Overcommitment: A Blur of a Season To Remember

Checking my online draw results last spring, I saw the increasingly familiar “unsuccessful” next to my name and the same for my wife and daughter’s applications. This meant that I would be relegated to “over-the-counter” elk hunting in Colorado if I was wanting to hunt. I’ve done pretty well for myself on these hunts due to hard work and local knowledge, but hunting pressure is extreme and this often creates a lower quality experience. I hoped that a friend would draw a sheep or moose tag and I would have a chance to go on one of these coveted hunts. What happened during the next couple of weeks was unusual, to say the least.

I started getting calls from people saying they had drawn moose and sheep tags. These weren’t just acquaintances but all people I consider good friends. I had encouraged all of them to apply for certain tags in particular, with the hope I would be able to come along.

Opportunity Surplus

There were two friends with moose tags in the same unit where I lived and two friends with sheep tags in units I had recommended to them because of my knowledge of these places. Conveniently, the sheep and moose units just happened to be about 300 miles apart. Plus, I had agreed to help outfitters Clay Hill and Jim Breck Bean with the statewide auction sheep tag holder. To really complicate things, all of this was to basically take place in September, and I only had a ten-day block of time off from my normal work schedule. There was also Melissa, a fellow firefighter and friend from my fire department who was hoping I could do some scouting with her and her husband for a sheep tag she had drawn in a unit I was very familiar with.

Fortunately, none of these people were complete hunting rookies, so they had the knowledge and skillset to get the job done. However, I was put in a position where I had to make some choices, and this added stress to my life because I didn’t want to disappoint any of my friends.

What I found myself doing this last summer was more scouting in more places than I have ever done in hopes that this homework before the season would pay off quickly when these hunts opened.

Chipping Away

The auction tag hunt went well because the ram we hunted was very much a home-body during September and was willing to stay in the area I had seen him in the year before. The Statewide Auction Tag season lasts through the end of the year for this hunt, but I knew in October this ram would leave his summer haunts and start heading to an area where he would be very difficult to locate. We made quick work of the hunt, and the hunter was very pleased to be taking home the ram he had dreamed about. I also got the great news that Melissa with her husband Karl had taken a fantastic ram on the opening day of her season.

Moving on to the next hunt, my buddy Jeff Demaske’s daughter Madie had a Shiras moose tag and had high hopes of taking a B&C bull like Jeff had taken in 2017 in the same unit. Madie was finishing law school, studying for the bar exam, and had no real time to scout so I volunteered to do some looking around for her. My wife Shellie and I had located two nice bulls while scouting in August, but I knew that as soon as these Shiras bulls rubbed off their velvet, they would start roaming and be more difficult to find. One of these was a huge, wide, 50-plus-inch bull but had only a single spike brow instead of forks or palmation up front. The bull was impressive, to say the least.

Evolving Situation

I had to work at the firehouse on the opening day of muzzleloader moose season and, as luck had it, Madie and Jeff encountered this bull briefly that morning. The bull wandered off and into a sea of dark timber before they could close the deal. Success at this moment would have radically shortened this hunt, but mature Shiras moose are no slam dunk. Madie texted me a short video clip of that bull, and he looked even bigger than he had in velvet a few weeks before. We all decided she would hunt for this bull exclusively, but what we didn’t know was that a couple of hours later, this bull was wounded by another hunter and was never recovered. For the rest of the muzzleloader season, we were essentially and unknowingly hunting a ghost.

On the way back to my house after a morning’s hunt during that week, I had an email notification pop up on my phone from Colorado Parks and Wildlife. I was next in line for a mountain goat tag that someone had turned in the day before that season started, and it was mine if I wanted it. I found myself at this point now five days into a month-long season. I had done zero scouting, I had several commitments, and my knee replacement surgery from last spring had left me far less than 100% mountain-fit. I called the number listed, told the guy who I was, and he asked me if I wanted the tag. I thought that it was fairly obvious seeing as I was calling, but I replied enthusiastically and politely, “Yes!” anyways and stifled my tendency for sarcasm.

Pressure Building

Now, I really injected some complication into my already busy month. I still was planning on heading to the San Juans (300 miles away!) to help another friend, Brian, on his bighorn hunt that started up during the second half of September. Plus, since Madie had not been successful in muzzleloader season, she could hunt during the rifle season for moose the first two weeks of October, which was the end of Brian’s sheep season. Additionally, I didn’t even mention my good friend Aaron Neilson had planned on coming to Colorado for his Shiras moose hunt then. My mountain goat season ended the first week of October, and I hadn’t even scouted yet.

