The Haystacks - Part 2

         In the great Western novel Lonesome Dove, author Larry McMurtry's two protagonists, Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae go into San Antonio to find a cook to replace the one who has quit, having had more than enough of their quixotic cattle drive from Texas to Montana. They are surprised at what they find. In their days as young Texas Rangers, San Antone was a wild place. But now it's become like every other town, with too many people and too little of the old excitement. Gus says, "We'll be the Indians if we last another twenty years. The way this place is settling up, it'll be nothing but churches and dry-goods stores before you know it. Next thing you know, they'll have to round up us old rowdies and stick us on a reservation to keep us from scaring the ladies." As I drive from one wellpad to another, trying to figure out where we are by checking the legal descriptions on the locations, I think I know how he felt. There are trucks going full bore north, south, east and west but not a soul here knows or cares where our camp was back 30 years ago. None of them know or care about the old man or the store or the sage grouse and deer we used to hunt here. I think perhaps my time and my place here in this part of Wyoming is gone.

            Maybe Gus was right. Maybe they ought to just round us up, us old rowdies who were here so long ago. They could load us up on a little bus every so often and take us out to fish in the park or maybe to a baseball game. That way we wouldn't have time to sit and think about what we've lost. We wouldn't be frightening the ladies or the oil companies with our talk of what once was, what might have been and what still could be. But like Woodrow Call, I doubt that's going to happen. I suspect we'll keep right on doing what we're doing now, and old men like me and the cowboy poet Wally McRae will be left with the thoughts he expresses so well in his poem "Things of Intrinsic Worth":

Great God, how we're doin'! We're rollin' in dough,

As they tear and they ravage The Earth.

And nobody knows...or nobody cares...

About things of intrinsic worth.

-Grandpa

The Haystacks - Part 1

           The old man in the little store at Red Desert, WY had a bighorn sheep skull he'd picked up in the breaks south of Man and Boy Butte back in the ‘50s – the 1950s. Both the man and the sheep skull looked like they could have just as easily found one another in the 1850’s. Both were sun-dried and weathered relics in this little oasis in the middle of the sagebrush sea. The country south of Wamsutter was still wild when my dad and I used to stop in at the store for a Coke on our way home from a daytrip to Fort Laclede or the Haystacks. The old man and the little store grew older and shabbier together over the years as the Lincoln Highway was replaced by Interstate 80. Finally they both passed away. I wonder what ever became of that sheep skull.

         I wonder what ever became of the country he found it in, too. I tried to take The Apprentice and his dad in there not long ago. The sagebrush sea was gone, chopped into little pieces up by a spider web of roads and pipelines, wellpads and compressor stations. It took me three hours to find the road along the north side of the Haystacks, and another hour to find the little two-track that dead-ends where we used to camp. The old timers claimed that Butch Cassidy used to camp for a day or two in the Haystacks too, back in the day. He could rest his horses and watch his back trail to make sure nobody was following him on the Outlaw Trail from Hole in the Wall to Brown’s Park. It was a dry and lonely camp then, but not anymore. It’s part of one of the largest gas fields in America.

           We can stand on the same rockpile that a bighorn sheep stood on once, quick-draw the smartphones out of our pockets and call our cousins in Los Angeles or Las Vegas or Lost Springs. We can open Google Earth and know exactly where we are. There’s no app to tell us exactly where we’re going, but I think I know. I think we're going to a place where nobody knows and nobody cares about bighorn sheep or Butch Cassidy or the Red Desert Store. We're going to a place where as long as we’ve got a smart phone, a soccer field and an SUV, we could care less about the Haystacks or Man and Boy Butte or Fort Laclede. We’re going to the place where comfort lives and freedom dies. Welcome to the 21st century, fellow travelers.

-Grandpa

A Conservationist's Hero

Theodore Roosevelt:

A Conservationist’s Hero

Theodore Roosevelt was a president, soldier, people’s man, author, hunter, and conservationist. He is also one of my heroes for his work in establishing places where wildlife can roam freely and safely,and where we can learn about them. Over the course of his career, he established several National Parks and National Forests and worked to ensure that wild places affected by humans were restored.

