Martian Deer and the Vanishing Truck

In his gorgeous little portrait of grouse hunting, A Grouse Hunter's Almanac, Mark Parman states plainly,  "I've been lost just a few times or many times depending on how one defines lost."  That just about nails it.  He goes on to discuss how, while we as outdoorsy folks might occasionally become a tad turned around, we seldom have to spend an unplanned night or two in the woods.  I never have, though it has been close a time or two.

All is generally well and good for me when the only order of the day is walking through the woods.    If my mind is free to wander as it will and my eyes left to take in whatever they happen upon while the feet and legs keep churning away down below, I can and will most often turn back and make a beeline for the truck at the end of the day.  My brain, while not especially adept at handling differential equations or Farsi, has been conditioned to note and remember waypoints and landmarks as a matter of second nature.  I've been doing this for a pretty long time now.  Somehow, after years of practice, many outdoors folk can continually create a fairly accurate 3D map in their minds, as they progress through the day over hill and dale.  I happen to fall comfortably within that category most days.

We all acquire some tricks of the trade, of course -- sighting methods used to keep oneself aligned and on course relative to a big landmark or the sun.  In fairly open country the easiest thing to do, obviously, is to pick out a feature like a ridge or lone tree in the distance, and walk to it.  You can't get more simple than that.  In more dense or hilly terrain, we often line up two or three closer trees, sighting down them like stacking them up against one another, in order to maintain a course.  Deliberate error is also a handy play to master when navigating to a line such as a road or stream.  If you consciously nudge your back bearing off a few degrees in a purposeful direction, you'll know for certain that the tent or the truck is, say, downstream as opposed to upstream when you get to the road or river.  Much easier to find.  I use that one all the time.

Dad taught me a decades ago to stop every few minutes when bucking cross country, and turn around to look at the way you've just come.  I still do it.  It helps to cement a visual image of the country as it will look coming back the other way, so things don't look so foreign on the return.

Still, with education and experience, even the most practiced among us sometimes do end up wandering around in a meadow that isn't supposed to be there or gazing bewildered into a river valley that surely eroded in behind our backs after we'd passed that very way earlier in the day.

If you walk around outside long enough, you will eventually crawl up out of a thicket somewhere.  That small spark of elation at finally seeing the sky after an hour shouldering through cover not fit for human travel will blossom in your chest, only to be slowly and inexorably crushed by the realization that you have no idea where you are.

 A nice enough shot, but I took it because I fully expected a certain kettle lake to be there when I crested that hill.  They moved it, apparently.

It is most often when other tasks are added to the agenda, more mental energy spent on other things, that we can fail to keep track of our way.  On a very short walk through the northwoods with Frisbee years ago, I got a little turned around.

We'd parked on a sandy road that makes up one side of what we casually call "the loop."  I believe we were looking for a spot to put up a tree stand, though I no longer recall whether it was his or mine.  Maybe we were both looking for a spot.  It was a month or so before gun deer season, with all the accompanying contentment and excited jitters that time of year brings to the hunter's heart.  I remember the chill wind being strong enough to bring on the goosebumps for one of the first times that season, and the angling sun as it shone through the turning leaves.  I also remember walking back out to the road, and discovering that the truck had been beamed up by aliens.  Or stolen in a preemptive strike by the deer we were preparing to hunt.

Those were my first suspicions, anyway, though I was quickly yanked back to reality by Mr. Occam.  In a quick, if slightly befuddled, review of my actions to that point, I realized that I'd committed the gravest of outdoor follies during our mini-hike.  I'd distrusted my compass.

Any woodsman worth his salt doesn't leave the bermed gravel turnout in big country without a compass.  I carry two, one pinned to my vest for quick access and a spare in a vest or backpack pocket.  I use them constantly on the long grouse pushes we make through spruce and balsam so thick you sometimes have to turn your back and bull in reverse.  There is no lining up of landmarks to maintain a bearing when you can't see past the end of your gun.  Not a lot of shooting either, but that's a subject for another time.  The compass is the single most  invaluable tool in our arsenal, should we choose to leave the easy confines of tarmac and road signs.  It is the first thing on my pre-hunt checklist after food and water.

