Pack Rat with a Passport

The storm’s energy picks up as the night wears on. Penny-sized snowflakes try to punch holes in the side of my truck as I shift restlessly in my sleeping bag. The extra dose of Melatonin doesn’t take hold, I know I’m in for a long night. The anticipation is high, and it’s also the mother of sleepless nights.

The rut is on in Wyoming and the storm is supercharging it. I listen to the far-off bugles that sound off every so often with frequency enough to pull open my heavy eyes.

I’m surrounded by a cacophony of sounds, and they all have their natural place. Except for one.

There it is again. It sounds like something running through my truck’s engine. It’s barely noticeable, but with my head a mere few inches from the truck’s bed, it is amplified by the resonation through the metal (I use that term loosely on modern trucks).

With little else to do, I run different scenarios through my head on what can be the source of that sound. All of them involve me leaving my warm sleeping bag, getting dressed, and walking out in the pounding snow. If there were a bugling bull at the end of the trail, I’d be up in a heartbeat. But the unfamiliar sound that is sure not to end in giant antlers and backstraps have me debating enacting the age-old adage of “If I ignore it it will go away.”

After pinpointing it down from an alien knocking on my door and several other highly intelligent scenarios, I come to the hypothesis that a porcupine crawled up into my engine block to get out of the storm and steal any leftover warmth the engine might provide.

The thought of popping the hood to see the beady eyes of an inverted pincushion, pissed off at the intrusion and wanting to prove the theory that porcupines can shoot their quills as accurately and rapidly as Annie Oakley could her rifle. To hell with the scientists that say otherwise, I don’t see them standing next to me ready to go to war with this trespasser. I’m on my own and my brain is in idiot overdrive.

An idea pops in my sluggish head.

I get dressed and hop out in the ensuing storm in my long underwear. In the cab of the truck I kick her over and redline the engine. I figure 5.7 liters of Hemi should get the point across to the intruder that he’s not welcome in these parts.

I decide not to risk it and take it one step further and while I’m at it kill two birds with one stone. About a mile up the road, and a very washboard road at that, is a patch of timber where I can park to get out of the storm. Rattle the little bugger out of his hiding spot and find a place to sleep with a little protection, that’s a win-win.

I rev the engine and set off at a meteoric pace, rattling the fillings out of my teeth and hopefully jarring the freeloader out in the process.

I careen into the little parking lot in the timber and cut the engine to sit in silence. Huge sentinels of pine form a formidable wall, blocking the wind but allowing peaceful snowflakes to saunter down from the sky and create a calming blanket.

I sit and listen. Silence. Beautiful, beautiful silence.

The deed has been done.

With that, I pop open the truck cap’s window and crawl into the inviting embrace of a -20 degree, luxurious synthetic hug. I look at my watch’s glow, only a few short hours until I need to brave the elements again, but this time chasing rutting bulls, not imaginary critters. Might as well make the most of it and I close my eyes.

And as if on cue, comes a slight, “scratch, scratch” from somewhere in the realm of this hunk of metal I’m laying on.

My temper boils over. I could have been the brass section blaring their horns at a college homecoming game and it would not have been more obvious or loud to me.

I thrust my clothes on, frothing threats from my mouth about what I'm going to do to this trespasser when I get a hold of him. The Lord may have created every creature with a specific intent and purpose, but I’m almost sure he made this one by mistake and it was now my purpose to “remove” this sleep-sucking little beast from the Earth.

I slush through the snow in half-zipped clothes to find my weapon of choice in the nearby armory of the forest. A hefty stick is chosen and I pop the release on the hood as I prepare for battle.

As the hood’s spring sends it skyward, I jump back and ready myself for a wall of needles hurtling my way. 

Feeling no immediate pain in the arm covering my eyes, they always aim for the eyes by the way, don’t let the scientists tell you otherwise, I peer into the cavity holding my engine block, looking for the culprit.

Sitting on what looks like an eagle’s nest perched on top of the truck’s battery is a wide-eyed, what appears to be a guinea pig.

As if his feet are welded to the battery, he’s frozen in place, entranced by my headlamp. 

Now I’m a hunter and I’ve taken plenty of lives in the name of my requirement for sustenance. It’s just the way of it and there is no guilt on how or why I do it.

But this little thing. I mean… it's just not a fair fight.

I place the stick next to him and with both hands start the stick in a slow arc out towards the woods. The little rascal careens through the air like a lacrosse ball being passed upfield.

I’m a nice guy, but rent was due and he wasn’t paying. The woods of Wyoming would have to take in this immigrant, whether he had the right paperwork in place or not. 

I started to clear out the dinner plate-sized condo he decided to make in the engine cavity and the mystery of where he came from started to piece itself together. Mixed in the nest were shreds of Starbucks wrappers, torn-up pages of kids coloring books, tissue, and even small shreds of junk mail. 

Either this little guy had a passport on him that I missed while sending him on his one-way flight back to mother nature or he’s been stowed away with me for some time now.

Then it all clicked. Two weeks ago at the base of the mountains, I was hunting bighorn sheep, just finishing the hunt, my hunting partner was loading up the back of the truck and found a full garbage bag shredded. A couple of days later he informed me he killed a sizable packrat that had been making a home of his truck as well.

That was two weeks ago. Two weeks!

I must have picked this little fella up at the same place, the two of them deciding to split up and later write to each other on how their adventures were going.

This packrat traveled over two hundred miles back to Denver with me, went through three automatic car washes, braved the one-hundred-degree summer under a black hood, and foraged through my garbage for food and nesting materials.

Then, it took a ride with me to help the aforementioned hunting partner pack a mule deer out of the mountains of Colorado and then a trip through a snowstorm to the windswept lands of Wyoming.

My respect for this not-so-little packrat kept mounding up as I thought of the numerous times he should have abandoned ship, but like a true captain, apparently, he was going down with the ship.

Ride or die.

This was one impressive animal I thought to myself. I may have just unleashed a veritable badass into this unsuspecting swath of Wyoming’s wilderness.

I lay back in my sleeping bag with a sense of reverence. A couple of hours of well-earned sleep came, but I remember waking with vivid dreams of visiting this place in a few years with a packrat being carried down the middle of the road, now king of the forest, commanding untold millions of forest dwellers to do his bidding.

I better get this hunt done and get the hell out of here, there’s no telling how wrathful he could be. I shivered and decided to kill the first legal elk I saw.

// Fred Bohm

Pistols, Birddogs and Spaghetti Westerns

“Rainbow sparkle unicorn puppy,” comes my daughter's response to the all-important question on what we should name the new puppy.

I look in the truck’s rearview mirror to catch the excitement in my daughter’s face, but instead see Braker, our Pudelpointer, moping about in the bed of the truck. His long eyes indicate his exhaustion. A pang of guilt hits me. I’ve been a bit selfish not holding him back on our recent two-week quail hunting extravaganza. He’s been going hard in the paint, and it shows.

“Ok, since that’s the only one I heard so far, that makes it to the top of the list,” I reply as I focus my eyes back on the road.

Not to be outdone, her brother blurts out the first name that pops in his head.

“Pistol!”

“Pistol… I like that. Has a sharp twangy feel to it, something that you can spit off the end of your tongue,” I say with a smile on my face.

I look out at the desert’s setting sun in what could be one of Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns. I can see him facing off some grizzled no good bandit, locking eyes, hand hovering, waiting above his pistol.

Pistol… Yes, that will work just fine. In the past, this has been a decision that could have taken lawyers, three supreme court justices, and an ensuing battle to rival the O.J. Simpson trial to get a decision made.

And just like that, a five-year-old saves us from untold headaches and legal counsel fees.

He then throws in a slew of dinosaur names and what my wife has to later explain to me as a litany of Pokemon characters. He’s not satisfied with just one name, oh no. She’s going to have more surnames than a Russian.

Give them a reason to string some letters together that have the potential (or not) to form a word and they’ll give it their all.

As they continue to bark out names, my mind wanders to the past two weeks of scouring the desert for quail with Braker and the family. It has been pure bliss. 

Upland had been the common bond between the wife and I since the beginning. It’s what got us outside together, it’s what bonded us. With two kids in need of rearing, upland hunting has taken the back burner in her eyes over the past five years. But the plan was to come back to it and bringing the kids along for the experience.

This trip was the catalyst for the spark was reignited her passion for the uplands. The kids are old enough to participate and she is ready to get back behind the gun and watch her pup, Braker, do the thing he loves most.

My throat constricts as I look back at the years hunting with Braker, mostly because it brings up the sore subject of his mentor, Sage. Sage was my first hunting dog and one that will always have a place in my soul. We learned how to hunt out west together, how to be partners, and how to be best friends. His loss two years ago shook me to my core. I did what I often do when faced with a loved one's death, I ran from it. It was painful to try to chase birds without him, so I didn’t. Not much at least.

Perhaps Braker suffered even more. He not only lost his hunting buddy but more importantly his reason for living, chasing birds. That was on me.  Upland was put on the back burner because of my selfishness. I just couldn’t get out in the field without Sage. 

But time heals all.

“Sage, huh?” my wife asks as she can see my glassy eyes reflecting off the twilight. 

Damn. I’m an open book sometimes. 

“Yea. No biggy. Just thinking,” I reply.

I look back at Braker again and realize after two years of towing the company line, albeit a slow two years, he was in need of help and it was time to start looking into it for him.

The road trip had gone so well that we decided that the next hunting season we’d extend it. Bigtime.

We would round up the kids, plan out hunts all throughout the west and show the kids this great country they were so fortunate to be born into. No small feat. Two kids, one (soon to be two) dogs, Hazel and I in our camper for six months. Add running a company and schooling the kids while on the road and you may be reading an article from a future resident at an insane asylum.

So the plan is set and the wheels immediately get rolling. We don’t hem and haw over it. Life’s too short for indecision. Come up with the idea, plan, then execute. Let the dust settle where it may.

As I finish taping out the last few sentences of this post, on my lap sits a three-month-old English Setter aptly named Pistol. I now firmly believe my son has a bright future in fortune-telling. Pistol not only holds her name but is an adjective that could not be more appropriate for a creature of her character.

Pistol, the gunslinging hero that moseyed into our lives to save the day. I like that. I think Clint would be proud.

// Fred Bohm

Introducing Your Kids to Firearms

“What’s that smell dad?”

“Freedom son, that’s the smell of freedom,” I reply to my five-year-old son as I eject the spent mag to my Sig Saur P320. 

I say this as a joke, but I know it harbors a good deal of truth. I let him and his sister approach the table now that the weapon is cleared and let them ask any questions they may have.

The faucet is opened and a turret of questions comes forth in an exhaustless stream. Just what I was hoping for.

The decision was made before they were born to introduce them to firearms at a young age. The attitude of ‘what they don’t know won’t kill them’ holds no place in the world of guns. Sheltering them from their presence was not a possibility for us, given that the family business deals with firearm cleaning products. Nor did we want to on principle alone.

They needed to be taught the significance of guns. You don’t just hand a child the keys to the family car and hope for the best. You instruct, you teach and you introduce. In other words, you parent.

To be honest, it’s scary being a parent these days. Though I don’t trust the twenty-four-hour news cycle to give us a proper representation of what our world is like, there are events attached to firearms that weren’t there in my parents’ era.

I’m also a firm believer that you don’t displace blame onto an inanimate object and ignore the underlying problem. Pencils don’t misspell words, just as guns don’t kill people; humans do.

So we implemented a think globally, act locally plan. We can’t control what other parents teach their kids, but we certainly could control how and what we teach ours.

“How does it work dad?” I hear my daughter ask as she approaches the table.

“First of all, every one of these guns you see on the table is extremely dangerous. They have the potential to kill you or someone else. Remember when we went hunting and daddy shot a grouse? Remember how it fell from the sky? It was permanent. He died. There was no coming back, right?” I say to both of them, making full eye contact so they both know the seriousness of the situation.

They both learned about death at a young age. Coddling has never been part of our parenting plan. Don’t horrify them into a coma, but let them see the lifecycle from an early age and their part in it. Let them know that what we are experiencing isn’t permanent. Let them see the finality of our actions.

And this last sentence holds extremely true for firearms. There is no reset button when using them. The action you decide to take can stay with you and others for a lifetime. This can both be a positive thing, like in saving a loved one, or a negative thing, such as taking them away.

But that is a lesson for another day. They are still too young to need to know of the atrocities that have been committed with these tools. For now, the importance of safety is the primary concern.

