Hunter's Choice, page 2
Dad put his arm around her shoulders. “The Higgins family always wears blaze-orange when hunting with rifles.”
“I knew that, I guess. I don’t want to be one of those overprotective kind of moms. It’s just hard to believe my boy is so grown up.” Mom smiled. “Be safe. Good hunting.”
THEY WERE SOON IN DAD’S PICKUP AND HEADING OUT OF town on their way to the family hunting cabin.
After driving in silence for a couple of minutes, Dad spoke up. “So you ready for this weekend?”
Hunter was, and he said so, but there was more, only he didn’t know the right way to bring it up with his father.
Eventually he asked, “Did you take a deer your first time?”
“I did,” Dad said. “Not what you’d call a big trophy buck, but respectable. I had most of it made into jerky to eat out on the hunting trail through the rest of the season. I loved it, out there in nature, just me, my old man, and his dad. Do you remember your Great-Grandpa Higgins?”
“A little,” Hunter said. “He’d always pretend to box me when I was little.”
Dad laughed. “That’s right. He’s the one who bought our hunting preserve and put the first tiny wood cabin on it.”
“And Grandpa built the lodge?” Hunter asked.
“We built the lodge when I was a junior in high school. Grandpa’s construction company had scored some great contracts the year before that, resurfacing most of the highway almost clear to Boise. So he built the lodge to keep the family tradition alive. You may think it’s just a simple pole barn with a part-finished interior, but it took a lot of work.”
This was the first Hunter had heard about this. “You know how to do all that stuff?” Hunter asked.
Dad shot him a quick, confused look. “Are you serious? I thought you knew.”
Hunter knew Grandpa had built up a big construction and earthmoving business, working on highways, bridges, and big industrial sites, but Dad hadn’t talked about working with Grandpa very much.
Dad shrugged. “I worked off and on for my old man starting when I was sixteen. Full-time during summer back in college. So, yes, I know how to do all that stuff. Most of it. Well, a lot of it. Hardest part of building the lodge wasn’t building it, but getting the cement and the rest of the building materials back there. Your grandfather had to re-bulldoze the road on our land leading to the site first so the trucks wouldn’t get stuck. But I helped dig and level the site, pour and finish the concrete slab foundation, get the steel frame set up right. Everything right down to hanging, taping, and finishing the drywall on the rooms inside.”
Dad cracked his knuckles, a habit Hunter hated but which his father seemed to get into more the closer he was to hunting or manual labor, and the farther he got from his law office.
Dad turned north onto Warren Wagon Road, heading up the west side of Lake Payette, and suddenly McCall was left behind. They were into the woods. Well, sort of the woods. Cabins and houses were packed in pretty tight, especially on the land between the road and the lake. It had always seemed to Hunter that nobody had planned very well for where the cabins might go. Instead they were all wedged into pure chaos, the front of one opening right next to the back of another, roads to access them zigzagging among all the buildings, some of them large and expensive-looking, some more simple shacks.
“Yeah, your grandpa was disappointed, kind of hurt when I didn’t go into the family business. He didn’t try to stop me from pursuing a law career, but . . . well, there was some real tension. But that was a long time ago. Hunting brought us back together. For a while, hunting and fishing were about the only connection we had.”
“I never knew any of that,” Hunter said, impressed by this revelation of his father’s broad set of skills and surprised there had been trouble between Dad and Grandpa. Some of his friends at school had divorced parents, but dads and sons couldn’t split up, could they? Anyway, aside from the occasional mild argument over politics, the two of them seemed to get along fine now.
“You learn a lot on hunting trips.” Dad was watching the road, but somehow the look in his eyes made Hunter think he was staring much farther than the next curve in the highway. He was quiet for a moment. “Yeah, you’ll learn a lot.”
Hunter wanted to ask what he might learn, but he sensed that now wasn’t the right time, and that his Dad wouldn’t even be able to tell him, at this moment, exactly what he was supposed to learn. He said nothing as ancient classic rock played softly on the radio.
