Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/209178
amblings R There is something primordial about new blood on virgin snow that awakens feelings old and elemental in an elk hunter's heart. T what went wrong. But what little clarity there may be still hovers high on a ridge 300 miles behind me in 30 inches of cold, crimson-stained snow. e had lost the trail within 40 yards of where he'd been standing when I hit him, the blood churned deep into the tracks of all the other elk as they fled through the hard-crusted, knee-deep snow. He must have split off from the main group somewhere, but the only thing that had deviated from the trail were some day-old coyote tracks, and they had quickly disappeared. Back there where we'd lost the blood. There is something old and elemental in new blood on virgin snow. Snow that creaks and crunches and clutches at your legs as you break it and crush it and shove it aside, your eyes scanning its hard crusty surface for any hint of the frozen remembrance that W hree a.m. Santa Rosa, New Mexico. Bearing east back home, seven hours out of the high country with 27 hours to go. And I still can't get it out of my head . . . How did I ever make such a poor shot? All the other elk I had ever taken had been clean and precise, one shot kills, drop 'em in their tracks, dress 'em where they lay – liver and tenderloin for dinner that very night. But this shot had been different. It's all still bumping around in my jumbled mind, muddled and confused as I try to find some sense of clarity in S P O R TT II N G S P O R N G By Michael Altizer moments earlier had been warm and viscous and fluid as it coursed the veins of the big bull elk that now is lost. The trail was a labyrinth of fleeing tracks as Pat and I pushed on, evidence of at least seven or eight elk, and we knew full well that even if our bull was still with them, any blood sign had likely been beaten into the agitated snow. For a half-mile we pressed on, Pat high, me low, on each side of the trail. We had hunted together for years, and my trust in him was total and there was no shame in yielding to his lead . . . only in the shot that I had so obviously misread. The old bull had stood twisted and partially obscured in the dark timber barely 70 yards distant as he nuzzled his left flank, his long neck extending back over his shoulder and his head covering his upper chest, and I had held centered just below his throat and felt the trusted C LL A S S II C S C A S S C S 44 44