I finally made my way back to my roots as I climbed atop a solid, steady quarter horse and slid into my Billy Cook saddle exploring the endless wilderness of the National Forests.
The slow, arduous pace of being back in the woods was a warm, welcomed feeling despite the cold, thin air of Colorado piercing my lungs at 9,000 feet. This bull elk was the first critter the author shot with his Remington Model 7. 30-30 took my first pig in a long overdue hunt with my father after too many years dormant. My father’s Savage 99 in my hands equated to plenty of deer meat in our freezer. A muzzleloader handed down from my great-grandfather took down a young buck. Over the following years of hunting through high school and college, I continued to borrow family rifles and shotguns that would get the job done on a few more deer, squirrels, and pheasants. The turkey laid still and my love for hunting and the outdoors continued to grow. Sitting against a wide elm as still as possible, I squeezed the trigger and felt my shoulder become a knot in the tree that I would later complain about having to split for cord wood. Putting my paternal grandfather’s old Remington 870 super mag in the hands of a 12-year-old was like dropping a Pontiac 455 SD engine into a Honda Civic. Seeing as how that old stick was the closest thing I had for a shotgun, I once again had to borrow. Continuing the family tradition of hunting no matter what, my father helped me skip school to go for turkeys.
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