“You shot him and then we ate him,” comes my son’s response.

“Exactly. This shotgun here,” I say as I point to my over/under laying on the table, “killed that grouse.”

I want to make that connection that a tool in the hands of a human can have serious consequences on the life of another creature.

I go on to let them know that they are never to touch a firearm unless I or their mother is with them and assisting. I let them know that the weapon itself is not bad, but what a human can do with one can be.

I decide I’m not quite as old-school as my father was and to introduce them to a beginner version. The mule kick of my father’s 12 gauge as a kid still has me flinching when I pick up that old Mossberg pump. Not the way I’m going to go about it with mine.

I crack the barrel of the pellet gun I picked up for this purpose as well as ‘enticing’ the tree rats back home to stay out of the attic. 

My son mounts the pellet gun to his shoulder with my help. His alligator arms are too short to make it all the way to the trigger so I help him out. He aims carefully and implores me to pull the trigger.

A soda can ten yards away spasms into the air. Action, reaction. He’s hooked. He also understands that by pulling the trigger, he made that can move. His action had an effect.

In a simple lesson on how to shoot a pellet gun, he learned personal sovereignty. A lesson that seems to be fading away in a polarized world that encourages them to find blame in the “enemy” and acquit them of their own personal responsibilities. But this is a blog about introducing children to firearms, not my diatribe on why the world is falling apart. 

I fade out of my internal contemplations. School is back in session as I notice my daughter looking on with genuine interest.

“You’re up peanut,” I say and she inches forward.

// Fred Bohm

Quail Hunting in New Mexico - Keeping Your Bubble Small

A stiff north wind wreaks havoc on the thirty-three-foot camper being pulled behind my under-gunned Ram truck. The kids and woman are asleep, giving me the silence I rarely get on such a trip to mull over the last week.

We have been chasing scaled quail near Carlsbad, New Mexico with little luck. Rumors are rumbling through the landscape that the quail numbers are way down in the area. Top that off with attempting to hunt these wary birds near the end of the season and you have yourself a recipe for disappointment.

The decision was made to head closer to the Arizona border in hopes of finding more quail and of different variety. Scaled, Gambel’s and if lucky, Mearn’s quail would be chased in good numbers. We have a week left to get it done. The goal is to get Hazel her first quail, have the kids run free in the desert wilds, show Braker, our Pudelpointer, enough birds that he becomes sick of their smell and for me; the much sought-after New Mexico quail trifecta.

I watch my gas gauge plummet faster than lifestyle changes from kids. From dirtbag hunter to KOA visiting, kid toting modern-day Clark Griswald. Change happens, often without us taking notice, until one day it is as evident as an elephant in the room, or in my case a house on wheels.

Upon arriving, we lay down camp in quick fashion. Get the essentials taken care of, a cocktail for dad to calm his frazzled nerves from white-knuckling the windstorms, and prep for a hunt.

OnX is fired up on the phone and we head off to what looks like promising terrain. Braker is shaking with anticipation in the rearview mirror, staring out the back window at the passing mesquite bushes with the concentration of a fighter pilot. The kids’ boots are laced up, ready to unleash endless energy that only toddlers are blessed with and grownups look on with envy.

Hazel drops me off on the upper end of an arroyo that I picked out. She’ll take the kids to the lower end and meet me towards the bottom. She knows me all too well, I am either blessed or cursed with the drive of a field trial dog. If some of that steam isn’t released the engine could blow.

Braker and I plan on putting in four or five miles before we reach them, finishing out the hunt with the full crew.

I’m daydreaming of the new opportunities in new territory when a bush explodes in front of me. Dark outlines of Gambel’s quail fill the sky momentarily and as quick as they appeared are dispersed like confetti into the wind the next. My Browning Featherweight is clutched in my right hand, never moving from its original position. I see Braker looking back my direction with his ever disappointed eyes.

I grin at him sheepishly. He holds the stare a bit longer to drive home the point.

“Alright, alright already. Get after them,” I say as I release him from his point.

He tears off like a possessed demon. By the time I catch up with him he’s locked down like a statue. I make my approach at a poorly thought out angle and two Gambel’s quail with rocket boosters blast into orbit at opposite directions. 

Paralysis by analysis. I can’t decide which way to swing.

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

Damn you, Theodore Roosevelt.

This time I refuse to make eye contact with my judgemental birddog.

We edge near private property and I decide to pull anchor and head further down the arroyo. In the world of cameras behind every bush, I’m too paranoid to even piss past a barbed wire fence that’s bordering private land.

We walk through terrain that belongs at the end of a Google search for ‘where do you find quail?’

I have my game face on now. Disappoint my gun dog once and he’ll let you know it. Twice? He’s telling his friends what a lame hunter I am. Three times? Well three times, and he’s looking for a new owner.

He cuts the country apart like a Samari sword, throwing pebbles and clumps of sand in his wake.

Any and every square inch of this place could contain birds and he’s determined to leave his mark on all of it. 

We make our way down the arroyo and closer to the little bouncing orange dots that is the family before his stumpy tail picks up cadence signaling to me that I best get ready. I crack my over/under and check that I didn’t pull a knuckleheaded move like forgetting to load it. I’m on thin ice as is.

Braker scales a ten-foot eroded creek bank with the skill of a mountaineer. As he crests the top he locks up. I take a few steps forward and another covey explodes in the four cardinal directions. I lock in on two and with the determination that comes from a man staring down a third strike, I pull off a double in a fashion
I’m not accustomed to nor deserve.

I break the barrel and two smoking shells arc for the sky. I grab a fresh one from the pouch and as I slide it in the top barrel another Gambel’s takes to the sky. I close her up and mount to my shoulder in one move.

Another puff of feathers and I’m looking my birddog’s way for that eye contact he was so desperate for earlier.

“Eh?! Hope you include that in your story to your little friends,” I quip with raised eyebrows.

His only response is to find the nearest downed bird, not wanting to acknowledge in my childish remarks. We round up the fallen birds and decide it’s time to see if we can accomplish one of the original goals of getting Hazel her first quail.

I pull Braker off the scent of the now long gone covey and head towards the family. A sizable portion of the birds headed their direction and they will have had plenty of time to settle down and let their stink coat the area.

I wave Hazel over and we converge in the middle, about a mile from where she has parked the truck. I can hear two bouncing kids following on her heels asking her a million questions from where does the sun go every night to what’s her favorite dinosaur. Little carbon-powered voiceboxes with feet.

I point her over to where part of the covey landed and back off with the kids to let her and Braker go to work.

“Did you get any Dad? How many more do we need before we can make quail chicken nuggets?” they ask without slowing down for an answer. They’ve been away from dad for about two hours and they have earth-shattering stories to tell of their exploits during that time. I kneel down, crack open the scattergun and take it all in. Hearing the excitement from my two favorite little people in the world starts to make my eyes well up.

I listen and fill in explanations where I can. I watch Hazel work out in the mesquite, pausing at random bushes as Braker locks up on birds that were there only moments ago. They’re running, as desert birds will, and he has to figure a way to lock them down in order to get Hazel a shot.

I see the glimmer of steel as she raises her Ithica pump, a bottom ejecting 20 gauge that is older than she is, up to her shoulder. There’s a crack in the air that silences the little ones.

“Did mommy get one?” my son asks.

“Wahooo!” reverberates back to us from here position.

“I think so buddy, should we go find out?” I ask.

We’re running over her way, little feet pumping like pistons, powered by curiosity.

By the time we get to Hazel, she’s holding her first quail in hand, slightly dampened by Braker’s saliva. The kids pet the bird and ask more questions. Life and death can be a heavy subject for any human, but presented this way it appears more natural, easier to explain.

Hazel and I look at one another, knowing the significance of these moments. To the kids, it’s another day, absorbing the world around them and the role that they play in it.

We walk back to the truck, happy with the day, happy with the way we’ve decided to live our lives, and just simply happy to be together. We’re in a bubble. Outside our immediate area, nothing matters. Not politics, not ranting social media posts, not the world’s problems. 

I hesitate at the handle of the truck, knowing that when I open it and we move on we enter back into the world. It’s cowardly to avoid it so I relent. I know a piece of that bubble will come with us and as long as we keep doing what we’re doing right now. These memories will continue to build and more of what is really insignificant in our lives will become less and less relevant.

I smile, help load the kids up and look forward to tomorrow, and the tomorrow after tomorrow. I look forward to keeping my bubble small.

// Fred Bohm

Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep Bow Hunt - Getting Over Yourself and Moving On

I was perched on a fallen log that was clogging the trail ahead of me. I was fuming self-loathing out of every pore in my body. The universe was against me, it didn’t want to see me succeed, it was setting every obstacle it could muster in front of me just so it could watch me fail. It didn’t have to try hard, I was doing a standup job of it myself and I could hear its laughter.

The bottomless pool of self-pity knew no depths. I was supposed to be having fun, hell I chose to do this with my free time, but plain and simple, I turned something I loved into something I loathed.

I was stewing in my thoughts when I heard the crumbling of leaves. I looked up to see my buddy Jon whistling to himself as he made his way up the path towards me. This is the first human I’ve seen in over eight days and I’m not sure if I was speaking my thoughts out loud or if I wasn’t so far removed from society that I knew how to keep them internalized.

If I was going crazy and muttering like a mad man, like any good friend he didn’t embarrass me by showing that he caught on to it.

“You look like you need a beer,” Jon said as he unshouldered his pack and plopped down next to me.

“I could use a keg I think,” I muttered back, still half in my own world.

“You want to talk about it?” he asked.

“I don’t… I really, really don’t,” I said as we clink cans of whatever ultra-hopped IPA he pulled out of his bag.

We sat in silence for a bit, me not knowing what to say. He knew I was a ticking time-bomb so he let the alcohol go to work on me instead of trying to pry it out.

“Ahhh fuck it. So it goes,” I finally spurted out and rose up to my feet with finality. “Thanks for meeting me for the hike out buddy.”

Jon cracked another pair of beers and handed me the trail soda for the hike out.

Conversation started up and any subject was game except for what I had been up to for the last month of my life. I looked around on the way out and know that sometime in the distant future I’d really miss this hunt, but at the time I couldn’t see it.

For the last thirty-one days of my life, I’d been stomping around with my bow on my shoulder in some of the nastiest, steepest, most uninviting mountains known to the west. I’d been seeking out its inhabitants, more specifically Rocky Mountain Bighorn sheep.

And I had been getting my ass handed to me every step of the way.

The early summer initial phases of scouting started innocent enough. I explored areas in a mountain range that I thought I knew very well. The scenery was stunning, the pictures were some of the best I had ever taken, and as the scouting season progressed rams started showing up.

But this was the honeymoon phase. Every animal is killable when you don’t have a bow in hand and the weight of the tag in your pocket.

The season started and the wind didn’t seem to be as consistent, the animals changed their patterns and Murphy reared his ugly head at every turn in the trail. Seeing animals during scouting season is a minuscule fraction of the potential success come the season.

I came to the ugly realization that luck wasn’t going to be on my side the day before the opener. I sat with binoculars glued to my face when I heard the telltale sign of incoming sheep. Scree tumbled down the steep slope of the mountain letting me know I wasn’t alone up there.

I stayed perfectly still, pulled out my phone to film, and waited. Seven sheep made their way towards me like I was some lonely ewe looking for company. The front two would be shot by any sane hunter. They stop within thirteen yards of me, knowing full well there isn’t a weapon within a mile of me. They had the regulations and had studied them. They enjoyed their last day of unmolested freedom and sauntered by me without a care in the world.

“Shit, I just used up about ten years of hunter’s luck on this little interaction”, I muttered to myself.

And this is where the bad attitude started. The day before the opener. I convinced myself that the hunt was cursed and I would have to fight tooth and nail if I were to be successful. I let negativity dig its claws deep into me and give me a preemptive excuse for failure.

The hunt was over before it started. I failed to control my mind and the negative thoughts it was producing. Physically I was ready for this hunt, but mentally? Not even close. The relentless physical exertion, the loneliness, the frustration, the knowledge that this was going to be the toughest hunt of my life… none of this bothered me in the least. 

Having to control negative thoughts and their uncanny way of manifesting into reality? That’s what killed me. I let it get to my head.

And so the season went. I screwed myself on every attempt, every chance that I had. I told myself that it was supposed to be near impossible and so it became.

I thought I was mentally tough, but I wasn’t.

