adam mills elliott

Hunting in Wyoming

Note (10-31-09): This is a report of a hunting trip from October of 2006 with Oliver Deshler and Terry Deshler outside of Laramie, WY. I rode into town on my motorcycle as part of my 3 month tour across the States.

I immediately liked Laramie. It was a little blustery but much warmer than in Cheyane that morning. Oliver, his dad and I, loaded up grampa’s VW bus and headed out around 10. I was wearing just what I rode into town in: jeans with long underwear, button up shirt, microfleece, jacket, gloves and hat. My motorcycle boots proved to be the perfect footwear out in the short grasses and small prickly pears. Oliver was wearing a torn and blood stained checkered shirt from two days prior. It was the first time that I had ever worn hunter’s orange; it was the first time I’ve ever been hunting.

We drove around for a long while looking for antelope that could be hunted. We saw lots of antelope on private land, but we were looking for school sections, public land that had been set aside for future development of schools.

We then drove out to an area where we found 2 or 3 big herds near a school section and we thought about trying to scare them over to where we could at least get a “stalk” on them. The antelope that we saw would run back and forth, east and west along a wide ridge. We wanted them to go down through a gully over to the school section to the north. They ran out of sight and we figured that we might as well go back to the north section and see if any of them came up. When we drove up to the section, via our roundabout road, we spotted a small herd of 9 lying down in a small valley. There was a hill directly to the south of them and a gully to the north. Our road curved around to the south on the backside of the hill. It was perfect; the hill hid our car and our approach and the strong wind masked any noise and blew our scent clear away.

After a whole day of driving around and getting shut down, we finally had a stalk. We crept up to the top of the hill and Terry motioned Oliver and I to stay back. He then crawled on elbows and thighs to get as close to them without being seen. With my camera in my hands and lying in prickly pears, I felt like a hunter and every shot was hitting the mark. It felt great to be out there and to be clicking away and trying to capture the process of finding and killing an animal.

I was so intent on watching terry’s intensity that when the shot came, I didn’t realize it until a while afterward. “oh, right, he shot it.” and I had seen the group of antelope run out into the field and down into the gully and up the opposite bank and then the distant ridge. We watched them start to graze and mill about. “Is one of them acting funny? Did I hit one of them? Did they all come up out of the gully?”

We went down into the gully and saw just over the tops of some sage plants the head of an antelope that was lying down. It was the wounded one. We didn’t want to scare it out of where it was; Terry needed a second shot. He set up his bi-pod for this and Oliver came in next to him. This is one of my favorite photos of the day. I enjoyed seeing the father/son relationship as two men. The would switch roles now and then, showing each other how something was done, not competitively but gently.

Taking pictures during the skinning and cleaning process reinforced the feeling of distance. I could be right in there with my camera lens but not feel too affected by all of the blood and shiny bones. The head was half gone from the killing shot and the back leg was broke from the exit bullet. The wind had been so strong that the bullet was blown 2feet off of where it was aimed. The first bullet had gone into the stomach and out the back leg. Again, one of the best parts was photographing the two of them working together. In this photo, they have almost completely skinned the animal. This photo is of the heart, where it lay as the two of them finished cleaning the rest of the antelope.

That evening involved hanging up the carcass from the eave of the garage cutting it in half with a hack saw, cutting away any bloodshot areas of the meat, then moving it into the garage to hang of 3 or 4 days.
To complete the entire process, I got to see the butchering of the antelope Oliver shot a couple days earlier. This photo shows it well. The meat is laid out and cut apart. Different cuts go to different things. It is that simple. I certainly couldn’t don’t know how to cut it apart but large knives and hammers work good on the sternum and spinal column. Apparently liver slices are really difficult to wrap in freezer paper, as Oliver’s sister Anna can testify to. I watched and it was good. For dinner we had some select cuts of antelope as part of a large and wonderful meal.

Growing up I always had negative connotations of hunters. Always it was about picturing them drinking too much, reveling in the death of large animals, or just being gun nuts. I knew this was an unfair generalization and I had always wondered about the hunters that have good attitudes and perspective. The curiosity was also about the pure experience of primal connections, about knowing exactly the link between the food that enters your mouth and the animal that it came from. I am very glad that I went with Oliver and Terry and that the hunt was a success. Thanks to you both.

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