The modern GPS is a fine instrument, and can no-doubt be a useful tool at times.  I use one for certain things, and it has yet to fail me, but it probably will someday.  When I fail to replace the batteries or slip on a damp rock and crush the screen, most likely.  Or drop it down an ice hole.  It's much easier and cheaper to carry a backup compass.

Which brings us back to our fateful day seeking hunting spots, and The Case of the Vanishing Truck.  As I said, I'd committed the most serious (and flat-out dumbest) navigational faux-pas earlier that morning.  I'm a righty when I shoot, so I keep that compass pinned just above the left breast pocket of all my vests so it won't foul up a startled gun mount.  It's perched inches from my face.  A normally functioning adult bushwacking in unfamiliar country would glance at it every minute or so, and base his or her movement off that observation.  Instead, that morning I was suddenly struck with the sure-hearted conviction reserved almost solely for the irrational that the compass was wrong.  It wasn't, of course, and so as I continually bumped our course further away from the correct return bearing, I felt justified, proud even, in having realized that my compass was somehow malfunctioning and I, consummate woodsman, had not only noticed this, but reacted in a manner suited to solve the problem.

Until we got back to the road, and the truck had been absconded with by alien deer.

Unless you're traveling in areas considerate of extreme magnetic declination or random huge mineral deposits, always believe the compass.  It's not wrong, you are.  If you really doubt it, take out the spare you should be carrying and compare them.  It's not wrong, you are.  That was the lesson learned that day, and the mantra I repeated to myself as Frisbee and I hoofed it through the sugar sand to the truck, a half mile the wrong way down the road.

Not many years after that, Caleb and I decided to take a ride up to the river, and have ourselves a little mid-week hunt in fresh country during the gun deer season.

 A favorite view of the river

He had a big rock he wanted to sit on, a perfect vantage point looking out over mixed hardwood and popple thickets interspersed with stands of balsam.  I, on the other hand, had no plan or idea, and as such, struck out almost directly east from his postition to see what I could see.

I walked for a few hours, combining the still hunter's glacial pace with occasional fits of over-the-peak-itis.  Not a condition suffered by the old farts in camp in this case, OTPI is the strong urge some of us suffer from, whether hunting or not, that drives us up to the peak of the ridge, and the next one, and the one after that; in a singular quest to see what lies beyond.  It's very similar to around-the-bend-itis, a condition more often suffered in a canoe or kayak, but resulting in the same symptoms and outcome.  Those being, the sufferer, often in a state of endorfin-induced bliss, ends up way the holy cripes too far away from campsite or vehicle as dusk begins to fall.

That is exactly what happened to me on the hunt along the river with Caleb.  I'd seen what I thought were a doe and a fawn through the slashings sometime around what photographers call the "golden hour," that period of time when the sun is setting and everything takes on the soft hue and cast of autumn.  I'd then hunkered down for the last few minutes of light in the hopes that they would return or a buck would follow.  None of that transpired, but I did suddenly realize I was quite a long way from the truck in country I did not know, full dark quickly approaching.

To be completely honest, I had a moment, as they say.  I could suddenly feel my heart pounding in my ears, and the hair start to stand on end.  I was alone in the wild, unprotected in the dark.  The most profound of our primordial fears.  Fortunately for me, a process that began when we dropped out of the trees and started growing bigger brain pans eventually lead to the ability to reason, and a few hundred thousand generations down the pike, the invention of the LED headlamp.

I had two additional things on my side, combating my heedless flight into the dark.  I was prepared, and I'd learned to always trust the compass years before with those martian Cervids.  It was a simple matter of donning my headlamp, and following the compass straight back west through the big woods to the road.  I was amped, a little frightened by my poor decision making, but fully confident that I would be fine in a lean-to with a campfire and frozen Snickers dinner if it came to that.  It didn't.  I walked right out to Caleb's truck, and found him sitting in there with the heater running, wondering where my big buck was, that being the hopeful assumption of every deer hunter when his buddy returns late from the field.  I was puffing a bit, and sweaty from pushing it a little too hard on the way back.  I was also content to have found my way out of the darkness, and looking forward to the comforting glow of the wood stove and a nip or three of brandy.

