They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?, page 6
I had rigged up my bike especially for deer hunting. There were straps to hold my rifle snugly across the handlebars, and saddlebags draped over the back fender to carry my gear. The back fender had been reinforced to support a sturdy platform, my reason for this being that I didn’t believe the original fender was stout enough to support a buck when I got one. My one oversight was failing to put a guard over the top of the bike chain, in which I had to worry constantly about getting my tongue caught. Deer hunting on a bike was no picnic.
A mile farther on and a couple of hours later I came to where the fellows in the Jeep were busy setting up camp with some other hunters. Apparently, someone told a fantastic joke just as I went pumping by because they all collapsed in a fit of laughter and were doubled over and rolling on the ground and pounding trees with their fists. They seemed like a bunch of lunatics to me, and I hoped they didn’t plan on hunting in the same area I was headed for. I couldn’t wait to see their faces when I came coasting easily back down the mountain with a trophy buck draped over the back of my bike.
One of the main problems with biking your way out to hunt deer was that, if you left at four in the morning, by the time you got to the hunting place there were only a couple of hours of daylight left in which to do your hunting. Then you had to spend some time resting, at least until the pounding of your heart eased up enough not to frighten the deer.
As luck would have it, just as I was unstrapping my rifle from the handlebars, a buck mule deer came dancing out of the brush not twenty yards away from me. Now right then I should have known he was up to no good. He had doubtless been lying on a ledge and watching me for hours as I pumped my way up the mountain. He had probably even snickered to himself as he plotted ways to embarrass me.
All the time I was easing the rifle loose from the handlebars, digging a shell out of my pocket, and thumbing it into the rifle, the deer danced and clowned and cut up all around me, smirking the whole while. The instant I jacked the shell into the chamber, however, he stepped behind a tree. I darted to one side, rifle at the ready. He moved to the other side of the tree and stuck his head out just enough so I could see him feigning a yawn. As I moved up close to the tree, he did a rapid tiptoe to another tree. I heard him snort with laughter. For a whole hour he toyed with me in this manner, enjoying himself immensely. Then I fooled him, or at least so I thought at the time. I turned and started walking in a dejected manner back toward my bike, still watching his hiding place out of the corner of my eye. He stuck his head out to see what I was up to. I stepped behind a small bush and knelt as if to tie my shoe. Then, swiftly I turned, drew a bead on his head, and fired. Down he went.
I was still congratulating myself on a fine shot when I rushed up to his crumpled form. Strangely, I could not detect a bullet hole in his head, but one of his antlers was chipped and I figured the slug had struck there with sufficient force to do him in. “No matter,” I said to myself, “I have at last got my first deer,” and I pictured in my mind the joyous welcome I would receive when I came home hauling in a hundred or so pounds of venison. Then I discovered my knife had fallen out of its sheath during my frantic pursuit of the deer. Instant anguish! The question that nagged my waking moments for years afterwards was: Did the deer know that I had dropped my knife? Had I only interpreted it correctly, the answer to that question was written all over the buck’s face—he was still wearing that stupid smirk.
“Well,” I told myself, “what I’ll do is just load him on my bike, haul him down to the lunatic hunters’ camp, and borrow a knife from them to dress him out with.” I thought this plan particularly good in that it would offer me the opportunity to give those smart alecks a few tips on deer hunting.
Loading the buck on the bike was much more of a problem than I had expected. When I draped him crosswise over the platform on the rear fender, his head and front quarters dragged on one side and his rear quarters on the other. Several times as I lifted and pulled and hauled, I thought I heard a giggle, but when I looked around nobody was there. It was during one of these pauses that a brilliant idea occurred to me. With herculean effort, I managed to arrange the deer so that he was sitting astraddle of the platform, his four legs splayed out forward and his head drooping down. I lashed his front feet to the handlebars, one on each side. Then I slid up onto the seat ahead of him, draped his head over my right shoulder, and pushed off.
I must admit that riding a bike with a deer on behind was a good deal more difficult than I had anticipated. Even though I pressed down on the brake for all I was worth, our wobbling descent was much faster than I would have liked. The road was narrow, twisting, and filled with ruts and large rocks, with breathtaking drop-offs on the outer edge. When we came hurtling around a sharp, high bend above the hunters’ camp, I glanced down. Even from that distance I could see their eyes pop and their jaws sag as they caught sight of us.
What worried me most was the hill that led down to the camp. As we arrived at the crest of it, my heart, liver, and kidneys all jumped in unison. The hill was much steeper than I had remembered. It was at that point that the buck gave a loud, startled snort.
My first deer had either just regained consciousness or been shocked out of his pretense of death at the sight of the plummeting grade before us. We both tried to leap free of the bike, but he was tied on and I was locked in the embrace of his front legs.
When we shot past the hunters’ camp, I was too occupied at the moment to get a good look at their faces. I heard afterwards that a game warden found them several hours later, frozen in various postures and still staring at the road in front of their camp. The report was probably exaggerated, however, game wardens being little better than hunters at sticking to the simple truth.