They continued up Warren Wagon Road. Eventually the highway came out of the deep evergreen woods a little, curving to the right to run closer to the lake. Out across the water loomed the north end of the great peninsula that reached up into the lake. Porcupine Point, and in the distance beyond that, Cougar Island.
“My whole life, minus a few years in college down in Boise, is on this lake. Swimming, boating, and fishing on it in summers. Hunting in the woods around it.” Dad sighed. “Fell in love with your mother out on my dad’s fishing boat when—”
“She caught a trout twice as big as yours,” Hunter said. “I know. I’ve heard the story.”
Dad laughed. “I suppose you have. But, of course, it wasn’t just the fish. That was only part of it. What I mean is, our lives are intricately connected to the land. No matter how many roads we build up or how much of our time is spent on computers and phones, we are still connected to this place. Nothing reminds me of that so much as hunting.”
Hunter had been twisting his seat belt in his hands and finally blurted out something that had been hovering at the edge of his thoughts for weeks, ever since Dad had told him he could come on this hunting trip. “I’m nervous.” Instantly his cheeks felt hot.
Dad frowned. “Nervous about what?”
The heat spread down his neck, and he was sure he was flaring red. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.
“What is it? You mean about hunting?”
Hunter nodded. “It’s just that I . . .” How could he explain this without sounding dumb, or weak and afraid? He was probably too late.
“You’ve taken the hunting safety course. You’ve been taught gun safety all your life. You’ve had plenty of practice shooting. You’re a great shooter. What’s the problem?”
Hunter forced himself to let go of the seat belt. “What if I can’t do it?”
“Are you kidding me? You were dropping most of the targets on the range at the lodge, even way out at three hundred yards. You’ve got this.”
That wasn’t what Hunter meant. But he couldn’t figure out how to tell Dad what was on his mind. In the Higgins family, turning twelve was a big deal. It meant he was allowed to watch more grown-up TV shows and movies and he could stay up later. Twelve meant he was old enough to go hunting with the men. They were trusting him to be old enough to be around them when they were having fun, talking about grown-up things, cussing, and having a good time.
If he told Dad, Grandpa, or Uncle Rick that he wasn’t sure he wanted to kill an animal, they’d think he was pathetic. Worse, they’d make fun of him, call him a little girl or a crybaby, the way guys do. Once, at lunch in school, Hunter had made the mistake of saying he wasn’t very interested in playing football next year in seventh grade. He’d been able to salvage what was left of his reputation by saying he’d been joking and ripping on any hypothetical guy who wasn’t interested in laying on a hard hit against an opposing player on the football field.
“You really think I can do this?” Hunter breathed.
“Hunter.” Dad sounded like he was shocked his son would even ask the question. “I know you can.”
They followed Warren Wagon Road past high stone cliffs on the left and the broad expanse of beach at the north end of the lake. Hunter watched the winding river and marshland out his window. Eventually they passed the right turn for East Side Road that would have taken them on a bumpy drive down the east bank of the lake. They continued north for a long time until turning onto the narrow gravel Deer Lane. Finally they stopped outside the gate to the private road that led to the Higgins hunting lodge.
Dad handed over a silver key and nodded toward the white, slightly rusted cattle gate, a big NO HUNTING—NO TRESPASSING sign hung from the middle. Hunter smiled a little. Maybe it was no big deal, getting out to unlock the gate—the padlock on the chain was new and easy—but the way Dad just assumed he knew what to do, and trusted him to do it as if he were a normal adult, made him feel welcome and a part of all this. He swung the gate open, Dad drove through, and Hunter closed and locked it again.
The gravel driveway snaked its way up the slope and headed farther back into the woods for about half a mile.
“Remember as much of this trip as you can.” Dad laughed a little. “I mean, I named you Hunter because of how much our family loves this sport.”
“It would be easier to remember this if Grandpa would allow me to document it with my phone.”
Dad waved the idea away. “You don’t need your phone out here. You’re on that thing too much anyway. We’re all on our phones too much. To really live, especially to live nature, you have to leave the internet and all that gadgetry behind.”
“Well, there goes my Snapchat streak,” Hunter said. He laughed when Dad shot him the funniest look, an expression of mixed horror, annoyance, and doubt. “I’m kidding!” Then Dad laughed too. Actually, it was good to be here in the last land of no cell service. Hunter enjoyed the break from his friends’ collective online buzz.