Most of my experiences with getting spun around in the fields and woods are nowhere near that intense or prolonged.  Often, when you've had your noggin to the ground tracking an animal or in the clouds simply getting loose for a while, there suddenly comes a wait just a second moment.  An alarm born of instinct and experience reminds you to snap out of it, and take stock.  It hits with a little shock, but fades quickly as you assess and correct.  Hang on.  Where's the sun?  What's the wind doing?  Is that little pond still where it should be?  OK.  And you comfortably resume the tracking or shroom hunting or my personal favorite, mindless wandering.  It's important to stop and check in with the macro view once in a while, in outdoor pursuits just as in life.  Fail to do so, and you may quickly find yourself lost.

I failed to do so a little more than year ago.  A scant few miles from where I sit typing there is a DNR public hunting ground with a river running through it.  One of those small, wandering woody rivers with plenty of backwater that looks as if it should be fairly bristling with wood ducks come hunting season.  I'd been up and down it a number of times with Selma Kayak, and I knew the general layout of things, but I wanted to get in there and have look from the banks.  I wanted to get a little sweaty and muddy, and check things out for duck hunting.

So I did.  After a couple hours of poking a prodding along the banks on foot, occasionally fighting boot-sucking river muck, it was time to head for the shack.  I veered up out of the bottoms and back into the light, put the sun on my right cheek, and got to making time across the mixed prairie beset with small stands of hardwoods.

I hadn't studied the maps or aerial images of this particular area too closely before leaving home.  It's relatively small, and there's a river bisecting it.  If you get spun up anywhere near the middle, just make for the river.  Then it's simply a matter of knowing whether you need to walk upstream or down to get home.  Nor did I bother with the compasses.  "Practice what you preach" was apparently not in session that day.

But as I cut across country through the grass taller than me, in a bit of a rush to get home to a nice cool shower, I was rudely and quite suddenly cut off by a river that shouldn't have been there.  And it was running the opposite direction from what it should have been.  I stood there slack-jawed, utterly stunned.  There's no river here, and certainly not one that runs uphill.

Looking back on myself standing there now, I'm reminded of that picture you sometimes see of yourself, taken from an odd angle when you weren't paying attention.  I tend to live under the cheerful delusion that I have things pretty well under control and put together, at least a portion of the time.  Then I see myself in the periphery of one of those off-hand pictures and realize again from my unguarded countenance, I'm just another open soul, sometimes confused, less often truly content and sated.

That's how I'm sure I looked standing on the bank of that stream that shouldn't have been there.  Confusion with a chaser of surprise.  I stood still until I could hear the whisper of the Interstate in the distance.  Using that as my guide, I made some big loops, half circles along the bank of the mystery river, until I figured out, at long last, that it was in fact the same river.  I'd simply walked directly into the crook of an oxbow I hadn't known was there.  Had I cut the bank fifty yards in either direction from where I did, that towering prairie grass blinding me from any meaningful perspective as it was, things would have made much more sense initially.

As it happened, I was forced to make a couple five minute detours to reacquaint myself with what was actually happening.  As I got my wits about me and and a picture in my mind, Venus began to shine brighter, and the western horizon caught flame.  Time to boogie.  I made for the railroad tracks that I knew edged one border of the public land, and made my way back to the parking lot under that jostling gait you can only achieve walking on the tracks.  An extra hour of bumbling around in wilds, minutes from the state capitol building, it was just the sort of mini adventure that can crop up close to home when you get out there, and explore.

 A little mud, well earned

I never really worry about getting lost because I'm pretty damn good at it.  And thus far, I'm OK at getting un-lost too.  We'll see what this fall brings.  Following an eager flusher through the heavy bird cover is one of the easiest ways to lose oneself, and I hope to be doing plenty of both come October.