I probably would have been able to get the bike stopped sooner and with fewer injuries to myself if I had had enough sense to tie down the deer’s hind legs. As it was, he started flailing wildly about with them and somehow managed to get his hooves on the pedals. By the time we reached the bottom of the mountain he not only had the hang of pedaling but was showing considerable talent for it. He also seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. We zoomed up and down over the rolling foothills and into the bottomlands, with the deer pedaling wildly and me shouting and cursing and trying to wrest control of the bike from him. At last he piled us up in the middle of a farmer’s pumpkin patch. He tore himself loose from the bike and bounded into the woods, all the while making obscene gestures at me with his tail. I threw the rifle to my shoulder and got off one quick shot. It might have hit him too, if the bike hadn’t been still strapped to the rifle.
“Now that,” I said to the boys at Kelly’s, “is how to tell about a first deer—a straightforward factual report unadorned by a lot of lies and sentimentality.”
Unrepentant, they muttered angrily. To soothe their injured feelings, I told them about my second deer. It was so big it could cradle a baby grand piano in its rack and shade a team of Belgian draft horses in its shadow at high noon. Honest! I wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.
The Crouch Hop and Other Useful Outdoor Steps
While going through my mail at breakfast the other morning, I noticed a picture on a magazine cover of what was purported to be a group of backpackers. The individuals portrayed were all neat, clean, and beaming with happy smiles as they came striding up over a grassy knoll.
“Those aren’t backpackers, they’re fashion models,” I told my wife.
Always keen to assimilate my wisdom on such matters, she fixed me with an intense look. “Did you eat my piece of bacon? That last piece of bacon was mine!”
“Well, first of all,” I explained patiently, “they’re all neat, clean, and beaming with happy smiles, whereas backpackers are generally messy, grubby, and grunting. Second, they’re climbing a grassy knoll instead of a forty-five-degree, rock-strewn snake path the Forest Service laughingly calls a trail. What really gives them away, though, is that they’re striding. No self-respecting backpacker would be caught dead striding.”
“You even ate my English muffin!” my wife shouted.
This enlightening exchange got me to thinking that there are probably many people like my wife who have waited in vain for someone to erase their ignorance concerning the various foot movements, or steps, as they are sometimes called, employed in the practice of outdoor sports. I herewith offer as a public service the following compendium of the basic forms of outdoor pedestrianism.
THE PACKER’S PLOD—Backpackers, being generally optimistic souls, will start off on an excursion at a brisk pace, which they maintain for approximately nine steps. They then shift into the standard packer’s plod. One foot is raised and placed forward three inches on the trail. The backpacker then breathes deeply, checks his hip strap, wipes the perspiration off his face, takes a swig from his canteen, eats a piece of beef jerky, snaps a photograph of a Stellar’s jay, and consults his map. Then he repeats the process. A good backpacker, if he had a table handy, could play a hand of solitaire between steps. His forward motion defies detection by the human eye. Nevertheless, his progress is steady and unrelenting, and during the course of a day he can eat up a surprising number of miles, not to mention several pounds of jerky.
It always amuses experienced backpackers to see neophytes of the sport go racing past them on the trail. The tale of the tortoise and the hare leaps instantly to mind. Last summer my old backpacking partner Vern Schulze and I took his two boys, Wayne and Jim, on their first overnight hike. Our destination was a lake high up in the mountains of Idaho. Vern and I set off at the standard packer’s plod, while the boys tore off up the trail ahead of us, soon disappearing from view. After about an hour they came racing back down the trail.
“What happened?” they shouted. “When you didn’t show up at the lake, we thought maybe you had fallen and hurt yourselves.”
Vern and I just winked at each other. “Don’t worry about us. You fellows just go on ahead. We’ll catch up.”
After the boys had charged back up the trail, I said to Vern, “You know, when Wayne and Jim are exhausted and we pass them up, it would be better if we didn’t tease them too much. It’s a bad thing to break a boy’s spirit.”
“Right,” Vern said, munching a handful of beef jerky while he snapped a picture of a Stellar’s jay.
A couple of hours later the boys came jogging back down the trail.
“Look,” I whispered to Vern. “They’re already starting to slow down.”
“Hey, Dad!” Wayne shouted. “The fish are really biting great! We’ve already caught enough for supper!”
It was all we could do to suppress our mirth. Both youngsters were showing definite signs of burning themselves out.
“You guys better speed it up a bit,” Jim said.
“We can take care of ourselves,” Vern replied, giving me a nudge with his elbow that almost toppled me off the trail. “Say, if you guys want to sit down and take a rest, go right ahead. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Just because Pat and I never stop doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.”
“I thought you were stopped right now,” Jim said.
“No,” Vern said, “as a matter of fact we have just quickened our pace.”
“We’d better be going,” Wayne said. “We’ve got the tent pitched and a rock fireplace made and want to finish gathering wood for the fire.”
They made three or four more trips back to check on us, each time moving a little slower. Along about evening we came upon them sitting alongside the trail eating huckleberries, and they both looked plumb tuckered out. Vern and I passed them up without so much as a single unkind remark. When we had dumped our packs in camp, though, I couldn’t help offering a bit of advice to Wayne, who was hunkered at my feet.
