Vegan Hunting

Hunting even P.E.T.A. can get behind.

May 15th in my part of Montana is a big day for antler hunters.  Since 1949 the Sun River game range closes to humans for the winter. This year about 3000 elk chilled out (get it?) undisturbed by man on the 20,000-acre range. The sheds accumulate until May 15th when wardens open the gates. By mid-May migration to the calving grounds is complete and all but the slacker elk are long gone. You can Google “Sun River Game Range” and learn all you need to know about the range. What we’re going to look at here is the cultural event that was last Sunday.

My daughter and I attended with my wife’s boss, Thomas Baumeister and his two kids along with photographer Kenton Rowe. Thomas wanted to soak up the flavor and make a good plan so we arrived a couple hours prior to the noon opening of the gates. The first guy in line arrived a week earlier. Thomas was amazed that someone would take a week off from work to be first in line to gather sheds.  I’m pretty sure missing work wasn’t an issue.

High-noon approaches and wardens unlock gates. Engines start and rev as people implement different strategies. Our party owned insider information from someone we later deemed a double agent. We entered at a gate much lower down from the timber reasoning that the tough winter kept the elk lower longer. We also knew lower down there would be fewer horn hunters.

Thomas’ son and Kenton, the photographer http://krowephotography.photoshelter.com/ wisely ditched us and remained above. This means our J.V. team consists of a pair of daughters seven and twelve. Good eyes but short on attention. Thomas is wound up like a Frisbee dog in a hobby shop when the tires on his third world cruiser start rolling down the dirt road. He maintains a four-foot gap between us and a Ford monster truck with four well-armed youngsters inside. Not once, but twice he skids to a stop inches from rear-ending them as he scans the grass and tailgates simultaneously.

Just after Thomas locks up the Mitsubishi’s brakes for a second time, my daughter, Alyssa spots a beautiful branch forty yards off. She adamantly insists it’s a shed. She and Anya, Thomas’ daughter, cause a minor traffic jam piling out to confirm the stick is wood.

After a good German talking to (Baumeister? Really? I have to explain this?) the girls understand the rules. There is no first or second strike in this game. They’re both out. They will be taking orders for the duration. The girls go to their safe places until Thomas, who has amazing eyes (I mean they work well in addition to being transfixing) spots another shed. We shout orders to Alyssa to run like a banshee and gather it up.  It’s fun pretending to be German for a day.

Alyssa jumps from the moving truck and rolls like a dwarf commando on the ground before getting traction and direction. As she runs we see a specter of horror moving in Alyssa’s direction at a remarkably high rate of speed. Grizzly? No. Mountain Lion? No. A large woman in her fifties in a light blue t-shirt is charging with reckless abandon straight at my daughter. They are both fixated on the antler. The woman clearly does not run regularly and I’m very concerned she lacks the ability to turn or stop.  I’m no physicist, but her inertia seems to be on a crash course with my daughter’s future mobility. Alyssa dives on the shed moments before the big blue bully fully rolls like a spilled bowl of blueberry pancake batter and grasps the shed from my 75-pound daughter. Alyssa later reported the blueberry bully growled, “It’s mine” as she wrested it from her and jogged back to her truck triggering Richter scales in the region.

We spot the landmark our double agent directed us to andwith the truck left running, Zeiss binos left on the dashboard along with a high budge camera, the team evacuates in four separate directions scanning for sheds. We spent a couple hours running and walking through the timber, soaking up sunshine and fresh air. Remaining cows from the herd dodged, darted and dashed this way and that, sure that the Apocalypse arrived in the form of hundreds of killer apes and their machinery. I saw a yearling charge my way and ducked into the brush. It galloped past within ten feet.

At the end of the day wardens weighed a few 14-pound antlers. Piles of beautiful sheds were displayed around the gate. Most importantly many happy friends and families enjoyed interacting with each other and nature beneath the snowy slopes of Castle Reef.