North and South

As the temperature outside sails over 100 degrees yet again, and the sun beats the more winter-inclined souls among us into dreary submission, my outdoor mind turns to thoughts of fall.  It's just starting now, the very beginnings of autumn dreams sparking to life in the heat.  There will be college football tailgates in the lot, all of Madison pulsing with excited energy under the changing leaves, as we wait to cheer on Bucky.  There will be deer and ducks to chase, once again.  And there will be birds.

I re-waxed the tin cloth Filson bibs in anticipation last night.  No need for a heat gun in this weather.

That's an important distinction.  In the parlance of the Wisconsin hunter, especially those hailing from the northern part of the state, ducks are not birds.  They are not referred to as birds when hunting comes up in conversation, anyway.  When you're going duck hunting, you say you're going duck hunting.  The phrase "bird hunting" means one thing north of Highway 10-- ruffed grouse hunting.  While the mention of bird hunting could technically pertain to the pursuit of any winged and feathered creature, it evokes only images of thundering flushes in golden popple thickets and fragrant balsam bottoms to most of us.

That, and a nudge from my buddy Frisbee, set me to thinking about the many differences in language and practice we encounter between the urbanized, populated southern region of the state and the more wild realms up north.

I've already employed one linguistic difference between north and south, almost unwittingly.  I grew up in the southeastern corner of the state, in a tourist town where the "flat landers" from Illinois were tolerated during summer with cool indifference and where those trees of white bark and leaves fluttering on squared petioles were referred to by their given name -- quaking aspen.  The quaking aspen does not exist up north, or so the casual listener would think.  It's actually very prolific, but it's referred to as the popple.  I'd never heard that until I was invited to camp, and frankly, I hid my confused ignorance until I figured out what they were talking about.

"Popple," so far as I can tell, is also sometimes used as a catch-all for any of the slender light-barked trees that grow in thick, nearly impenetrable clumps around the state.  I've seen aspen, birch, poplar, and even occasionally young willow and cottonwood referred to as popple by those less concerned with botanical accuracy.  And I knew what they were talking about, even if their taxonomic skills left something to be desired.

Of course, bird hunting talk brings another salient example to the front.  Ruffed grouse are almost never called ruffed grouse up north.  Often, as denoted in the phrase "bird hunting" above, they are simply called "birds."

"How many birds did you get today?"

"The leaves are still up so it was a little tough.  A few wild flushes that I couldn't see, but I put one in the vest."

Both parties know they are discussing the ruffed grouse exclusively.  If a woodcock (the only other upland game bird up there) made it into the game bag, it would be mentioned separately.

The grouse is also frequently referred to as a partridge up there, another stumbling block for me as a rookie in the camps more than a decade ago.  I'd heard them referred to as grouse or even "ruffs" or "ruffies," but never as "partridges."  In my early days, it often seemed as though those guys were just making up names for stuff in order to confuse me.

A similar anomaly exists in the fishing world of our camps up near the border with the upper peninsula of Michigan.  Often, if not always, "fishing" refers solely to trout fishing in that part of the world.  Like bird hunting means grouse hunting, when someone from the camps asks you how the fishing has been, they most likely want to know the condition of the local trout streams, at least outside of the ice-locked winter months.  And you can forget talking about fly fishing up there.  It remains little more than a curiosity with the old guard still in power.

Being a dedicated smallmouth fly rodder, this can sometimes throw a spinnerbait into the gears of a conversation for me.  I've been met with more than one quizzical look after going on about fly fishing for smallies in the same rivers they think of as trout water.  Then I remember that trout are king up there to most, and then almost exclusively using a spinning rod and worm.  Which is a real shame actually.  Not that I have anything against catching a few gorgeous brookies for dinner, but if they were even casually in touch with the outside fishing world, the up north boys would realize they reside literally in the heart of what has become a world-class smallmouth fishing destination in recent years.  People empty their pockets to airlines and guide services for the chance to strap up against huge smallmouth bass in rivers my friends and deer hunting compatriots drive right by to fish for six inch trout.

