October 2024 - 46

Chance
I
Story by Tom Reed | Illustration by L. Eslick
believe it is chance, or brushes with, more than any single
factor that impels mankind toward the divine. Turn one way
and you take a certain path. Turn another and you are off to
an entirely different life. Those who survive natural disasters, who
just missed getting crushed by the storm-tossed tree limb, often
attribute their fortunes to a higher power that had plans for them
over those who were felled by said limb.
In this most beloved of months, chance
plays a formidable role in the life of an outdoors
aficionado. Along with this comes its
cousins, skill and risk, or more to the point,
risk management. Skill helps add parity to
chance, while risk management is a bit of
insurance to dampen its impacts when it
does happen; wear a helmet when you ride a
motorcycle and you might survive traumatic
brain injury.
But neither skill nor risk management truly
dominates or drowns pure chance. I have a
friend who is about the most skillful hunter
I have ever known. He's a dead shot who
practices all summer from various distances
and shooting positions. To increase his odds
he uses only one firearm that he has carried
most of his adult life. A retiree, he has time
to hike in the hills before hunting season,
following the patterns of the land and its
moods, learning the wheres and hows of the
quarry, elk and mule deer. For several years,
he stalked a big buck mule deer in the Wyoming
Range much as those who followed the
famous mule deer buck, Popeye, had during
its heyday some decades ago. This mule deer
had a very distinctive rack and for several
years, my friend found the buck on its summer
range and tracked it into the fall, hoping
to get a chance at it when the season opened
in October. Never a loquacious man in the
first place, this is a story he told me long after
the big buck was killed.
He did not kill it. One October on the
day before the season opened, he was certain
that he knew where the buck would be the
46 | October 2024
next morning and he " put it to bed. " But
something happened during the night and
the deer was not on the ridge when it got to
be shooting light. A little later in the morning,
my friend heard a single rifle shot from
the other side of the mountain and while he
thought little of it, after a week of hunting
he did not see this monster buck again. This
was unusual because if anyone could find
that deer, it would be my friend with his tremendous
skill set. On the last day, he killed
a smaller buck, one that folks would call a
government-issue, symmetrical buck of no
particular distinction. A nice buck, but not
the slab of beef he was after. At the check
station, he heard about a college kid who
arrived late in the night before opener, threw
his bag down on the ground in some random
canyon, drank a few beers and went to sleep,
setting his watch for predawn of opening
morning. When he woke, he saw a giant buck
mule deer on the slope 150 yards above his
pickup truck and, as luck would have it, his
cased rifle was right there in the frost next
to his sleeping bag. He was able to roll over,
already prone, and put the buck down with
a single shot. Without even getting out of his
bag. The check station attendant had a picture
of that buck. It was the same one my friend
spent all summer, and the previous summers
and autumns stalking, only to fall, by chance,
to a hung-over college kid who drove up a
random canyon in the tall country.
There are other kinds of chance in this wild
life. This past summer, I took my son and
joined a friend on a short horsepacking trip in
the high country. I took along my bird dogs,
one of which is my 10-year-old setter, Mabel.
My horses are used to dogs and get along with
them, and my dogs, being more interested in
grouse and mice, pay zero attention to the
horses. Sometimes that's the problem, for
they have little regard for their own safety
when running around - and under - 1,000
pounds of hoof. Far up the trail, my pal's pack
horse suddenly lashed out with a kick and
caught Mabel right in the face, less than an
inch from her eye. She yelped, was thrown a
few feet, got up and staggered a little like a
punch-drunk boxer. I checked her out, determined
she was fine, and we continued down
the road. Had the kick come just a half-inch
over, she would have lost an eye and perhaps
her life. What are the odds?
It's a dangerous world out there, whether
you drive to the coffee kiosk every morning
or climb tall peaks with a loaded firearm. We
who travel the hills with rifle and rod put
ourselves into contact with a natural world full
of surprises and some would say, dangers. I've
ridden young horses through the old burns of
1988 and been caught by unexpected zephyrs
that come out of nowhere to whistle through
the skeletons of a one-great forest. I have had
trees fall onto trails I rode only seconds earlier.
I've lost not one, but two fantastic mountain
horses to tragic accidents in the mountains in
my many decades of the natural life. I also lost
two fantastic horses before their time on the
home place. Life - and death - happens.
Where and how you spend it is one of our
best, most pure freedoms, and I've always
felt spending it outside is worth the chance.
- Outdoorsman and author Thomas Reed lives with his
family on a small ranch in the mountains not far from
good elk country. He is the author of several books and
most recently helped edit the upland hunting anthology,
" Mouthful of Feathers, Upland in America. "
- Lori Eslick is an illustrator, artist, presenter, children's
book illustrator and workshop leader. She regularly
creates illustrations for Wyoming Wildlife magazine's
Wild Country Dispatch column. More of her work can
be seen at eslickart.com
http://www.eslickart.com
October 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of October 2024
