In reviewing my last few stories I realized that the common thread was luck; both good and bad luck. Luck vs. skill is a constant struggle in hunting, so today I’ve written some of my ideas concerning luck:
Never let someone tell you that hunting is all skill and no luck, even me. It seems that all I write about is acquiring the innumerable skills necessary to be successful in bowhunting, but rarely do I speak of luck.
Today I’m speaking strictly of luck.
I had kind of a push-pull type of conversation with a friend not too long ago. He said that hunting had a whole lot to do with luck, which was something he generally lacked. Taken a bit back, I retorted that hunting also has a whole lot to do with skill. He replied, “Yes, but luck is definitely a factor.” I replied, “Yes, it’s true; you have to have some luck on your side, but you need skills too; it’s not a 50/50 split. I’d say it’s closer to 80/20; Sure, a guy is will occasionally stumble into a big buck, but without some decent skills he won’t be consistent from year to year.” We left it at that.
I’m sure you’ve heard all the motivational sayings, such as Stephen Leacock’s, “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” Or Emerson, “Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.” These adages imply that there is no luck, just hard work. But hunting is a little different. Hard work doesn’t necessarily guarantee you anything.
First off, you need to remember that there are two kinds of luck: good luck and bad luck. In hunting, there is a lot more bad luck than good luck. This is because of the innumerable variables that are beyond your control in nature. As a result, bowhunting success is generally less than 25%. Therefore a bowhunter must acquire great skills in order to swing the odds in his favor. Occasionally a person will luck into a big buck, but more often than not he’ll luck out.
My primary motivation for this article is reflecting on yet another difficult hunting year and a failed deer hunt. Certainly I had some great opportunities–due mostly to experience and skill–but in the end it was sheer, uncontrollable bad luck that accounted most for my failure. Here’s just one example:
It was just another super-hot, super-dry day in the woods. I quickly realized that still-hunting was a terrible approach because the ground was so dry and loud. Worst of all, the drought-like conditions seemed to irritate the squirrels more than usual. The squirrels are always bad, but the hotter it gets, the more cantankerous they become…just a theory. Anyhoo, I was traveling from one bedding area to another. For once the wind was blowing hard and constant in my face, so I really didn’t have to be quiet. However, the squirrels were ferocious. As soon as I left one squirrel, another would fire up ahead of me. Their constant barking was driving me nuts! It didn’t really matter though, since there were so few deer in the area. I was hunting my 5th choice unit after all, thanks to the living nightmare of not being able to draw a decent tag in my own state, which is quickly becoming a dreary reality, but I digress… So, I was approaching a known bedding area with little hope. A squirrel fired up as soon as I entered the woods, and I thought nothing of it. As I rounded a pine tree, my eyes latched onto a pair of big, floppy ears rotating in the woods. I froze. In the dense tangle sat a big, heavy-horned 4×4, 170-class buck bedded facing away from me at only 30 yards. My dream was about to become a reality! But as I slowly reached for an arrow, another squirrel up ahead suddenly lit up into a full nutty rage. The smart old buck stood instantly and walked into the woods. He paused for a second to look back, then disappeared out of my life forever. Needless to say, I was enraged. I vowed that next year I would go into the woods two weeks before the hunt and kill every single squirrel on the mountain.
It’s easy to blame bad luck for failure, the same way that it’s easy to blame great skills for success. The trap you don’t want to fall into is relying on sheer luck, good or bad. Blaming a bad hunt on bad luck is an excuse to stop trying. Same with blaming success on good luck.
If you had an unlucky year like I did, you must remember that luck changes often. It’s like in poker: some nights you can’t get any cards, and other nights you can’t lose. In hunting you might go five years without bagging a buck, and then suddenly you bag one every year. The point is to never give up.
Today I believe success in hunting is an 80/20 split. An 80/20 split means that you’ll be successful 4 out of 5 years because you’ve acquired the necessary skills. The one year that you fail, you can go ahead and blame on bad luck. With great skills it doesn’t matter how much bad luck you have because when your luck changes, you are going find wonderful and consistent success!
I never thought much about turkeys. I love bowhunting more than anything, but it was my wife Esther who took an active interest in hunting turkeys. In spring we drew turkey tags for Southern Utah where we’d come across plenty of birds in the past. Getting tags was easy enough, but that’s where easy ended.