Early in his adulthood, Roosevelt lived on a ranch in what is now North Dakota. He saw the impact of people on wildlife and the environment. Case in point: an estimated 500 American Bison were left from the thousands bison that roamed only a few decades before. He resolved to take action, once elected to President and after, Roosevelt did just that.

On August 31, 1910, during a speech given in Kansas he said, “Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us... Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation."

Roosevelt did more than just talk. As President, Roosevelt provided federal protection for almost 230 million acres of land, an area equivalent to the entire Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida. With that land, he set aside 150 national forests, the first 51 federal bird reservations, five national parks, the first 18 national monuments, the first four national game preserves and the first 24 reclamation projects. As a result, many of the endangered species such as the American Bison were able to come back from the brink of extinction.

I’ve talked about what Roosevelt did, but I haven’t talked about why he is one my heroes. During the time of his political career, huge companies (or trusts) that would let nothing stand in their way, dominated U.S. industry. Roosevelt could have let these trusts rampage across this country’s wild lands, leaving nothing but waste. But instead, Roosevelt led the way in not only creating places (such as national parks) where the trusts could not come and destroy, but he also made sure when companies use the resources of the land, there are laws that restrict their activities and require them to restore areas to their former glory before the projects.

Sometimes it’s easy for us to take our wild places for granted. My generation is used to getting what we want pretty easily – whether it’s the world’s knowledge at our fingertips, downloading the latest song, or driving a few hours to experience the magnificence of Yellowstone National Park and its inhabitants. Sometimes we forget what it took to protect this land…and the responsibility we have to make sure it staysthat way.

Theodore Roosevelt was a true hero. He was responsible for many of the places where we go across the U.S. to see amazing places and wildlife, to think about our lives, get away from the world or spend time with our friends and family. He helped to shape the United States.

-The Apprentice-

Why We Are the Way We Are

                                                      

          We are a Wyoming family. We hunt. We fish. We pick berries and mushrooms. We know the names of the birds and the flowers. We have names for the places that are special to us – Three Elk Meadow, the name of this blog - is also one of those places. We’re out there in the mountains and the deserts, in fair weather and foul, having the time of our life all year long. We always have, and I hope we always will.

        I am, I guess, what passes for a patriarch in our family. I’m Grandpa, an honor I take very seriously. Perhaps that’s because I never met either of my own grandfathers. They were dead long before I came on the scene. I never knew the man whose name I bear. Never heard his voice or even saw his face, except in the old sepia-toned pictures that have been were handed down to me. My dad didn't remember him much, and I don't think I ever heard him mention his father to me. Never much of a mentioner to begin with, my dad didn't have a lot of memories to work with when it came to his own father. My grandmother wasn't a lot better when it came to sharing memories of the husband she lost to the great influenza epidemic. Maybe it was just too hard to talk about him, even after all those years. He remains elusive, a ghostlike presence in our family almost a century after his passing.

The photos of him at age 40 show a prosperous young stockman. Sandy haired, sporting a Stetson and a pocket watch and wearing a suit. But it’s the eyes that tell the story. Blue-eyed, like his young son and later the grandson he would never know, he looks not so much at the camera as through it. There’s a Michael Martin Murphy song that says “You can see it in the eyes of every woman and man who spends their whole life livin’ close to the land. There’s a love of the country and a pride in the brand in America’s heartland, livin’ close to the land.” That’s what you see. You see the sagebrush sea, the utter vastness of millions of acres without a fence. You see the blazing heat of the summer and the bitter cold of the winter and the constant, endless wind. You see a man who loved being in the saddle, who lived and loved living in the wild. A guy I connect with very deeply, no matter that we never met.

I don't want to be just a picture to my own grandchildren. That’s why we started this blog. We want to share with you the connection we feel with the land – each of us as individuals and all of us collectively as a family. We're a family that loves God, each other and the wild things and wild places of Wyoming. We hope you'll enjoy sharing them with us.

