Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 47

summer is over, but the hunt is ahead. In my
desk is a hunter's safety card dated on my
birthday in 1975 and signed in the careful,
practiced cursive of a child's hand. Nothing,
not school, playground activity nor nature
itself was more important than this hunter's
education. I remember acing the written and
shooting tests were top priorities. Once that
was done and the card carefully signed, I was
ready. All of the O'Connor Outdoor Life
articles read by flashlight, all of the Hemingway stories of charging cape buffalo and the
Roosevelt tales of badlands horseback rides
would converge into a giant river of adventure that burst into opening morning. This
look-forward attitude, this get-through-thistime because in X number of months it will
be hunting season prevailed for years and then
decades. Through high school and anticipated

elk hunts with my father and his old buddy
from his high school years, into college with
its Coues white-tailed deer, quail and javelina escapades, into young adulthood with
more elk hunts and mule deer on into middle
life with moose,caribou,bighorn sheep,more
elk,more deer and horsepack hunts deep into
wild country. The season was always coming,
even in January when guns were cleaned and
stowed, the maps came out, the dreaming
began anew.
Perhaps late in a hunter's life comes
another hinge, to possibly a more pure consciousness, back to the child's way of going.
One morning you look up and it is already
September and you wonder how that happened. You were swallowed up in the activity
of living, the wash of the natural world over
your soul, living midsummer. Not looking

		

ahead to midautumn, but simply living fully
in the glorious, oxygenated burst of summer. The looking-forward mentality always
somehow slowed down the getting there, but
once again perceptions change and here it is,
autumn. It seemed as if it would never arrive.
But without conscious thought, it is here.
Herein lies the secret of the good hunter.
One must look forward, ahead to woods,
anticipate. But one must also go inward and
allow himself to be swallowed whole in the
moment. One must become the elk, grouse,
trout and child.
- Tom Reed is the author of several books including "Give
Me Mountains For My Horses." He lives with his family on
a small ranch not far from Yellowstone National Park.
- Lori Eslick regularly creates illustrations for Wyoming
Wildlife magazine's Wild Country Dispatch column.
More of her work can be seen at eslickart.com.

Wyoming Wildlife | 47



http://www.eslickart.com

Wyoming Wildlife magazine

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wyoming Wildlife magazine

Table of contents
Cover
From the director
A couple pennies
Letters to the editor
Opening shot
News
Project profiles
Ask Game and Fish
Case files
In the Field
The terrestrial extra
Elk and Elke
Earrings with info
Still in Love
Wild country dispatch
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - Cover
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - From the director
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - Table of contents
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - A couple pennies
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - Letters to the editor
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - Opening shot
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 7
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - News
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 9
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 10
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 11
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 12
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - Project profiles
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - Ask Game and Fish
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - Case files
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - In the Field
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 17
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - The terrestrial extra
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 19
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 20
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 21
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 22
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 23
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - Elk and Elke
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 25
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 26
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 27
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 28
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 29
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - Earrings with info
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 31
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 32
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 33
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 34
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 35
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 36
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 37
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - Still in Love
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 39
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 40
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 41
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 42
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 43
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 44
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 45
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - Wild country dispatch
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 47
Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 48
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