Hunter? Part 3

The bison hunt logistics began with the effort to secure pack animals, as the region was seven miles into the southern end of the Absarkoa-Beartooth Mountains. The Yellowstone River flood earlier that year had washed the Gardiner entrance away, further complicating access. We’d have to drive to the trailhead from the west, via Red Lodge.

I called my friend, Abby Nelson of Widesky Adventures. We had collaborated a couple weeks earlier on a wilderness writing and horseback riding retreat. An avid hunter and skilled equestrian, she would be an invaluable member of our mission.  

When she agreed to team up with her horse and mule, a surge of confidence and excitement carried me into the next phase of planning. We’d need more mules, but here was a solid start in a woman I admired, agreeing to go on a hunt with me.

With me, a…hunter?

Still unsure, I began acting as if.  I took my husband’s 307 to the range twice a week and honed my shot. While I had decent aim with my bow, rifles still scared me. What if I shot someone accidentally? I had this flinch, too, a lingering consequence from when I first learned to shoot and the spotting scoop broke my glasses on the bridge of my nose.

The only girl on the range most days, I set up my pack on the ground and practiced shooting supine. With time, the flinch softened. I wore a pad on my boney right shoulder that helped with the kickback as well.

Over the course of a month, the fear subsided into pleasure. I liked the way the butt nestled into my pec, a breath held, core tight, slow pull of the trigger. The satisfying ping of a target hit 200, 300 yards out.

I also began hiking in the woods with my pack stuffed to roughly fifty pounds. An avid trail runner, I was surprised by how much harder it was to move slowly uphill with weight. Sweat drenched my shirt beneath the shoulder straps and back pad. I grew stronger, mile by mile, though my hips constantly ached.

Abby and I made plans to scout the decided hunting destination: Frenchy’s Meadow. She, on horseback, trailing her mule; me, pack on and hiking. We set off in early morning toward Wolverine Pass. Being late August, the day shined with brilliant blues and golds. The hours walking smelled of sage and last night’s rain, withering wildflowers and baking earth.

Fresh bear scat on the trail. Footprints in the mud told of a bear walking toward us, hearing our incessant “hey bear” calls, and veering off into the woods. There were dug up rocks and roots, amber hairs clinging to the bark of a back scratch.

Around us, the “beartooth” mountains cut into the sky, their serrated peaks embodying time itself. The cadence of my steps a heart, beating. The easy ebb and flow of conversation between Abby and myself as we navigated loose-rock creek beds, situational marshes, flooded river bends—the year’s flooding complicating our route months after the fact.

We finished the twelfth mile, a steep descent into Frenchy’s, at the edge of twilight. Abby set up an electrical fence for the horse and mule as I filtered water into our bottles. Half dead, I ate dinner and went straight to bed. We would scout at sunrise.

Dawn arrived before I was fully resurrected. A quick cup of coffee and we were glassing the meadow and surrounding slopes from a lookout point. Abby howled into the dawn to see who might be listening. After eighteen years working as a wolf biologist, her call was unnervingly real. She smiled shyly at my reverence.

We saw a moose and no bison. With the sun rising, we walked south, looking for tracks. We found some old ones in dried mud near a forest service cabin but no other signs. The bison weren’t there yet. When the snow settled up high, they would return. Yet we wouldn’t want snow a few thousand feet lower than the peaks on the mules’ route up and over Wolverine Pass. The timing would be a needle to thread.

We now knew where to camp and where to hang the meat. We talked at length about the necessity to clean the bison quickly, before grizzlies could catch wind. Given the abundant bear sign, it was unlikely that we would evade them entirely. Yet with enough people cleaning and a couple more on guard, we could hopefully avoid a confrontation.

Abby broke down the fence as I packed up my tent. The hike was brisk, the pace set by homebound pack animals. Abby offered to take turns on the horse but riding with legs wide like that hurt my hips even more than walking, so I refused the kind gesture.

Again, footsteps like a heart beating, as if I could speed right past arthritis. We rested creek side and I boiled water for a backpacker meal. The sun a blanket, the rocks a bed, and me, a body that could sleep for the next century. But no—we still had the day’s other half to go.  

Rule of the mountains: the last two miles are always longer than the previous twenty-two combined. The last half mile, longer yet, with an uphill charge because why not. At the truck I bemoaned the lack of pizza. The mule and horse agreed. Where’s the freaking food?

It’s dusk as I drove the winding road up and down Beartooth Pass. These views alone, a reward of being alive on earth. When I reached cell phone service, it was dark. Texts chirped and chirped. Are you okay? Call immediately!

Was I okay? My hips had a different answer than the rest of me.

One of my favorite songs came on as I finished the drive home.

You say, go slow.

But something’s right behind me.

I can runaway, for only so long.

It will not stop.

I will come down.

Oh no…

I tried to name the emotion bringing me to tears. Joy and gratitude for the experience just had, the surreal beauty of this wild world? Grief for my body’s decay, mortality encircling totality? Exhaustion? Elation? All of it, one.

A week later, I’m recovered. Abby, though, had sadly come down with long COVID and would not be able to join the hunt. The search for mules continued as September brought the mountains closer to snow. After securing a last-minute opening with an outfitter, I packed for the hunt. Folding my freshly printed tag into its plastic baggy, my hands stilled.

West Yellowstone, it read.

The tag wasn’t for the hunt the letter had described. My bison would be wintering on the plains east of Yellowstone Park, not northwest in the mountains. I would need a snowmobile and sled, not mules.

I would need to tell everyone that I had misunderstood the most basic factors of a hunt: when and where it would take place de facto.

Was I hunter? As if.