the pronghorn was hardly half of the work! After saying our final "Thank you" and "Goodbye", we headed off into the fog, away from the ranchlands on those beautiful golden plains, towards home.
I sat comfortably in the backseat, with my rifle in its case and across my lap, as I stared out of the window at the outside world. At first, I saw only plains, then a few farms, then a few shopping centers and hotels. I saw less dirt roads and more suburbs as we sped further south down the highway. Pretty soon, I saw city skyscrapers as we slowed down in a traffic jam. My grandpa accidentally made a wrong turn, forcing us to drive through the heart of Denver, where so many people swarmed the paved streets and sidewalks of the brick and concrete jungle.
Seeing those people and buildings, and being stuck in that endless Denver traffic, made me think about how far removed we've become from the wilderness. Barely even 120 years ago, Denver was just another small western outpost in the middle of the plains. But very quickly, Denver went from a small riverside town to a booming city, where today, millions of people live and work. So many people in Denver have no idea what lies beyond the city's streets and distant suburbs. So many people have no idea what the wilderness is really like. So many people don't even think about what they're eating, or how their lives impact the world around them. So many people are oblivious to the things I experienced on the day of the great pronghorn hunt, and would live their entire lives without ever seeing more than a few hawks and deer outside of the zoo.
That thought alone made me incredibly proud of being a hunter, but at the same time, I was very humbled by my experience. So many people think that humans are somehow better and smarter than the rest of the wilderness. My experiences as a hunter have taught me that just isn't so. I've learned that I'm just as successful as any other natural predator in the wilderness, and my rifle and camo are simply tools, but don't give me an advantage. A human is just as predatory as a wolf, only we evolved to develop tools rather than use our teeth and claws to hunt things down. Even chimpanzees and orangutans use tools to hunt and fish, which further proves to me that we're not much different from the rest of creation.
I'm no more successful than a mountain cougar or pack of wolves, even if it seems like I should be with my rifle and camo. In fact, in some ways, predators like the mountain cougar and a pack of wolves are much more successful at hunting than I ever could be, as they too hunt for sport, a behavior known as Surplus Killing. Predators who engage in surplus killing have wiped out entire species from certain regions before, which makes hunting predators just as important as hunting prey animals.
Clearly, I'm not smarter than nature either. After all, it took me eighteen hours to hunt that damn pronghorn. And while I was on my way home, I was still trying (and failing) to pick out a few tiny cactus needles out of my itchy left hand.
When people claim that humans are somehow smarter than the wilderness and/or are biologically and ontologically different from other animals, I always think back to my adventures in the wilderness, which have shown me otherwise. Sure, as a Christian, I do believe God picked us out from the rest of creation to do greater things. That is rather obvious, considering we are the only ones (as far as we know) building houses with plumbing and electricity, and coming up with advanced theories to explain how the universe works.
But despite this, we shouldn't think we are any better or smarter than the rest of God's creation. We still rely on the wilderness to live. People don't freak out about pollution and climate change for no reason. While I think many people take it way too far and believe the world will literally blow up tomorrow if we don't ditch gas cars today, the roots of their arguments still have merit. We do need to change the way we do some things on this planet, or else we'll soon suffer the consequences. We are already seeing mass die-offs in our rivers and oceans due to agricultural pollution and other man-made biotoxins. We have already poached plenty of species to extinction including the Northern White Rhino, and if we don't work to preserve other endangered species of wildlife, they too will become extinct. And many cities and towns across the world are permanently stuck in a cloud of dangerous pollution, that has caused all sorts of respiratory issues for the citizens who live there. We do need to be conscious about what we eat and do, and how that affects our world around us. Our actions are a lot more powerful than we think.
Before I started hunting, I was blissfully unaware of all of this. But hunting opened my eyes to how fragile our world is, and just how much impact we have on our environment. Now, I'm certainly no tree-hugger. I don't shame people who drive gas-guzzling diesel trucks or cry over fallen trees. I actually don't even like today's electric cars, and don't see myself ever owning a Prius. But I'm at least aware of my actions and how they impact the environment, and I do put a lot of money and time each year to try and help the wilderness through hunting, fishing, and endurocross.
I have more to say, I just lost my train of thought. It will come back to me eventually...