Call of the Mild

by Lily Raff McCaulou

  Deer hunters can succeed by locating prime deer habitat and then waiting, hidden, for an animal or two to show up. But because elk live in larger groups—and because there are fewer elk than deer—hunters usually have to cover a lot more ground to find them.

  “I expect to see a deer every day that I spend deer hunting,” Andy tells me, “but it’s a good day of elk hunting if I just find fresh tracks or scat.”

  This further deflates my hopes as I recall my less-than-fruitful deer season.

  To make matters worse, elk season in Oregon is shorter than deer season. I actually have two tags for my wildlife unit, but each tag is only good for a span of about four days. During each season, I am only permitted to kill a male elk, or bull. As with deer, hunting for female elk is tightly regulated for the protection of the overall population. As a result, there are as many as seven females (called cows) for every male, further diminishing my chances.

  At the start of the first elk season, we drive down to my unit and wake up at four thirty in the morning. We have almost three hours before sunrise. I pull on layer after layer to withstand the cold. Scott tries to encourage me as we drive toward Buck Butte.

  “Maybe we’ve had it all wrong, and it’s really called Bull Butte.”

  Only a couple of weeks have passed since deer season, but winter has made significant headway. We are soon greeted by a thin layer of snow. This is a welcome development. Snow will dampen our footsteps as we creep through the woods. And it will highlight any recent hoofprints that we stumble across, too.

  A large brown animal darts across the logging road ahead of us, flashing in our sights only when it’s in the headlights, then vanishing into the dark.

  “Oh my God, an elk!” Scott is genuinely amazed. He turns to me. “I didn’t think we’d see one.”

  “Me neither.”

  He rolls the car to a halt. I peer into the dense woods through my window on the passenger’s side, where the elk disappeared. All I see is blackness.

  I jump out and tie some fluorescent orange flagging on one of the branches nearby. If we don’t see anything promising this morning, we could come back here and try to follow the tracks in the snow.

  I get back in the car.

  “Well,” I say, “this is already more successful than deer season.”

  We roll over the snow-covered dirt road, the tires barely making a sound. All those days of deer hunting come back to me, and a familiar combination of frustration and disappointment edges into my stomach. I take a deep breath and remind myself that this is a new day, in pursuit of a new animal. Anything can happen. This time, at least the weather is cooperating.

  The road barely climbs the butte when we decide to park and travel the rest of the way on foot, to avoid getting stuck in the slush or mud. The sky is dusty black, with no stars, as we pull on all of our layers. I hoist my backpack—stuffed with a raincoat, snacks and a water bottle, not to mention rope, canvas bags and knives, just in case—onto my shoulders. I pick up my rifle and load it.

  We hike quietly. The snow offers another perk—it illuminates the forest. We pick our way up a steep slope, hugging the edge of a thicket. Afraid that the sun will rise pretty soon, I motion to Scott that we should settle down here just in case an animal travels along the swath of thinned trees that stretches before us. We both sit against tree trunks, facing north. We listen. We wait. I peer into the darkness, trying to make sense of the shadows and blotches. I notice some noise uphill from us, which of course I imagine is a herd of elk traversing the butte. Daylight takes its sweet time. When the sun does come up, we stay put for a while longer. The air is still and foggy. I’m starting to get cold and that promising window of dawn, when elk, like deer, are supposedly most mobile, has almost passed. It’s time to get moving.

  I start uphill and Scott follows me. Not far from where we were sitting, we see black dirt kicked up in the snow. These are hoofprints, the mere sight of which feels as if I just lifted a clump of duff and uncovered a mushroom: Yes! It’s a game trail, and not the subtle, summery kind we were finding two weeks ago. Many hooves have trodden along this path, and recently.

  I can’t tell which way the animals were headed, so we follow the tracks downhill for a while, then turn around and walk uphill. Through the trees ahead, I see a flat clearing that I recognize as an old, overgrown logging road. Trees and shrubs have reclaimed too much of it for a vehicle to drive on, but it would make a convenient path for large animals. As I get closer, I see what I think are more prints on the road, so I tell Scott to lag back a little farther while I go check it out. He stops behind a boulder and watches me walk ahead.