This was a new type of mental game that I didn’t even know existed before I confronted it on this hunt. My mental attitude would have a direct outcome as to how this hunt would go down. And my mental attitude sucked.

I took everything I loved about bowhunting the backcountry and threw it off a cliff. I instead made it into something I hated. I sabotaged myself and I deserved the outcome I got.

More than anything, I was disappointed in how I viewed the hunt and therefore how I went about it. You can train in the mountains, shoot your bow every single day, and know the species you're chasing inside and out, but a shit attitude can sabotage success faster than walking in there completely unprepared.

I failed. And in a more significant way than just walking out of the mountains empty-handed. My concern about what I wanted in the future became more important than what I was being blessed with experiencing in the present. And in the process, I almost ruined something I love.

On a positive note, I walked out of the experience a lot more humble. The universe does not care about you. And I don’t mean that in a negative way. We are small infinitesimal organisms in the grand scheme of things and our wants from the world do not make it into the equation. We get what we put into anything we set out to accomplish, and that’s not always the end goal. Sometimes it's learning that your wants are not that important. 

I don’t know about you, but that’s awful freeing. 

// Fred

The Ego Stroke - OTC Colorado Archery Elk Hunt

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

Hammock Ram - Bowhunting Sheep in Hawaii

“Aww what’s wrong? With all this disease going around, it looks you evaded coronavirus but caught a serious case of Resting Bitch Face.” Hazel prods at me while we have coffee on the porch of our Hawaiian bungalow.

The only thing consistent so far on this trip has been the constant rain and me getting winded by every animal I’ve attempted to approach.

My complaining about the latter of the two obviously has not gone unnoticed. It has spilled out of my internal thoughts and apparently has been vomiting out of my mouth unknowingly. Note to self, work on keeping your inner dialogue where it’s meant to be.

“Just a little run of bad luck. Hell, today I could be laying in the hammock taking a midday rest and shoot a ram. You never know how these things work.” I explain, trying to redeem myself with a positive attitude.

I had brought this damn hammock all the way out to this rock in the middle of the ocean and had yet to use it. Today I’d remedy that situation, fixing yet another case of “you brought the damn thing, now use it”.

We load up the car with kids and enough hunting gear for an African expedition. The plan is that the family would head to town to get boredom survival gear for the inevitable lockdown that COVID19 was causing and I’d be responsible for the protein. With any luck, I’d get a set of horns to boil while bunkered up.

The car peels down the highway, leaving me standing on the edge of it with a loaded backpack and my bow hung over my shoulders. With a sizable dent already put into the flesh of the last sheep I’d shot, I was feeling a little pressure to show the family they had a provider on their hands.

I stumble my way deep into sheep country, my ankles screaming from the abuse that only lava rock can inflict. I was getting used to constantly being off-balance as what appeared to be formidable sized rocks crumble underfoot, spilling you out in whatever angle is most inconvenient.

Hunting here didn’t have the leg-burning effect of the West, but unstable ground assured you to go home with reflexes to rival any alley cat on the planet.

While debating this predicament, I see a flocked up herd of sheep staring at me at what could only be called pronghorn distance.

Damn these things have a set of eyes on them.

They move off with little concern. There are no rams in the group so they show little care about a wobbly two-legged creature tripping and falling his way through the lava fields. They know I don’t want anything to do with them through previous human encounters. Being a ram-only area has the ladies showing little concern about human interaction.

The sun boils overhead as the day begins to heat up and I know my time is growing short to get any movement out of these wool laden animals. If I think it’s hot in a flimsy long sleeve shirt, I can’t imagine what an animal whose coat is harvested for its warmth could be going through.

I pick my way through the minefield of lava rock for a high point and potential glassing area. More importantly, I look for two trees the perfect distance apart…

I spot an outcrop that fits the bill about a half-mile away.

What normally should be about a 10-minute hike turns into a solid 45 minutes of picking my way through the maze of rock and gullies. My reward is a vantage point shaded by two trees that were put on this earth for the sole purpose of hanging my “glassing” hammock.

Shade, a high point and the chance to glass from a horizontal position. Define the success of a hunt how you want, that last sentence just defined the new standard for mine.

Hammock set, feet up and as my head just comes to rest on my hands and I hear the “bahahaing” of a couple of ewes.

“At least I know there’s sheep around”, I think to myself.

I stare off in the direction of the noise and wait for a few ewes to come marching by, leading their youngins’ to the shade and safety of a nearby outcropping.

Marching they came, but not leading little ones, rather running terrified as two testosterone-laden rams come tearing in to mount them or anything else they deemed mountable.

Holy shit. The trash you were rambling on about this morning about shooting one out of a hammock may actually come true.

I hold as still as possible, which is actually quite comical to think about as I swing in the hammock. They look over towards me but for the life of them, they can’t figure out what to make of this giant cocoon.

Lust distracts the rams and they get to the matter at hand. They push the ewes along a ridge not 80 yards from me, looking for a more romantic and secluded spot.

I wonder if an animal has ever been shot out of a hammock and debate if I will be the first. Then the glowering face of my wife pops into my head as I tell her why I missed the ram by a county mile as I unfold the story of my would-be entry into the Guinness Book of World Records. 

Protein over pride.

I let them sneak off as I keep a close watch through the slit of my cocoon.

They clear the ridge and I explode into action, taking the necessities and leaving the rest to be packed up later.

Following the trail of freshly disturbed rocks, I pick my way through the moonscape toward their general direction. With the bad often comes the good. The terrain might be a pain in the ass to walk through, but it would be a paintballer’s wet dream with all the cover it provides.

I close the distance and make my way behind a sizable boulder. Running out of real estate, I know I either have to make this work or admit defeat.

The biggest of the two rams’ sixth sense kicks in and he looks behind him. The rangefinder comes to my eye and I get his yardage. Now all I need to do is wait until he turns broadside. That and not screw up.

His patience rivals the Dalia Lama himself, not moving an inch during his scanning gaze. My feet burn from holding the same position for the better part of the ten-minute stand-off. I adjust to my knees, knowing this is going to be my shooting position anyway.

My movement causes him to shift while contemplating whether he should run or not. I don’t give him time to make that decision.

The arrow cuts loose and I hear the music that is only sung to bowhunters. I know the shot is good.

Despite my confidence in the shot, he stands perfectly still, looking back at me.

What the hell was that sound then? Did I miss?

Unwavering, his thousand-yard stare is more telling than the blood I see pouring out of him as my binoculars come up to my eyes.

He’s dead, but has no idea. 

He falters, stumbles around like a drunk college kid with no governor on his alcohol intake and finally falls.

Sticking with tradition, I pick up my phone and call the family.

“I’m selling the company and buying a crystal ball. Time for a career change”, I say into the phone as my wife picks up. “Fortune telling.”

// Fred Bohm

Internal Pandemic

So you decide to do this during an epidemic, a pandemic or some sort of “demic”. The point is, your timing has always been off. 

The rest of the world is hoarding toilet paper and you’re getting on a plane with what equates to your entire world and waiting to touch down on a piece of cooled lava isolated in the pacific. 

But you’re on the clock. You’ll punch out in fifty years or maybe tomorrow. Pandemic or no, your life has to go on because of your fear that it won’t.

But there is this incessant nagging of guilt. One that you constantly weigh to see if it has any merit. One that wakes you up at 3:00 am with a start, ensuring a sleepless night of ceiling watching. The cliche “Live your life to the fullest” comes with a heavy weight on the conscious. Live it to the fullest is very Buddhist. Very in the moment. But it does require stealing from the future.

Or maybe you were just raised to be part of the machine and any deviation from that predetermined course causes a glitch in the internal system. You can’t rewire your brain quick enough to accept the path you chose to take. Self preservation on what’s worked for society so far will cause a constant urge to jump back to the safety net. You’re treading in uncharted waters, as do all of us that made the jump. We are light years from the time when pure freedom of one’s time was the norm. There’s no manual for reverting back to a simpler way of living. We may self enslave through fear of parting with the tribe, but we are slaves regardless. Walking against the current can be a harder path to choose and terrifying if you are pulled under, but there’s no turning back now.

I get in the field and it all clears up, or at least is set aside temporarily as success is going to require all concentration in the present moment. The animals I chase can care less about my internal battles, their only thought is to survive, not to ponder the inner workings of man’s mind.

Concentration can be a temporary cure for self-doubt. The lava rock shifts beneath my feet reminding me that priority number one is to not eat shit and snap a leg. Priority number two is to get some meat in the fridge for the family. Hysteria has left the grocery stores empty. I say an internal thank you to my father for raising me to be a self-sufficient man. Or in other words, raising me to be a hunter.

The boiling clouds roll in wrapping around every surface area like a wet blanket. I start to soak through but love the feeling of a warm rain coating me. It reminds me that comfort is a luxury and something that I’ve become too accustomed to.

The sheep are making their way in my general direction and I cut an angle to intercept them. They want to survive, I want to eat them. We have similar goals, mine just happen to infringe upon theirs. 

At the predetermined rendezvous point, I tuck behind an alarmingly sharp chunk of volcanic rock and wait. Let them make the final mistake. Stay patient and wait.

At times that seems to be the wisest course of action to take, no action at all. Wait and see what plays out. Your brain demands constant action, perpetual momentum forward; progress. It needs to be short-circuited from time to time. You need to stand still, let the world come to you.

The plan works and they move forward. They never knew a trap had been sprung on them. Perhaps their momentum has betrayed them. They were too predictable. When you’re the prey that is unacceptable because that is fatal when a predator is around.

I take home what is mine, what is earned. I can’t predict what will happen tomorrow, which way the current of emotion that controls society’s direction will take. I just know that tonight my family will eat. Eat from a practice that has been with us since we could hold a stone.

// Fred Bohm

Hunting the Big Island of Hawaii - How to Plan a DIY Hunt

The bow hunting and rifle season ends when you want it to end. It’s as simple as that. Some like the finality of closing day after a long season. Soon after they can rest, plan for the next fall and get after some of the chores we neglected during go time.

However there are those of us that absolutely loathe it. We can’t fathom not hunting for the next eight months. We pace, we get the nervous sweats, our spouses want to stick a sharpened pencil through our ear. To put it mildly, we’re a pain in the ass to be around in the offseason. No amount of e-scouting or shed hunting will cure us. Once you’ve tasted blood, the wine is just too thin.

Luckily there’s a cure for the obsessed. 

There are some states and countries that take pity on our poor souls. Places that let your drive and ambition determine how long you’ll spend in the field, not regulations. If there were a heaven on earth, these places would be it.

I’ve gone over how to take advantage of New Zealand’s amazing year-round hunting in previous blog articles. Here are some links in case you missed them:

DIY Bow Hunting New Zealand - Part 1: Pre-Plan an Unguided Hunt

DIY Bow Hunting in New Zealand - Part 2: Equipment List

DIY Hunting New Zealand - An American Bowhunter's Post Mortem

New Zealand can be a pretty committed hunt. How about we stay a little closer, a little cheaper and still in the good ‘ol US of A? 

Hawaii

Hula skirts, luaus and roasting pigs on a beach right? For us hunters, at least one of those is correct. Take the pig, add in some goat and a few sheep and now we’re talking. Hawaii has a long history of hunting. The origins of the animals you will be chasing is still debated, they were originally brought over to by either Captain Cook or the Polynesians before him. Either way they are now firmly planted in the Hawaiin culture and lucky for the rest of us they allow us outsiders to partake in their tradition.

The Big Island of Hawaii to Be More Specific

Almost all the Hawaiian Islands have hunting, but I will concentrate on the Big Island of Hawaii in the article. Why the Big Island you ask? This is a poor man’s guide to expanding your hunting season. It’s meant for those of us that prefer the DIY experience on a budget. This isn’t for those looking for a guide to show them how and where to hunt. This is public land, burning boot leather for the self-sufficient hunter that wants to get the most bang for their buck.

Here is a list of reasons I chose the Big Island:

1. Flights can be flying into Kona Airport.

2. Lodging is reasonable.

3. Car rentals can be obtained.

4. Tons of public land.

5. It doesn’t feel touristy.

If you’re a family man like myself, you can’t find a better option in Hawaii than the Big Island. We take the kids, rent a house and car for a month and have at it. Logistics are fairly simple. 

If you got a couple of buddies together that want in on the trip, it’s even cheaper. Splitting a house and car is the way to go. 