A bass fly fisherman from the southern part of the state is a fish out of water, as it were, telling stories around the fire.  I might as well be speaking a foreign language half the time.  Brian even commented on it once, during the long drive home after a great bass fishing trip up there.

"Man, those guys have no idea about the smallies, do they?  They just looked at us like we're nuts."

"No they don't, and all the better for us.  They leave them alone."



The Yooper and northern Badger also have a rare and strange superpower.  They can make wood.  At least if you listen to them talk about it.  Where a kid from Fontana like me grew up splitting and stacking ricks of firewood, they "make" firewood.  After a little reading on the subject, I believe the phrase could be a calque of the Finnish, much like a Cajun might "make groceries" using a direct translation of the verb faire in French.  Whatever the history or derivation, I grin a little inside every time I ask what happened up at camp in my absence, and it is related to me that firewood was made.

The gear and tackle of the northern sportsman must also be discussed here.  While the causes can vary, almost none of my peers from the northwoods find themselves some-time slaves to the whimsy of outdoor equipment purveyors as I do.  I stop at the big box stores or specialty web retailers all the time, and often become enchanted with a certain rod or reel, boot or backpack.  They don't have to worry about such infatuations around camp, as the nearest big stores are hours away.  Not that they are ignorant of quality, it's simply often a matter of gas mileage and opportunity for some of them.

Ted will never read this as he remains convinced the internet is a fad and thinks a laptop is something you pay scantily clad women for in the back of a gentleman's club, so I can state with no worry of future recriminations that his life-long affair with questionable gear is the direct result of his induction into the Hall of Fame of Tightwads.  He is cheap and proud.  I've accompanied Ted and Rog on the deer season grocery run for camp, and I enjoy watching Rog slowly come to a simmer as Ted quibbles over every single cent for a can of beans or a loaf of bread, the cost of which will be divided between multiple paying members of the camp.  Ted is completely willing to fight for quarters of cents... as Roger's ears slowly take on a burning glow of frustration in the soup aisle.  The entire affair is glorious to take in.

Ted is one of the funniest men I've ever met.  He is easily the undisputed champion of joke tellers I know, and has forgotten more about trapping fur bearers than I will ever know.  A great guy to hang with.  He also painfully parted with $25 for his last rifle scope, pulled from a bargain bin (Camp Boys, correct me if I'm wrong on that figure).  You simply cannot convince a miser of that jaw-dropping conviction to spend a few more bucks on his gear.  I stand both amazed and mystified when he walks into camp with yet another "steal" most hunters would toss in the bin.  Then I sit back and try not to cry laughing at his stupendous jokes and stories with the rest of the guys.

Primo stands at the other end of the spectrum among friends who use gear from decades past.  He is one of the best woodsmen I know, and has a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of every fire road, two-track, and fading backwoods ATV trail in the eastern county.  When October rolls around, I'll look forward to our meandering bird hunts together more than anything else up there.  Sometimes we spend more time bumping down rocky lanes last visited by voyageurs, guns safely cased, than we do actually chasing birds, but that's OK too.

He has no aversion to quality gear, outfitted as the most hearty logger all winter long, right down to his signature Husqvarna suspenders.  Everything I've ever seen him use has been stout, well-cared for, and in perfect working condition.  It's just that some of it was popular well before I was in elementary school.  He apparently sees no need to update, nor should he if he be judged by results.  He bags as many fish and game birds, spends more time in the woods, than almost anyone I know.

 Canvas hipsters, Mitchell reel, Ugly Stick, even a wicker creel on the back.  Like fishing with my bud, Norm Rockwell

That brings us to the what I suppose you would call the Up North Attitude.  It is not unique to the northwoods or our camps by any means, but that is where I encounter it most often.  Relaxation is part of it, surely, but that does not fully encapsulate the feeling. It's more the idea that, come what may, we're in camp and everything else is better left for another time.  Nobody gets worried when guys are hours late or unaccounted for.  They probably ran into friends.  People don't get uptight about dinner time or curfews -- eat what you want when you want, and go to bed whenever you see fit.  There exists no unfortunate infighting or snarky gossip sadly found in many of the other groups I associate with.  We all go along to get along.