  Just as I reach the road, I look to my right and see what looks like an elk walking toward me. I crouch down behind a scrawny snowbrush shrub, my hands shaking with excitement. Ever-so-slowly, I raise my binoculars to my face to get a better look at the animal.

  Sure enough, it’s a cow elk, probably seventy-five yards away from me. She’s alert, with her head raised and ears pointed forward. She slows, then stops and stares in my direction. I freeze, knowing that because elk are social, there could be others here, too. If she spooks, she will alarm the rest of the herd and they will all clear out. After what feels like minutes, but is probably just seconds, she turns and trots away. She is leery but not panicked. If she had identified me as human—by smell, for example—she would have sprinted away. Instead, she turns to face downhill. She looks back at me again, hesitating. Then she jogs into the trees and out of sight.

  I twist my torso around, look at Scott and raise my finger to my lips. He nods and takes a step back, tucking himself behind the boulder. I turn again to the little road that stretches in front of me. I sit down on the ground, to give my legs a break, and take a deep breath.

  There’s a good chance that other elk, possibly even a bull, are in the vicinity. If so, it seems most likely that they’re downhill, where the cow ran. From where I sit now, a thicket of small trees blocks my view. I need to find a way to peek down there. But if I walk down the open road, the elk below might see me. I clutch my gun with both hands and look uphill, thinking. I need to hatch a plan. Perhaps I could creep through the trees on the other side of the road. Branches and shadows would hide me while I peeped downhill, past the road, in the direction the cow headed.

  Then I look back down the road and gasp. A bull elk—I can see his antlers with my naked eyes—is walking toward me, following in the footsteps of the cow. Is this a mirage? Am I so desperate that I’m imagining wildlife now? I shoulder my rifle and peer through the magnifying scope. Adrenaline gushes back into my veins. He is about seventy-five yards away, and looks more relaxed than the cow did, plodding rhythmically toward me with his head hanging low.

  I remind myself: Stay still. He could notice me at any moment and disappear faster than I could blink. How has he come this close without seeing me? Now he’s fifty yards away.

  And then, without warning, time slows down. What starts as just the idea of calm, the abstract goal of it, somehow builds, like a fluorescent bulb that warms up and then illuminates everything around it. I watch through my scope as he continues to walk toward me, never missing a step. I try to sit deep in the ground, place my feet flat and anchor my elbows on my bent knees, so my rifle is as still as possible. I rest my thumb on the safety, just in case I get a clear shot.

  This doesn’t seem likely, though. The elk is facing me head-on, and the heart shot—the only fatal place I know to aim—would require him to turn broadside. But he is still walking toward me. The least I can do is be ready, just in case.

  Now the elk is impossibly close, maybe twenty-five yards away, and still plodding. Wait, now he slows down. Does he see me? No, he’s turning to face downhill. Maybe he’s looking for the cow.

  I center what I think is his heart in my crosshairs.

  If I am ever going to get a shot, this is it.

  I slide the safety forward and pull the trigger.

  He charges forward at the bang of my
gun, downhill and out of sight. I turn to Scott and give him a thumbs-up. I can hear the elk—my elk—thrashing through the trees and brush. He stumbles. A pause. Is that it? No. A loud, terrible wheezing sound, almost like a donkey braying, emerges from the woods. Later, Scott tells me that it reminded him of the sounds his grandfather made as he was dying of lung cancer and emphysema.

  I look back at Scott and motion for him to come toward me. He walks up and together we wait.

  Even when hit in the heart, an animal rarely drops dead immediately. Instead, a surge of adrenaline propels the animal to run; the body gives itself what could be its last shot at life. Every hunter I’ve known has advised waiting at least ten minutes—some say thirty minutes or even more—before tracking it. The idea is that an animal who knows it is being chased will produce even more adrenaline and keep running instead of lying down to die.