First off, we decided to do it with a bow. I don’t do guns—I am a bow-snob…I mean purist—so now we were hunting unfamiliar prey with light tackle.
Second, Esther couldn’t get any time off work. Her schedule is a consummate nightmare, but somehow she was able to secure a single weekend at the end of the April. Now this proved to be a problem because the turkeys we ultimately hunted were already people- and call- wary. Can you say sloppy seconds?
Thirdly, the weather report called for heavy thundershowers and snow. What choice did we have? We went for it anyway.
We left late Friday night and already it was raining. Four hours later we set up camp in the back of the truck and went to bed. The morning was cool and lovely. We ventured across a small river and up the mountain. I decided to make a video of our ordeal, so Esther carried a bow and I carried a camera. I would be the caller for the first couple days, and after she got a shot it would be my turn.
Me and Esther on our first turkey hunt.
We hiked and called for a few hours, but got no response. A while later, we heard a turkey gobble out of the blue, so we set up a decoy, dropped back, and began a calling sequence. The turkey ignored us and so we kept hiking.
Esther using a turkey slate call.
Later that afternoon, some thick, black clouds rolled in. As we were making our way back down the mountain, a gobbler fired up fairly close by. We holed up under some junipers to devise a strategy, and that’s when the rain started. We pulled out our raingear and pretty soon it was a downpour. At some point I realized we were on the wrong side of the river, and if the rain continued we might get trapped on the mountain. So we bagged the hunt and made a run for it.
Snow storm.
By the time we reached the truck the rain had turned to heavy snow. The snow let up later in the afternoon and so we ran back up to where we heard the gobblers. But they were gone. For the rest of the evening we hiked all over looking for tracks in the new snow, but found none. The turkeys had flown the coop!
Esther creek crossing.
The next morning we woke to a full-on blizzard. Around 10 a.m. it subsided, so once again we crossed the river and headed up the mountain. We hiked from four inches to six inches of snow. We covered an immense amount of ground, but heard no gobbles and found no tracks. The turkeys were gone.
It seemed to me that the only direction they could have gone is downhill, so we packed up the truck and headed to the bottom of the mountain.
It rained most of the day so we spent several hours driving the low-elevation dirt roads and scanning the hillsides for black blobs in the snow. We found none.
In the late afternoon we decided to find a place to camp. I remembered a dirt road that gave access to the low-elevation drainage. Basically, the steep dirt road drops into a bowl before turning back up the mountain. Well, half-way to the bottom, the truck started sliding sideways and I struggled to maintain control. We got to the bottom okay, but now we were really stuck. We slopped to a flat spot to camp, then, with a break in the storm, hiked up the mountain to see where we’d be spending the last day of the hunt.
Things began looking up.
Almost a mile up the muddy mountain, we heard a gobble. With a couple hours of light left, we rushed in, threw out the decoy, and made some calls. There were three gobblers struttin’ around us, but it was way too thick for a shot. I kept dropping back and making hen calls, but they just kept circling us nervously and gobbling every few minutes.
We pulled the decoy and repositioned to a better clearing, but they still wouldn’t come in. We pulled the decoy again and rushed toward them. We were getting close, and so was nighttime. As we sat there trying to figure out where to plant the decoy, some big red heads came bobbing through the sagebrush. The toms were about to pass right in front of us at only twenty yards! Esther nocked an arrow, and when the turks went behind a juniper bush I whisper-yelled, “30 yards!” When they broke into the open, Esther let an arrow fly…and missed! The arrow sailed right behind the first turkey and the second turkey jumped straight into the air. Somewhat alarmed, they all trotted out of sight.
It’s funny how thin the line is between failure and success. After two hard days of hunting, we suddenly had turkeys all around us. Although Esther missed, we were just excited to finally be into the turkeys!
On Sunday we got up early and hiked to where we left the turkeys. We were excited, and I even carried a bow this time. Sure enough, we were greeted by gobbles. Several times we set up the decoy and made calls. The toms responded diligently, but wouldn’t come in. Instead they continued up the mountain and we followed.
Now this is where things get real bad; where Nate and Nature have a serious falling out.
With plenty of new snow, it was easy to follow their tracks. We spotted the turkeys a hundred yards ahead of us. I quickly set up a decoy and dropped back to call. Just as I started calling, a small herd of elk came running through the oak brush. The elk had caught our scent and ran right through the turkeys, nearly trampling them! The turkeys spooked farther up the mountain and we followed.