What You’ll Be Hunting

Feral sheep, goat and pig is the name of the game. Mouflon sheep can be found, but aren’t as plentiful and if you’re there during the right time of year, you can hunt turkey as well. They’re here and they’re in abundance. From what I hear the upland hunting is pretty awesome as well, you just need to hit the season right.

For those wanting to hone in their spot and stalk abilities, this is the place for you. Whereas you could spend a whole season chasing elk and only get one shot opportunity, this typically isn’t the case in Big Island. But don’t be fooled, it is still hunting and these animals still don’t like to have a pointy stick shot into them. They will run and they will hide. They certainly can be elusive at times. That being said, it isn’t a high country mule deer hunt either. You should see plenty of animals and get a few good shots in there once you get a feel for things.

For all the details on the hunting seasons and locations and where you’ll find specific species on the Big Island, you can check it out HERE.

Now although there is hunting year-round, you’ll need to know the when, what and how many you can kill in each individual public area. You can almost consider each area as a GMU. What you can hunt in each area can differ. Also, times you can hunt during the week will change from area to area. Some you can only hunt on weekends, some are 7 days a week. 

There are areas, like the Puuanahulu Game Management Area, that have OTC tags that are only good for certain times of the year. So although there is hunting year-round on the Big Island, this doesn’t hold true for all public land.

And speaking of public land, there is plenty of it. Here is what you’ll be working with.

You can find this map as well as more detailed maps of the individual hunting areas HERE.

OnxMaps also has all the public land overlayed on their app. At this point, if you’re not using OnxMaps, you probably should be.

What You Need to Do Before You Go

Like any other state, you’ll need a hunting license. The great part about Hawaii is that the license covers all big game hunting except for a few areas and species. Here’s the cost breakdown:

Non-Resident Hunting License: $105

Puuanahulu Game Management Area Non-Resident Sheep & Goat tags: $25/tag

Turkey Non-Resident tags: $20/tag

You will need to get a hunter education letter of exemption form before you can actually get your license. Fill it out online. Not a big deal.

Bring some hunter orange as well. Unless you’re hunting in an archery-only area, you’ll need to wear it.

Camping

Price: Camping: $18/night, Cabins $50-$90/night

Unfortunately, it’s almost non-existent. It’s not like the mainland where you can camp on pretty much all public land. All hope is not lost if this is the direction you want to go however. With a little planning ahead of time you can reserve one of the few camp spots on the island.

You can reserve sites HERE.

I’m trying a couple out on my upcoming trip. I’ll write individual blog articles on them so keep an eye out in the near future.

AirBnB

Price: $40 ish a night for a private room. $50 - $150 a night for an entire house. 

Controversial in Hawaii, but there are still plenty of homes available. They can book out fairly quickly, so plan on reserving them a few months out from your trip.

This is a good option if you plan on splitting it with a few friends. If you’re planning on an extended stay, this can be the cheapest way to go. A lot of hosts offer discounts for staying a week as well as a whole month. On the home we reserved for our 2020 stay, we received 37% off for staying the month. 

The Hilo side (east) of the island is typically cheaper for lodging. There’s also a hell of a lot more rain than the west coast. The Hilo side feels way less touristy, but still has all the amenities that you’ll need. 

Rental Car

Price: $25 - $100 per day

The pricing on this can be absurd. But it’s an island after all, so I guess the supply and demand model I learned back when I was picking boogers in grade school rears its ugly head. 

You can get away with a standard size car for most areas you can hunt. But for those of you that will want to dig in deep and get back in there, you’ll probably need a Jeep or something with high clearance. Most spots you can hike in from pavement, but some of the cooler spots require a little bit of offroading.

Besides your standard rental options, check out Turo. It’s like AirBnb for cars. The prices seem comparable to most rental companies, but like AirBnB, the owners often offer hefty discounts for one week or longer rentals.

What to Bring

Depending on how you’re going to be spending your nights will depend on whether you’ll need camping gear or not. Camping certainly adds a little to the complexity as you’ll need to bring a tent or hammock with a rain tarp, sleeping pad, sleeping bag or quilt and all the other things that you’ll typically need for camping. It’s more to bring on the flight, but it also is going to save you some cash.

Here’s a quick list of things you may not have thought about:

1. An old pair of boots - The lava rock that you’ll be hunting on can tear up a pair of boots faster than a belt sander. Don’t destroy your good backcountry boots hiking around here. Something with decent support is a must as trying to avoid twisting your ankle will be a daily challenge while hopping around the lava rock.

2. Warm clothing - Not something you might think while hunting a tropical island, but depending on where you decide to hunt, you could be hunting as high up as 10,000 feet. Some of the volcanos exceed 13,000 feet, so take it seriously.

3. Rain gear - Rainfall is highly dependent on what side of the island you’re hunting. The eastern side receives an average rainfall of 130 inches a year whereas the Kona side is closer to an average rainfall of 18 inches. So if you plan on hunting the eastern side to the middle of the island, expect to see some rain!

4. Hunter Orange - Unless you’re hunting an archery-only area, you’ll need to wear hunter orange. Even if hunting with a bow.

5. Snorkeling/Spearfishing gear - I mean, come on, you’re in Hawaii.

6. Backpack - These are big chunks of public land. There’s no issue spending a full day hunting without heading back to the car. Plan on long day hunts.

This should get you started on your path to broadening your hunting universe. There are options out there to make this a year-round sport, you just got to dig.

I’ll follow this blog up with a few stories while I spend the next month bowhunting in the Big Island of Hawaii. After that, I’ll do a post mortem and fill you in on all the things I forgot in this article and screwed up while on the trip. Stay tuned and follow along on the day by day adventures with me through my Instagram Stories → @fredbohm

// Fred Bohm

An Analog Hunt - Chasing Whitetail Deer in the Midwest

If there is one thing I’m certain about is that I’m certain that I don’t know if I’m a trophy hunter or not. I know I like success just about as much as I like killing big animals. The two rarely coincide. If you want to walk out of the woods with a monster you have to be just as willing to walk out with regret in the likes of “shoulda, woulda, couldas”.

I have yet to determine what side of the fence I place myself on.

Of course, it’s not always black and white. Some hunts are meat runs, some I can be more selective and some I make up my mind while at full draw. I’m not the cliche “You can’t eat the horns!” type of guy. That sounds lovely to the masses on social media and often will get you accolades, but it just ain’t the case with this fella.

I’m also not the guy that says, “It’s a 200-inch deer or nothing.” Often that’s a built-in excuse just like the stickbow revolution on why people walk out of the woods year after year empty-handed. Give yourself a cop-out as to why you can’t succeed and your ego will thank you for it.

No, I’m much worse than that. I’m the indecisive type that often walks into the woods with no plan at all. I’m sure this is the part where some Boyscout will chirp in that “Failing to plan is planning to fail”. And they would be right.

Sometimes.

I had just finished up a successful hunt in South Dakota chasing whitetails in the hills. Again one of those indecisive times where I wasn’t sure if I was there for a trophy. The rut hadn’t kicked in and I was getting impatient. Success was going to be determined not by the size of the deer or the need of meat, but rather a reward to a perfect stalk. The reward came to fruition.

With that animal’s death came my freedom to explore the next state, where rumors of rutting bucks being passed around on social media may have enticed me to slip an arrow into the aforementioned buck.

I had been planning nine days on the road and I still had five left. With a cooler packed full of meat, I let the arrow-straight Midwestern roads guide me to my next destination.

I slide through small town after small town where the only restaurant to be seen shares space with its sole gas station. I watch enviously as old farmers sit by the windows, chatting and sipping gas station coffee as the sun breaks the horizon.

It’s nice to see that there is still a culture that takes a minute to converse face to face, to pause before the start of the day. There is a world that is still analog.

Maybe one day.

I pass through the last town as unnoticed as the tumbleweed lodged in its fences. This is my second deployment to the area, the first being far from successful. I do what feels most comfortable and head for the hills, wary of sitting in a treestand. Staying stationary hasn’t produced so far this year, so I go back to what I’m comfortable with; stalking. A miserable way of attempting to learn and become proficient at hunting from a stand.

You can’t dip your little toe in the water to see if the temp is just perfect. You grab your shit, take a running head start and dive headfirst into the deep end. If you drown so be it, not all Indians were meant to be hunters, some had to gather water for the tribe after all.

That’s a weak way of thinking and you know it. Man up and learn something new.

I pull a 007 with the truck, spitting up a dust cloud that reaches for the heavens on the rain thirsty dirt road.

I know of a spot that looked amazing the last time I hunted the area. Hell, I had a tree picked out with perfect shooting lanes. Better yet I had a trail cam that had been sitting in there for more than three weeks. If the hunting sucked and I had picked a horrendous location, at least I could update the local Audubon Society on the tweety bird count that zig-zagged in front of my game camera.

As I pull into the parking area I see a rather luxurious camp set up and what appears to be a fully dressed elk hanging from the meat pole.

I recheck my map and make sure that I didn’t blackout while driving and end up back in the west. As I’m doing this a burly older fella pops out of the condo-sized tent. 

He approaches with a big smile and outstretched hand instantly making me like this guy. He has the type of presence that makes him instantly feel like your friend.

“That’s a monster you got hanging there,” I say as we shake hands.

“Oh that? Yea that one is my sons,” he replies as he looks back over his shoulder admiring the beast hanging from the pole. He shakes his head, obviously still taken back by the sheer size of the thing. 

He invites me over to take a look at the display he and his two sons have acquired in the last few days hunting. Three monarchs lay on a cooler. Bone reaches towards the sky like the gnarled fingers of some long-dead giant. If I were a buck roaming the woods in search of some action, you could be sure that I’d be looking over my back for any one of these monsters to attack.

We talk for awhile and the ex-marine tells me that this is a tradition for him and his sons. They come together to hunt whitetail every year. Water may repel oil, but with a little convincing it always makes its way back together to unify as one.

This hits deep as I think about my two young ones back home waiting for their father to come back from the woods.

I tell him my plans of where I will be hunting and then promise to stop back  to meet his two sons when I call the quits for the day.

I load up with gear and have a flashback of reading Tim O’Brien’s, The Things They Carried in highschool.

The spot I had previously picked out is a pinch point. Twenty yards from a river and in thick cover. A great spot for searching bucks to cruise for does. A couple of fresh nearby scrapes let me know that the area has been frequently visited. My trail cam pics validate it further.

I climb the perfectly spaced cedar branches and giggle to myself. A far off time thirty-something years ago I was doing the same thing at recess in a little school in rural New Jersey. Many things have changed, but the important ones haven’t.

I set up and settle in. Three hours out until sunset, I relax and let my mind wander. 

There was so much hope in the man’s eyes. He talked of this hunt as if it saved him. As if this is what kept him going. Not this particular hunt, but just hunting in general. Not even hunting, but hunting with his sons. There was a purpose behind these yearly hunts.

Age eventually breaks down the bullshit. I look to my elders often as a litmus test. In the end what’s important, what isn’t. Like any scientific test, the samples used are an important part of the step to get an accurate end result. Find a miserable old man beaten down by life for this test or you may get an ugly result. Unlike a real science experiment you are looking for a particular end result, you just need to find the right variables in order to get there.

This guy was the variable I was looking for.

I hear crunching behind a cedar not forty yards away. I stand up and grab my bow.

I listen for a second set of crunching, hoping a buck might be pursuing the doe that is making her way towards me.

Me and my assumptions. My hypothesis is way off. I’d make a shitty scientist.

Antler pops out of the cedar and attached to it is my “doe”.

What the hell is it about this place? Do they only grow them one size?

I don’t have time to panic. He’s on the move with more pressing matters than giving me time to lose my shit.

I draw back and give him a bleat. A half-second pause is all I need. My arrow punishes him for his mistake.

Forty minutes from leaving the parking area and I am on my way back loaded down with my gear. Dragging this beast out with all my gear was not an option. It was time to lighten the load.

“What did you forget?” comes the welcoming call from the ex-marine.

“Bad luck I guess. Had a shooter come in not ten minutes after I sat down,” I explain.

“My sons will be back shortly, hold up for a little bit and they’ll give you a hand,” he offers.

We sit around and I pry my variable for more about his life until his sons show up.

The apples don’t fall far from the paternal tree. Just like their father, upon introduction I instantly like these guys. They offer up help with my buck as if I’m doing them the favor. As inconvenient as it may have been, they show no signs of feeling that way and gladly go out into the setting sun to help me break down the buck.

