Well, this being the one week of the year we can hunt elk, last friday we beat feet to our favorite elk hunting campsite and proceeded to make fire. Funny how the crowd is slowly switching from the wall tent, cot and barrel stove to everyone has new shiny trailers with forced air heaters and queen beds.

Since I had not qualified yet as a state resident, I opted to forego any actual hunting and work on some of my more mundane camping skills. My menu for the 4 days I was to be at camp included such delights as huckleberry pancakes, mountain man breakfast, deer stroganoff(the deer being donated by another hunter in the group), deer stew, chicken asparagus rice casserole, biscuits and gravy, and heaps of eggs and coffee. Apparently my culinary skills haven't waned too hard, for I made enough to have only a serving or so left over after every meal, and most of the hunting group had thirds of everything.

I do have to admit, we let the fire in the barrel stove die out at 3:00 am on Saturday morning. With a clear sky that night, the temps got right down to about 20 degrees, and I had trouble finding the bottom of my sleeping bag so I could stay warm. I am definitely getting averse to using the woods for a privy in the wee hours of the morning under such conditions, so I held my business as long as I could, then booted up and made the quick dash out and back. Since I was not going to bother with hunting, I opted to sleep in as it were until daylight, which was a good two hours after the rest of the gang had to vacate camp to get to their designated ambush sites.

Unfortunately for us, the animals once again eluded our sights. There were a few taken, and even more were poached (we were in a spike only area, and there were a number of branched antler bulls and some cow elk that were shot and left where they lay). The sheriff and the wildlife officers were running all over checking people and we saw a few get cited for having a loaded rifle in their rig while driving, a big no-no. One guy at the bottom of the hill (not from our group) managed to shoot himself in the leg and lost his foot as a result. I sure wish I'd have caught one of them poachers; it would be worth 10 preference points on my next season permit application. Oh well.

This was a much needed trip to the woods. After 5 years on the road, I hadn't really had a chance to do anything even remotely like this, and just being able to sit at the campfire and poke a stick in the embers and sip a beer was mighty fine. Firing up the dutch ovens and making a lot of really good food also felt like putting an old warm glove on a cold day. We had a couple of guys in our group that liked taking a little pack stove with them to heat up some water on location and make some instant soup or coffee or what not while munching on a granola bar. After two days of my cooking, that sort of activity came to an end, as no one had room left for snacking much while on post. We do talk a lot of politics around the campfire, and it's amazing how voices get raised, even when everyone seems to be in general agreement about a topic. We are a passionate people I reckon.

Anyways, we didn't get an animal, which is always a disappointment, but really elk camp I suppose is about a lot more than harvesting big game; it's all about the love, baby.