The Sneak

    “Head down that two track a ways, past the patch of brush on your left and when you get to the tree, stop and glass the horizon.” These are Grandpa’s directions to Uncle Mark and me as the sun was just peeking over the snowy hills on hunting morning. The instructions are clear. Go to the tree. Glass. Then, return and report. Grandpa moves the truck back to a higher vantage point and Uncle Mark and I head for the tree.
     After arriving at the tree, I pull up a trusty set of Maven binoculars (above and beyond the clarity I am used to) and I immediately see elk a few clicks away. Uncle Mark is into elk as well. Uncle Mark keeps talking about a bull looking our way and I cannot find the bull he is talking about. Then, I realize Uncle Mark and I are looking at two different bunches of elk. After focusing on the terrain, I find three different bunches of elk all tucked up in a bowl. It is perfect. The wind is at their back and moving toward us and they are spread out across the ridge in a strategic move to alert others if danger approaches. The way they camouflage into the mountain side is art in its purest form. They are going to do what they can stay alive and put themselves in the best possible advantage to do so.
Luckily for us, we are approximately three quarters to a mile away from them and lots of terrain in between us. Uncle Mark and I take our time on this one. It would only take one of the lookouts in the bunch to sniff out two guys bumbling through the dips and valleys of the terrain. Every few hundred feet we stop and glass - looking for the best possible strategy. We go slowly so we don’t increase our heart rates. Based on our location, we are out of sight but definitely within smell because of the circling breeze. We use rocks, sagebrush and valleys to hide us. As we bounce back and forth closer to the elk, we can smell them. Heart rate starts to elevate. Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman’s soundtrack fills the crevices of my mind and we are Hawkeye and Chingachgook, the last of the Mohicans. Running silently through the woods, leaping over fallen timber (or walking slowly and trying to catch a breath) trying to cut off the elk and get a good shot. We make our way to a point of advantage. We must get there before they see, hear or smell us. Uncle Mark steps out from behind a rock and immediately goes to a knee. He backs up slowly. The cow elk just sits there, not knowing or caring we exist. I position myself so

Mark can use my hind quarters as a rest. There is no breeze and I

can feel my heart pounding. I’m worried I may throw off Mark’s

shot. I can hear Mark slow his breathing and with the slightest

pull of the trigger “BOOM” followed by “I got her.”
     Uncle Mark makes a clean shot on the cow. We take a minute to watch the rest of the elk scatter and we make our approach. As we draw near, I hear Chingachgook’s words as they descend over the valley. “We’re sorry to kill you, Sister. We do honor your courage and speed, your strength.” We kneel down and offer a prayer of gratitude. It’s part of the code. The last thing we would ever do is break the code.

                                                      -Long Rifle

Code of the West - Part 5

    Ok, here it is, 3EM’ers! The fifth and final chapter of the Code of the West. So far, we’ve talked about:

#1 – Work hard, and do your share.
#2 – Help out.
#3 – Serve God.
#4 – We all screw up.

To which we’ll add…

Principle #5 – Never miss an opportunity to shut up.

     It's very common for some of us (especially those of us who might be getting a little long in the tooth) to tell everyone who will listen that they're a throwback, an atavism. About how they should have been a mountain man in 1825 or a cowboy in 1885. To be honest, I've said that myself a time or two. But the fact is that I'm so nearsighted that the Crows would have killed me before I saw 1826. And while being horseback on the llano has its allure, the truth is that without antibiotics I'd have been dead at about age 30. 

     What I think we’re really wishing for is quiet. Stillness is an endangered species in the 21st century, and it's darn near extinct. Phones, tablets and other devices connect us, but they also imprison us. We're talking, texting and tweeting incessantly, obsessively. I miss the silence. If the West has any one defining characteristic, it is the scope of its silence. Wallace Stegner said that to understand this place, you have to get over the color green. I would add that you have to shut up and listen to the silence. That's the Code of the West. Shoot, that is the West.

-Grandpa

Code of the West - Part 4

     By now, you're probably wondering how long we’re going to ride this “Code of the West” horse. The good news is that the end is in sight. We sorta figured that there couldn't be more principles than we could count on the fingers of one hand. You ropers out there will have to count the stubs,too. We’ll be putting out a special sixth edition for those of you from Star Valley…
So we have: 

#1 – Work hard, and do your share.
#2 – Help out.
#3 – Serve God.

To which we’ll add…

Principle #4 – We all screw up sometimes.

