The Last Hunting Trip I Took with my Grandpa.

Without sounding too cliché, I think that life is simply a compilation of experiences and, in turn, the quality of one’s life is determined by their interpretation of those experiences. So much of our daily lives can be affected by our perspective on the things we encounter and the problems we face. How we chose to deal with certain situations is what molds us into the characters we are.

My mother’s father was a serious character. He had a unique flavor for life that matched his reputation as well as his personality. The man had an unhealthy affinity for practical jokes that seemed to grow with his age. It’s like it was a craft that he intended to truly master. If gags were a martial art the guy was a third-degree black belt. At 80+ years of age the old man still had a collection of fake rats and rubber snakes. He once convinced my younger brother that he had his toe amputated and the surgeon allowed him to bring it home as a souvenir. He stuck his thumb through a hole cut in the bottom of a ring box and then showed it to my five year old brother. He even put ketchup on it.

As we got older it seemed as though the jokes turned into tests to see just how far he could push you before you would cave and call his bluff. It was like his version of a litmus test. Hey Sam…grab that chainsaw and follow me…that kind of thing.

He also had a reputation as a fisherman. I could write volumes on the fishing stories that he has told me over the years, but I am not sure that they would find a spot on the non-fiction section of the bookshelf.

He was a pilot in WWII and when he returned to the States, he did what every soldier does when they come home. He bought a helicopter. The helicopter was his means of travel when it came to fly fishing. He would fly into the upper reaches of the headwaters where the fish were plenty and the game wardens were sparse. He also used it to take my mom to work in the summer. She worked the early shift at a golf course in town cleaning locker rooms before the local bogies showed up for their 6:30 am tee times. The clubhouse was located at the end of a mountain road that curves and winds its way to the very top. He would fly her to work every morning and land his Enstrom on the driving range turning pinecones into hazardous projectiles and scattering practice balls onto the margins of the range making it impossible to collect them later. That’s not a joke.

I never really understood the capacity of his character and reputation until I moved back to North Idaho to attend college. My grandmother had passed away while I was still in high school and so my grandfather was living by himself, burning gasoline and living on pan fried T-bones. When I moved to Idaho it provided me with an opportunity to get to know my grandfather in a way that would change my life.

As kids, our grandparents seem to be larger than life characters that are full of stories and quips, always there to provide a worldly perspective without over endorsing the good old days. However, as we get older it becomes more apparent that they are simply human beings and that, just like us, their days here are limited. Not all of us are lucky enough to realize that while we still have time.

When I was in college, I tried to make an effort to spend some of my free weekends traveling back and forth to visit my grandfather as well as my father’s parents. It was something I enjoyed doing because I got to spend time with my family. It was also nice to score a few free meals and do my laundry without having to dig through my truck for quarters.

I made a trip to visit in mid-October with a plan to spend my Saturday driving logging roads and hunting for grouse with my grandfather. At the time I was new to hunting but I was excited by the prospect of sharing that type of experience with him. He had spent the majority of his life hunting and fishing, not only as hobbies but as a means of acquiring protein to feed the ten mouths living under is roof. So many people of that generation learned to hunt simply because they had to. When you have a wife and eight kids at home free meat is a welcomed blessing.

I pulled up in front of his house late Friday afternoon and unloaded the small amount of gear I had. The door was unlocked so I walked in and put my bags down. No sign of the old man. There were typically only a handful of places that he could be in town and it usually wasn’t hard to find him. Unfortunately, I found him in the basement taking a nap on the couch in nothing but his underwear, which left little to the imagination.

That evening we made a trip to the grocery store to get some “essentials” for the next day’s excursion and then we went up town to grab dinner. Whenever I went to dinner with him, he had a habit of ordering for me. I didn’t mind because that usually meant that I was going to have medium rare slice of prime rib with a baked potato and a Miller Genuine Draft. All of the waitresses knew who he was, so they didn’t question the fact that he was ordering booze for a baby faced 18-year-old kid. Sometimes we would get done with dinner and go to the bar.

