That One Friend That Disappears

I have a friend who always disappears around this time of year.

“When you can’t find him he’s out killin’ stuff,” an old buddy of ours used to say.

It’s true. The closer the end of the season, the scarcer my friend is to find, and without a doubt “he’s out killin’ stuff.”

The general big game hunting season wraps up the Sunday following Thanksgiving. Until then there a lot of hunters still looking to fill tags.

“Git yer elk yet?” is an often-heard query at the bar, the gas pump, the grocery store.

I haven’t tagged anything in a few years, preferring to chase birds with the dog instead of packing out heavier critters. That season doesn’t end until January, so I’m yet to feel the anxiety that accompanies the final days.

My friend, however, is feeling anxious. By now he’s probably down to his last tag or two. There are only a couple of weeks left. He’s beginning to doubt that the big bull he saw earlier in the season is even still alive. He worries that the non-typical buck that showed up on his game camera has crossed the river to land he can’t hunt.

He’s starting to second-guess decisions he made at the start of the season, like going to work instead of calling in sick.

The only solution is to hunt every day to the end. So he disappears like the song lyric: “somewhere in the middle of Montana.”

That’s as specific as he gets. He’s always careful the photos he takes during the season don’t contain visible landmarks. He doesn’t brag about the animals he harvests. He doesn’t drive around town with antlers sticking up from the bed of his truck.

On the occasions I go with him he swears me to secrecy. I took a photo of him with an enormous mule deer buck a few years ago.

“Don’t show that to anybody,” he warned me, concerned someone would recognize the sagebrush in the background and figure out where he was.

We talk every few days, even as the end nears. He likes to stay in touch in case he needs my help packing out a carcass. But until then he’s out of touch and out of sight, glassing some distant meadow at first light or sitting with binoculars glued to his eyes until dark, making himself scarce, killin’ stuff.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]