We caught up to the turkeys moving ahead of us in some boulders and brush. Squatting low to the ground, I trotted up and planted the decoy again. No sooner had I started calling, some coyotes suddenly lit up howling like crazy a short distance behind us. The toms made one last gobble, some other turkeys across the canyon gobbled back, and then everyone shut up. Those were the last gobbles we heard.
Esther and I followed the tracks way up the mountain into the deep snow, but they were moving too fast. Eventually the tracks led out of the huge valley, crossed a saddle, and disappeared. Stupid coyotes!
Frustrated, we turned back. While on top of the mountain, Esther decided to call into work and let her boss know we were stuck in the mud and may not get out by tomorrow. Her boss wasn’t there, but the nice fellow who answered the phone informed her that her 23-year old work-friend had crashed his motorcycle and died over the weekend. Now we were super-bummed for the rest of the day.
With the day slipping away, we had no choice but to make our way back to where we started. Who knows; maybe we could find some new turkeys.
And we did! Half-way to the bottom of the canyon I spotted a hen walking in the sagebrush. I made some calls and some new gobblers fired up. I snuck out to the open and plugged the decoy in the mud and snuck back. I could barely make out two large, strutting males wandering back and forth in the trees ahead.
We started calling and this time a herd of nine deer came bounding out below us. Now, these deer were hell-bent on going uphill, and did so by running right through the turkeys. All the commotion spooked the turkeys off and again it was silent. You gotta be kidding me! First elk, then coyotes, and now deer!
With no other choice, we followed the toms into the dark timber. The snow had melted in the lower elevations, so following tracks was no longer possible. However, a short while later we got them gobbling again. The problem was they refused to come in. We called for more than an hour with no luck.
Using aluminum turkey slate call close up.
Frustrated, I decided to make a move. I told Esther to hang back. I’d sneak above them, and if they spooked, they might run back towards her.
It didn’t work. Instead, one of them busted me and all three toms slipped away down the mountain. I went back and got Esther. With only a couple hours of daylight, we made one more setup at the bottom of the canyon.
After half an hour of futile calling, I couldn’t take it anymore. I wasn’t going to just sit there and watch it get dark on my hunt. I told Esther I was going to enter the dark timber and sneak around for the last hour of light. She would stay in the ravine with the decoy and continue calling occasionally.
I was hiking up the steep, timbered mountain slope when out of the blue I heard something: “Cluck—-cluck—–cluck.” Well, this was new to me! I pulled an arrow. Sure enough, 40 yards below me, a huge chicken—I mean turkey—came sneaking and clucking along, all alone and completely oblivious to my presence. As it rounded a tree I let my arrow fly.
The arrow hit the giant black bird perfectly broadside and dead-center. The tom’s wings flapped wildly as it sprinted out of sight with my orange fletched arrow sticking straight out of its side. I was super excited as I dropped down to see my trophy…which was gone.
I found a couple clipped feathers and some torn up dirt, even a speck of blood or two. I followed in the direction the stupid bird ran, found another feather, and then lost the trail. I started walking circles. I called Esther on the radio to come help. She showed up and we search up and down and all over. The turkey was gone; run off to who-knows-where with my arrow. The problem with turkeys is two-fold: they don’t leave a blood trail, and they can sure take an arrow!
We continued our search by headlamp, but with no trail to follow, there was no choice but to give up. I was so deflated as I walked back to the truck. Few words were spoken.
The next morning we somehow slogged the truck out of the mud and drove home with nary a feathered foe for food.
Later study proved the turkey’s can take an arrow better than most animals. Basically their stiff wings, when folded against their bodies, creates a sheet of armor, like a stack of zip-ties. This armor will slow, or even stop an arrow, before it penetrates anything vital. In most cases it eventually kills the bird, but only after a lengthy sprint. A head/neck shot is really your best option.
The story ends here. But it also begins here. Next year you’ll find me and Esther in the same area, earlier in the season God-willing, with both heavier arrows and more experience in our quivers.
When facing nature one-on-one, the mountain and its infinite variables often wins. But this particular mountain still owes me a turkey, and I’ll never give up until I get one.
Travails from a Frozen Mountain: A Cold Weather Hunting Story
In 2013 I bagged a giant 200-inch buck and was determined to repeat this feat in again in 2014. But dreaming too big doth a nightmare make!