The internet is unheard of and you have to drive quite a piece down the road to get a finicky single bar on your cell phone, so there is almost no contact with the outside most of the time.  The world carries on, the weather will be what it will be even if you can't check it, and there's cold beer in the fridge.  Let's toss some cards, and pretend we're the only people on the planet for a while.  Why else are we here, after all?

A Beacon of Suck

Have you ever had the wind knocked out of you?  Have you been emotionally crushed by failing stupendously in an audition or interview?  Ever sit dumbstruck on the couch or in the stands as your team gives up the winning score with no time left on the clock?  I certainly have.  More often than I care to remember on all of the above.  If you have too, and you don't wish to relive those feelings, think seriously before becoming a hunter or fisher.

Sure, there are the halcyon days, fish and game around every corner and under every rock, the camaraderie and food and sleepy, hypnotizing camp fires.  But there are also the missed shots and lost fish.  The ones that stick with you forever, that pop into your half-awake mind, and keep you from falling asleep.  The ones that mark a geographical place indelibly in your mind, so that every time you pass it, you think, "there's the spot where I screwed the pooch on that one."

There is a short stretch of bank in Gibb's Chute, between the Mississippi River and Lake Onalaska, that haunted me for more than a decade.  I lost the biggest, baddest smallmouth I have ever seen at the end of my own line there.  I can see the red eye and tiger stripes now, glistening in the spray of his acrobatics, six pounds of pissed off riverine muscle and power.  He broke off at the boat, and before disappearing forever, leapt one more time behind me, my black Heddon Torpedo still dangling from his jaw.  The angling equivalent of flipping me the bird.  I'm secretly glad we got rid of the fishing trailer up there so I don't have to go back, and commit seppuku.

The bad ones feel like you've had the wind kicked out of you during an awful interview while watching your team fumble away a lead at the last possible minute.  Disappointment and self-loathing get together, and conceive a shame baby in your stomach.

Not all shots or lost fish.  Some shots happen so fast or were so ill-conceived to begin with, they don't have the investment to make you sick.  You learn this quickly as a grouse hunter.  Often as not, you're firing at where you think the bird might be through the spruces or balsalms, instead of actually seeing it.  Those misses are dismissed out of hand.  You're just happy when one magically tumbles to the forest floor.  Upland shotgunning is very often like that.  I'm still surprised all the time when a sharply swerving woodcock suddenly explodes in a puff of feathers, and falls through the willow thicket.

I can get excited over big bluegills and perch, but losing a few here and there doesn't really rate on the soul crushing disappointment scale.  That's probably part of the reason I don't fish for them much anymore.  There are no stakes involved, other than whether or not I have to clean the deep fryer.

  Look very, very closely at the other end.  You won't see the coyote because he kept right on running.

I was a great practitioner of missing from an early age.  A prodigy, even.  Pigeons, chipmunks, and squirrels often remained unscathed in our yard, snickering at the boy who couldn't shoot, safe on their perches thirty feet away.  Cans and baby pumpkins swiped from the garden sat unmoving and inert on the fence rail, unfazed by my attempts to murder them.  It taught me humility and the value of practice.  It also taught me not to shoot dime store pellet guns with any faith.  That thing was a pile of crap.  When I finally learned how to sight in a gun, I tried to get that one on paper.  It was given away or lost shortly after that.  No point in sighting in a gun that sprays pellets around like a drunken Mardi Gras reveler chucking beads all over the place.

As I grew older, under the guidance of Dad, I eventually became a fairly good rifle shot with my .22.  He paid me a bounty on woodchucks from the garden and Grackles from the bird feeders.  $1 for the woodchucks and $.25 for the Grackles.  On a good day, I was pulling down $2.25 after school.  Just enough for bait and a couple cold sodas for Josh and I.

