Permit Yourself Fall’S Treats
A friend and i strutted and gloated in August as we compared our uncommon luck in big-game permit drawings.
He had just received a doe tag in the mail and was asking about my favorite venison recipes.
I had hit the jackpot with a Blue Mountains branch-antlered bull elk tag, a Wilson Creek mule deer tag and a Montana pronghorn tag.
He gave me a high-five and reminded me how much his daughter liked the teriyaki venison jerky I gave her last winter.
We debated the savings of butchering at home vs. the benefits of a good meat cutter. Major decisions would have to be made on how much meat to wrap into roasts and steaks and how much to put into hamburger and sausage.
With bear and cougar tags in our pockets, we might have to find room for even more meat in the freezer this fall, not to mention a gap on the wall for a mount or two.
“Where should we have the annual big-game harvest dinner this year?” he said. “My house is too small if we invite more people.”
We must have scoured the terminal issues of the hunt for half an hour before we paused and looked at each other, suddenly sobered by the same thought.
“I guess we have to fill our tags first,” he shrugged, noting that he’d better fix the brakes on his vehicle and, oh yeah, he still hadn’t bought that rifle he was borrowing from another friend since last season. I started wondering about the time thing. How am I going to make a break to scout for elk in one corner of the state, hustle to get a deer in Grant County, and carve out time for the annual return to boyhood hunting grounds in Montana?
To be a serious hunter, you need a week here and a week there.
I went home and looked at the kids’ soccer schedule and the dates for band concerts and ballet performances.
Then I looked at my wife’s schedule and felt the sweat beading on my forehead. Getting a week for hunting is like trying to jam an ought-six shell into a .22 chamber.
To make things worse, the dog came over and sat on my foot, a gentle reminder that the upland bird seasons are about to open, too.
And if the dog doesn’t go hunting much during October, he gets weird and chews my wife’s underwear. Then she gets weird, if not violent, but never at the dog, you see.
This is enough to drive a guy into the woods, but how the hell does he get there?
It didn’t help that I had to walk past the pickup as I went outside, reminding myself that the rig needs new tires before I take it into the Blues.
I probably ought to go to six-ply this time because elk country is rugged and it only took me 40 years and a half dozen flats in the worst possible weather to figure that out.
Larger tires will require a new set of chains, of course. That brings the total for that minor afterthought to a mere $600 or so.
The hunting licenses and tags for three states already have added up to … ooh, I can’t print that number on the off chance my wife reads this column or I’ll be doing the ballet carpool every night for the rest of autumn.
I hadn’t even started thinking about the additional costs for fuel or patching the tent where the bear ran through it last year before something startling caught my eye.
There in the newspaper on the garage floor.
The ad no hunter wants to ponder.
“USDA Choice Beef Bottom Round Roast: $1.98/lb.”
Just ducky: Waterfowl hunters will be reaping the benefits of ample rainfall and hard conservation work this fall. Ducks are in abundance, thanks to weather and decades of efforts to preserve and enhance wetlands for waterfowl.
Hunters can pat themselves on the back and enjoy the season. But don’t forget that wetlands are being ruined faster than they are being preserved, a fact that might not hit home in the duck blinds until the next drought.
No one stepped forward to organize Ducks Unlimited fund-raising banquets in the Spokane area this year.
That’s a shortsighted pity. Got interest? Call Gordon Hester, 838-6541.
Hero of the Hills: Tom Rogers, the late founder of the grassroots movement to preserve the Dishman Hills, penny-pinched for nearly 40 years to raise money for the natural area.
He lived in a modest little house. That’s probably the way he would have lived even if he’d made a fortune teaching high school biology.
I can’t help but think of him when I look at the several mansions people have built in unspeakable places to take advantage of the nature and views people of modest means have worked so hard and donated so freely to preserve.
For the price of just one silly one-family mansion, Tom Rogers could have and would have preserved a thousand acres of natural area for countless creatures and native plants, not to mention millions of people for generations to come.