The next morning, he woke me up at 5am by turning on every light in the basement after he had fired up the stove to percolate his coffee. We ate breakfast and packed our lunch, which consisted of a six pack of MGD and stick of hard salami with some saltines. I was sitting in the living room gathering my gear when he walked up from the basement with a shotgun and a Winchester Model 94. I let him know that I had already packed my own shotgun (a pump 870) and he kindly handed me a single shot 20 gauge without making a comment as if to say, “you only need one shot”. This was another litmus test.

As we loaded the truck, I couldn’t help but wonder what the rifle was for. I was new to hunting but I was pretty sure he wasn’t planning to sluice a spruce chicken with a 32 special. When I asked him what it was for, he looked at me and explained, in a relatively bewildered tone, that we might need it if we see a deer. My next question was if he had a deer tag. This time him simply looked at me and just gave a slight chuckle. He explained that if we shot a deer, he would buy a tag when we got back to town. He used to give me that look a lot. Every time we got in his truck, I would reach for my seatbelt out of habit. His truck didn’t have seatbelts and would shake his head and scoff as if he had some sort of distain for that goofy modern invention.

Looking back I wish that I had paid more attention that day to where we went exactly because I would love to retrace our journey with my own kids someday. We made our way up the mountain and I soon began to realize that this trip was more about socializing than it was hunting. We made stops at several different camps that all welcomed my grandfather (and me by default) with open arms and a warm hello. By this point in his life he wasn’t a spry as he once was so tracking deer and elk around the mountains was out of the question. This was his substitute.

After what felt like hundreds of miles of driving, we finally began to make our decent down the back side of the mountain with a few beers and half the salami left but, at this point, we had no birds to show for it. I had all but given up on the idea that we were going to shoot anything, and I don’t know that my grandfather ever really cared about the grouse.

We came around a corner and hit long straight stretch of gravel where the sun had melted off the frost from the night before. About 40 yards ahead of us I could see the shadow of a grouse picking gravel in the sun and I pointed it out to my grandpa. He was terribly hard of hearing from years of working underground and with large machinery, so he didn’t hear me the first time. I raised my voice trying to holler over the hum of the engine, but he still didn’t hear me, and we were bearing down on the bird with a full head of steam. I finally reached across the cab and smacked him in the shoulder to get is attention. He was in his mid-80’s at the time but the look on his face still scared the shit out of me. I finally pointed out the bird and he stopped the truck with about 10 yards to spare.

I hopped out without slamming the door and tried to put the sneak on it. I was trying to get as close as I could given the fact that I only had one shot. Thanks Gramps. I was creeping in close when something jolted the bird into flight forcing me to take my shot. That “something” was the sound of my grandfather’s voice yelling “shoot the damn thing” in is muffled Italian accent. Lucky for me, I passed the litmus test.

It was the only bird we saw all day and at that point I was convinced that I could rest easy knowing that my grandfather wasn’t going to get picked up for poaching anytime soon. He couldn’t see a grouse standing in the middle of the road let alone a deer bedded in the timber.

We dropped down into town and headed back to the house to unload before we found another cut of prime rib and a few beers.

I think about this story a lot whenever his name comes up in conversation. You learn a lot about a person when you spend an entire day in the cab of a truck with them. That was the last time I ever went hunting with my Grandfather as he passed away the following spring. He ended up moving out of his house and into the nursing home up the road. I would still go visit him on the weekends whenever I had a chance and we talked about that day a lot. It was a trip that we both enjoyed, and I am blessed to have shared that experience with him.

From time to time, I think about those types of trips with him and there is a small part of me that feels guilty for not having done it more often. I feel like I missed out on so many trips because I chose to stay in my apartment and drink beer with my buddies.

Again, not to sound cliché, but the truth of the matter is that I should consider myself fortunate to have had those opportunities at all. I have siblings that never got to know our grandfather the way I did and for that I am grateful. It is easy to look back on life and feel sorry for ourselves because of the things we missed out on when in all reality we ought to spend more time being thankful for the experiences we have had.

Instead of bitching about missed opportunities…open your eyes and make the most of the ones that have yet to present themselves.