  While we wait, I alternate between feeling triumphant—It was a good shot, I tell Scott, I’m sure I got it—and wondering if maybe I somehow missed. And anyway, do I really want the elk to be dead?

  I can’t help but think of Nathan, wondering if my killing of this elk will bring even a fraction of the sadness and suffering to the herd that my brother’s death caused in my family. I wince at the thought. Then, as always happens during intense moments since Nathan’s death, I wonder what he would say if I could call and regale him with the latest stunner in the story of my life.

  Desperate for something to do while the minutes tick by, I tie some flagging around my snowbrush shrub. If we get turned around while tracking the animal, the flagging will remind us where I sat when I fired the shot.

  When twenty minutes is up, I bound over to where the elk last stood. I bend down and examine the melting snow for blood. There’s nothing, just some strands of light fur scattered around. Dread creeps in. What if I missed the elk altogether, or just nicked some fur off his back? Maybe that wheezing sound wasn’t the elk’s final breaths at all, but some sort of able-bodied warning to the others. What if I did hit the elk but it wasn’t fatal and we end up tracking him for hours, only to have to shoot him again to put him out of his misery? Or worse, what if he’s wounded but we never find him? Together Scott and I follow the elk’s tracks downhill. The vegetation is dense and I focus on the ground, examining the snow and dirt for hoofprints and, hopefully, drops of blood.

  Scott interrupts my thoughts. “There he is.”

  “Where?”

  “By that tree.”

  It takes me a second to see the elk, even after Scott points to him. He lies on his back, as if he slipped down the hill until a stout tree stopped him. He’s just a dozen or so yards from where I shot him. Branches are entangled in his legs. His eyes are open. He looks enormous.

  I approach him slowly, with my gun loaded and pointed at him. I’ve been warned that a wounded animal lying still might not be dead. One book advises to take a branch and poke the animal’s eye; only an animal who’s truly dead will remain still. But I can’t bring myself to poke him—it feels disrespectful. And he could be alive.

  “He’s dead,” Scott says. “Really dead.”

  Nervously, I lower my gun and slide my hand onto the elk’s fur, which is thick, coarse and slightly oily. I’m still dizzy from the adrenaline, and amazed that all of this is really happening. Already, my feelings are not as pure as what I’ve come to expect when bird hunting. Guilt has a bigger, prompter presence this time around. So does awe. What have I just done?

  I wrap my hand around one of his antlers. I count the points—four on each side, which indicates that he is fully grown but still young, maybe two and a half years old. Soft ears, filled with wild tufts of blond fur, flop beside each antler. Again, I am shocked by his size. He is more horse than deer. His long, slender legs are covered in short, dark fur. His furry face falls somewhere between the narrow deer and the bulbous moose, an endearing, unfamiliar middle form.

  I’m disappointed in myself that in all my research, I never thought to memorize a hunting prayer. Almost every hunting culture has some traditional words that a hunter recites over her prey. I stroke the long, dark mane that covers his neck and I fumble for something to say to this majestic animal. When nothing else comes to mind, I lean in and whisper, “Thank you. I’m sorry.”

  I shove my fluttering flock of emotions—awe, remorse, guilt, giddiness, gratitude—down into my gut before one flies loose and destroys my composure. Big-game hunting is an exercise in compartmentalization. I will release these feelings later, one at a time, and roll over each one in my mind, to savor it and try to understand it. Right now, there is work to be done. I’m nervous about accomplishing all of it here, in the middle of nowhere, with no seasoned adviser. What if I can’t gut and quarter this animal? What if we can’t get it back to our car?

  Scott takes my picture with the bull, then we try to drag him a few feet, away from the tree and into a more open patch of ground. I grab hold of his antlers while Scott grabs the hind legs. We both heave with all our might but the beast moves maybe an inch. We try a few more times before giving in. The best we can do is to rotate him so that his belly faces downhill. Using some rope from my backpack, we tie his antlers to one tree and a hind leg to another, to prevent him from sliding downhill while I’m below. I get out my elk tag and cut notches in the date and month, then tie it securely around one of the antlers. Scott snaps another photo.