    Old Gerdes used to say that the only people who never make mistakes are people who never do anything. His point was that it was ok to mess up once in a while, as long as you owned up to it and tried to make it right. He was pretty forgiving of a dumb mistake, so long as you didn't try to cover it up and you didn't make it a habit. As a teenage hod-carrier on a crew of bricklayers, I appreciated that because I made some bonehead mistakes. But I learned to own my mistakes, and that taught me to be a little more forgiving of other people when they screwed up.
     I needed that lesson a few years later on my first real job in conservation. I worked on a wildlife habitat management area in central Wyoming. Ace was the boss. He was a tough old galoot with the work ethic of a beaver on meth. He learned leadership skills working oil rigs, and his tolerance for sloth or stupidity was zero. We had just finished putting in the first of three center-pivot irrigation systems, and he left me in charge on site while he went into town to pay the tab for it – the $50,000 tab for it. We worked until about mid-morning, then I drove over to check the pivot. I found it tangled up around a cottonwood tree, twisted and crippled on its very first trip around the field. I considered suicide, and I considered headlong flight, but settled on just telling Ace I screwed up. When he got back, he just looked at it and said, “It's ok, kid. S[tuff] happens.” We fixed the pivot, removed the tree, and he never said another word about it. Because Ace lived by the Code of the West, and I loved him for it. Still do.

-Grandpa

Code of the West - Part 3

     So far, we've talked about the first two parts of the Code of the West, or at least the Code as
we practice it:

#1 – Work hard, and do your share.

#2 – Help out.

     The third one is a little more difficult. It's more difficult because it’s related to both the first two, but it's even more difficult because it’s part of everything we do. On top of that, it's one that might turn some of you off. But we try never to be untruthful here at 3EM (except about where we hunt and fish – we lie like rugs about that) so I'm just going to lay it out there and hope you’ll understand.

Principle 3 – Serve God.

     We are a family of faith. It's who we are. We know God lives and that Jesus Christ is our Savior. We try, in our own way to be a little more like the Savior every day. Sometimes we make it, sometimes we don't. But we know He loves us, so when we fail we get back up and keep on trying. As my father said, “It doesn't matter if the horse throws you ten times, as long as you get back on eleven.”    

     We pray. A lot, I guess. We pray in the morning. We give thanks when God grants us an animal to feed our family. We pray at night. We pray when someone we love needs help.And we pray when we find ourselves in a jackpot that we’re pretty sure we can't get out of on our own. It's just what we do.
     But maybe just as important, we try to live our faith by loving and serving others. I'm reminded of something I saw Apprenticedad do not long ago. A friend’s vehicle had broken down in Cody on a Saturday. It was going to be weeks before it could be repaired there. Apprenticedad and another friend figured out over Sunday dinner that they could use their flatbed and other equipment to go get it. Did they wait until Monday morning to do that? They did not. They just packed up and headed north after dinner. They loaded up the disabled outfit and headed home, arriving at 4:00 AM after a 430 mile all-nighter. Why? Because it's the Code of the West.

-Grandpa

Code of the West - Part 2

     The other day, we kicked off the Code of the West series here at 3EM with Principle #1 – Work hard and do your share. We work hard, and as the Ranger says, “That's just what we do in our family.” I saw an example of this the other day that will stick with me for a long time. Uncle Mark killed a cow elk in a late season hunt up near Giffy Peak. We could drive the truck to within about 400 yards of it. Rather than make either of the two frail elders of the tribe (Grandpa and Uncle Mark) pack more than one quarter of this elk, Long Rifle simply put the back half of the elk on his massive shoulders and toted it to the truck for us. That act reminded me of the second principle in our Code of the West:

Principle #2 – Help out.

     God sends each of us here with some gifts. Some of us get obvious gifts – like the massive shoulders of Long Rifle that have packed literally thousands of pounds of meat out to the trailhead for our family. Some are a little less obvious – like a tender heart or willing hands. The Apprentice may be the alpha male of helping out in our family. He’s not at his best early in the morning – he’ll be the first to admit that. But I don't know many other 13 year old males who stagger bleary eyed up the stairs at 5:30 AM at Grandma’s house and say their first words of the day: “What can I do to help?”
But whatever gifts we come here with, we can and should use them to help someone. We never drive by someone who’s stuck. We always carry a set of jumper cables – not for us, but to help someone else. And we never ask, “What's in it for us.” Why? Because it’s the Code of the West.

-Grandpa

Code of the West - Part 1

     Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is credited with one of my favorite quotes on political power: “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t. ” So it is, I think, about being a westerner. If you have to wear woolly chaps and spurs to go get the mail, you’re just a pilgrim in a Gene Autry costume. My own community is a serial offender when it comes to this principle. Every year during the last full week in July, bank presidents and financial planners who couldn’t saddle a horse to save their soul don their starched Wranglers (almost always an inch or more too short) and the same pair of cheap boots they’ve had since 1978 to play cowboy. It’s fun for them and funny for the rest of us. We’re all romantics when it comes to the West.
     The romance of the West has been a draw almost from the beginning. Kit Carson and Buffalo Bill were the heroes of dime novels more than a century ago, each espousing values neither ever practiced. More recently, there’s been talk about the “Code of the West”. It's not a new idea. Zane Grey wrote a book about it. John Wayne talked about it. Some recovering Wall Streeter named James P. Owen exploited it. And legislatures across the West have adopted resolutions endorsing vague value statements that have little or nothing to do with the real Code of the West. The truth is, I doubt there is a real one. If there is one, it's one that varies a bit from family to family and individual to individual. But living here for six generations counts for something. Starting today, and for the next few days, we’ll touch on a few items that are important in our own family's Code of the West.

