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About The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 26, 2020)
MyEagleNews.com // Grant County Hunting Journal 2020 // 23 SHOOTING THE BREEZE THE BLISSFULLY IGNORANT “IT ISN’T THAT CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY MEANS NOTHING; IT’S THAT IT DOESN’T MEAN EVERYTHING.” —Dale Valade By Dale Valade For the Blue Mountain Eagle S ome years ago, I was elk hunting in Umatilla National Forest up above Spray, and near the end of my stalk, I came upon an old skid road and decided to walk it out to the main road where I could wait to be picked up by some- one in our party. Nobody had cell phones back then, not sure they would’ve worked up there even if we did. Not long after I had started down this road, I saw another hunter exiting a thicket with the Dale same idea. No matter, I Valade wasn’t seeing anything to shoot at anyways. As I neared the fella, I waved to make sure he’d seen me, and he smiled and waved back in acknowledgment. I could see he stood about 5-feet, 7-inches tall in his Army surplus “Mickey Mouse” boots, was wearing wool pants and a red flannel jacket and a felt hat with a shorter brim. It probably was a fedora at some point, but it sure wasn’t anymore. He was girded about with a wide leather belt that had only a few old cartridges in loops and a Ka-Bar knife dangling off of it. Like everything else the old boy car- ried with him, his rifle had seen more than a few miles. I could tell it was a Winchester Model 94 but couldn’t tell which caliber. We passed the short time with small talk in sort of a half-whisper, betraying the fact that we both somehow still held out hope that we might walk up on an elk. He was quite a friendly chap. We will call him Harry. As we neared the main road, we came across a downed log and had a seat. It was there that the real conversation took place. I was about to inquire about Harry’s rifle when he beat me to the punch and asked about mine. That day I was carrying a Rem- ington 700 in 8mm Remington Magnum loaded with Sierra 220-grain Gameking handloads. As he looked it over, I spewed ballistics and numbers like some guy read- ing the disclaimer at the end of an infomer- cial on TV. But despite my best efforts, it was no sale. Harry handed back my rifle, Contributed photo Dale Valade shot this buck on the last day of the season in 2018. largely unimpressed, saying, “When I was one of Harry’s folks wandered up on us in in the service, anything that big came on an old Dodge Ram pickup. Harry collected his prized punkin-chunker from wheels!” my youthfully ignorant After an awkward hands and waved as silence, he asked if he climbed into the I would like to cab, wishing me see his rifle. luck. Once I quickly All these wiped the years later, drool from I’ve come to my chin, realize just I grasped how smart and the rifle how lucky old from Harry’s Harry and others extended hands like him really are. to give it a look He had probably hap- see. He warned me that pily hunted all of his it was loaded, and after Contributed photo life with that old Win- I had completed a short inspection, he asked me Columnist Dale Valade sights in his chester. Maybe it was what I thought. Although rebuilt .30-06 rifle in the spring of even a well-used hand- me-down when he got old guns have always 2016. it. Possibly it was his interested me, I couldn’t believe that anybody would willingly take one and only rifle, unlike most of us with a a .32 Winchester Special to go elk hunting. library of guns to choose from. He bought What if he had to take a longer shot? Did his ammo at Wal-Mart, only when it was on he even know his muzzle velocity? It didn’t sale, and darned his socks when they wore thin. Unlike me, he didn’t stew over laser even have a scope, just buckhorn sights. Tragically, before I could inform him rangefinders, high-dollar optics with cus- of the many flaws in his choice of weapon, tom dials and mounts or spend countless hours stewing over ballistics charts, test- ing every new “wonder bullet” that came along in his meticulously prepared hand- loads. He didn’t burn up boxes of ammo in several agonizing hours shooting a veritable howitzer off of a bench rest to prepare him- self for that proverbial “last day at sundown ‘sniper’ shot.” He spent no time reading Kuiu, Danner or Havalon product reviews and took no part in Black Friday sales nor social media feuds. Harry was in the woods not just to kill something but to enjoy some freedom from the hustle and bustle of the world — yes, even from the hunting world. Harry refused to exchange the simple pleasures of hunt- ing for any sort of edge (real or implied) afforded him by all the modern gear and gadgets. I see now that he really was on to something there. By that time in my life, I had already read several grocery sacks — paper not plastic — full of the various hunting and shooting magazines. My young mind was filled with charts, numbers, muzzle veloc- ities, sectional densities and ballistic coef- ficients. Not old Harry. He wasn’t bur- dened with such information, or if he was, he didn’t let it bother him too badly. Nope, what he knew was there were elk in those hills and his old ‘94 would fill his freezer if he got lucky and did his part. It must truly be blissful to just “go hunting.” It isn’t that cutting edge technology means nothing; it’s that it doesn’t mean everything. I think we hunters and shooters of today get so caught up in the minutiae that we sometimes miss the big things. We literally can’t see the for- est for the trees, it would seem. We sometimes get to thinking that the more money we invest will not only make us more successful in the field but more happy in the heart. Harry under- stood that it’s the little things about hunting, and life in general, that are of the most worth. I never saw old Harry again, but I think about him every so often. He’d be 100 years old at least if he’s still around, lugging that old .32 Winchester Special looking for elk in his Mickey Mouse boots and enjoying every bliss- ful minute of it. Dale Valade, a local country gent with a love for the outdoors, handloading, hunting and shooting, writes a regular column for the Blue Mountain Eagle.
