I pack the truck with mixed feelings on the upcoming hunt. The wounds are still festering from the failure of my archery ram hunt and no amount of care seems to speed up the healing. It burns deep and will so for some time. Accept the pain and move on.

I have a few days to chase OTC elk with my bow and figured I’d be one pathetic hunter if I squandered the time feeling sorry for myself and sitting this one out.

A few days to pull off what typically takes me a whole season to accomplish, if I do at all, is about as likely as me winning the bronze medal in the women’s steeplechase. In all likelihood, it ain’t gonna happen.

But that’s the quitter’s talk. There’s always an excuse to sit on the sidelines.

I tell the woman and kids I’ll be back in a few days as a new man. There’s nothing like some leg-screaming mountain hunting to cure the grumpiness that attaches to self-pity.

Ahh, Colorado’s OTC archery tag. If you haven’t hunted it, let me paint a picture for you. Go to an NFL game. Replace the fans with hunters (that’s about the numbers you could expect to see), the jacked athletes that you have no chance of chasing down are the elk and the roaring crowd is about the decibels you can expect from various hunters smashing on their Hoochy Mammas and freshly bought elk calls. It’s a sporting event of the highest competition and you’re planning on showing up with a bad attitude and a grudge against all wild animals and hoping against all odds for success. No one ever proclaimed you to be a smart man.

My truck knows the path well and rolls up to its resting spot for the next few days. I’m surprised by the lack of vehicles on the drive in, suspecting most will be hidden a few hundred yards from where I’m parked.

I lay out the sleeping bag in my poorman’s hotel with my backpack and bow getting its own rest next to me, we await the deep purples of early morning.

Spending more nights this year in my fart sack than underneath the covers of my urban bed, it takes little time before I’m shaking hands with the cousin of death.

The barking of technology pulls me out of the deep and I go through my morning ritual in autopilot.

I’m crunching through the aspen’s exfoliation, cursing my human clumsiness well before the sun thinks of breaking the sky. Just me, my thoughts of failure of the not so distant past and the hopes of redemption in the near future.

There’s no greater equalizer to the human ego than hunting an animal that’s only daily chore is avoiding the likes of you.

The wind’s gentle push presses against my face assuring me that the science behind thermals still applies today. Good to know there are some things in this world that aren’t completely based upon emotion.

I work into a basin of densely spaced aspens with a solid wall of evergreens on the north facing slope. I know of a wallow nearby and know that elk are a big fan of this area.

I pause to let my ears pick up on the sounds that my heavy feet are covering up. It takes a minute to decipher the typical morning sounds from the abnormal.

The snapping of a far off branch being such a sound that I’m looking for. Being a simple request, the hunting gods grant it to me.

The quiet chaos that can only come from a herd of elk become more prominent as me hearing clears itself of the city life and adjusts to what has helped allow humans to survive this long.

I hear their movement and know that this is no solo cow coming home after a late night of partying. And if there’s a herd of them in here, there’s bound to be a fella with some weapons on his head that is tending to them.

The faint mews come more often as the herd starts to move on to their bedding area.

I think of my options. I know there’s a bull in there but his lips are sealed. By my Sherlock Holmes-like reason of deduction, there are no cows in there in the “mood” quite yet so he’s saving his voice.

Bugling would be counterproductive.

I opt for a more subtle approach. Seeing a thick pine in the middle of the aspen glen, I let out a few sexy mews on my reed and make a mad dash for said pine.

Pulling from my memory bank of stupid hunting mistakes, I remember to get in front of the pine and let my camo do the work. There’s nothing more fun than blowing an opportunity because you decide to place the one object you can’t shoot through between you and your target. It only took me a decades worth of repeating this mistake to get it firmly pressed into my memory.

I tuck myself in and get ready for the show.

I hear some more urgent breaking of branches and know the bull has heard my unfamiliar cow calls. He’s on the move hoping this newcomer doesn’t have a “headache” like the rest of his harem.

I pull up my binos and am rewarded with a glass full of antler. He’ll do, oh he’ll do just fine.

I steady myself for the onslaught of impatience that plagues me in these situations.

I range him at 80 yards.

Don’t even think of looking down at your site dial. You’re not taking an 80-yard shot, especially when he’s walking right at you.

The first test is passed. I let him continue his path right to me. I struggle to keep the rangefinder out of my hands. Instead, I calculate his direction and see a clump of aspens that coincide with his trajectory. The perfect cover for the long and drawn out draw cycle that only a bowhunter knows.

I allow myself to range the clump of aspens. Thirty yards.

Stay patient and you will be rewarded with a chipshot.

He comes in with his nose up, pulling particles of love out of the air. From time to time he stops and allows his gaze to sweep the woods. He knows there’s a lovely lady lurking nearby and was hoping she wouldn’t play hard to get.

He continues on, never for a second suspecting a two-legged creature with malicious intent upon his well-being hiding in the shadows nearby.

He continues on, looking away at a perfect angle to allow me to adjust my site wheel to the coveted thirty yards.

In he comes, never deterring from his path. Predictability is a sure path to death in nature, this being a mistake he never even knew he committed.

I start to shake, a shake that only comes from this amount of time awaiting the approach of a much sought after trophy. I know it will be corrected by the tension created at being at full draw, but this knowledge doesn’t completely squelch my doubt.

His head disappears behind the clump of trees that didn’t realize their only purpose in their creation was to allow me to draw my bow undetected.

He steps out and within a few steps knows his mistake. There thirty yards off to his side is something that wasn’t there a second earlier.

There are times we know our mistakes and can correct course, and then there are times that our mistakes catch up with us.

There is no knowledge of me releasing the arrow. Hundreds of generations of hunter lurking within me take control of my body and perform on their own. I’m just there for the ride.

He bounds off a few yards with pink mist fouling the air. Like so many of us humans, he is dead on his feet but hasn’t come to recognize it.

He piles up and a great relief overcomes me. My knowledge that providing for my family what they’ve come to expect is part of that relief, but it would be a lie if I were to say it was the biggest part.

My ego is restored. Say what you want, knowing that you can succeed at the thing you most love and work towards when the moment counts gives us the reassurance that we are the person we think we are. That the maniacal effort put forth for such an endeavor can actually meet success. That in some small way you are worthy of those that came before you, that the tradition of self-sufficiency won’t die with you.

// Fred Bohm