Perhaps the true experiment should not be on the original variable you had sought after, but rather his offspring. You can tell a lot about a man by the way he raises his sons and daughters. You can hear words come out of a man’s mouth after years of refining them and be impressed. Raising children doesn’t work that way however. You have years of showing by example to help mold them. They are the true result of who you are as a person.

We work into the evening, knives out and hunting stories being thrown around like we were old college buddies. A perfect way to end an analog day in a digital world.

// Fred Bohm

Luck - A Lesson in Hunting

“The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

— Samuel Goldwyn

“So tell me how it went down,” I ask.

Moments earlier I saw the telltale sign of a successful hunt, a man leaned over at work with blue latex gloves busily moving about. Right in the epicenter of where I made a long circumnavigation to where I had planned to meet up with a buck I had been chasing. 

“It was complete and total luck. I mean I walked over the ridge, saw him bed, walked up slowly from below and shot him,” comes the reply of a man standing over a mule deer I’m all too familiar with.

“How far was the shot?” I pry on.

“Thirty yards. He never got out of his bed. Hell, I think the arrow skipped off the ground and ricochet into him,” he answers.

Son of a bitch. I haven’t been able to get within 95 yards of the bastard and this guy pinballs one off the ground at spitting distance.

I’d been working this mesa on and off the last several days. I had got to know this particular buck quite well. We were quite intimate. I knew his quirks and he knew mine. He knew to hightail ass when he heard the now familiar clicking of my torn up ankle, I knew to look off in the distance for his does to find him laying about overlooking his harem.

Luck, huh? I want to believe you but I know it’s not completely true.

“Again, congratulations. That’s a damn fine buck. One any archer would be proud to wrap his hands around. I’m not so sure about that luck thing, however. Old bruisers like that don’t die by luck,” I say as we shake hands and I let him get to work. 

I start the long trek off the vista and back to camp for a cup of black soup. I need the caffeine and I need to regroup. Most of all I need to make sense of what just happened.

Luck.

I mumble that word over and over as I kick steps in the loose dirt that inhabits the descent. It’s something that I’ve been grappling with for a long time in its relation to hunting. I’ve always felt uneasy about that word. Notoriously a cop-out for failure and an ego-crushing recognition often owed for success. 

But after each and every kill’s postmortem, I would hurriedly skim over certain details not wanting to focus on the presence of luck. I knew it was part of the equation, I just didn’t know what proportion I owed to it.

I, like everyone else, want to believe that I have complete control over the outcome. Put in the time, put in the effort and eventually success will follow. That’s not luck, that’s determination.

So here’s a scenario. Two men hunt the same woods. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll say they are on the same skill level (that’s a far reach I know). One doesn’t kill in five days worth of effort, the other kills his first hour in. 

Luck?

Isn’t that really just rolling the dice, hoping for it to come up sevens? Roll enough and you’re damn sure to eventually come up a winner.

I ponder my own accomplishments in the field as I zig-zag my way down off the mesa. 

How many of my kills are owed to being at the right place at the right time? Blindly fumbling around the woods only to have some unsuspecting buck curious about the commotion and make the unfortunate accident of standing within range. 

Was it luck? Or was it the sheer magnitude of time I spent in the field to make the encounter inevitable? What part did skill have in it?

We like things in black and white. It’s either this way or that. We are Republicans or we’re Democrats. We root for this team or that team. There’s no middle ground, we are or we aren’t. Success is derived from skill or its complete luck. It helps our simple brains understand complex issues. It allows us to put things into categories, process that information and move on.

But there was cream in this coffee.

Hunting, however, is different. We aren’t dealing with constants. We are dealing with individual creatures that to some extent can think, reason (I’ll use that in loose terms) and sure as hell learn to stay away from danger. And just like humans, they all have different capacities in doing so. What’s more than that they are susceptible to good days and bad days just like the rest of us.

Hell, some days they are just off. Occasionally the oldest and wisest of bucks stumble around and fall into our laps, oblivious of the numerous mistakes we made.

In hunting, we don’t always get what we deserve. There is just plain old dumb luck.

So in my equation that my little brain has put together so far it goes something like this.

Luck + Time in the Field + Skill = Success. 

There’s never been any use harping on what we can’t control. Luck is luck. You have nothing to do with it so take it out of the equation. The only thing you can control is the amount of time spent in the field and your skill. Skill takes a long time to develop and can only come through the experience time in the field provides for you. So the one that looks like we have the most control over would be Time in the Field.

There it is. The more time you spend out there the better your chances are at success. I think I have just written down what could be the most obvious and well know way to achieve success in hunting. I hope I didn’t make you dumber for reading it.

However, I needed to come to this realization on my own. I’ve never been one to learn from others.

So maybe that quote I stole at the beginning of this little story should read more like: The more time I spend in the field, the luckier I get.

I guess I was just lucky enough to figure this equation out and be able to put it to use in future hunts... 

// Fred Bohm   

Bowhunting South Dakota Whitetail - Into the Hills Without a Glitch

I look for a nearby branch, a log, a dry spot, anything to get me out of this mess I got myself into. Nothing. The opening scene of Blazing Saddles flashes in my mind where Bart slowly succumbs to the quicksand.

Shit, this isn’t good. You’re going to look like a damn fool when your tombstone proclaims “Here lies an idiot, too stupid to stay out of the mud. Now six feet under where he belongs.”

I’m knee-deep in a thick paste that lured me in under the pretenses of solid ground. Not the case, the muddy sublayer is clamped to my boots and holding tight as if snagged by a bear trap.

With nothing else available I use the only tool at my disposal. I lay my bow flat on the ground using its surface area to help leverage one foot at a time out of the deep vat of cream cheese. With the added weight of a day’s worth of hunting gear and a treestand strapped to my back, I was in quite a predicament.

I finally managed to get out of the death trap and scrape a healthy portion of the snot from my boots. 

This is stupid man. There’s no way deer are walking through this. They have the intelligence to stay out of here, apparently, you don’t.

I look behind me in disgust. The hike I made down to this strip of trees looked promising on a map. Far away from the convenience of a road. Hefty elevation loss (and therefore gain) that would scare the typical whitetail hunter away. A perfect funnel between a bedding and feeding area. Everything was perfect. Everything except for the fact that there was no way in hell a deer could walk through this river bottom filled with oatmeal.

South Dakota had seen flooding of Biblical proportions since spring. I should have known something was awry when I saw homes submerged in lakes that were farm fields not 6 months ago.

Flooded home in South Dakota.

I take a last look at the landscape before I walk back to the truck with my tail between my legs. It looks shockingly like a pin cushion. Smooth and flat with interspersed vertical pins, ie. trees. No underbrush, no place for deer to hide. Just silty ground with trees struggling to hold their footing in this moonlike landscape.

I was screwed.

It was plain and simple. The deer weren’t here. 

I knew that I could play the part of the victim ever so popular in society today or man up and figure out how to solve this problem.

I at first consoled myself and internally whined how Mother Nature had done this to me because she is a malevolent bitch that’s sole purpose was to destroy my good time. Once the pity party was over it was time to get to more productive work.

They’re somewhere. Maybe not where you’re used to finding them, but they’re somewhere. They didn’t just stand there with a dumb look on their faces while the river was rising.

You didn’t have to be a genius to figure out where they sought safety.

Up.

The creek rose and pushed them to higher elevations in the surrounding hills. The cuts and cedars of the higher ground became their new home. From time to time you could see them venture down to dip their toes in the same muck I decided to leap into. They wanted to get back to the safety of the thick forest of the river bottom, but it wasn’t happening anytime soon. For now, they had to make do with the refugee camps set up in the hills.

And I was ready to go a knocking on their doors.

You can make a compelling argument to the deer and tell them where they should be, or you can go out and find where they are. One gives you a chance of success, the other gives you an excuse for failure.

I ditched my vacation plans of relaxing in a stand, crushing levels of Angry Birds and waiting for them to come to me. I was a western hunter after all, so it was time to do what I felt more comfortable with anyway. It was time to get to stalking these transplants in the surrounding hills.

I traded my Lacrosse 1600 gram Thinsulate for my hiking boots, threw the stand in the back of the truck, grabbed my backpack and spotter and pointed the truck to the rolling hills of South Dakota.

At the top of these hills sat copious amounts of feed. Long flattened out and turned into cash producing land, it created the perfect setup for well-fed deer. Hit the buffet on tops of these hills at night, then meander down the cuts in the hills below and look for a cedar to provide shade and cover for the day. Rinse and repeat.

My job was to intercept them without being noticed. Hold tight in the shadows of a bush like some creep in a city park and let an arrow loose if it all came together.

That was plan “A” at least. Otherwise, let them bed and put a stalk on one, as designed by the Western Hunter’s Handbook.

The wind rocked me to sleep as I lay in the bed of my truck that night. It was howling out there. I hoped some of it would stick around for the morning’s hunt as I knew what a pain in the ass it was to stalk in the dead silence of a windless day. As wet as it was out there, the tall grasses that called the hills home decided to not absorb any of the moisture and instead do their best impression of Rice Krispies.

I was finishing my second cup of coffee as I rolled into a parking area about a mile from where I wanted to hunt. The wind decided to bless this out-of-stater with a welcoming continuance of its presence.

I ditched the headlamp, grabbed my backpack and bow and made for a lookout point I thought would do the trick while perusing my maps the night before. It was a clear night with stars illuminating the path well enough. No use advertising my intrusion anymore than necessary with a glowing orb attached to my head.

I made my way to the glassing knob, parked it, pulled my hood up to keep the piercing wind from attacking my neck and waited for the alpenglow of the sky.

What if it decides to not rise today? What if this is all a scam, we’re in a simulation and there is a glitch in the system and they forgot to flip the switch for the sun? What if the glitch sends me back some odd million years and a T-Rex pops out instead of a deer and now I’m no longer the hunter but the hunted? I should start looking for an escape route.

The sky starts to glow and deer start to appear. No glitch. For now at least… 

The hills are loaded with deer. Two bigger bucks have made their way down a good bit ahead of the rest.

Typical. It makes sense really. Experience has taught them to get the hell out of Dodge before the clumsy two-legged creatures with pointy sticks and god-awful odors start flinging projectiles at them. Little did they know that this clumsy two-legged dimwit likes to sit out in the dark earlier than his brethren.

I follow the two in front with my glass as long as I can before the undulated terrain conceals them.

The smaller of the two eventually squirts out the bottom. The bigger guy did what bigger guys do; he disappears.

With a Kansas tag burning a hole in my pocket and rumors of the rut kicking in down there, I put my glass to my eyes and watch the decent buck make his way to his bedroom, all the while asking if I’d be happy with my tag wrapped around him.

What are you here for? A giant, meat or the thrill of a perfect stalk?

I opted for two and three. If the stalk went down exactly as I planned it, he was going home with me.

Looking across the hill at the whitetail deer bedded.

He beds between some cedars, facing out over the small valley and looking my way. Using my rangefinder I gauge the distance from him to the closest point I could sneak to without getting caught.

96 yards. That ain’t going to cut it. I picture my pin dancing over him like a drunk driver trying to touch his nose for the glaring officer. The wind was howling, he was bedded and I wasn’t going to risk it. As I told myself earlier, I was only going to shoot him if it was the perfect stalk.

I scan the hillside and find a bush that couldn’t be more than 35 yards from where he is laying. It was downwind and offered to block my approach for me.

If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, I managed to find the absolute longest possible distance while still staying within the constraints of the public land I was hunting. I took the full tour of the area in order to make the stalk happen.

The bush I had seen 45 minutes early appears just over a ridge I had been using for cover. I pull out my release and get to crawling. The wind does its job and keeps the firecrackers I’ve been setting off on the approach inconspicuous.

I slide around the predetermined bush at a snail’s pace. I’ve made it this far, no use blowing the stalk because I wasn’t patient enough in the closing moments.

I see fur tucked into the cedar ahead of me. Occasionally I can see antler moving about lazily as if going through the motions to secure the perimeter, but not really having its heart in it.

36 yards. Spot on.

I turn the wheel on my sight and let it stop on the correct hash mark. I load up an arrow and attach my release to the d-loop.

Breathe it out buddy and get that heart rate to where it needs to be. Don’t go home kicking yourself because you got sloppy through impatience. He has no idea you’re here, you have all the time in the world. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

I rise up to a standing position. Nothing changes in the buck’s world, he is oblivious. I pull with the center of my back and dig into the back wall. I look at my pin and place it right behind the ribs. Perfect for this angle. I let the pin go blurry as I bore a hole with my eyes at the spot where I want the arrow to hit. 