I went on to win some Boy Scout and NSSF rifle shooting competitions with that little gun.  Not exactly Olympic gold, mind you, but you get the idea.  I was 14, seven feet tall and bullet proof with that rifle in my hands.  I can still look through that Lyman target peep sight, and be immediately calmed.  Like some people looking at a famous painting in a museum, I guess.  The squirrels no longer paused to mock and chatter.  Mostly, they ended up as pot pie, one of the first dishes I ever learned to cook on my own.  Or skinned and gutted on a stick over a campfire when we wanted to play Rambo.  Not delicious.   Even when Brian and I go after them to this day, the standing bet applies.  First guy to make anything but a head shot buys the beer.  I seldom have to buy.

Still, I miss.  Seemingly all the damn time.  We all do, at least those of us who get out there enough.  I can't think of anyone I've ever consistently fished or hunted with who hasn't missed a shot or pulled a bonehead move to lose a fish.  It happens.  The big fish comes unbuttoned or the deer doesn't tip over, and there is this pause.  Time freezes while your stomach balls up in a monkey knot, and then, if you're with friends, the jeering begins almost immediately.  Not that we want our buddies to fail.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  It's more a form of intimacy, for lack of a better term.  You wouldn't laugh at a stranger if he missed, or a client, but when one of the boys doinks an easy lay-up it off the rim, look out.  That's all part of the fun.

Of course, this is all leading up to the story of my miss yesterday.

I met up with my buddy Rick to do a little coyote calling, our first trip of the year together.  I like hunting with Rick because he brings great coffee.  I've successfully given up almost all coffee, but certain concessions to sanity have to be made in the shivering pre-dawn darkness.

We'd made two sets with no action by the time the sun was fully up, and were set up at our final calling station of the morning.  Rick was fifty yards downwind of me, I was manning the mouth calls.  Foregoing the howling we'd tried in our earlier spots, I set right in with the bunny distress.  After a few rounds of dying rabbit, a coyote appeared out of the blue.  I hadn't seen him come in, as so often happens, but there he was, popped out from the edge of the frozen cattails, just staring in our general direction.

We tried and tried to coax him across the little creek that separated us, but he was having none of it.  Cottontail distress, pup yelps, barking; he was a rock, firmly planted and unwavering.  I knew he wasn't going to hang out all day, so I decided to take the shot.  It was fairly long (187 yards on the range finder I won in our deer camp raffle), but certainly a make-able shot for the trendy Ruger .204.  I had a good rest, plenty of time to get comfortable and take a few cleansing breaths, no wind to speak of.  In through the nose, out through the mouth.  Don't strangle the gun.  Relax.   I held and felt my heartbeat and squeezed.

Nothing.  That gorgeous dark gray dog just turned and trotted back into the marsh.  That was it.  And there I was, a shining beacon of suck in the soft morning light.  I had no idea where or how I missed as that sinking feeling set it.

Of course, we walked down to check for hair and blood.  Nada.  Rick tore me a good-natured new one on the ride home, as is the right and duty of any hunting buddy.  I wouldn't have expected anything less, and I'm look forward to returning the favor the next time he shanks one into the rough.  

Lunch

From way back when I was still scuff-kneed and covered in dirt, still casting a Zebco 202 (when it actually worked), until I eventually moved away to college, my parents would come home from working vacations, and delight us with highlights of their trips.  While I'm sure other kids heard about the standard tourist attractions of City X, or gazed mesmerized upon slides of Alcatraz and the Grand Canyon, we heard, almost without fail, about the food.  It was always about the meals.  Sometimes these gauzy tales of culinary Nirvana concerned restaurants known far and wide.  Other times the stories were of magical little taverns or supper clubs discovered by random chance.  Often, they were about feasts conjured at the hands of my father, armed only with local ingredients, an old Boy Scout mess kit, and a state park hibachi grill.  Maybe some aluminum foil and a bottle of wine.

"Did you take a tour of the Gateway Arch, Dad?"

"Nah, we heard about this rib place we had to check out.  You shoulda seen this place..." 

Since then, I've been blessed enough to have engaged in serious gluttony in Paris, dined gleefully in New York City, and supped until sated in L.A.  And a lot of points in between.

