Cannot Climb – An Ode to Military Humor

If you have read some of my most recent posts, you know that I have been writing about my exploits and experiences after arriving at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and being assigned to the Joint Interoperability Test Center (JITC) at Fort Huachuca.  My most recent post took you back to my very first active duty assignment (heh doody) at Fort Benning, Georgia.  I had to dial up the way back machine in order to write that post.  For those of you that watch syndicated cartoons or are old enough to remember, you may even know where that reference comes from.  If not, oh well.  Suffice it to say that I had to use the way back machine in order to recall some of the details of that post.  Anyway, in a post before that, I talked about my first ever Javelina hunt at Fort Huachuca.  Well, I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss my first ever deer hunt at Fort Huachuca.  Cuz a few factors play into hunting at Fort Huachuca.  First, you have to deal with the altitude.  Fort Huachuca sits on a plateau nestled up against the Huachuca Mountains at an altitude ranging from 4600 feet to 5300 feet.  That’s before you start to climb any mountains.  However, if you want to hunt critters, you usually have to climb mountains or enter canyons.  Even when you enter canyons, you are climbing uphill.  When you start climbing uphill, you start from an altitude of about 5300 feet.  Unless your name is Atlas or Hercules and you have some sort of superhuman strength and endurance, the chances are that you are going to need a vehicle to help you get any critter that you bag down from those mountains or those canyons.  I introduced you to one of my vehicles already.  Yes.  The illustrious 1990 Ford Tempo (a.k.a. Found on the Road Dead).  And if you have been following my blog stories for any amount of time, you’ve already met my other vehicle, my red Chevy van.  My red Chevy van was good old reliable, but it had one shortcoming.  That van could not climb.  Billy goats can climb.  My red Chevy van definitely could not.  Deer can climb.  My red Chevy van could not.  Javelina can climb.  My red Chevy van could not.  Have I mentioned that my red Chevy van couldn’t climb?  Do you see where I’m going with this?  It’s perfectly fine if you are lost because I’m going to color the picture right now.  There were a lot of finger ridges with canyons in between them, leading up to each of the mountain peaks in the Huachuca Mountains.  Each of those finger ridges had fire breaks carved into them by a bulldozer.  A firebreak is like a dirt road that separates one side of the ridge from the other side of the ridge to form a natural barrier in case of a wildfire.  But I digress.  I mentioned that there were a few factors playing into the hunting at Fort Huachuca.  The first was the altitude.  The second was mixed herds.  What is a mixed herd?  A mixed herd is when there are two or more species of the same critter in a herd.  With Javelina, you don’t have that problem.  However, you do have that problem with deer.  There are two species of deer at Fort Huachuca: the Coues white tail deer, and the mule deer.  Since deer tags are issued for a specific species (Coues white tail or mule deer), a hunter can only hunt that species.  If the hunter shoots the wrong species, he or she can incur severe penalties up to and including the loss of his or her license and firearm and a fine of as much as $500 for the first offense.  Ignorance is not a defense.  Usually, new hunters have a problem identifying between the species, so that is a problem.  Mule deer tend to stick to lower altitudes.  But that is not a hard and fast rule.  The Coues white tail deer tend to range from low altitude to high-altitude, and they tend to mix with the mule deer to hide.  They’re sneaky bastards.  During my first hunting season at Fort Huachuca, I learned very quickly just exactly where I could hunt and where I couldn’t hunt using my red Chevy van.  Basically, my choices were really limited.  And as I said, the Coues white tail deer were some sneaky bastards.  They are generally the harder deer to hunt, so your hunting skills have to be a little bit better to hunt them.  The third thing that you have to consider when hunting deer in the canyons is location.  Location of the critter from you.  Is the critter up draw (that means uphill for you city folks) or is the critter down draw from your location?  Why is that important?  That tells you which way you gotta drag the dead critter.  Dragging a dead critter up draw can be one helluva workout.  Let me tell you.  I’ve done it.  Even dragging a critter downhill can be a helluva workout if you have to go more than a couple hundred yards.  And that red Chevy van just could not get into very many places or get up to anyplace.  Because it would lose traction right quick and in a hurry.  After experimenting with what I could and couldn’t do with that van for the first half of the season, I got lucky one day.  It was early in the morning and I had entered hunting area T-1.  I was driving the flatlands along the finger ridges looking for movement.  Off to my left, about 150 yards away from me.  I saw a small herd of what appeared to be white tail deer moving out of a stand of oak trees toward a small pond of water.  I coasted to a stop and shut off my vehicle.  I got out and got down into some tall grass and glassed the herd.  After positively identifying the deer as Coues white tail deer, I then glassed the herd to look for a buck.  I identified two forked-horn bucks at the back of the herd.  The deer were walking very slowly toward the pond.  I took out my rangefinder to get a good distance reading to the bucks.  The bigger of the two was approximately 125 yards from my location.  The herd was unaware that I was even there.  So they kept moving closer to me and to the pond.  When they reached the pond, they stopped to drink.  I put the rangefinder on the big buck again.  Now, the big buck stood about sixty yards away from me.  It was a perfect time to shoot.  I took the shot and bagged my first Coues white tail deer.  As I started to pull the deer over to my van to clean it, I noticed a dude pull up behind me.  I didn’t know who he was.  He waited by my van until I got there.  He looked at my dear and said, “That’s a really nice one.  Where did you get it?”  I replied, “Right over there by that pond.  There were two of these forked-horn bucks in the herd.  When I shot this one, the rest of the herd ran back into that stand of oak over there, so I think they will be back.  Cuz they were headed for that pond to drink water when I got this one.”  “Where did you shoot it from?”  “Right down there about ten yards from here in that tall grass.  Cuz it’s only about sixty yards from there to the pond.”  “Oh wow.”  “Check it out here they come now.”  When the deer got down to the pond, I ranged the remaining buck for the other dude and told him it was about sixty-five yards away.  We waited and we waited, but he never took the shot.  Finally, the deer walked off after they drank some water.  I looked at him and said, “Dude, why didn’t you take the shot?  They were just standing there.”  He looked at me and raised his hands and said, “I don’t know man.  I guess I froze.”  “What you mean, you froze?”  “Well, you see, this isn’t my rifle.  I borrowed it from my friend.  I’ve never shot it before.”  Then I looked at him and I looked at the rifle and realized that he was holding a seven millimeter Magnum.  I realized that he was afraid of the recoil.  That was a hunter that was so new that he didn’t even have his own gear.  He was up to his ears in exercises in futility because he didn’t trust his own equipment, but I also realized that my red Chevy van had to go if I didn’t want any of my own on future hunts.

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