Breaking the Silence

Many years ago there was a time when I would hunt with my dad and younger brothers. Oh what times those were, being able to spend time out in the woods, enjoying time spent with family, bringing back precious meat to help feed the family so we didn't have to spend an arm and a leg for beef, and just getting away from the ever so crowded life that can be found in just about every city out there. However, once I moved away from my family and started doing things on my own, things have taken a much different path than what I am used to.

Now that some of my younger siblings have begun to get into the art of hunting, my father has been taking up more time teaching them to hunt and it just doesn't have that same feeling when you have to hunt by yourself. I had always gone with my father before and it was a special time, but now it feels very different. Whenever I go out into the unknown and try to stake my claim to fill a tag, the pure anxiety of having to do everything without assistance feels kinda unnerving. This happened to be the case after I turned 20 and tried hunting on my own without anybody to talk to.

I was out hunting in the open deserts of Shoshone, Idaho, trying to take down a mule deer without anything to guide me but my past experiences and training I had built up over the years. Just on the outskirts of town there was a vast expanse of open desert that stretched for miles with many patches of volcanic rock left from magma flows of times past seeping down into the earth, forming large pits that could hide just about anything. One particular place that really piqued my interest was an old hill that had a cellphone tower perched atop it. To the left of it from the old holey road was a somewhat shorter hill with sides that started to form rocky cliffs thanks to weathering from the read. On its side one could see a few little four-wheeler trails that led up to the summit, and that is where I had decided I would attempt to find a deer to harvest.

After parking my car in the most perfect little patch of still flat ground, I started to make my way up that hill. With each step I took, my footsteps seemed to echo within my ears and made everything seem like it would just jump out at me if I made a wrong move. Twisting and turning all along following the trail set before me, I made my way up to the top. It leveled out for the most part until about a hundred yards, and then it quickly turned into a sheer drop. Sitting before me was a huge caldera made from the long forgotten remains of an eruption from times past. Taking a quick breather in order to calm my mind, I decided to whip out my binoculars and scan the caldera for any signs of game.

To my dismay, no mule deer could be seen from my position. At the same time, however, I was relieved since it would have been such a pain to have to drag any animal outside of this couple hundred foot tall hole in the earth since its only exit was on the opposite side of it over a mile away. Seeing that I wouldn't get anything at that location, I decided to make my way back down to my car. On the way back my mind was racing with potential places to go in order to complete the task at hand. Luckily for me however, my ears were more in tuned with my surroundings compared to my eyes since I was not expecting what happened next.

After going no more than 50 meters from the ledge of the caldera, a sharp rattling begins to sound off into my ears. This rattling soon turned into two, and then three. Upon taking a better look at my surroundings, I soon realized I had walked right into the center of a group of rattlesnakes out on a hunt themselves. With 3 rattlesnakes going off, my mind started running faster than a cat hyped up by catnip. What happened next thankfully gave me an opportunity to leave that dilemma behind, at a breakneck speed. One of the rattlesnakes decided to slither on out the other way from where it was sitting underneath a tall sagebrush and a minute later, I found myself panting after sprinting down a hill as fast as I could to my car. Since then, I have never gone hunting alone and although it isn't quite the same as going with my father, its a lot less stressful on my mind when it comes to unforeseen situations.