A little more tension with the back and the arrow is on its way. 

I see it rotate clockwise as it splits a gap in the branches. 

A burst of fur and then a tumble. Everything goes quiet except for the howling of the wind in my ears. It roars just the same as it did before I shot, assuring me that nothing I’ve done has made the slightest hiccup in the world. No glitch.

I walk up to the piled up animal as he takes his last sucking gasps of air. He is gone. I am here. At least until the day where I’m the one gasping for his last few breaths. Life moves on and the world doesn’t skip a beat. 

Packing out my whitetail deer in the hills of South Dakota.

// Fred Bohm

Road Trip for Whitetail Deer - A Dirtbag Hunter's Guide

I have to admit, I’m a vagabond by heart. Family and work keeps me rooted in one place, but when the option arises you can bet I’m jumping into a overpacked truck and headed out to explore the unknown with bow in hand.

Hunting is riddled with variables, with unknowns. We thrive on it, we love it. We can’t wait to see what’s over the next ridge, what our e-scouting will produce and what that next sit in the stand will turn up. Leave consistency to bakers. Give us the adventure of the unexplored.

Mid August through the end of September usually finds me chasing elk, mule deer and pronghorn in the western states. For some this will be the end of their archery season, for the obsessed it’s only the warmup.

Luckily the Midwest has our back with their lengthy seasons when it comes to chasing whitetail. We can easily hunt until the end of the year, extending our season a great deal.

So when October hits, the cardinal direction of my compass 180’s and points me east. To the Midwest and the monsters that lurk in the woods.

A stud buck I took while roadtripping through the Midwest.

Simplifying

Now I’ll admit, this article is not for everyone. There are plenty of guys out there that have their hotels booked a year in advance or their locomotive sized RVs plopped down on where they plan to hunt. Good on ya, but for a lot of us we have no interest in this cumbersome (and expensive) way of hunting.

This is for the throw your gear in your rig, sleep in the back of your truck, stay as mobile as possible fellow dirtbag hunters. The ‘I ain’t taking on another mortgage for a house on wheels’ type of guy. Get in, get the job done and get out while still being as comfortable as possible.

I’ve spent more hours sleeping in the bed of my truck than I have in a lifetime of hotel visits. Call me cheap, call me what you will, but I can find a better way of spending $80+/night than sleeping in a dive motel.

With a few extras and a little pre-planning you can turn a miserable night cramped in the front seat of your truck into a four star hotel experience.

Where to Stay

This is what I love about the Midwest.Towns tend to be small, the people are nice and they set up their town parks to welcome travelers. With a little research online, you can look up the nearest town you’ll be hunting by and there’s a damn good chance that they’ll have a park that allows you to camp. Better yet most have electric hookups and bathrooms.

Prices vary from free to around $12. Not a bad deal when compared to the alternatives.

When the weather is fair, electric hookups aren’t really essential. Come to the colder days nearing the rut, they are almost a requirement to keep you sane.

Scent control on a budget.

King’s Luxuries at a Pauper’s Price

Here’s a list of gear that you may want to consider picking up in order to make these trips a good bit more comfortable. A truck with a topper is optimal, but not absolutely necessary. 

1. Electric Heater - A game changer. A must. Don’t leave home without it. Plug this in while sleeping and it keeps those bitter cold temps manageable if not comfortable. An added bonus is that it dries out damp clothes in the process.

2. Extension Cord and Power Strip - We live in a world powered by electronics. Why fight it. Plug into power keep that electric heater humming, boot dryer chugging, the Ozonics performing and cell phone charged for the next day’s Angry Birds marathon in the tree stand.

3. Thick Bed Mat - Your truck camping, not hiking into the backcountry so why not go all out. I use a 3” inflatable sleeping pad and I sleep like the dead on that thing. Don’t forget to bring some pillows along as well. Teddy bear optional.

4. LED Light - Depending on your headlamp can get old. I throw in some rechargeable LED lights so I can read and cook without losing my eyesight.

5. Plastic Totes - The problem with living out of your truck is that it can look like a shanty town in no time. You’ve got to stay organized if you’re going to stay sane. I like using rigid plastic totes. I seperate food, clothes and tree stand gear into separate boxes and label them accordingly for easy identification.

6. Coffee Maker - Why screw around. If you’re a coffee fanatic and tend to fall asleep in the stand like I do, coffee isn’t a luxury, it’s as necessary as oxygen. Typically you’re only going to find gas station coffee in these little towns and unless you’re a huge fan of gut rot, I’d bring your own.

7. Boot Dryer - I don’t care how cold it is out there, my feet sweat. Especially in the heavy rubber boots used nowadays. Damp boots in the morning equals freezing feet. Get yourself some boot dryers and plug them in overnight. Some even come with ozone scent control as an added bonus.

8. Clothesline and Hangers - It’s usually easy to set up a clothesline off your truck to something in the park allowing you to hang your clothes overnight. We all know how important scent control is. Keep your clothes outside your truck and away from the after effects of that gas station burrito you slugged down for dinner.

9. Dust Brush - This ain’t the city people. You’re going to find yourself on plenty of dirt roads that will turn your sleeping area into the Sahara desert. A good brush down before laying out your sleeping gear will keep you from feeling like Pig-Pen in Charlie Brown.

The key here is to stay comfortable and enjoy the advantages of truck camping while not turning it into a hot mess. You want to be mobile. Winds change and areas get pressured. You want to be ready to move without having to call a moving company to help. Enough to keep you comfortable but not so much that you look like you’re having a garage sale everywhere you stop.

// Fred Bohm

Bow Hunting Mule Deer in Colorado - A Question of Morale

It’s never really how you remember it, is it? Time has a funny way of erasing the hardships, the misery, to be down right honest; the truth. As hunters, the months we accumulate in the off season gives us ample time to romanticize past seasons and make it the way we want it to be, not the way it happened.

This certainly is the case at the present moment.

I stand in a patch of willows in a vast basin as hail tries to puncture holes through my clothes in its attempt to deflate my will. A half hour ago it may have just done that, pushing me out of the backcountry in disgust; with myself, with what I’m doing away from my family and with what I had chosen to do with my “vacation” time.

But not now. Not as I stand here with knife in hand and a velvet buck at my feet. How quickly it has changed. From misery to elation. From questioning to validated.

This is the backcountry, my self-inflicted humble dose of temporary discomfort. Something that I previously used as a source of appreciation for the modern conveniences that we enjoy by way of being its polar opposite. That has changed. Now I look forward to in its own right, for what it is, not a means to an end and not what it gives me when I don’t have it. But for what it is at the present moment, reminding me how human I am while also showing me that I’m an animal not so different from the ones I hunt.

The Colorado archery mule deer opener started six days before and with expected excitement, I headed out for my first mountain hunt of the season. And as often happens, with many months away from these mountains and the memories of its hardships, my optimism is sky high.

“I’ll be home in a few days at most,” I told the family. “Most likely I’ll be FaceTiming you and the kids on the way out of the mountains opening morning with a big buck in the bed of the truck. Get the grill ready, we’ll be eating backstrap by tomorrow evening.”

I had the confidence that only the Navajo hunter or those who forget every season previous possess. I’m about as white as a Cumulus cloud so I assure you, I’m the later of the two.

On opening morning sitting atop a cliff protruding into basin like the Titanic looming over the ocean surface (and just as intimidating) , I felt my chances of keeping my word to the wife were highly likely. There were deer everywhere. Apparently no one told them that it was opening day and I sure as shit wasn’t going to tell them.

The sun crested the spine of the Rockies as I sat and watched mule deer mulling around, my spotter making erratic movements as I tried to keep track of the bedding bucks.

Keeping tabs on them from my crow’s nest perch was one thing, but I knew once I started a stalk this two dimensional flat map would become three dimensional in a hurry. The carpet of willows that matted the valley floor offered up as many landmarks as being smack dab in the middle of the Atlantic ocean.

The wind felt right as I made my way down into the basin. In hindsight I should have been smarter and knew that what was happening up on top of a ridge had close to nothing to do with what was happening in a deep basin.

As I made my approach I experience turbulence to rival any storm in the Bermuda triangle. Wind hit the back of my neck, wind hit the side of my face and at one point I’m pretty sure I was in the center of a tornado with winds swirling around me from every angle.

Deer busted out and moseyed off without much concern.

I played this same scenario out to some extent for the rest of the week. Get close, catch wind on the back of my neck, swear off bowhunting. It was almost comical at the predictability of how the stalk would play out.

But you know what? I wasn’t going to kill back home in Denver. The winds are more predictable there but for some reason the deer population has been on the decline since 1858 when the city was founded. I figured I’d take my chance up here.

I was seeing plenty of deer so that kept the “lows” from tanking like the 2008 stockmarket. But I was feeling the morale destroying effects of failure.

The alarm kept going off and I kept getting up. The “todays the day” mentality kept me going. If you don’t believe you’re going to kill, you might as well pack it up and head out of the woods. You’re time will be better spent elsewhere.

“Today’s the day,” I continued the mantra as I woke up on that sixth day.

I had seen a monster the day before high up on a ridge, bordering a unit that was forbidden to me and the tag I held in my pocket. Maybe he’d decide to peak down into the basin I was hunting to see if the salad bar presented a better option than what he was currently being offered. A man could hope.

Besides today had to be the day. Tomorrow morning I would be packing up and pointing the truck towards a groggy eyed, freshly turned four year old that expected dad to have his birthday pirate ship assembled and waiting for him. I’d take the disappointment of eating a tag over disappointing my son any day of the week.

I made it up to the ridge in the early morning light to see the beast feeding in the wrong direction. It looked like he sampled what my basin had to offer last night and decided that the grass isn't always greener on the other side. He was headed back to a GMU that was as off limits to me as North Korea.

“To hell with it,” I said as I worked my way from the demilitarized zone. “Go back to North Korea.”

I plopped down on the ridge since I already made the effort to climb up into this thin air and overlook the valley I’d been hunting for almost a week. Luckily it’s big enough that if you make a mistake and get winded, they headed to another spot in the same valley. I figured that’s the only thing I had going for me, because buddy, this valley had my stink coated all over it like cheap perfume on a… well you know where I’m going with that.

I kept glass to my eyes and tried to ignore the deep rumblings of a storm building up behind me. I peaked back over my shoulder and realized the storm has some potential. I felt the air go still as the thunderheads sucked up the energy in the mountains before it decided to spew it back on them tenfold. 

My eyesent back to the glass and I caught movement of velvet.

“There you are,” I said.

One of the bucks I’d been chasing all week. An odd fella of sorts. A three by four with small forks, but damn is he wide. And thick. And apparently available.

Last day redemption buck? I’ll take him. Besides, I needed a little extra time to practice my “Arrrgs!” and “Ahoy there matey!” before heading back home.

If there was a better spot to put a stalk on in the basin, I was hard pressed to find it. The way I see it:

1. He was a little ways off of a popular hiking trail so I know for a fact he was catching some human scent by passing by hikers and it wasn’t spooking him off. 

2. He was buried deep in some willow with just his antlers sticking out, giving him very low visibility.

3. There were some thick patches of pines that would give me a perfect approach route to hide my bumbling approach.

He looked like he was pretty locked in there and wasn’t planning on moving anytime soon.

“No time like the present,” I said to myself.

I started my casual hike off the ridge, knowing he had no chance of seeing me this far out. The thunder started to build adding a deep sense of suspense, like giant drums sounding off the march to war.

Here and there I took a peek at him to make sure he didn’t change his mind about the hotel room he chose and wander off in search of something classier.

I cut back and forth behind the camouflage of the pine patches and miraculously manage to get within seventy yards of him. 

His velvet antlers rotate around like a periscope as he scans for trouble, but he never lock on to me.

Perfect. He had no idea that I was there. The deep willows that he decided to bed himself in was giving him minimal visuals on his surroundings. Unfortunately it was also giving me minimal opportunities to slide an arrow into him as he’s almost completely covered up.

The waiting game.

He stood and fed, then bedded back down, repeating this over the next hour, never giving me a clear shot at his vitals. He’s blocked on one end by thick willow and had a small runway to work with to move around. There was one small opening and I knew that he had to move through it at some point. And when he did…

At one point he must have buried himself in a deep hole because I lost sight of him. Panic set in. I knew he had nowhere else to go, but I’m a visual type of guy. If I don’t see it, I usually don’t believe it.