The regular season was a frantic search for non-existent superbucks. The biggest buck I saw grossed well below 190”, and all told I passed up more than a dozen smaller four-points.
The Wasatch Extended Hunt
Fortunately, Utah offers an extended bowhunt which lasts from mid-September through November. I’ve seen a few great bucks in those steep and rugged mountains over the years.
A week after the September general hunt ended, I took a two day trip into the mountains above Salt Lake City. I had both an unused elk and deer tag, as well as a floundering bowhunting blog dangerously void of success stories.
But this trip stunk! Everywhere I’d seen deer in the past I found nothing but old tracks and other hunters. The biggest problem with the extended hunt is the pressure from hundreds of fools-like-myself who couldn’t get the job done during the regular season.
So I was patient and waited for November when the big deer come down from their snowy, high-country haunts to participate in the rut.
Rut Hunt Round 2
On November 5 I hiked a few miles up a steep canyon and pitched my tent beneath an old pine tree. For years this was the place to be during the rut. I once saw five 4-points all fighting for a small group of does. But this year there was very little snow, and I was a little skeptical.
My frozen bivvy camp.
I was feeling a little ill on my hike in. In bed that night I was suddenly gripped by fever and a sore throat. I tossed and turned all night, and by morning I was sick as hell. I went hunting anyway. Sadly, there wasn’t a single buck in the whole canyon. I spotted a couple decent elk in the distance, but passed them up in hopes of finding a good buck.
The second night was a disaster. I shivered and tossed all night with a full-body fever, sore throat, and coughing. I woke up dizzy and sore, but clambered out of my tent anyway. Determined to hunt through my illness, I somehow managed to 1000 vertical feet in search of deer.
I finally spotted a couple bucks rutting across a canyon: bits of antler, fur, and deer prancing around in the trees. Excitedly, I stood up, took two steps towards them, then reeling with dizziness, flopped back down on the ground. My hunt ended right there. I dragged my bent-over body off the mountain, swaying like a zombie. Each step pounded in my head; every muscle and joint wrenched with pain. I passed a couple hikers on the way out. They said, “Hi,” and I could barely croaked out a sickly “hello.”
Rut Hunt Round 3
Ten days later I crawled out of bed and headed back up the mountain. Still weak and feeble, it took three hours to reach my lonely tent under the pine tree. The weather had turned bitterly cold that week. The cold air streaming down the canyon stung my exposed skin. It was so cold that I could hear things freezing in my pack. What had I gotten myself into?
By the time I crawled into bed, my water jugs were mostly frozen, my pile of boiled eggs froze solid in my pack and split open, my energy shots froze, as did my scent spray, Visene, and water filter. When I moved in the night, flakes of frozen condensation snowed down on me. I stuffed every bit of clothing I had into my sleeping bag with me, and wore six layers of uppers including my down coat.
Cold be damned, by morning I was out hunting. I squinted through freezing eyeballs and couldn’t sit still very long before catching a chill. I wrapped a game bag around my neck and stuffed extra pck items into my coat pockets just to trap the heat in. My lungs, heavy and tender from illness, coughed and wheezed in the frigid air.
My pack thermometer.
There still wasn’t enough snow to push the deer down, so I hiked farther and farther up the canyon. On the evening of the second day, I finally located both elk and deer near the top, but it got dark as I tried to close the distance in the crunchy snow.
I was planning to hunt four days, but was running dangerously low on food. I failed to anticipate the amount of calories my body would burn just to stay warm and on the third day I had no choice but to pull out early.
The following week, on November 22, I headed back for one more big push. The forecast called for heavy snow and blizzards, which I welcomed with open arms. Perhaps it would finally push the deer down to lower elevations.
The next morning, while hiking up the steep ridge above camp, the skies began to darken. Just as I was reaching the “elk zone”, I spotted movement way back down where my tent was. An entire herd of elk had moved in, including a few good bulls. Still trying to catch my breath, I began a hasty descent. Halfway to the bottom, some damn hunter appeared and spooked the whole herd off.
It started snowing around this time. I followed the elk tracks for about a mile and a half until they left the canyon. Luckily I ran into a bunch of new deer tracks. The snow was really coming down and the wind howled through the aspens and pines. Pretty soon the unrelenting snow was blasting horizontally and stinging my eyeballs.