- Grandpa

Heroes of the West #1 - The Legend

The Legend

            Born and raised in Wyoming, I feel that it is fitting for me to learn and write about some of the American West heroes that have made this land so great. This biography is the first in a series I intend to title, Heroes of the West.

             Buffalo Bill Cody was a legend in the far West. A frontiersman, one of the best bison hunters West of the Mississippi, a great entertainer with his traveling Wild West show, and a ruthless trailblazer in a time that mostly consisted of legend and folktale. Buffalo Bill Cody set a standard for what the West looked like and could be for the whole nation.

          William Frederick Cody was born on February 26, 1846 on a farm just outside the tiny town of Le Claire, Iowa to Isaac and Mary Ann Cody. William grew up on the farm, and led a quiet childhood. In 1853, when he was seven, the family sold the farm and moved to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory. This was at a time in our country when it was divided so badly over slavery. Kansas was nearing Statehood at this time, and there was a hot debate over whether it would be slave or free.

          Isaac Cody, (William’s father,) was very antislavery. Kansas was on the verge of becoming a slave state. Inevitably, that came to a head at Rively’s Store, a place where many pro-slavery supporters met. Isaac’s antislavery speech angered the men so much that they threatened to kill him if he didn't step down. When Isaac refused, one of the men pulled a Bowie knife and stabbed Cody twice. Isaac was immediately rushed to medical attention, and lived, but never truly made a full recovery.

           In Kansas, the family was persecuted so bad over their being antislavery, that William’s father often had to leave home for days or weeks on end. One such  time, young William rode 30 miles to warn his father of a plot to kill him on the way back. Isaac went to Cleveland, Ohio to organize about thirty antislavery  families to add to the cause. During the return trip, he caught a respiratory infection which, compounded by the lingering effects of the stabbing and complications from kidney disease, led to Isaac Cody’s death in 1857.

Young William Cody

           After the father’s death, the Cody family struggled financially.  Bill took on a job with a freight carrier as a “boy extra.” He would ride up and down the wagon train delivering messages between the driver and the workmen. Next he joined Johnston’s Army as an unofficial member of the scouts assigned to put out a rumored rebellion from the Mormons in Salt Lake City, Utah. According to his own account in his autobiography, (see below,) this was where he first began his career as an “Indian fighter.”

             "Presently the moon rose, dead ahead of me; and painted boldly across its face was the figure of an Indian. He wore this war-bonnet of the Sioux, at his shoulder was a rifle pointed at someone in the river-bottom 30 feet (9 m) below; in another second he would drop one of my friends. I raised my old muzzle-loader and fired. The figure collapsed, tumbled down the bank and landed with a splash in the water. "What is it?" called McCarthy, as he hurried back. "It's over there in the water." "Hi!" he cried. 'Little Billy's killed an Indian all by himself!' So began my career as an Indian fighter."

             In 1860, Bill Cody was struck by gold fever. He gathered up his belongings and headed west to California. Along the way, he met an agent for the Pony Express. This agent persuaded Bill to join and Bill worked delivering messages cross-country at breakneck speed for a number of years. He only quit when he was called to his mother’s sick bedside. After she recovered, Cody wanted to enlist as a Union soldier during the Civil War, but was denied because of his age. He began working as a Freight Caravan delivering supplies to Fort Laramie, Wyoming until 1863, when he joined the army as a captain in Company H, 7^th Kansas Calvary and served until he was discharged in 1865.

          The next year, Cody married Louisa Frederici. They had four kids together, but two died young in Rochester, New York. From 1868 to 1872, Cody was employed as a scout for the United States Army. Part of the time he scouted for Indians, and part of the time he hunted Bison for the army. In 1872 he joined Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia’s highly publicized royal hunt. In December that year, Cody traveled to Chicago to make his stage debut with friend Texas Omohundro in The Scouts of the Prairie. During the ’73-74 season, they invited their friend James Hickok to join them in a new play called Scouts of the Plains. In 1879, Cody wrote an autobiography titled The Life and Adventures of Buffalo Bill.