I pressed in ten yards closer hoping to get a different angle and much needed confirmation that he was still there.

Nothing. What the?

I was contemplating my misfortune when up rocketed velvet like a kraken out of the sea.

He stood and made for that three foot by three foot window of opportunity. There was no time to think. To be honest I don’t even remember drawing my bow back.

I heard the most beautiful sound that a bowhunter could hear. The sound of a cantaloupe being struck by a two by four as my arrow buried deep into his body. The sound of success.

He ran off sixty yards and laid down. The storm cracked with a renewed vigor as the life faded from him.

I walked out to did what all hunters do; convert hard work, obsession and countless hours away from our loved ones into sustenance. 

I packed him out to a vehicle miles away that will transport me out of the primitive lifestyle and back to the ones I love. To a boy waiting for his dad to stop playing in the woods and come home to him and tell him why he’s there in the first place. To a world that thinks what we do is archaic and unnecessary. To a place I love because of the lessons hunting and the backcountry has taught me. 

// Fred Bohm

Colorado Pronghorn Rifle Hunt - Staying Loose

The screen on my phone illuminated the bedroom. I peered up at the clock, 2:45am. Super. Another sleepless night. I looked over at my wife wondering if she had mistakenly taken tranquilizers before bed. The dead don’t sleep that well.

I looked back at the screen and let out a long sigh. Another hunter tearing into their brethren over some minute difference in the way they hunt. What am I doing here? What am I gaining by reading these childish attacks? Is this a good way to spend these sleepless nights? Insomnia doesn’t mean I have to open the lid and peer into these dumpster fires.

There has to be some good to come out of this amazing way to connect with like minded people. I get it, there’s assholes in this world, but so disproportionately large?

I scrolled on.

I found a blog that peaked my interest. The Big Game Hunting Blog. Sounds right up my alley. I hopped on and read a few articles. This guy knows his stuff.

Seemed like a like minded fella so I shot him and email.

I ease my truck into a gas station straight out of the 1950’s. The old gas pumps look like they spewed their contents into Detroit steel while a greaser leaned against his hot rod with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth.

I step out of my truck and extend my hand to the only other person at the vacant station.

“John, great to finally meet you man,” I say as we shake hands.

“Great to finally put a face to the voice,” John says back.

After years of talking online, on the phone, working together on projects and trying to plan a hunt together, I finally meet John, the owner of The Big Game Hunting Blog.

We squared away this hunt six months back to hunt my home state of Colorado. We’d be chasing speedgoats, me playing guide while John would be the guy pulling the trigger. This was an area I knew well, hunting it with my bow for a slew of seasons.

“We should have a good hunt and I know the area well. I saw some real studs here during archery season. The only thing I’m not sure about is going to be the pressure. I’ve never hunted it with a rifle, so that part will be as new to me as it is to you,” I say.

We go setup camp and plan on getting in some scouting before the opener the next morning.

As we make our way towards camp I notice plumes of dust raising up from the depths of the criss-crossing dirt roads. I feel the adrenaline rise from what I know is going to be heavy competition.

Camp is setup in gail force winds. We end up maneuvering to a new location in order to get out of the Jetstream, not an easy feat in the plains of eastern Colorado. We search for any undulations in the land that we can exploit as protection.

Trucks pile past as we eat dinner in the deepening evening. My nerves are a wreck. On my own I can deal with it, but this is my first hunt with John and I don’t want him to think I pointed him in the wrong direction with the GMU selection. I’m on the hook for this one and I know it.

He appears at ease with the situation. Being a rifle hunter perhaps he is used to this chaos. It’s all part of the hunt for him. For me however, it’s the main reason I only lasted one season as a rifle hunter and chose to make the switch over to the more solitude endeavor of bowhunting.

We end the night early with high anticipation for the morning and the hunt that will ensue. Sleep eludes me for some time as I try to recalculate tactics, adding in the known variable of extreme hunting pressure. There’s always a way to use these known variables to your advantage and hunting pressure is no different. Letting other hunters’ screwups become your opportunity can pay off. The problem is you can’t plan for it, you have to roll with the punches and see what they do and be ready to act on it at a moments notice.

Stay loose.

That thought repeats itself over and over as the wind rocks my truck and me to sleep.

Coffee is brewing well before the glow of the eastern sun attacks the darkness of the night. The plan is to head to a little rise I know of and glass. To find animals and just as important to find out what the orange army is up to.

Binos are up to our eyes with spotting scopes on their tripods waiting on standby.

My heart sinks as the chunk of land that so far has batted a thousand for me falls short. Dust devils rise from the access roads as hunters plow through the center of these hunting grounds in their pickups. I equate this to an elk hunter tearing through a bedding area with his ATV and expecting to have a bull standing there waiting for his opportunity to be shot.

Time has made me forget the overconfidence that can come with a long range weapon. Subtly can be lost with superior firepower. Not really an option when it comes to bowhunting.

I sigh and try to start formulating another plan for the day. Perhaps a bit premature.

“I got one,” John says.

“Really? I don’t see him,” I reply.

I look back at him and see that he is not looking in the direction I told him that the pronghorns would be. Instead he’s looking in a direction that in all the years I’ve been bowhunting this area, I’ve never seen a one.

“Stay loose,” I remind myself. Advice that I gave not ten hours ago.

He’s a decent buck, one well worth chasing.

“You want him? I ask John.

He looks back through his binos for a second inspection.

“Yea, I’ll take him,” he replies.

I’m secretly relieved. With orange dotting the plains I know that our opportunities are going to be severely limited.

There’s a group of hunters walking a road a couple of hundred yards beyond the buck, but luckily for us a small rise blocks him from their view. I giggle to myself, the scene playing out like some ludacris comic strip from an old hunting magazine. The laughter is cut short as I wonder how many other hunters have watched this same situation play out but with me on the other end of the glass.

With ego in check I watch as John makes his move. The pronghorn buck feeds off in a direction that makes it impossible for John to seal the deal. I wonder if that animal knows how lucky he is, that death surrounds him on every side but the one he chooses to nonchalantly wander towards.

Unreal. That right there is proof to me that there is a sixth sense or that some creatures are born with a horseshoe up their ass.

We regroup and hop in the truck to maneuver closer to where we last saw him. 

As we cruise down the road we see no less than six other vehicles parked along it, most plates revealing the heavy concentration of out of staters. I knew Colorado was gracious with its tags, but I had no idea to the extent.

We jockey for position centering ourselves as the axle to the wheel of vehicles that surround us. 

There’s a dip in the landscape where it looks like something the size of a pronghorn could hide. He’s got to know he’s surrounded and if he’s lived this long, I would have to assume that he knows to keep hidden in this type of situation.

Bingo. Keep it loose.

“There he is,” I say. “And he’s in a very stalkable position.”

We move in using whatever vertical relief and plant life we can find to shield our approach.

“500 yards,” I say as replace my rangefinder into its pouch.

“Sub 300 yards would be great,” John replies.

I know this guy can shoot and I’m impressed that he wants to whittle away the distance to turn this into a sure thing.

We crawl in as the buck rakes whatever greenery dares stand in its way.

He dips out of sight into a small cut. He could squirt out of either end at this point and that makes me nervous. Not knowing how deep the cut is we could miss him vacating the area altogether.

When in doubt, do nothing.

We wait and as time passes my doubts increase. 

Finally I see the tips of a horn move.

“He’s still in there,” I say.

At this point it makes sense to only have the movement of one for the final stalk. John grabs his rifle and backpack as I wish him luck.

He disappears out of sight.

I await the thunderous sound of his .300 Win Mag to inform me of success, sound being the only sense that I have at my disposal to relay the information.

I have little left to do but wait. I watch as hunters circle and reposition themselves. Some stop back at their campers for lunch, some congregate for a midday BS session.

I love to see others out here enjoying the same thing that has become my sole passion in life besides my family. It makes me thankful for public land that we all can call our own. I makes me thankful for introducing me to others that still hold that caveman gene in their bodies.

Thunder roars.

“Got him Fred!” I hear John whoop.

I quickly glass at the surrounding orange and see all heads snap in our direction.

Again a giggle comes out and again it is quickly cut short as memories of more patient hunter than I taking game in a place I was just hunting.

I walk up with hand outstretched to John in congradulations.

I think to myself how this hunt would have never happened, how I would never have met John and the numerous other people I’ve hunted with over the years if it wasn’t for social media.

I realized right then that it’s just a tool. It could be used for good or bad. Inherently there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, just the same way there’s nothing wrong with a mechanic’s wrench. It can be used to fix a vehicle and help him make a living or it could be used to club someone over the head. It’s not the tool, it’s the user. We make it what it is, we have the choice on how we’re going to use it.

// Fred Bohm

If you want to hear the story from John’s mouth head over to his podcast —> The Big Game Hunting Podcast

They Change You

They change you, or they fucking should.

Or maybe they only do if you were doing it wrong to begin with.

I look over at him and there’s not a care in the world. Just a little boy and his fishing pole and the only thing that matters is within an arm’s length. That’s his world. The there. The now.

No fucked up manifestos. No sides taken. Hell he doesn’t even know that at some point in his life he’s going to be expected to take a side. A loose term, it could be anything, but some time in the near future this world is going to expect him to be on one side of the fence or another.

But not right now. If there’s one thing I can squeeze out of all this chaos that surrounds me, it’s that. Make his world his immediate area. Or stand back and do nothing at all, because somehow it’s already that way with him. Don’t intervene for the sake of your own ego, his course is straight, let it play out.

He asks for help, somehow realizing that the plastic Disney Cars fishing pole with a plastic tire for a lure isn’t going to cut it in these gold medal trout waters.

Damnit. More slipping away.

I move over next to him and he sits on my knee as I show him how to cast. He tells me he wants to catch a small one because those are for little boys and the big ones are for daddies.

I don’t want to explain to him that most of the time daddies don’t catch anything at all. Most of the time we stand on the edge of the water looking at our own reflection questioning why it distorts us the way it does. Why it shows us something of ourselves that we didn’t know was there.

It merely reflects. We interpret.

I wonder what he sees in his reflection. Likely nothing. Likely he looks past it into the depths of the water to what he’s looking for. 

I look back at my reflection and then to him,  wondering if I’m the man I want him to be someday. 

I hear excitement in his voice. I awaken to the feeling of the erratic bending of the pole. 

The present calls me back from the future. The messenger is a three year old boy.

// Fred Bohm

Turkey Hunting in Nebraska

Braden and I take to the wood's of Nebraska with our bows and enough coffee to kill a horse.

Photography Video Tutorial - How I Created the "Windowed Man"

Here’s a breakdown on how I created the “Windowed Man” image. I’ll run you through the how-to’s in Photoshop and Lightroom, from the beginning right to the end.

Bowhunting Arizona Coues Deer - A Trade in Ivory

The debate has been going on since I squirted out of my sleeping bag. I finish the last drop of cold coffee and as I flip flop back and forth like a politician pandering for your vote.

I mean your just adding weight making an already strenuous hike all that more difficult. Besides the damn things are awkward.

The sky starts to show signs of waking up, turning a slightly lesser deep grade of purple. Shit or get off the pot.

Com’on man. You’re an athlete!

To hell with it. I strap in a pair of rattling antlers to the outside of my pack and heft it on. I instantly feel the extra weight added and question my judgement. Now these are no ordinary rattling horns, oh no. I’ve received odd looks from encroaching hunters passing by my deer stand as they look up to see what appears to be a set of elk antlers dangling from my bow hanger.

Now technically a Coues deer is a whitetail so the same rules should apply right? I had never rattled in a Coues deer nor have I heard it being done before. But these little tweekers are notoriously skittish and I figured I’d up my chances of success if I could convince them to come to me.

I stuff the remnants of my gear and move out for higher ground, pushing up from the river bottom into the finger ridges of Arizona’s backcountry. When in doubt go up.

Struggling to get my creaking legs to function properly, I avoid cactuses with the grace of a drunken orangutan as I head up the mountain. From time to time I stop and peak ahead with my glass in hopes of finding some brown fur attached to some browner antlers in the predawn light.

I aim for a cliffed out ridge and make for the top. The sun peeks over the edge of the earth with the endless chore of starting the day. I put it in park, plop my butt on the ground and settle in for the morning glassing session.

Predawn glassing can be great, but when that sun hits the hillside it might as well be adding animal location waypoints to my GPS.

Huh... Mule deer. Wasn’t expecting them up here.

A thick beamed four by four peacocks its way across the hillside, thrashing at bushes that dare to stand in his path.