I scrambled from pine tree to pine tree, ducking and diving for shelter from the blinding snow. It was late afternoon and I was nearly two miles from camp in a violent blizzard. The deer tracks soon disappeared under a fresh blanket of drifting snow, but at this point, shear survival is all that mattered.
Hoping to catch a break in the storm, I holed up under the bows of a huge pine tree. I was passing the time, poking away at my little video-poker game, when I heard a nearby shuffle. I looked up and ten feet away stood a little 3×3 buck peering into my tree hollow and wishing I wasn’t there. He spooked out to 50 yards and stared back at me. Apparently I was sitting in the most coveted shelter in all the woods because that poor buck stood there looking at me for 20 minutes and turning completely white with snow. With the end of the season nigh, I considered shooting him, but changed my mind. I envisioned myself out there field-dressing the thing, and then having to climb into its body cavity for warmth. No thanks!
With the storm worsening and evening falling fast, I had no choice but to make a run for it. I headed straight into the blasting snow, but hadn’t gone very far when up ahead, through the murky twilight, I caught the movement of a big buck chasing some does. A second later the wind swirled and blew them out.
My knee was killing me as I hobbled into camp that night. My clothes were soaked and I was starving, but at least I’d brought extra food this time. Tomorrow would be better…or so I thought.
The blizzard continued all night. Every couple hours I’d wake up and bang snow off my collapsing tent. I slept in until about 9:00 when the storm finally broke and the sun lit up a winter wonderland the likes I’d never seen. I burrowed out of my tent and dug my bow out of snow. It was caked with ice and wouldn’t even draw one inch. I worked to de-ice it using my breath and rubbing it with my fingers throughout the day.
Snowed into camp.
The snow was well over my knees as I trudged up the mountain in search of that big buck from the night before. I spotted a group of deer way up high and spent several hours working towards them. The higher I climbed the deeper the snow got until I was forced to abandon the stalk altogether.
Completely exhausted from plowing snow all morning, all I could do was head for the trail at the bottom of the canyon. When I got there I was surprised to see a beautiful 4×4 buck chasing some does on a nearby slope. Finally, some hope!
Video still of giant buck in snow.
While contemplating my approach, a dog appeared out of nowhere and began barking up a storm. There was a cross-country skier coming up the canyon and when his dog saw the deer it ran after them in a barking fit. The deer splashed away through the snow and out of sight. In my weary state I knew I could never catch up to them. Disgusted and exhausted, I hiked back to camp, threw my tent in the sled, and headed for home.
Rut Hunt Round 4
On November 28, the weekend after Thanksgiving, me and every other hunter with a tag headed for the hills. The Black Friday hunting pressure had pretty much blown out the entire mountain; I never saw it so bleak! I hunted a different canyon that day, closer to the road. Partway up a side draw I jumped a little forked-horn buck. He ran to 50 yards and stopped, just in time to catch one of my arrows through his chest.
My last chance buck, 2015.
My last chance buck didn’t come anywhere near my 200-inch goal; hell, it barely broke 20-inches! But I gained something. Actually I gained a lot. I gained venison. I gained humility; grim humility bordering on disgrace. I also gained strength; both mental and physical strength beyond measure! Never again would anything be too difficult; never would any mountain seem too steep.
You might be wondering, would I do it all over again? The answer is a decisive YES, starting next November.
I’ve related this fish story many times since that fateful day in 2012. It’s a great story about a great fish, and about time I wrote it down.
The Lake Monster: The Story of my Trophy Brown Trout
Causey reservoir is a small dam located in Northern Utah. I fished there since I was a kid. Ice fishing seems to be the most productive method, and my family has been quite successful over the years. The ice generally freezes around mid-December and remains fishable through March.
The best thing about Causey is the variety of fish you can catch. I’ve caught kokanee salmon, rainbow trout, brown trout, tiger trout, splake trout, cutthroat trout and even a sculpin, which is a small bottom-dwelling fish that looks like a cross between a frog and a turd. The 15 – 19 inch Kokanee are by far the most delicious and alluring fish, and on December 16, 2012, that’s what I was hoping to catch.
As my teenage son Jacob and I were loading the car with ice fishing gear, I asked my wife Esther, once more, if she’d like to join us. It was a cold and snowy day, so she declined and wished us luck instead.
