Backwoods Wisdom
When hunting for you elk go out only at dawn for the first one and a half hours. Kill your elk as it rises from rest. The meat will be pink and not gamy. If you wait until your elk has been charging about, the flesh will be beet red from the blood forced into the muscle and flavored with sage and grasses…gamy.
Ken saw a head buck Billy goat with many does and children on path. A Grisly bear was coming from the opposite direction. Who would give ground? The gruff Billy goat headed to the front of the bunch and lowered his head exposing the two prongs of painful puncture. The grisly moved off the trail and down the mountain apiece and watched as the tasty morsels moved along. Only after all were safely moved did gruff Billy goat catch up keeping an open eye on the grisly till out of sight.
Ken had gone elk hunting with a world-renowned outfitter. They were gone about four days late in the season with no elk for their efforts. Late in the afternoon, four inches of snow dusted the ground. Concerned, Ken and the other hunters asked if it wouldn’t be prudent to leave now? The outfitter said they would stay one more night for a last morning shoot and then leave. All went to bed early. In the morning, Ken rose to a very cold tent. He got up and started a fire in the stove in the middle of the tent. By the glow from the fire, he noticed that the sides of the tent were bowed in. He touched the sides. They were solid. He quickly put on his 32-oz lumberjack underwear, down vest, jacket and boots and crawled outside digging through three-foot drifts of snow. Once outside Ken yelled at everyone back in the tent to get up and get out. Packing only the essentials, the horses and the pack animals struggled to get through the snow that so quietly and consistently fell in large snowflakes. At times the horses would bound through a formidable drift needing to stop, energy sapped, nostrils flaring out with warm moist air exiting their lungs in huge billowing clouds. When they got to the trucks, only then did they notice that the snow chains, although the correct size, did not fit. The outfitter could only recommend to move down the logger’s trail in first gear and if the truck starts to slide off of the road, jump! Ken’s wife said many times that she could not see the bottom off of the side of the road. The highway never looked so good.
Then there was the time that Father Billy Bob came into the kitchen to have boils on his back lanced and drained. Father would do most anything to avoid going to the doctor. In the kitchen was a white gas stove being cleaned. A full gallon of white gas was on the counter with the screw top cap removed. Father told Ken to start the stove and Ken pumped and then lit the stove. There was a fireball that burst out and lit the gas on top of the can. Father grabbed the lit can and threw it into the sink. Fortunately, the fuel container was full and not at an explosive level. After this Father reconsidered and went to the doctor to have the boils on his back lanced and drained.
Then the time Ken’s father back in Iowa repeatedly had a pack of the neighbor’s dogs run across his property and he decided to just scare the dogs off. He opened four 12-guage-shotgun shells and poured out the lead pellets. He then put rock salt in and closed the shells back up. There they sat on the shelf for a month with repeated cycles of heating and cooling. Finally, the dogs returned. Dad took careful aim at the trailing dog and fired. He hit the dog right in the rump and the dog fell over dead. The course rock salt had solidified into a solid mass, passing cleanly in but blowing a hole out the other side big enough to pass a toaster. Dad put the shotgun away, threw away the remaining salted shells, buried the dog and observed that the pack never crossed this property again.
14 September 2002