I could feel the stress building as I knew that by luck and circumstance, I had overcommitted to all of my friends and was feeling the pressure. Keep in mind, this is self-imposed because no one actually pressured me on any level and they were all very understanding of my predicament. Still, I knew that every one of them had a very special, if not once-in-a-lifetime tag and wanted my help.

At this point, I was waking up at night thinking about all of it; the stress was real and borderline overwhelming. It was time for a sit down with my therapist, AKA Shellie Duplan, and let her soothing words help me through this. She said all the right things, and I felt the stress level moderate but not disappear. One day at a time would be my approach, yet the feeling of time slipping away ate at me relentlessly.

Run Ragged

When I went to help Brian on his sheep hunt, I was relieved to see that our mutual friend Brock had taken some time off to help out. We got lucky and found some rams feeding on a mountain familiar to me on day two, including the kind of bighorn anyone who draws a sheep tag in Colorado hopes to take. This was a mature, nearly full curl ram with some age, but he was in an incredibly gnarly location with sketchy approach routes laden with cliffs and unstable talus slopes. “Sheep country,” you say, but this was high-end gnarly even by sheep country standards and was akin to some of the insane spots that cagey old Dall rams find to survive in the Chugach mountains of Alaska.

Although we made a big climb and a long stalk to get into position, the rams entered a steep and rocky chute to bed for the day and never offered up an opportunity. The weather worsened and snow was in the forecast, so we backed out late in the day. The next day we were all too physically spent to make another climb, but I left for home feeling like Brian was in good shape with a great ram located and a plan in place.

I had arranged a vacation swap and some shift trades for work, so I had a pretty decent window of time off ahead to around the 10^th of October. I spent the next few days looking for cow moose (bull magnets) and trying to locate roaming bulls, but it was the peak of the rut and they were on the move. The rifle moose opener arrived, and I was once again helping out my friends, the Demaskes, to try and locate a big mature bull for Madie. There was no shortage of younger bull moose running around but, by rule, this was literally a once-in-a-lifetime tag, and the chance of ever drawing again was extremely slim. Madie had taken a nice Shiras bull in Wyoming a few years back and was now looking for something really special. We would look hard for a couple of days, and then I would take a few days to try and find a representative billy goat.

Welcome Respite

Fast forward a week later; I had found and taken an exceptional mountain goat billy, and we had packed a nice bull moose off the mountain that Madie had taken with both her parents present the day after. Unfortunately and mainly due to three early snowstorms, Brian’s sheep hunt ended with the ram still on the mountain to live another year. I was finally able to feel a wave of relief spread through my mind, as the past month was a blur with days blending into one another.

What I did take away from these six incredibly busy weeks of my life is that there comes a point in all this we do in hunting and outdoor pursuits when it is worth tapping the brakes, slowing down, and savoring the moments. After all, we are unintentionally creating memories. When I say “unintentional,” I mean that it doesn’t seem like the creation of a memory is the primary intent when we are in the midst of the experience, but the memories seem to be the most valuable to us as the years pass.

It is the immersion in the immediacy and also a physical act of pursuit and of the hunt that harkens back to a primitive psychological reward system of securing food and providing for others. This drive within us seems almost illogical in our modern times, but it is a skill and ability that we are separated from by only a few generations. You don’t eliminate tens of thousands of years of evolution in a short period of a century or so.

Along with acknowledging and embracing the act of the hunt is the ability to remember and reflect on these special times as the years have gone by. Have you told yourself that it seems as though last season was but a blur because of all the hunts participated in and the lack of time to enjoy each of them fully because your schedule was so busy? Think of how difficult it will be to try and remember this blur a decade from now.

Each of us has our tolerance and ability to maintain different schedules, but I will say that I feel any of us can do too much, thus allowing the quality of the experience to suffer. I know, at this point, what the sweet spot is for me on hunting time and what it takes to find the quality of animal I’m looking for. There is a quality vs. quantity relationship when you consider how difficult public land is to hunt in this day and age. The more time you devote to hunting a certain animal, the more likely you are to reach the goal of taking home what you want. You are relying on simple luck if you hope to kill three trophy mule deer in three states in three weeks. It sounds appealing at face value, but the odds are stacked high against you.

My wife said something to me in one of our talks that helped out and rang true. “You are lucky to have the friends you do, that trust you enough and want your help on these special hunts.” For that, I’m grateful. Loving words from a wise woman and a network of friends that call me the same.