“Easy does it,” I told him. “If you pull a man’s boots off too fast it hurts his ankles.”
A boy is never too young to start learning the basics of backpacking, I always say.
THE SIDEWINDER—Skilled anglers the world over are masters of this rather peculiar outdoor step. Essentially, it consists of sauntering sideways. While looking straight ahead as if wearing blinders, you attempt to give the impression that you are oblivious to what is taking place on either side of you. The situation in which it is used is this: Your partner has laid claim to a nice piece of fishing water twenty yards or so downstream from you. Suddenly he gets a strike and flicks his fly into the uppermost branches of a thorn apple. You know the fish was a big one because of the way your friend suddenly crouches down and scurries about like a hyperactive crab as he tries to untangle his line and stay out of sight of the fish at the same time. There is a great temptation on such occasions to be overwhelmed by your partner’s desperate maneuvers and to laugh yourself senseless. A master angler, however, will maintain an expression that is not only sober but that conveys the impression he is totally unaware of anything but his own rhythmic casting. While maintaining this expression, he then performs the sidewinder, which carries him sideways along the bank to that portion of water where the monster trout has signaled its presence. Upon arriving at this position, the master angler must make a pretense of being in a trance of sufficient depth that it cannot be penetrated by the vile epithets screamed at him by his former friend. The former friend will at this point give up all caution and throw himself into all-out combat with the thorn apple in order to free the offending line. Catching and landing a fish under such trying circumstances is what qualifies one as a master angler, sometimes referred to by fishing partners as a “no-good bleep of a bleep.” Good sportsmanship requires that one refrain from maniacal laughter after performing a successful sidewinder.
THE MOSEY—This is a walk that belongs almost exclusively to game wardens, and they reserve it for occasions when they are moving in to make a pinch. If you see a man moseying toward you while you are fishing or hunting, you had better make a quick study of your game regulations because you may be in trouble. If game wardens in your area are prone to being sneaky, a stump or a bush moseying toward you also may mean trouble. I myself have on occasion put the mosey to good use. Indeed, it is rather amusing to see how quickly other anglers can be cleared from a stream by the simple expedient of moseying toward them.
THE HEEL-AND-TOE—This is essentially the same step employed in the track event of the same name. It is characterized by quick, tiny steps, an exaggeratedly straight vertical posture, and a facial expression combined of equal parts of indignation and suffering. It is not unusual to see a whole party of elk hunters going about camp in this fashion after a twenty-mile horseback ride into the mountains.
THE CROUCH HOP—This is usually performed midway through the process of driving in a tent peg with a large flat rock. The individual will suddenly leap up, clamp one of his hands between his thighs, and, making strange grunting sounds, begin to hop madly about the camp. I have performed this exercise many times, and it does wonders for relieving the pain resulting from a finger caught between a rock and a tent peg. It is equally important to recognize the crouch hop for what it is when you see it being performed. Once in Yellowstone Park, blinded by tears, I accidentally crouch-hopped into the adjoining camp space where an hysterical lady tried to run me through with her wiener stick. Luckily for me, she didn’t have sufficient foresight to remove the wiener and I escaped with a single bruise no larger than the business end of a Ball Park frank.
THE SAUNTER—The saunter is applicable almost exclusively to bird hunting. I can remember the very first time I used it. I was fourteen and grouse hunting with my friend Retch Sweeney. We were moving stealthily through a thick stand of evergreens where we knew a grouse to be hiding. Suddenly the bird exploded off a limb almost directly above us and roared away through the trees. Startled, I whirled, pointed my old double-barrel at a patch of sky as big around as a bread box, and fired. Out of sheer coincidence, the shot and the grouse arrived at that patch of sky simultaneously, and the bird landed with a dead thump ten yards away. All my instincts told me to race over, grab up the grouse, and clamp it to my throbbing chest, all the while exclaiming, “Holy cow! Did you see that shot? Holy cow! What a shot!” For the first time in my life, however, I defied my instincts. I s-a-u-n-t-e-r-e-d over, picked up the grouse, and nonchalantly deposited it in my game pocket. “That one sort of surprised me,” I said to Retch, whose tongue still dangled limply from his gaping mouth.
Now, had I gone bounding and bawling after that grouse like a hound pup after a squirrel, Retch would have known the shot was an accident. Instead, my saunter filled the great empty spaces of his mind with the impression that I was a fantastic wing shot. He frequently commented afterwards that he didn’t understand how anyone who was such a great shot could miss so often. I have found, in fact, that a properly executed saunter after downed game will sustain one’s reputation as a great shot through an unbroken string of twenty-five misses.
If one hunts with a dog, by the way, the same effect can be achieved by teaching it to retrieve game in a manner that suggests unrelieved boredom. Personally, I haven’t had much success in this area with my own dog, since I’ve never been able to break him of the habit of doing a histrionic double take every time I hit something. You just can’t compensate for bad breeding, so there is nothing for me to do but saunter to make up for a stupid dog who aspires to be a stand-up comic.
