I will fill my freezer, one way or another

It’s a good thing I hunt birds.

My plans for an antelope hunt fell apart this week when I failed to draw a tag.

I had earlier been notified that I hadn’t drawn a special elk permit, and my attempt to draw a permit for a bighorn ewe was also a bust.

So I’ll hunt birds instead.

That will please the dogs.

Me, too.

There are few things I enjoy more than hunting birds, but antelope hunting is right up there.

It’s been a while since I drew a tag. Pronghorn numbers are still down in the areas I like to hunt. The 1,000 head of antelope that crossed the ice of Fort Peck Lake a few years ago never returned. There appears to have been a good crop of fawns in recent years, but apparently not a good enough crop for me to draw a tag.

So there will be no need to crawl on my belly through the sagebrush, no need to dig through the medicine cabinet for tweezers to pull prickly pear cactus spines from my knees.

I won’t spend hours glassing the prairie, looking for white dots in the distance. I won’t get to plan a stalk, watch it fail, and plan another, when the antelope reappear somewhere else. And with no tag in my pocket, I expect to see a lot of antelope this fall, probably some good bucks, too.

On the other hand, failing to draw an elk tag for the Breaks was a disappointment, but doesn’t mean I can’t hunt elk. I have a tag for the general season. I’ll just have to travel a little farther to fill it.

I had the best odds of drawing a ewe tag --- something like a one-in-three chance -- but this wasn’t my year. If I’m going to eat wild sheep this fall I’ll have to rely on the generosity of friends who had better luck in the drawing.

So I’ll hunt birds with little distraction. Except for the time it will take to fill a deer tag, I’ll concentrate on what flies.

For months now, I’ve been waiting to see what tags I might draw, and dreaming about the hunts that await. I recently checked the freezers to see if there was enough space for all the meat I was going to bring home. I guess I’ll try to fill them with garden produce instead.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]