When we arrived at the lake, I was dismayed to find it wasn’t quite frozen yet. There should have been safe ice on the inlet arms, but it was a late winter and the ice was thin and slushy. It looked like we’d be shore fishing the open water after all.
Snow was coming down pretty hard as we trudged through more than a foot of powder along the shoreline towards the open water. I setup our poles with a couple bobbers and bait and casted out. The wind was picking up and blew our bobbers into the edge of the ice.
For the next hour, snowfall increased and the wind blew harder. To keep our spirits up, Jake and I foraged continually on crackers and snacks while staring listlessly at our bobbers bouncing in the waves. Occasionally I’d check our baits and recast. Nearly two hours passed without a single bite as our hopes dwindled.
But I’m a stubborn fisherman. I don’t pack my car, drive to nowhere, and sit in the worst weather for nothing! At that point, all I really wanted was a single, dumb little trout for dinner. As is often the case, my mind gradually drifted to thoughts of Zen.
Zen is something that’s been on my mind in recent years. It came about after several miraculous successes in fishing and hunting amidst the worst odds. My theory was that if a person focused hard enough on nature, perhaps he could somehow sway the odds in his favor. Certainly, it couldn’t hurt! But in this case, no matter how much I concentrated on my line, and no matter how much I wished for fish, nothing happened.
I couldn’t take it any longer; it was time to make something happen.
Breaking a long and cold silence, I turned to Jake and said, “Do you think a person can materialize a fish?” He looked at me with half-inquisitive expression. Detecting that I might be speaking both rhetorically and irrationally, he just shrugged and mumbled, “I dunno.”
With that, I stood up and reeled my line in. It was time for a more active approach. I proceeded to cut off the bait and bobber and tie on a small, silver Mepps #0 spinner. Surely this shiny, little inch-and-a-half piece of fluttering metal would coerce some little rainbow trout into biting.
I walked 50 feet down the snowy shoreline and casted out to sea. The light lure on my 6-pound line fell pathetically short of its mark. I bounced and reeled it in with little interest from both the fish and myself. I repeated the process, this time swinging the pole hard like a baseball bat.
The lure was ten feet from the shoreline when my line suddenly jerked and hung up. Instinctively I jerked back to set the hook. A snag? I thought. Nope, it started bobbing left and right. Wow, a fish! About the same second I realized I’d hooked a fish, my reel began screaming. The fish took off with no intention of putting up a fight. I tightened the drag and cranked the pole back hard, the pole tip bent 90-degrees straight out to sea.
As the line continued to fly off the reel, it occurred to me that I’d hooked into a whopper of a fish and had absolutely no control over it. It felt like I had tied my line to a pickup truck and sent it down the road. My heart rate jumped straight up.
As the fish ran, I would occasionally feel a weird bump and pause in the line. The fish was apparently hitting the lake bottom, trying to knock the lure from its lip. This was new to me; smart fish! When this failed, he took off down reservoir towards where Jake was sitting. Desperate to keep line on my reel, I followed the fish, running down the shoreline through the deep snow
Anticipating a detrimental tangle with Jake’s bobber, I yelled ahead, “REEL IN! REEL IN! I have a monster on! Get your line in!” This woke Jake up and he did what I asked, then moved out of the way to watch the spectacle unfold.
I was still losing line, but less now. The fish, realizing that a hard left turn wasn’t going to free him, suddenly veered right and began dragging me back up the shoreline towards deeper water. After another desperate jog, the fish once again headed straight out to sea. Every minute or so I would tighten down my drag one more click. Surely I was reaching the breaking point of my 6-pound test line.
Ten minutes into the fight and having gained not one inch, I knew–absolutely knew–two things: First, I would never see the humongous fish I hooked. And second, I would do everything in my power, dedicate every ounce of my fishing experience, to fighting this fish to the end.
My arm was burning and going numb; my heart raced faster. The last few loops of line were slowly becoming visible on my reel. I winced, knowing that in a few seconds my line would snap free from my reel
Then something amazing happened.
About 150-yards out in the middle of the lake the fish broke the surface with an audible slosh, then waves; WAVES not ripples! There was a sudden pause in my line, then slack! The fish had finally reached its threshold of strength and turned its head my way. Instinctively I reeled to keep the line tight.
Then the tug-a-war began. I would crank a few loops back on my reel, the fish would pull more off, and I’d crank ‘em back again. This seemed to go on forever. But there was a twinge of hope. Maybe I would catch a glimpse of my foe after all!
