crosshairs on the base of his skull, and pulled the trigger.
Overwhelmed, Jesse ran to the deer, dodging kicking hooves and shaking antlers, and lay atop the animal as its life left it. Ed, hearing the shots, made his way down to us. Together, the three of us gutted and hung the deer in a small spruce. Covered in deer blood, we slept on heather and deer lettuce next to a fire that night.
The smell of sweat, deer, blueberry leaves, decay, spruce, and hemlock accompanied us down the mountain the following day. Our packs sagged with the weight of the meat. The wind rustled trees, and condensation dripped from branches. That night we fried heart and barbecued ribs. None of us had ever eaten a meal so fine.
MY BEST TROPHY
I CAN IMAGINE FEW THINGS more terrible or wonderful than being a parent, particularly a mom. My own mother was abducted from California to Alaska and then forced to live with a wild husband and three savage sons. Imagine coming home from work to see a bloody pelt on the kitchen counter and your six-year-old son gnawing a boiled squirrel. Maybe it’s not that weird for Alaskan mothers, but for a young woman who grew up in Sacramento, it must have been disorienting at best. Ermine, marten, and a variety of rodent soups—my mom was always in for a surprise when we cooked dinner. The house, with piles of bones and antlers strewn about, seemed like a Neanderthal clan’s cave crossed with a hunting lodge. For the most part, she bore the horror quietly and late at night, as she stared up at the aurora dancing or through sheets of rain in the inky blackness, dreamed of ridding her house of dead animals. This seemingly simple task—a basic human right in other parts of the country—became as epic a quest as Frodo’s journey to Mordor in The Lord of the Rings.
Growing up, I didn’t sympathize much with her. I couldn’t fathom why anyone wouldn’t want their house to smell like a rutting buck or a salmon spawning ground. Why change your clothes or take a bath when you’d be dirty again a few hours later? Up until the point Nintendo was created, there was nothing cooler than pelts, bones, and stuffed game animals. Forget Disneyland. A trip to visit a taxidermist—even an amateur whose road-killed critter mounts looked like they’d suffered horribly botched plastic surgery from the shaky hands of an Amazonian witch doctor—was once my happiest place on earth. Each antler, hide, and bone was fought over. My mother’s greatest victory was excommunicating our dad’s sheep and goat mounts from the living room. Over the years, after my brothers and I left home, she reclaimed her house. Only one dead animal memento remains—a stuffed ten-inch golden trout I caught with a worm when I was a small kid.
Back then, my friends all seemed to have Nintendos, and when I visited them and played Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Street Fighter, it felt like heaven. It was even more fun than looking through the stack of Playboys one of my friends’ dads left out. Who cares about girls or being in the outdoors when you can make an Italian dwarf do flips onto a psychedelic mushroom? When I tried to convey my passion for video games and begged for a Nintendo of my own, my folks were oddly quiet. Screaming, throwing fits, and running away for a few hours didn’t do much good either. Finally they had enough.
“Save up your money, and you can buy your own,” my dad said. So began an era of economic fortitude. No more Bazooka gum. No more packs of Upper Deck sports cards. No more fantasy lead figurines. My will was unbreakable. The Nintendo would be mine.
More than a year after I began saving, my family was spending the summer in Bozeman, Montana. I counted out my money and did the math. It was time! Before taking me to the store, my dad suggested we go fishing and camping for the weekend.
“Did I ever tell you about golden trout? There’s hardly any, and they only live high in mountain lakes,” he said reverently as he drove his three sons up a winding dirt road. Soon, he had me believing that catching a golden trout would be as unique and spectacular as seeing Sasquatch. My fascination with dead animal mementos and trophies came back with a vengeance. What if an asthmatic porker like me somehow managed to climb through the mountains and, by the wildest twist of fate, was able to hook the El Dorado of the trout world? Would it be possible to manifest that great moment forever and get it mounted by a taxidermist? The very thought of torturing my mom and solidifying my greatness as an outdoorsman sent shivers down my spine.
The two-mile hike was akin to Amundsen’s trek to the South Pole, but the thought of golden trout spurred me on. Finally, when we stood at the edge of a blue-water alpine lake, I put a worm on a hook and cast out near a partly submerged log. When my red-and-white bobber went under, I thought I’d won the lottery. The trout, golden colored with dark bars and spots, was a beauty. On the hike out, I wrestled with the most difficult existential question I’d yet to face: Nintendo or stuffed trout. By the time we made it home, I asked Dad if we could get the fish stuffed. He’d already carefully placed the tiny trout in wet leaves, and we beelined to a friendly taxidermy shop. I immediately regretted handing over the money. It would be years, perhaps forever, before I’d have enough money to buy a Nintendo.
My parents love that golden trout. It’s the only trophy I’ve kept from the woods, other than the Dall sheep horns on my bookshelf. My three young nieces sometimes suggest I upgrade and get a herring mounted for my next trophy. This offers me an excuse to ramble off a “when I was your age” story with a moral that neither they nor I can make sense of. Often these backwoods parables end with some wisdom like “… and that’s why you should never pet a humpy salmon when it’s spawning,” or “…and that’s why you should not dress up in a deer costume while hunting on Admiralty Island.”
The three sisters are lucky to have parents who make sure they get plenty of time out in nature. One of my favorite things to do is walk in the woods or go fishing with them and see how excited they get. When their dad, Luke, decided to take Kiah, his eldest, sooty grouse hunting for the first time, I was lucky enough to be invited along. Most folks call these grouse “hooters,” after the males who perch high in conifer trees and hoot to establish territory and attract mates. Luke and Kiah, with me and Dad tagging along, made an early season foray into the snowy mountains. Just the day before, there were a couple lovelorn fellows reciting their monosyllabic poetry in a winter storm, but on this day, the forest was quiet other than the wind, ravens, and a hairy woodpecker. On the last day of the season, Luke, Kiah, and I waded through brush toward a mountainside we hoped had a few birds. I’m pretty sure Luke and I were more excited than Kiah. Deer poop and tracks crisscrossed a muskeg. A network of game trails spread through a forest of towering Sitka spruce and western hemlock. Snowy mountain summits appeared through breaks in green foliage. Clumps of wolf hair hung in brush, and piles of bear scat lay at the edge of verdant avalanche paths. Soon the deep booming of grouse brought the forest even more to life. Luke began to get farther and farther ahead. Kiah didn’t stop or complain; she simply hiked faster. As she tunneled through a maze of devil’s club, she stared back with a confused look.
Luke and Kiah with a sooty grouse.
“This is what you guys do for fun?” she asked. I shrugged and said yeah, suddenly self-conscious.
Luke made a great spot on the first bird, but with just a tiny bit of it visible, it was the sort of shot only an expert marksman could make. The next bird offered a similar perspective, so I suggested Luke shoot it. As we were lacking a dog, I did the fetching. Kiah held the bird and studied it with mixed emotions, saying how beautiful it was over and over again. We moved on to the next hooter, which was silhouetted and quite a bit closer. Luke helped Kiah find a rest. At the sound of the shot, the bird plummeted. We found it beneath a giant root wad. Kiah stroked its feathers and held it tenderly before gutting and skinning it. At Luke’s encouragement—and the thought of how I might have to wait almost a year before having another delicious grouse
