Don't any of you bastards work? I've lived in this valley for the last 40 years and seen people like you try to turn this place into some kind of fool's playground. I've about had it up to my gills with all this x-game, extreme sport, generation x bullshit. Tony Vagneur writes here on Saturdays and welcomes your comments at. The significance of a grouse left in the creek can’t be overstated. How I’d love to share a grouse with him in that old ranch kitchen, the woodstove popping as the pan sizzled. If, in the future, Gramps and I should meet along the trail somewhere, I’d probably put away my reticence and after the joy of seeing him again, my excitement for the hunt would possibly return. It’s still exciting to see wild creatures, but strictly for my viewing pleasure. Uncle Vic, cousin Wayne and I hunted a lot of grouse, too.īut somewhere along the way, more than a few years ago, the desire, the enjoyment of the hunt left me, or I left it and I’m done with the killing. And oh yeah, I understood the enthusiasm, the thrill of the hunt, just like Grandpa probably did, for many years. The head of the poor son-of-a-gun hangs on my living room wall still. And then, the year after Gramps died, I went on my first successful elk hunt with my dad and uncle Vic. But hunting grouse, that was another matter. Went back a few times, but the magic was gone. Like I said earlier, he died when I was 11, and that was the end of fishing for me. Gramps was a good cook, made great fried egg sandwiches, too. We ate those grouse and fish at various times of the day, whatever seemed right for our hunger pangs and my mother sometimes worried that I’d lost my appetite for one reason or another. The lure of the hunt or the tug of a wild one on his fishing line made him into a kid again for a little while, something to be cherished in one’s later years. He was like that when he was a youngster, you can bet, and when he was in his 60s, it was clear he never outgrew it. He died the year before I was old enough to hunt big game with him, but I know that infectious excitement would have been floating in the air. He could get as excited about digging up some bait worms as he did when he saw a grouse whiz up into a tree. As a ranch kid, I caught the bug early, on those riding expeditions with Gramps or the fishing we did out of Woody Creek on the off days when we weren’t looking for cows. The excitement of hunting birds or fishing big, fighting rainbows out of the cold mountain stream is something I remember well. Gramps seldom missed and don’t think the above scene happened every day¸ because it didn’t, but its occasional occurrence was enough to brighten the day for my grandfather. It wasn’t one of those things you’d particularly notice, like a 30.06 or other bigger caliber slung there, and I never really paid attention to it until the scene unfolded.Įven if I didn’t know what we were stopping for, the excitement in the air became palpable as Gramps hauled his big sorrel, Slim, to a halt and before you could count “one-two,” that pellet pusher would be aimed at something, most generally a grouse camouflaged in a pine or spruce. 410 shotgun my grandfather always carried in a scabbard alongside his saddle. My cousin Billy has it now, the single-shot. Never was a grouse more welcome, and I have to admit, even with my perceived culinary limitations¸ cooked over an outdoor fire, it could not have tasted better. The note was succinct and to the point: “We left a chicken in the creek for you.” Five or six days at cow camp without seeing another soul, and the closest I came was a note extolling the dinner menu.
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