Dad pulled up onto the wide gravel parking plateau in front of the lodge. From outside, the lodge was plain. A tan aluminum building with a big roll-up garage door, and a door for people next to it. A few windows spaced evenly about every six feet along either side. One of Grandpa’s big yellow backhoe tractors was parked over by the straw bales where the targets were already hanging for their archery range. In the near distance behind the clearing the dark rock face of the steep cliff rose a solid hundred feet.
Dad parked the truck and killed the engine. The two of them sat for a long moment, together in the still silence that fell so heavily after the motor vibration of the long drive had finally stopped. “You’re twelve now, Hunter,” Dad said quietly. “Your childhood is coming to an end. Now you’re a young adult, entering an amazing time of discovery. Some people have the greatest time of their lives through their teenage years. Some have it harder than others. But whatever happens, these years will be a big part of making you the person you are to become. So try to enjoy and remember these times, because once they’re gone, they’re gone, and they don’t ever come again.”
Without saying anything more, Dad opened his door and climbed out of the truck. Hunter did the same, his shoes crunching on the gravel as he walked around to the back to get his bag and his gun. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath as he headed toward the building. Hunter had been to the lodge before, but this time everything was different and the experience felt completely new. This was really happening. His first hunting trip had begun.
CHAPTER 3
PEOPLE WERE SOMETIMES IMPRESSED WHEN HUNTER talked about his family’s hunting lodge. They must have imagined a rich, fancy mountaintop mansion. Hunter always had to explain that the “lodge” was simply what his family called it. Really, it was a big steel and aluminum box, half giant garage and half finished house space.
The garage half had workbenches, tools, and cabinets along both side walls, and two large deep freezers along the back wall away from the big bay door. One of Grandpa’s hobbies was woodworking, and he did a lot of projects here. The family also stored the tractor, three snowmobiles, two four-wheelers, a few kayaks, two canoes, and an assortment of bicycles, the combined recreational vehicle fleet of Grandpa, Hunter’s Dad, Uncle Rick, Aunt Lorie, and their families.
The back of the garage was mostly a big blank white wall, with half a dozen mounted trout and bass, three deer heads, and some stuffed ducks and mallards standing on little wood platforms. One small room jutted out into the garage in the corner. Inside were white plastic walls, stainless steel counters, and a center table. Saws and other tools hung on the wall. When not in use, it was perfectly clean and kept locked. That’s where they cleaned fish or butchered the animals they killed in the hunt.
Hunter looked longingly at the snowmobiles. “I read an article that said it’s supposed to snow a lot this winter.”
“Hope so,” said Dad. “Your uncle Mike was up here last weekend. He says he’s laying claim to a few pounds of whatever meat we take on account of how he cleaned and cleared our snowmobile trail all the way out to the county’s old railroad trail.”
“That’s great,” Hunter said. Nobody loved snowmobiling more than his aunt Lorie’s husband, Uncle Mike. The county snowmobile trail was on the leveled bed of long-torn-away train tracks. A branch line shot off of that for about a hundred yards to a gold mine that had been closed for a hundred years or something. A small creek crossed the branch line about twenty yards before the mine. The rails and ties were gone, and where there had once been a bridge there remained only what snowmobile riders called Stone Cold Gap. The trail angled up sharply just before where the bridge had been, and then there was nothing but a gap of ten feet until the trail resumed on the other side of the stream, the icy creek gurgling twenty feet below. Uncle Mike was the only man Hunter had ever seen even attempt to jump Stone Cold Gap. Just when it looked like he was going to smash too low into the opposite bank, he stuck the landing. “Don’t tell your aunt Lorie,” was all he’d said about it.
Through the double doors in the back wall of the garage, Hunter and his father passed into the finished living quarters of the lodge.
No matter how many times he saw it, Reagan always surprised Hunter. Reagan was Grandpa’s fully stuffed trophy bear, shot in 1984, the third-largest bear ever taken in Idaho. When Hunter was a little kid, it had terrified him with its dark fur, long claws, and sharp teeth exposed in an everlasting silent roar. Now he understood it as an amazing example of Grandpa’s hunting prowess.