Jake stood by my side, cheering me on without a peep, as you might expect from a teenager.
Nearly twenty minutes into the fight, and with almost a full reel of line, reality hit me. The shoreline was very steep, the fish had to be well over ten pounds, and my line was only rated for six pounds. If and when I got him to shore, there was no physical way to drag him out of the water without breaking my line. I would have to go in after him.
Wide-eyed and trembling like an idiot, I turned to Jake and barked these orders: “When the fish gets close to where I can see it, I’m going to hand you the pole and jump in. Keep the line tight!”
A minute later, in the dark water, a huge, shadowy form came cruising down the shoreline. It was exactly what I expected: A lake monster!
As it drew closer I loosened my drag and shoved my pole into Jake’s hand. Without a second thought I jumped out over the water, twisting my body mid-air and splashing down just behind the fish. Crotch-deep in the icy murk, I shoved my arms underneath the fish and I hefted it out of the water as it swung side-to-side trying to escape my grasp.
The fish plopped into the deep snow near Jake’s feet and we just stood there stunned. “Holy COW!” Jake exclaimed. After much excitement and jumping around, I realized that I was soaked from the waist down and standing in a snow bank in a blizzard. The trip was certainly over at that point.
Jake snapped a couple photos of me and the fish, and then I tossed the lunker trout in the back of my truck and raced for home. I called ahead and told Esther to start searching for a fish taxidermist in the area.
An hour later I arrived home, still shaking and unable to calm down. I taped the fish out at 33-inches and a whopping 21 pounds. After more than three decades of fishing, I’d never seen a brown trout remotely close to that size.
Although the Utah fish and game department doesn’t keep individual lake records, the agents I talked to said it was by far the biggest fish they’d ever heard of coming out of Causey Reservoir, and that a brown trout that big had to be over 20 years old.
A year later the Lake Monster was hung proudly above my television. During commercials I would sit and admire the fish, and still do. But the thing that sticks with me most from that adventure is the question I asked my son right before I caught it:
“Do you think a person can materialize a fish?”
The answer is a resounding MAYBE! Just beware the fish for which you wish.
The benefits of an outdoor lifestyle are many: beauty, experience, clarity, peace… It’s endless, really, but the greatest benefit seems to be the memories. Insert yourself regularly into the harsh beauty of nature and you’ll come out with some dramatic stories for the ages!
Since I’m currently on a bowhunting adventure, I’m taking a break from deer talk and focusing on stories from the past that haven’t been published.
The next few posts will be exciting stories of success and failure; stories that beg to be told…
So that was the 2015 bowhunt; it came and went faster than I could imagine. What I expected to be just another same-old archery season ended up being a whirlwind of ups and downs and a dramatic unfolding of failure and success, coupled with new ideas, concepts, and a solidification of theories that sprung up during the 2014 season.
But in the end I failed to bag a buck, which was so spiritually deflating that I decided to take a month off writing and devote my energy to regrouping and digesting it all. Fortunately, the whole adventure was documented in my super-top-secret field journal. There is now enough new information in this little notebook to fill an entire book, and someday it will.
Enough with the pleasantries, let’s move on to the details.
My hunt was 28 days long, but I devoted half of it to my wife Esther’s, limited-entry bull tag in Fish lake. This was the most difficult hunt of my life. The terrain was super-steep, thick, boulder-strewn, log-fallen and all-round unforgiving with mostly hot, 90-plus degree days. A myriad of cow and spike hunters chased the herds into the far reaches of the worst mountain tops long before we arrived. We beat ourselves ragged on two separate trips just to close the distance on this silent 310-class bull which wouldn’t respond to calls. Esther was finally able to shoot it bedded, facing us, at only 20 yards. Thus began a most grueling 11-hour pack out on our backs. All in all it was a wonderful success and Esther’s very first bow kill. Congrats, doll!
In the end I shot nothing…just like last year. So here we go again, into the even more difficult extended season. The difference this time is that I am building off countless lessons learned last year. Not only is it my goal to shoot both a Pope & Young buck, but a P&Y elk too! Unlike last year, I’m not just saying it; I’m doing it.
So we say goodbye to the 2015 general season forever. Incredibly difficult throughout, but beautiful. The story has just begun; can’t wait for next year!