His harem of does meanander a bit taking little notice of him and settle in for a morning snooze. Waiting for the buck to bed, I find a stick close at hand and start to clean the sweater that has formed on my teeth.

After prepping my teeth for a Colgate commercial and seeing the buck’s head nodding, I hump on my pack and take a long about way to the backside of the ridge they’re using as home base for the morning.

Being that they are near the only patch of trees on the whole mountainside I feel good about my chances of finding them.

The sweat stings my eyes as I push deeper into the backcountry and higher up the hillside.

Next year I’m only truck hunting. I’m over this backcountry horseshit.

A common promise to myself that I know will never come to fruition.

I crawl up the rolling ridge wishing for a steeper angle that would hide me better. The wind seems to have held out so far, but I know that the transition over a ridge can be unpredictable.

My pack comes off for the home stretch as I go to my belly for the last fifty yards. I make it to the bush where I guessed at a forty yard shot.

Empty.

A swing and a miss. I stand up in time to see the whole herd clearing out the other side of the canyon. I don’t know how the hell I did it, but once again a blown stalk.

I head back to where my pack lays grinning at me in the dirt. It knows to many of my embarrassing secrets; the amount of antler I’ve watched bounce away from me.

Don’t give me that look. Do your job, hold my gear and don’t give me any lip.

I continue my way up in elevation. When in doubt, go… well no need to be redundant.

I follow the ridge up, not caring about skylining myself in the midday heat. At this point I’m looking for any shade on the mountain knowing that this is where any rational deer might spend the heat of this sweltering afternoon.

According to my map there is a nice looking bowl with some potential a mile or so ahead. Twenty minutes and several thorns later I get a good peek at it.

Trees. Now we’re talking.

I pull out the spotter and get settled for a long sit. Within seconds I have an explosion of gear surrounding me. It’s a disaster really. What I would imagine if the local REI were hit with a missle.

My glass no sooner hits my face when a deer pops into view.

Well that was fast.

I watch as two small coues bucks dick around by some does. I know that there has to be a dominant buck nearby. If this is the varsity team, the does have some slim pickings for genetics.

And as if summoned by my logic,  he materializes like a ghost. He pushes his way closer to the JV team and scatters the wannabes to the wind.

That’s my boy. That’s the one I want.

I scoop gear into my backpack while making a plan. There’s enough trees in the bowl to slide in to a reasonable distance. Then perhaps I’ll put the elephant tusks I’ve been lugging around to work. I carried the damn things all the way up here, I might as well make use of them.

Once again I sneak behind the ridge to use as cover. I find my mark and slip over top into the bowl.

The overhead sun projects shadows from the cedars as black as ink, allowing me to slip in with ease. I tuck into a particularly thick bush full well knowing that if the buck takes the assumed path he’ll be blinded by the sun and oblivious to me lurking in the shadows.

I marvel at my cleverness as I drop my pack and get out the two ship anchors I use for rattling.

Bow laid out in front of me I clang the antlers together. I’m not sure if it’ll send him charging in or running in terror.

I place the antlers to the side and take my bow into my hands. The minutes fade away.

And there he is.

Like a gymnast on a balance beam he walks a straight line never veering from his path. The problem is that that path leads to the bush off to my side that is as thick as a Brillo Pad.

I’m pinned and I know it. If I reposition he’ll bail. If I let him continue on his trajectory I’m screwed. His head disappears behind a thick branch and I draw. Maybe some unwarranted luck will come my way and he’ll recalibrate his path to stand in front of my site.

No such luck, he continues on as my arm starts to shake under the stress of the fully drawn bow. Perhaps less vanity days at the gym replaced with more practical exercises is in order.

Holy hell he’s getting close.

Sweat beads down my forehead as the stress of the moment and the strain of my bow becomes almost unbearable.

He doesn’t stop and getting a full view of his bladed rack with a kicker or two doesn’t help my situation.

Within moments he’s five yards away on the opposite side of what might as well be a brick wall. He pauses, finally understanding that I am not what I originally appeared to be.

He turfs the ground sending a wave of dirt my direction, making safety before I can blink an eye.

And there you have it. Why the hell would you put yourself behind any obstruction? This isn’t the first time you’ve blown it in this exact scenario. You’d think you learned… I hope that damn backpack didn’t see what just happened. You’ll never hear the end of it.

So it goes. If I got overly mad at myself every time I screw up I’d have quit  this game long ago. Perhaps that’s what makes a successful hunter; the willingness to be completely ignorant of one’s shortcomings.

I grab my gear to have a peruse of the bowl I’m loitering in.

It’s a beautiful day and there’s no use feeling sorry for myself. Besides there’s no one out here to hear my whining, so what’s the use?

An explosion of fur yards in front of my pulls me back from from my musings. I had totally forgotten about the other two bucks wandering around and managed to stumble right into a bedded one.

He takes off and for whatever reason decides to hook around and see what spooked him to begin with.

He stands perfectly broadside with his head behind a tree, not seeing me standing out in the open like the idiot I am.

My rangefinder tells me he’s at a doable 45 yards. I know I don’t have long to debate, he’s not the big one I was after but…

Carbon is in the air before I come to a conclusion of the situation. I guess instincts told me this was the right move.

He bounds off after giving me tell tale donkey kick of a mortally wounded animal.

I walk over to sniff the arrow and look at the blood. He’s dead, it’s just a matter of how far.

The tracking job starts slow as I pick my way through the steep terrain, but eventually the blood trail picks up. I’m feeling pretty good about myself, thinking of the lectures I will offer on blood tracking at the various ivy league colleges when I get back home. Then the trail goes cold.

How could it just stop?

I search the ground for the remnants of a needle and suture, but I come up empty.

I scan the direction the trail was going, knowing that they don’t often change it once injured. I continue to look down hill when I receive my first clue.

The rocks are disturbed and some dead branches on the ground appear to be pushed to the side. But they’re thirty yards below me so the math isn’t adding up.

I slide my way down the steep hillside and to the area of the disturbance.

Good Lord, this guy is an acrobat.

We typically rely on past experience to make sense of current situations, but this one was a new one to me. This I hadn’t seen before.

The spear like tips of a massive yucca plant is stained with blood. Not how you would normally see however. Not the sides but directly on top the protruding spears look like a painter’s mixing dowl, covered half way with a brilliant red paint.

Further down the hill is another disturbance, then another, all at great intervals. The scene comes to a conclusion at the bottom of a brushy tree where my coues deer is wrapped around the trunk. Back broken and with multiple body punctures, he looks like a torn up piece of seaweed clinging to a rock from the currents of the tide.

At least the meat will be tenderized…

Pulling him out by his hind legs to a semi-flat spot I get a good look at his antlers.

Jackpot.

They are perfect. I imagine these beauties in my hands, rattling my teeth as they come colliding together. I imagine the scores of whitetail that will succumb to irresistible purr of their elegant calling.

Even more than that, I image how light my pack will be without those God awful heaps of bone I’ve been lugging around.

“Don’t worry, you’ll make fine chew toys for the dogs,” I say to the antlers on my pack.

A double victory in the backcountry of Arizona.

// Fred Bohm

Framing Your Hunting Trophy - Hunting Photography Series - Part 6

Part 6 - How to Frame Your Hunting Trophy - Hunting Photography Series

Framing Your Trophy

You worked your ass off training and getting in some range time during the preseason. You weeded your way the application systems and pulled a tag. You begged time off from a boss that doesn’t understand why anyone would take “vacation time” to sit in the dirty woods with man eating animals. You’ve spent countless hours away from your family, sleeping in the dirt and chasing animals that did everything they could to elude you. At long last you finally arrowed one, tracked him down and took a knee and gave a fist bump to the heavens above.

Now it’s time to get the cover photo for Eastmans Magazine. Snap a pic with your iPhone and be done with it, right? If you’re looking to impress grandma maybe, but if you’re looking to have the photo seen you’re going to want to take your time and do this right.

When telling the story of a hunt we want closure. Either failure or success. Often it’s the former, but with success comes the grip and grin. Don’t let others shame you into not taking that photo. Hold that trophy in your hands and be proud of it.

Using Your Background to Your Advantage

The background of this all important photo is almost as important as the trophy you hold in your hands. It tells a large part of the story. Was the animal taken in the mountains or on the plains? Simply having your hunting partner snap a pic of you while he’s standing there won’t tell either story. Great pictures don’t simply happen, they’re planned out.

So how can you include more story in the shot?

Break the horizon line with you and your trophy.

Get that camera closer to the ground so you and the animal break the horizon line.

You’ll want to place the camera on a tripod or have your hunting partner get the camera close to the ground. You’re looking to have the animal’s horns/antlers as well as your head break the horizon line. By doing this you’re reducing the clutter in the background. It will force the viewer’s eyes where you want them, on you and your trophy. The rest of the background elements are important to help tell the story, but keep you and your trophy as the primary focus.

The cool butte in the background is iconic for the area.

Position the animal and camera angle to integrate key elements of the background.

Is there a cool mountain peak full of snow in the background? How about a windmill off in the distance standing erect in an otherwise desolate plain?

These are element that belong in the story. They help the viewer picture where the hunt has taken place. These are elements that are going to strengthen you picture.

Pro Tip: Make sure those elements aren’t directly behind you or your trophy. Set them off to the side a bit. You don’t want it to look like that windmill or mountain peak is growing out of your head.

There wasn’t much I could do with the background and positioning on this one so I cranked down the depth of field as much as possible.

What happens if your simply not in a cool looking location? This is where a shallow depth of field helps. Keep you and your trophy in focus and let the background blur out creating a cool texture.

How to Pose and Clean Up the Animal

This is often debated within the hunting community and honestly, I can care less. We live in a time where most people feel the need to tell others how to live their lives. I refuse to participate in these ridiculous debates.

So if you want to clean up the animal so theirs not blood drooling out of their mouths? Do it. Position it so that the it emphasizes the animals headgear? Have at it.

Often you’ll want to tuck the animal’s legs underneath it and position it in a laying down position. Grab the antler with one hand and twist his head so he is looking perpendicular to the length of his body. Make sure that there isn’t any tree branches or distracting features behind his rack. Reposition the camera or the animal to fix that if necessary.

You’ll want to position yourself off to the side so you’re lined up over the animal’s body. Again you want your head as well as the animals above the horizon line if possible.

I often clean up the wound a bit with anything lying around. Grass typically does the trick. I’ll also push the animals tongue back in it’s mouth. You can carry a twisty tie (like what they use to close a bread bag) to wire the animal’s mouth shut if necessary.

What Lense Should You Use?

Here starts another debate and can get you laughed at a good bit if you overdo it. We’ve all seen those pics where guys are standing a ways behind their trophy and shooting with a wide angle lens. The animal ends up looking like a prehistoric beast that will break all the record books. It’s bordering on an outright lie.

It can feel like this sometimes with the pictures I see out there.

But there is something to be said for highlighting the animal’s strong points. So tread lightly here.

Get your camera close to you and your trophy and use a wide angle lens. I wouldn’t go less than 28mm otherwise you will be treading on what we talked about above.


Being an arm’s length behind the animal seems to be acceptable and keeps the shot looking realistic.

I brought a flash with me on this hunt. I used it to help separate me from the background.

Lighting Options

Underated to the uninitiated. Lighting is extremely important. If you have that sun blasting behind you and your trophy with nothing to fill in the dark shadows it creates, the picture could be lost.

So there’s several ways to work around this. I always carry a flash with me, but I understand that is not practical for most people. I love this stuff to no end, so for me I’m willing to add a pound or so to my backcountry pack.

An alternative is to use what’s handy. I’ve had the sun to my back before and had a hunting partner hold up a white game bag in front of me to use as a reflector. It’s a great way to fill in deep shadows.

Another simpler way would be to just position you and your trophy to face the sun. Keep hat bills back so there isn’t a drastic shadow across your face if possible.

If it’s a semi-cloudy day it is often to your advantage to wait until a cloud goes over the sun. This will diffuse the light and give less dramatic shadows.

Here’s a different way to display your trophy besides having them on the ground.

Conclusion

I always like to end these photo series posts with this caveat. These are just ideas for you. A simple formula, but please by all means make up your own. That’s what will make your images unique and different from the crowd. These are ideas to keep in the back of your head and to be used to help spark ideas of your own.

Tag me on Instagram @fredbohm. I’d love to see how you put some of these ideas into action.

// Fred Bohm