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They Know, Somehow

Posted on by G.T. Rees / Leave a comment

I poked my head above the sagebrush and cursed under my breath. Forty head or more of antelope had just vanished somewhere on the rolling range. Where the hell could they have gone?

The valley wasn’t wide, maybe a little more than a mile from where I was at the root of the snowcapped Sawtooths, which climbed several thousand feet from where Highway 28 cut through the lonely Lemhi Valley.

I got up on my knees, thankful for the kneepads and leather gloves I had almost neglected to bring. About ten of those “speed goats” were grazing far down toward the highway, but there was no sign at all of the large herd I’d been stalking for more than an hour, belly-crawling through what slight cover was available. This was my first antelope hunt, and it was a lot harder than I had planned on it being. It was the second day of my hunt, and the umpteenth failed stalk. Get within five hundred yards, and the critters would just take off.

It was easy to locate them. I just drove along the lonesome highway south of Leadore until I spotted my quarry. But then I tried, and repeatedly failed, to put a stalk on them. It wasn’t working at all like they did it on the hunting shows. Continue reading →

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Bipolar Season

Posted on by G.T. Rees / Leave a comment

I climbed over one last deadfall on the long-neglected trail and pushed myself up the final step to the saddle on a commanding mountain ridge.

It was cold, the temperature dropping as the sun began to break over the Cabinet Mountains in late September and let out a puff of breath to test the wind direction. I’d hiked an hour in the dark to get to this spot overreaching a remote mountain meadow where I was certain elk would be bunched up like cattle with at least a dozen bruiser bulls competing for dominance of the airwaves with their primordial screams. Just then, a bull confirmed my thoughts with a mighty bugle from somewhere across the forest. Ah, it was going to be a good day. Continue reading →

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Gopher It

Posted on by Andrea Scott / Leave a comment

I don’t know that anyone wakes up one day and says, “I’m going to be a gopher trapper.” I certainly didn’t.

I had gophers in some of my pastures farther out from the house, but there weren’t many mounds and holes, and I’ve always been one to try to live within nature rather than dominate it. Then one day, a hole appeared right by the front door. If it had been to one side, I might have lived with that. It was smack in front of where I walk every day.

I called a gopher trapper, and he said he’d come out. Well, a few days turned into a week, and I called him and he said, oh, he’d get there soon. Soon turned into two more weeks. This time when I called, I raised the urgency a bit. He responded, and when he got there, apologized, and said, “Man, I’ve been swamped, I’m sorry.” I was a bit irritated, and said, “I’m sure of that. It’s February.”

He explained that gophers never hibernate like most people think and, yes, he actually was quite busy. One of the things I loved about Don right off was he had a great laugh and was just darn likeable. I followed him as he explained that this was definitely a male gopher and that you can tell because they usually burrow in straight lines looking for romance. Female gophers, he said, create burrows in circles. Both sexes are highly territorial. Continue reading →

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The Moose and I

Posted on by Wallace J. Swenson / Leave a comment

By Wallace J. Swenson

A bead of sweat, born in the region of the youngster’s hairline, started its journey down. Stealthily, it crept across the furrowed skin of his forehead, wound its way through the roots of his eyebrow, and paused.

Aware of it, the young hunter concentrated harder on the peep sights of his Mossberg .22 rimfire target rifle. Held rock-steady, the front sight remained centered on the left eye of the fourteen-hundred-pound bull moose that stood chest deep in the water forty feet offshore. Continue reading →

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