         The troupe continued for ten years. In 1883, Cody founded “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West,” a circus – like attraction that toured annually. This show was immediately popular, touring all over the US and Europe. It was a collection of acts and tricks all pertaining to the West. Many headline performers were also featured on the show, such as Annie Oakley, Gabriel Dumont, and Lillian Smith. With his profits, Bill purchased a 4,000 acre ranch near North Platte, Nebraska. In 1887-1890, the show toured Europe, and was watched by Queen Victoria and the Pope.        

          Through the ‘90s the show gained in popularity in both the U.S. and Europe.  In 1895, Bill founded the town of Cody, Wyoming. He had passed through it in the 1870s and was so impressed at all the area had to offer that he decided to build a town there. Several streets in the town were named after his associates. In November 1902, he opened the Irma hotel, which he named after his daughter. He also established the TE ranch, located on the south fork of the Shoshone River.

            On October 29, 1901, a freight train crashed into Buffalo Bill’s train. 110 horses died in the accident, and although no people were killed, Annie Oakley’s injuries were so severe that she was told she would never walk again. However, she recovered and went back to performing later.

           Over the next 15 or so years, Cody settled down. He retired from performance and moved to Denver, Colorado. Having built up such an enormous fortune, he lived quite comfortably. Arguably the greatest legend of the west, Buffalo Bill Cody died of kidney failure on January 10, 1917, surrounded by friends and family. His funeral procession was led by Wyoming governor and close friend John B. Kendrick. Today he is buried on Lookout Mountain, Golden, Colorado.

             

     Buffalo Bill Cody was, is, and always will be one of the legends of the American West. He was one of the greatest entertainers of the late 19^th and early 20^th century. He founded a still-thriving Wyoming town, and he created a introduced the world to the American West. He stood for toughness, bravery, and everything that made the West so great, and I am proud to be able to live in and experience this great land that this great person left a lasting impression on.

-The Ranger

Don't Stumble

                                                             "DON'T STUMBLE"

            Last November, I had my first opportunity to go deer hunting, with my grandpa and our friend Craig on private property just Northwest of Torrington, Wyoming. I loved it. It was super fun, and I want to tell you all about it.           

Everyone has their own little issues in life, such as how my poor brother struggles to go on a road trip without needing to use the restroom two miles after we pass a rest stop, and the next one isn't for another 73 miles away. My little issue in life, however, is the ability, (or rather the lack thereof,) to successfully pack all of my belongings before venturing out in the world. So, at 10 pm the night before hunting, we realized that I had forgotten my camo hunting jacket. I called my dear mother and requested for her to leave it outside for us, so we could swing by and pick it up at o'Dark 30 the following morning.

         I awoke to the sound of my alarm at 4:45 AM. Grandpa and I hurriedly got dressed and slipped out, taking some of grandma's delicious pumpkin muffins with us to eat on the road, picked up Craig at his house, and headed North. Along the way, we encountered this absolutely stunningly beautiful Wyoming sunrise. We hit Torrington by about 6:30, and headed straight for the property where we were to hunt. Our plan was to hunt the canal bottoms, where there was water and trees, where deer would go early in the morning to get a drink and have a snack. After this, they would go up to some of the bluffs and blowouts to spend the rest of the day taking a nap. We wanted to be able to catch this movement.

        We were into the deer right off the bat. Almost immediately, it can't have been more than two minutes after we had got there, we caught the flash of a little puffy white tail crossing the dry canal . I bailed out and almost got a shot, and it was a great, near-perfect opportunity, but everything was moving a little fast and I just wasn't on top of things. The two or three deer tore off to parts unknown, and we tried to follow up with them, but it just didn't work. So, I got my head in the game and we resumed the hunt with renewed vigor. It was still early, and we’d seen deer before along an irrigation drain on the north end of the property. We worked our way through the grass and sagebrush along the drain, all the while glassing the nearby fields. There was plenty of fresh deer sign, but no deer. By this time, it was mid-morning and we were pretty sure the deer had moved into their bedding areas near the bluffs.

