If you have been reading some of my recent posts, you are probably aware that I have been talking about some of my exploits and experiences after being assigned to the Joint Interoperability Test Center (JITC) at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. My story today centers around a subject that is near and dear to my heart, hunting. That’s right, hunting. We’re on the subject of hunting again cuz it was right in the middle of the late hunt, which means it was also right in the middle of the holiday season. If you will recall the Christmas story, which means at the moment in time the year was coming to a close. That also means that the hunting season for that particular year was also coming to a rapid close. Normally, that is not a big deal, but so far, I had come up with a big goose egg. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Not a damn thing. As a result, I paid a visit to my friends in the wildlife management office at Fort Huachuca. It looked like I might have to settle. Oh, I heard a question over there. What was that? What does settle mean? In hunting parlance, settle means that the hunter (that’s me) might have to settle for whatever is readily available. Usually, generally, always, whatever is readily available among deer populations during a hunting season are does. Just in case you are not familiar with what does are. They are the deer of the female persuasion. You know. The ones without the horns. No. Not the ones that go honk, honk. The ones that stick up in the air at the back of their head. Quite a few hunters were still signing out for the popular hunting areas, but very few were signing out for the more rugged hunting areas. I chose to try my luck in a couple of those areas. It always took much longer to negotiate up into a good hunting location when you chose one of those rugged hunting areas. But once you were set up in a good spot, you had a commanding view of your hunting area. After trying my luck out in those areas for several days after Christmas and coming up empty, I was running out of time and prospects. I thought that I was going to go home empty that year. I wasn’t seeing much of anything that was within shooting range. Sure, I listen to all of those braggarts who claimed that they took shots at deer out at seven or 800 yards and nailed them. But, of course, they didn’t have any witnesses or video evidence to back up those stories. And secretly, I always called bullshit in my mind whenever I heard one of those tall tales. Cuz that’s exactly what it was, a tall tale. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to attempt a shot at seven or 800 yards. Oh, my rifle had the range, all right. But I sure as hell didn’t. I wasn’t a certified sniper. Then there was the problem of hopping the carcass back once you shot its ass. And let me tell you something. If you had to drag a carcass seven or 800 yards across a canyon back to where you were sitting, you might as well drag that sucker five or ten miles. Cuz that’s what it will feel like. And if you don’t have a mule or a horse to drag it for you, you are in for a hurt’n for certain. And here’s the thing, I didn’t have room in my little Jeep Wrangler to tote a dead goddamn deer and a horse or a mule plus all my hunting junk. No sirree. That shit just wasn’t going to fit. Forget the fact that I didn’t even have a horse or a mule. Thus, shooting a deer off at half a mile away or more just wasn’t going to happen. Even if I got lucky and made the shot. But I never got lucky. As a result, I never made stupid shots like that. That was plain and simply a waste of ammunition. Finally, on the second to the last day of the hunting season, the hunting gods cut me a break. After a pretty chilly start, I found myself dozing in a nice sunny spot on a rock. For some reason, I was startled and woke up. Now, I’m not saying that I was asleep, I am merely saying that I was resting my eyes. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Anyway, there in front of me, about seventy-five or eighty yards away, a herd of five does was grazing. Those does were lollygagging and taking their sweet time. They gave me ample opportunity to size them up and pick the biggest one of the bunch. I thanked the Lord for sending this bounty upon me, then I selected my target and squeezed the trigger. The doe I shot dropped where it stood and the others scattered like bats out of hell. I waited five minutes and then I moved down to where the doe was a’lying and tagged it. I wrapped my drag-strap around its legs and dragged it back to my vehicle. When I was still ten yards from my vehicle in the thick, I field-dressed the doe. I made sure to take all of the internal organs, which I placed into a plastic bag that I put inside the carcass. I loaded the carcass into the back of my vehicle. It took some doing. Cuz I was guessing that the doe had to have dressed out at around ninety-five or 100 pounds. It was a good-sized doe. But the monsoon rains had been good this year, so that was to be expected. I headed back to the wildlife management office at Fort Huachuca to get my bagged deer registered and weighed. I also wanted to skin the deer so that I could take the leg bones and the head home for my wife to make soup. While I was skinning the deer, a guy with a big dog approached me. He asked me if he could have left-over scraps of meat for his dog. I told him that he could, but I also mentioned that there wasn’t going to be much that was left over. He asked me what I meant. I pointed at the carcass and I said that I was just about finished butchering it. I pointed at the ground and said that he was looking at the leftovers. He looked at me in disbelief. Then he said, “That’s it?!? The only thing laying here is skin and hooves.” I replied, “Yep. That sounds right. Oh, there are eyeballs and some other small bullshit. But that’s pretty much it. I take pretty much everything home. Even the skinned head.” He looked at me with the funniest damn look on his face. I don’t think he quite believed what he was hearing until the wildlife manager came out and asked if I had finished skinning and cleaning everything. I replied that I had. I even showed him the cleaned deer head. He asked if it was okay to lock up. I said that it was. The guy with the dog looked at him and said, “Does he always clean his deer like this?” The wildlife manager replied, “Oh, he does that with all the wild game that he hunts. He doesn’t waste anything.” A little while later, the guy and his dog slowly walked away empty-handed. I wasn’t quite sure what they expected. But this wasn’t like a grocery store where the meat shop had a bunch of scrap fat that they cut off the meat that they chopped up. There just wasn’t any fat on these deer. I loaded my butchered deer meat into a cooler, and then I cleaned my tools so that I could head to the house. I finished the deer hunt that year, with just one day to spare and experienced no further exercises in futility.
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