  These photos will never be posted on a brag board, or even on my Facebook page. I remember too well the discomfort of looking at similar pictures without any context, and I don’t want to put others through that. Nor do I want to demean my own elk, even in the eyes of non-hunters. I will share the snapshots with a few friends who hunt, and some understanding family members. Mostly, the photos are for me, a physical reminder of an experience so intense and so unique that I will sometimes reminisce about it in disbelief, as if it had been a dream.

  I stand downhill from the elk, near his belly. I get out my knives and a pair of latex gloves. I have never watched a large animal being field dressed in person. I’ve watched YouTube videos and studied diagrams in books. I have one book in my pack—Making the Most of Your Deer—that explains how to field dress a closely related species.

  “Do you want me to get out the book?” Scott asks, watching me hesitate.

  “No, I think I know what to do… First I’m going to cut open the abdomen.”

  “Don’t you have to tie off the anus and penis first?”

  I hesitate. I think I can slice open the abdomen—or most of it—before resorting to my most dreaded step in field dressing.

  “I’ll work my way up to it,” I say.

  I squat down and feel around for the animal’s sternum, then drag my knife along it, lightly. I go back and trace the same path, again and again, until the skin suddenly bursts open to reveal wet, pink viscera. I move the knife down and extend the cut, first a light trace through the outer layer of skin, then another layer, then another, then zip—the incision glides open. On the next stretch of cutting, I poke the knife in too far; the skin unzips and the tip of my knife punctures something below. A bilious bubble oozes out of it.

  “Uh-oh, I think I nicked the intestines.”

  “Does it smell bad?”

  “Um, I think so.” I can smell something, and it’s not pleasant. But it’s not overwhelmingly awful, which is how I’ve heard hunters describe the scent of a pierced intestine.

  I lean back and wipe my hair from my eyes.

  “Oh no.” I jump up. “I think I just got blood on my face. Do I have blood on my face?”

  Scott inspects my forehead.

  “I don’t see any.”

  “Oh, thank God.” In half an hour I will be drenched in blood and laughing at my earlier squeamishness.

  I lengthen the incision until it stretches the whole length of the abdomen. I have literally reached the genitals; now I have no choice but to deal with them. I cut off two eighteen-inch lengths of nylon cord. Then I grab the penis in o
ne hand, pull it away from the elk’s body, and tie one length of cord around it, tight, into a bow.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” I say cheerfully.

  “For you,” Scott says, looking away.

  The anus is worse, but not by much. I’m used to cutting the elk by now. I make a deep incision all the way around, then reach in and pull the whole organ out. I tie the second cord around it, pull it tight and knot it again.

  Then I walk back around the hind legs and return to the abdomen. I extend the incision as far as I can at both ends of the animal. The belly is split wide open now, exposing the giant, four-lobed stomach—it looks like an exercise ball, fully inflated despite my having nicked it with my knife earlier. Below, there’s a never-ending pile of dark, coiled intestines. The problem is, all of these organs are still firmly inside the elk. I stand up and turn to Scott.

  “I thought once I got him open, all of this stuff was supposed to just fall out.”

  He gets the book out of my pack and starts flipping through it for advice.

  “Okay, it says you might have to reach up in there and disconnect any tissue that’s holding everything in place.”

  The anus? The penis? That, it turns out, was the easy stuff. I spend the next hour with my right arm fully submerged in the elk carcass, breaking strands of… what? I guess the term is “connective tissue.” I have to take breaks every few minutes to step away from the elk and cool off my arm, breathe some fresh air. Heat wafts out of his body. So does the wet, metallic smell of blood.

  “This is a well-made elk,” I say, plunging my arm in yet again.

  After a while, though, I start to get comfortable with it. I know when I’m feeling an organ—maybe a kidney? the liver?—and when I’m touching a string that needs to be ripped. I think back to field dressing my first pheasant, and how simple that was by comparison. Three years ago, I couldn’t have imagined reaching my whole arm, up to my shoulder, into the cavity of an elk. Yet here I am doing it, without much of a fuss.