We stopped for lunch when we reached a small knoll near a windmill. I had a question that I’d wanted to ask Craig for a long time. He’s been a missionary, a stake president and a counselor in a mission presidency in our church. I’m planning to be a missionary in a few years myself. So during lunch, I asked him how I could get ready to be a really good missionary.  His main advice to me was "Don't stumble." It is so important for us to never get caught up on stumbling blocks in any form, before or after one's mission. If we stumble, we might fall before we can accomplish something great. It was a great talk, and I really felt the Spirit as he was talking to me. He’s a great man.

The bluffs

        After lunch, we started walking for the bluffs. The bluffs are a series of low, rolling grassy hills and sandy blowouts. In the middle of it all is a huge sand dune, and it was this area where my grandfather had met with success in an earlier deer hunt. We hiked from the truck, with me carrying the .243 and Craig using Grandpa’s .280 Remington. Actually, from our parking location, it was a little hike to even get to our destination, and it was almost half an hour of walking before we could begin hunting. Dang, we walked and we walked and we walked. Sometimes, we would split up and search different areas, but we didn't even SEE any deer. I wasn't feeling terribly discouraged, just maybe a tad bit disheartened.

       One such time when we had split up, grandpa had told me to go check out a little blowout. We were starting to approach the area where he had gotten his deer before, so we were using extra caution. I was just walking along, and decided to look back to see where my grandpa and Craig were. President Whitehead was hidden from view. When I saw grandpa, I thought he was behaving rather weirdly. He was crouched down and, I assumed, had decided to turn into an alien. I thought that he was making alien antennae gestures with his hands, so (luckily I had the sense to not shout out), I, via sign language, inquired as to what he was doing. He was pointing at something in the distance which I couldn't quite see yet, and then, suddenly, it hit me. He was directing me to a deer.

       I hit the deck immediately. I sort of crawled over to the edge of my bluff and saw the deer in question. She was a rather large doe whitetail. I took my rifle out of safety, and, with rapid breathing and huge amounts of adrenaline, squeezed the trigger. Right as the bullet left the barrel I knew it was a bad shot. I missed, and the doe bounded off. Naturally, I took off after her. My grandpa met up with me and we ran over to the edge of another bluff, looking down over into a draw. She was down there, looking nervous but she looked like she was going to stay. We army-crawled up to get a clear shot. I got my breathing under control, heard the click of the safety going off, got my crazy wiggling of the scope dead still, and pulled the trigger.

         BANG! Instantly, I knew it was a good shot. But not good enough. She went down, and with one more shot she stayed down. Man, it was an intense few minutes, but I got a deer! According to grandpa, she was one of the bigger whitetails he had seen and she was as big as doe whitetail get. She was very young and healthy and had a good life. The amazing thing was, I had made my first shot only about 50 feet away from where my grandpa had killed his deer! The #1 first thing we did was say a prayer of gratitude. That is extremely important. Heavenly Father blessed us with this beautiful gift of fresh meat, and it was important to give thanks. I was the happiest guy in the world!

       After cleaning her out, we started the long walk back to the truck. It seemed like quite a hike on the way there earlier, and I got very tired then, but the way back seemed really easy! I suppose it helped to be a 13-year-old who had just killed a deer. We had to hike all the way back to the truck and drive a long way around to get to my deer and load it up. 

      We hunted around a bit for another deer for Craig, but to no avail. Feeling satisfied with the results of the day, we paid our thanks to our dear friends in Torrington who let us hunt on their ranch and headed home. On the road, I learned that Craig knew a lot about missile defense systems from his career in the Air Force. He told us all about the workings of our ground-to air missile defense system. It was awesome! I loved it, and it was one of the highlights of the trip. It was really neat to hear about all the cool technologies and it filled us with national pride.

        I had an amazing hunting trip. I saw and learned so much, and got a doe deer to boot! The Lord's creation, Earth, is just so beautiful! It amazes me that anything could be so gorgeous. I'm lucky I got to experience Wyoming in all its glory, along with the fine men who are a part of it, on this trip. I got to learn about: a) What I can do to prepare for my mission, illustrated by Craig, b) How our ground-to air missile defense system works, told by the same, and c) Heck, I got a beautiful doe whitetail deer!