Still, the greatest kitchen I've ever eaten from or cooked in, the one closest to my heart, is often found by the side of a country highway, or at the dead end down by the old washed out bridge.  Sometimes it's in the cathedral formed by a canopy of gaudy autumn oaks and maples, or along the banks of a hidden farm country trout stream.  This oasis of laughs and warmth, sustenance and fuel, is located on the tailgate of my pickup truck.  I'm sure Dad, with his calloused mechanic's hands and do it yourself attitude, occasionally looks down on us hoisting fork to mouth in the woods, and is pretty damn proud about that.

Lunchtime in grouse season: lamb stew and a dry change of boots.

Seldom will you find a slow reduction or delicate emulsion out here.  There are no piping bags or sauce painting or stacking the food a mile high.  Consistent knife work and classic technique aren't necessary.  Chimichurri?  Chimiwhatthehell?

None of which is to say that we have to eat like heathens in the woods.  Or like insulin resistant eighth-graders bum rushing a convenience store candy aisle, for that matter.  There is no reason we cannot or should not stick to our culinary guns while dining al fresco in mud-caked waders.

First if all, it doesn't have to be "fancy."  We're talking about a midday meal here, designed to both refuel and satisfy.  I don't expect to be served multiple courses on grandma's china, nor will I cook that way in the field, but I do get offended by stale chips with bologna and white bread roulade de la poche (that's jacket pocket, not parchment).  If we're out here already, why not enjoy what we have already earned.  Venison Italian sausage steamed in a little white wine?  Hell yes.  Trout with asparagus and morels?  Are you kidding me?  I think you know where you can shove your Pringles can.

There are days when you can't or won't cook lunch on your tailgate.  Rain, work schedules, and family obligations often prevent the leisurely enjoyment of lunch afield with the boys.  Hell, maybe you already limited, and you want to get home to the missus and the game.  Or a hot shower and some aspirin.  I'm not talking about those days.  If you need to roll down the road or keep hunting, no time for lunch, there may be a call for energy bars and those petrifying sandwiches served up in plastic yellow pyramids.  But that ain't food, and you know it.  I hope.

Like I said, we aren't going for Michelin stars here.  We don't have to.  We already have two of the cook's biggest allies in our back pocket.  Guns to bring to the knife fight.  Any cook or eater worth his weight in Swiss chard will tell you these two secret weapons are unstoppable.

You arrive late morning back at the truck.  Maybe you've got a handful of ducks in the bag, maybe not.  A few things are sure: You are cold, you are tired, you are hungry.  This condition is the single biggest gun in the camp cook's arsenal.  You would eat your $50 Gore-Tex hat right now.  So we don't need six burners and 90 minutes to prepare a mighty feast.  Take a container of that cream of mushroom and grouse soup you rescued from the dark recesses of the freezer this morning, and chuck it in a pan.  When it's hot, dunk some nice crusty artisan country bread in there, and bang, you are ready to get after it again.  It's as simple as pie.  Simpler, actually.  As simple as turning on a burner.

If hunger is the greatest sauce, the howitzer in the cook's armory, then the next factor is the S&W .500 hand cannon.  It's your friends... your crew, the buddies, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band... whatever you call them.  Often, a passable meal can be raised to a much higher level simply by the power of the company, and an outstanding meal can be vaulted right up to phenomenal.  The experiences you've shared throughout your time together solidify your bond.  You know all the stories.  You remember the greatest trips with a serene smile, and grin ruefully at the ones that were wet, cold, and miserable.  Just by breaking bread together, you establish, once again, that you treasure each other's presence.  Let's not sully that with radioactive beef jerky sticks and neon plastic sugar cakes.

Go get yourself a little camp stove.  They range from miniscule backpacking models to the venerable old Coleman two-burner, up to truly chef worthy propane-driven monstrosities from there.  Cook a little at home beforehand, and warm it up along with some coffee in a freezing drizzle behind the truck.  Your hunting and fishing buddies will thank you, as will your waistline.  It's entirely worth the effort.