Journal Entry (November 6, 1994)

Today, I am posting a journal entry from November 6, 1994:

This time of year, snowstorms swab through the high ranges, dislodging summer's elk.  Slowly, the elk trickle down to lower elevations, the herd bulls bugling and thrashing saplings with their antlers as they push cows and calves.  At the same time, from the lowest points in the blonde valleys, men ascend the foothills hills.

The point where men meet elk is hunting season.

I no longer hunt for big game, having many years ago lost the heart for it.  Just the same, I occasionally accompany friends on the hunt, packing only my camera and a lunch.  Other times, when asked, I might help a friend retrieve game from the mountains. 

In years past I have helped the St. Clair family butcher and package deer and elk.  Two days ago, Leo (age sixty-seven) and his daughter (eight months pregnant) dispatched a cow elk in the Big Belt Mountains, and dragged it back to Leo's place.  Today, I walked down and helped them butcher the elk.

I must admit, something primal an unshakable within me enjoys butchering harvested game animals.

The rose-colored muscles of game animals fascinate me to no end...the way they gather and rush to the whitening tendon points that look like snow-capped mountains, the way the ribs stand like lodgepole pine, the way the muscles layer into thick fabrics.  I am not repulsed by the damp cave-smell of freshly cut meat.

Slicing through the dark meat as I divided part of the rump into steaks, I felt almost as if I were cutting through the earth itself—my knife a river carving hard into red hills. Dark folds, cutbanks, promontories appeared at each turn; some features sloughed away as the knife pared the cool mass.

As we butchered, we spoke kindly of the animals taken from the mountains.  We spoke poorly of the hunter seeking only the heft of antlers, of the hunter that wounds and walks away.

The St. Clair’s gave me a few packages of steak to take with me when I left.  Lugging the packages up through the juniper and sage hills as I walked home, I paused twice to gaze out over the storm-bred mountains, the home of elk.  The weight of the steaks soon fatigued my arms, as any such thing should.

—Mitchell Hegman