Nothing to do with Coronavirus

Oh, how the world has changed.

Here’s a story that has nothing to do with coronavirus.

It was nearly 30 years ago, and I was camped at an old homestead on Frenchman Creek in mid-October. I’d gotten permission from the landowner to hunt, and I had an antelope tag in my pocket.

I’d spotted some pronghorn when I arrived the night before and awoke anxious to go after them. But the crowing of rooster pheasants at first light prompted me to pick up the shotgun instead of the .270. New to pheasant hunting, I had yet to bag a bird.

The racket was coming from a brushy bend of the creek and I headed there with my dog Zoey, a springer spaniel who had only hunted grouse and partridge. She quickly caught a snoot-full of pheasant, dove into the thickest cover, and flushed a rooster. I raised the gun and swung with the bird, dropping it on the other side of the creek.

It was the first of many, but not that day.

While waiting for Zoey to retrieve the bird, I noticed a small herd of antelope grazing in the broken country to the north.

I knew I was close to Canada. I’d stopped on the way in the evening before and taken a picture of an obelisk marking the international boundary. However it was a half mile north of the two-track and I figured the border was even farther away now.

Back at camp I put the rooster on ice and kenneled Zoey. Then I grabbed the .270 and began my stalk. I was able to quickly get within range and picking out a fat doe, took aim and fired. She fell at the shot and was dead by the time I reached her.

After field dressing the doe, I hiked back to camp, turned the hubs in on the old Toyota and drove to with a few yards of where she lay.

I took a picture of the antelope and Zoey on the tailgate of the pickup.

I drove home to Livingston the next day, a content and satisfied hunter.

It wasn’t until I returned to the same spot the next year that I found out what I had done. The landowner was working cows when I arrived and after visiting a bit, I spotted some antelope in the same spot I’d shot the doe. I told him I’d better get going and pointed at the antelope.

“They kinda’ frown on that,” he told me. “That’s national park.”

Grasslands National Park in fact.

In Canada.

And no, I don’t hunt there any more.

Here’s hoping the statute of limitations has expired.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected].