Hunting, like all activities in life, will find you placed in a position where you will have to face the challenge of hunting alone. There will be no guides, gurus, or other assistants available. Native American Indian tribes make great ceremony out of this right of passage. You will have to call upon all of the knowledge learned from your friends. However, if you are fortunate to have a belief in God or the Great Spirit you will not be alone.
My first solo hunt was thrust on me out of necessity. We drew antelope tags for public land in area 87 in Colorado. We hunted Saturday and Sunday and I had no luck, so it was either call it quits for the year or take a day off of work and try one more time. No one else was able to join me on the Thursday hunt. So there I was wondering how I was going to accomplish this mission.
I remembered, in the past, some of the times we raced down those two tracks in full sized pickups trying to head off herds of antelope before they crossed a fence a mile away. We would be hanging on to those holy crap handles installed in the ceiling of pick ups as we bounced around inside.
Yes, that Subaru looked liked a hunting vehicle to me. It had good fuel economy, low profile to get close to the antelope and enough truck capacity to fit one of those goats inside with room to spare. Yes, if you look at the family car and justify how it could possibly make a good hunting vehicle, you may be a redneck.
So on Thursday morning I was off at zero dark early on the forty mile drive out to the Eastern plains of Colorado. As the first orange glow of the dawn of a new day ascended over the rolling hills of sage and cactus I was leaving the solid gravel road and making my way onto the two track, headed toward our usual hunting area by a windmill.
I drove around for about two hours, stopping at every good place where I could spot for the lopes. I glassed the area trying desperately to catch a glimpse of tan bodies amidst the greenish brown hillsides. Either my eyes needed to be checked or they were ghosts in the grass.
At one point I found myself traveling west up a rather steep hill that overlooks the watering hole where a few years earlier I had killed my first antelope with the shot I wish I could have taken back. As I neared the crest of the long straight climb another hunter approached from the opposite direction. He was driving a full-sized Ford F-150 equipped with rather large tires, a winch and other gear that made it one macho looking truck. I pulled over to the side of the lane to let him pass. We exchanged a few words about what we had not seen that morning and went our separate ways. I remember thinking that I hoped that I had not busted his ego any as he stared down from his truck at my rather conspicuous hunting vehicle. My mind smiled at the thought of what he might be thinking.
About an hour later I found myself a mile and a half to the north when the hide of a bedded antelope caught me eye. She was barely visible in the two-foot tall brush she was in. I stopped and planned on how I was going maneuver closer and get into a position to take a clear shot with a good solid back drop. As luck would have it I found a seldom used, barely visible two track that cut to the north. I turned the red Subaru onto the trail and drove it as it wound its way to the other side of the antelope.
I found a good spot to slip out of the car and crouched down and wandered through the brush getting as close as I dared. She would look up every once in a while and I thought she might get up and bolt and put some distance between us. When I got within eighty yards she started to get up. I sat down and rested my rifle on the steady sticks that Don had made for me. When she reached her hooves I was presented with a clean broad side shot. She stared at me and did not move as the bullet left my rifle. She went down and did not get up.
I waited for a ten minute eternity then slowly approached the downed animal. I had made a clean shot and she was dead. It was a good hunt. I said my prayers as I stroked her neck. Now the work was about to begin.
I walked back to the car and drove it out to the downed animal, carefully avoiding the thick brush and a few holes. I backed up to the antelope and began field dressing her. After the chore was finished I proudly put my tag on her and got her into the trunk for the ride home.
I pulled into the back yard and managed to get the antelope form the trunk to the old picnic table where I carefully skinned her and hung her in the garage. The feeling of accomplishment overcame me as I now had the confidence that I could hunt alone if I had to.
Whether it is in our work, our hobby, our recovery, or any other activity we are involved in, if we stay with it long enough there will come a time when the people we have relied upon for assistance and guidance will not be available. It will present a challenge that we can either take on or avoid. It is by taking on these challenges that we grow spiritually and realize that if we rely on a Greater Power we are in good hands and can experience a wonderful bounty.
The only vehicle I owned at the time that was four-wheel drive was the family car, a 1990 Subaru Legacy sedan. I looked at the car and thought about the two tracks that it would have to maneuver and I looked back at the car and thought some more about the steep terrain along some of the fences in the area I would be hunting. I looked one more time at the car and thought about the parts of some of the badly rutted two tracks that I would have to carefully get around and I thought about that one very low lying section where the trail is barely recognizable that many times retains a ten foot wide area of water and mud.