-The Ranger

The Hunt

Dud dum… dud dum…dud dum…inhale, exhale, pause… bang! These are the sounds of a hunt’s final moments. These were the sounds I heard about 30 minutes from dark on my deer hunt. And all these sounds have one purpose: to put packages of meat in the freezer.  And this particular hunt, I learned a lot about listening to my guides – both of them.

My cousin and I both drew non-antlered deer tags this past fall.  We were so excited when Grandpa told us that he had lined out a piece of property that a friend of his owned. I was even more excited when my cousin got a deer on the property and then finally, it was my turn to go on the hunt.

 It was the morning of December 12 (it felt more like the night of December 11). Grandpa and I were traveling down the deserted US Highway 85 at 4:30 AM with the smell of hot chocolate and “All Things Considered” on the radio interrupted by occasional yawns.  After a few hours in the truck, we arrived at our hunting grounds.

The ranch covered about 200 acres of grassy plains interspersed with cottonwood trees.  It sits in a bowl surrounded by sand dunes, and has a creek running right through the middle.  In other words, it is prime white-tailed deer habitat. As soon as we got there, we started to see deer. We saw a herd of about 20 deer a half of a mile from the truck, so we got out of the truck and started to stalk them. When we got as close as we could without them seeing, we were on a small hill covered in sagebrush and annoying little cacti – the kind that are almost invisible until you put your hand or your knee on one during a stalk. As we crested the rise we couldn't see the deer, but they could see us. To get a better view, we started to get onto our hands and knees, and as soon as we started that herd of deer thundered out of there faster than you can say shoot. They stopped at what looked to me at about 225 yards away, and I was confident in my shooting ability at that distance. I took a couple of shots and surprisingly missed them all, and the deer ran away! Grandpa was just as bemused as I, so we walked to where the deer had been, and paced out the distance. We realized that it had been over 325 yards!

After that miss, we went up and down the roads of the ranch. We would glass the fields every so often, but all of the deer we saw either were bucks that still had their antlers, or they were on the neighbor’s property. So about noon, we headed up to the sand dunes. From the road it was about a three-mile hike up to the places where Grandpa had seen deer previously. About 2:00, we were walking along a fence line looking for a good spot to cross, suddenly Grandpa stopped and dropped to all fours. As I dropped too, he turned around and whispered, “There are three deer about 100 yards from the other side of the fence. One of them is a doe, so get in position and shoot it.”  Because of the vegetation that had drifted up against the fence, I had to slowly stand up and quickly locate them and shoot. As I stood up I immediately saw them and the one Grandpa was talking about. There were two bucks and what looked to be a small doe resting in the shadow of a hill. I leveled my gun and was about to shoot when a small voice said, “Look at its head!” I looked and realized that because of the shadow we did not see the small three-point horns sticking out of its head. I couldn’t shoot.

We kept looking, and eventually we had to start back for the truck. As we were walking we would pass blowouts, which are miniature valleys caused by wind erosion. We were about a mile and a half from the truck, when Grandpa stopped suddenly and said, “Go and check that blowout over there and I’ll meet you on the other side.” I thought “Whatever, there might be a deer in there.” As I walked up to the edge something told me that I should take off the safety of my gun, and as soon as I reached the edge of the blowout, three deer came boiling out of there. As soon as I saw them I dropped to one knee to steady myself as I shot. Two of the three deer ran straight over a hill, but the third stopped, turned broadside, and looked at me. As soon as she stopped I put my crosshairs on her and shot. As soon as I shot, she fell down dead.

Later Grandpa said the reason he sent me to check the blowout was because he felt the Spirit prompting him to send me to check the blowout. I also believe that the voice that told me to check that small buck’s head, and the voice that told me to take the safety of my gun was the Spirit. I believe without the help of Heavenly Father, my hunt would have turned out very differently. 

-The Apprentice