Nobody who visited the lodge could fail to grasp the importance of the outdoors in general and of hunting in particular to the Higgins family. The place was a museum, a shrine, a temple to hunting. The plain white walls were fast filling with trophies of past hunts. Ten different deer heads and a massive elk trophy were mounted in the open living room/kitchen area, and a bearskin rug decorated the floor space before the TV. At the top of the walls near the ceiling a wallpaper border showed a repeating wilderness landscape with a group of hunters out after beautiful ducks and mallards, noble deer looking on in the distance. The deep greens and browns of the wallpaper border strip circled the entire main room, drawing the place into a camouflaged feel.
Camouflage was a big theme at the lodge. Grandpa’s recliner upholstery boasted one woodland camo pattern. The couch, though old and faded, sported another. If Grandpa had been able to find a camouflage-pattern carpet, he would have had it installed in every room.
The supply of kitchen and bathroom towels was a mixed-up selection of camouflage patterns, images of animals, and scenes with hunters after deer, elk, ducks, and pheasants. The handles on the knives, forks, and spoons in the drawers were fake animal horn. The handles on all drawers and cupboards, even the spindle upon which the toilet paper spun, were made of real deer antler points or cut-off nubs, most of which had been found lying on the ground in the woods after the shed antler season in winter, but some of which had been taken by hunting.
Hunter took it all in with a satisfied smile, his family’s hunting lodge, a hunter’s paradise, the second home he’d visited hundreds of times, now finally also his base camp for hunting.
“Hey, little man!” Grandpa said, emerging from the kitchen, cracking a can of the cheap beer that the men drank so much at the lodge. “Not so little anymore, though! Are you excited?”
“You bet, Grandpa,” Hunter said.
“Your old man help you wash all your hunting clothes?” Grandpa asked. Grandpa and Dad swore it was crucial to take from the deer their advantage of a superior sense of smell by washing all their hunting clothes in special detergent designed to remove all odors—and to shower, the morning before the hunt, using special soap and shampoo designed to do the same to their bodies.
“Sure, Grandpa,” Hunter said. “And I brought plenty of Right Guard deodorant.” Hunter had started using the stuff last year after his class had been subjected to a video at school about their changing bodies. But he hadn’t really brought the scented Right Guard today.
“You better not use that stuff before we go out tomorrow,” Grandpa said. “Deer will smell that miles away!”
“But it says deodorant right on the can.” Hunter was doing a great job holding back his smile.
“It just covers your natural body odor with a perfume scent.”
Now Hunter grinned. “Are you telling me my deodorant has been lying to me?”
Grandpa burst into laughter. “Hey, you kidder!”
Grandpa gave his son a quick hug. Then his normally happy, confident expression faltered for a tiny moment. “Listen, uh, Rick’s been staying in the main bedroom. So why don’t you and Hunter set yourselves up in the duck room?”
“He doing any better?” Dad asked quietly.
Grandpa opened his mouth to answer, but glanced at Hunter and stopped himself. He patted Dad on the back. “Everything’s fine. Just getting some space. Nothing like coming out to the wilderness to get a man back on track.”
Dad nodded and carried their bags and gun cases back to the bedroom decorated with at least eight stuffed ducks.
“Hunter, I’ve been looking forward to your first hunt for a long time.” Grandpa approached one of the deer trophies that seemed to watch over the big dining-area table. He gazed up at it with an admiring smile and turned to Dad. “Remember this one, David?”
Dad had returned and grabbed a beer for himself and a can of soda for Hunter. “Of course! It was my first. October twenty-second, 1994. I was about Hunter’s age when I took that respectable four-by-four with my Remington 788.” Dad took a drink. “I was climbing out of this little ravine, and as soon as my head popped up, I saw him munching on a shrub. Beautiful creature. He connected perfectly with the wilderness. And I felt . . . I was connected too, like something magical. Simply incredible. It took me about twenty minutes to quietly and slowly climb up onto his level.”