Principle #1 – Work hard, and do your share.

     The highest form of praise that can be lavished on anyone in our family comes from Grandma. And if Grandma says “He (or she) is a workin’ machine,” no higher accolade can ever come your way. As the original “workin’ machine” she ought to know. She came here, the product of a thousand generations of German-Swiss women, not one of whom made an inch of room in their family for laziness. Ranger and the Apprentice always scramble for the front passenger seat in my pickup (assuming Grandma isn't in it) because

they consider that the co-pilot’s seat. But with that seat comes the responsibility of getting out and opening and closing any gates. And when the truck comes to a halt, that passenger side door better be already opening. Why? Not because I'll be grouchy at them if it's not. These guys never required more than a raised eyebrow on the worst day they ever had. They open and close the gates because it's their responsibility. And it says so right here, in the Code of the West.

-Grandpa

Déjà vu

     A new year comes with new adventures and new stories. For us, stories sometimes evolve into many segments: the Cutt Slam, or an elk hunt that takes many attempts. I want to add the second chapter to something that started almost exactly a year ago: my forays into deer hunting.
     This was Stub’s (The Ranger’s younger brother) first deer hunt. We went back to the very same ranch where we had so much success last year. The very same voices of Robert Siegel and Audie Cornish drifted through the radio as we drove through the dark of southeastern Wyoming. A sense of déjà vu descended, and I looked at Stub as I remembered my deer hunt a year before. I wondered if he felt the trepidation that I felt, or the inability to sleep I remembered. Then, I noticed that he was asleep. I guess he wasn’t having that problem…
     As soon as we got on the property, in was game time. It was COLD when we got there at sunrise - about -8 F. We shivered outside the truck as we put on the final layers of clothing and discussed our gameplan. We would drive along the dirt road through sunrise, hoping to catch the deer as they made their way from water and feed to the sand dunes where they spend the day. Our lineup went as follows: Grandpa as driver/spotter, Rangerdad as front passenger/spotter, me at left rear passenger/shooter, and Stub at right rear passenger/shooter. It went exactly to plan. We just passed the property line when we saw three or four doe whitetail, not a hundred yards away. So Stub got out and very calmly made a great shot on one of the bunch. She dropped. With that, we began chasing one of the bunch that had separated and not gone very far.  

Stub and Rangerdad

     We chased her for several hours. She stayed pretty close, sometimes allowing me to get a shot in and every time she came out unscathed. By the time she finally darted into the neighbor’s property, I had fired six or seven pretty easy shots. This had shaken my confidence pretty badly. Before, I thought I was an okay shot, but after that I was regarding myself as the worst shot in the history of humankind. But after taking care of Stub’s deer and eating lunch, I convinced myself that I was just feeling a little off that morning and things would get better later in the day.
     We headed up to the sand dunes that afternoon. On the way, I took a shot at a little bunch about 200 yards away, within easy range for my .243. Again, nothing happened to one of the deer. By the time I had jacked another shell in, they were 400 yards away and running. I was once again trying to find a fault in my shooting to fix, and I couldn’t come up with anything that might cause me to miss entirely.
     When we got to the dunes, Stub was feeling sick so he and Rangerdad stayed at the truck while Grandpa and I went walking. We nearly had a repeat of last year, when we stumbled upon a doe and a yearling at the same blowout where I shot my deer last year. I was a wee bit wobbly this time, so it was no surprise to me that I missed my first shot but the others I was bewildered at. I had missed four shots at no more than 200 yards. Simply put, it was not good. I had similar experiences with another three or four groups. We decided that there could only be two possibilities: 1. I was really bad at shooting or 2. My rifle was really off. We decided to test this, so we found the nearest target (a rabbit 10 yards away) and tested it out. It was around five inches off. While that doesn’t sound like very much at first, until you do the math - if that stays a constant, at a 100 yards away, I am 4 feet off. With that, we decided that I should switch to the backup gun.
     We walked around a bit more but saw nothing and after it got dark, we headed out. It was a good day in the field (after all, any day in the field beats a good day anywhere else), and after a stop at the local gas station for a Coke and one of their gigantic hot dogs, we headed home to get some rest for the next day of hunting.

-The Apprentice