The frustrating big game season of 2020.

This has been a disappointing big game season, to say the least.

I'm what some people call a "meat hunter",  and approach what some people call "subsistence  hunter".  I'm radical enough at it that I'd be a subsistence hunter but for the fact that my long suffering spouse would not like to participate in that, particularly in a year like this one.

For the second year in a row, and I'll have a post on that later, I failed to draw any "limited draw" tags, which in this case means that I didn't have a chance to go antelope hunting at all.  Never in my life up until two years ago had I failed to draw an antelope tag, and now I've repeated that disappointment twice.  

Unlike some, I like antelope so this is a real disappointment.  

As an additional disappointment I also didn't make the left over license draw date.  I just flat out didn't make it.  There's no good excuse for that, I was just busy.

That left me with only general deer and general elk, and I didn't buy an elk license (I still could, but I'm running out of time).  

And then I didn't get out for the opening day of deer season as I was working. . . something I never used to let happen.  I was too busy, or at least I told myself that.

I didn't get out opening Saturday either, as I had to work cattle that day. But I did get out opening Sunday, with my son.

I had some hope for that, as I had a hunch that people did not go where I'd seen a large buck last year.  I was wrong.  There were people there. But very late in the day, based on another hunch, I got us into a spot that had a lot of deer.  However, it was a spot I hadn't been in before, and our approach didn't quite work out.  We could have taken shots, but the shots would have involved shooting at a moving deer.  I've shot deer that were moving before, but only where I'm confident that it'll be a lethal shot, and I wasn't under these circumstances.  So, we didn't get anything.

I planned on going back, but the season there was incredibly short.

The next weekend I didn't get out again as I was working cattle on Saturday and Sundays both, recalling the line from The Cowboys, "There ain't no Sundays west of Omaha".

So that left this past weekend.

By now, my son had returned to university and so I was left hunting deer on my own, something I haven't done for a really long time.  When my father was living, which is now a long time ago, I usually went with him, or with a friend, and then rarely on my own when I was first working.  After his death, I often went for awhile on my own as my friends were off on their early work careers, which in the United States tends to mean that you have to move away and work in some urban craphole.  But after my son was big enough, and then my daughter, that changed.

I guess I'm somewhat back there now.

On Saturday I went out to an area that was still open, which is an "any deer" area.  I'm not, as I mentioned, a head hunter, so that was good with me. And I've run into deer in there often.  In fact, I did right away, but the single deer I saw was a terribly long shot and a moving one again.  After that, I hiked for miles and miles and hours and hours.  Lots of scenery, which I enjoy, but no deer.  Indeed, perhaps I was lucky as if I'd run into a deer, I'd have been packing it out on my back.  I was prepared to do that, but it have been an exhausting endeavor to say the least.

It took me from early morning to early afternoon to do that, and then I determined to drive home through the mountains.  On the way out, I found a spot and took a small buck.  And that's okay by me.

So I guess this is a success story.  But it's a cautionary tale as well.

Just this past Wednesday I published an item about a man who has become his work, or his work has become him.  Or he's let his life pass by in some ways.

And that's easy to let happen.