On the Hunt for Elk

Story and Photos by Levi Armichardy

At 3:30 am, Dad wakes my brother Tucker and me. Groggily, we slide out of our sleeping bags and get dressed. While Mom makes breakfast, we prepare our packs for the day. Our friends, Chance and his son Sam, come into the wall tent. At 4 am, all six of us get in the car. The headlights illuminate only a small portion of Hells Canyon, the deepest canyon in North America. After a few miles on the paved road, we turn off onto a single-lane dirt road that climbs up and out of the canyon.

In the dark, we see only a black abyss on the left side of the road. Tucker, Sam, and I attempt to doze in the back seat, but the bumpy road makes it impossible. After two hours we arrive at a saddle on the rim of the canyon. Before us to the west, steep grassy hillsides drop three thousand feet to the reservoir that was once the Snake River. Behind us lie the towns of Cuprum and Bear, and farther out Council, with Council Mountain on the distant skyline.

At 6 am in November, the sun isn’t quite out yet but the sky is beginning to turn from predawn gray to orange. A foot of powdery windswept snow covers the ground. A cold wind blows from the east. I’m wearing four layers but the wind cuts right through them, chilling me. With enough light to see by, we begin glassing three big ridges downstream (north) of us, looking for elk. We spot a few, but the wide open slopes of Hells Canyon often make it more of a challenge to get within shooting range of an elk than to find one.

We talk it over and decide on a plan. The ridge we’re on continues up to our left. At about one mile, it intersects with the first big ridge. At about three miles, it meets the second. Chance and Sam will take the first one, and Dad, Tucker, and I the second. With full light now, we say goodbye to Mom, who has to go to town, and set off.

So much controversy and misunderstanding surround hunting today that I’ll take a moment to explain why I love it, with the disclaimer that my views do not reflect those of all or probably even most hunters. There are the standard reasons, of course: the thrill, Nature, the self-sufficiency, etc. All those are influences, but for me hunting at its core is a way to deepen my connections—to people, to the land, and to life itself.

I grew up hunting, as did pretty much everybody else in my family. Before I could hunt, I have memories of stories told to me by friends and family: visits to hunting camp, and days spent cutting and storing the meat Dad brought home from his hunts. I must have asked Dad a hundred times or more about the antlers that hang on our wall and in our barn.

The author (center) with his dad and brother. Courtesy Levi Armichardy.

Glassing for elk in Hells Canyon.

On the roam for big game.

The tent and the view.

After I started hunting, more memories came: first elk, first deer, good times sitting around a campfire or wood stove in hunting camps with friends, hiking up a ridge in a snowstorm my first year hunting alone, packing out meat on my back. These memories are a part of me, a part that forms a connection with the people I’ve shared them with. Each new memory reinforces that connection.

Hunting also deepens my connection to the land. When I hunt, I am no longer an “outsider” to nature. I have to be aware of animal movements, weather patterns, plant growth, topography, and myriad other things involved in an ecosystem. In short, I have to become a part of the land, which is as it should be.

A hunter plays a role in the ecosystem. Every hunter is a predator. We pursue and kill prey, and our actions directly affect those populations. The role of predator is unavoidable. We can choose how we play that role, though. Irresponsible hunting can disrupt ecological processes but hunting itself is an ecological process and not inherently disruptive. I define responsible hunting as being in accordance with the ecology of an area. Ecological hunters recognize their role within an ecosystem and they do not attempt to overstep, neglect, or circumvent that role.

Such hunting requires an intimate knowledge of ecology. Unfortunately, many people have lost that knowledge and modern hunting is not always ecological. I believe a return to ecological hunting could be a major step in solving our current environmental crises.

Though it may seem counterintuitive, hunting deepens my connection to life itself. Killing something is not a trivial action, and there’s value in such a close relationship with death. It is a fact of life that something must die in order for us to live, but we don’t like to think about it. As a society, we have managed to separate ourselves from the process of obtaining food. There is little to no connection between the meat one buys at the grocery store and the animal it came from. In hunting, there is no separation. The blood is literally on your hands.

As a hunter, I’ve had to face the reality that life and death are intertwined. When I was younger, my first emotion at a kill was usually excitement. Now it’s deep gratitude. It is through death that I have learned to truly appreciate life.

I do not believe there is a moral basis for not hunting and killing animals. As I said before, every life requires the death of something else. If not animals, then plants, microbiota, or ecosystems. I have no problems with people who do not eat meat, nor am I advocating for everyone to hunt or eat meat.

I do believe, however, that people should at least be aware of where their food comes from and ideally play an active role in providing their own food. It is the relationship between humans and food that I promote. I find this relationship primarily through hunting. Others may find it in farming, gardening, or ranching.

The hike up the ridge is relatively easy at first. But the steep and icy two-track disappears soon after we separate at the first ridge. The snow gets deeper and the footing more unstable as we make our way upwards. As the tallest, I break trail through snow that is three to four feet deep in some places. Layers of clothing come off, cold air fills our lungs, and muscles burn. At last, we reach the second ridge at an elevation of 6,800 feet and begin going down.

It’s still treacherous footing of snow-covered rocks and brush but a little easier with gravity on our side. At 1 pm, we seek out a sunny but not windy spot for lunch, which isn’t easy when the sun and wind come from the same direction. Eventually, we find shelter beneath a Douglas fir. Here, we build a fire, eat, and take a nap.

Around 3 pm, we start down again, with Dad in front. The ridge soon widens a little, and we find ourselves traversing a snowy hillside covered in middle-aged ponderosa pines and Douglas fir. A gap in the trees allows me to see down into a grassy bowl below us. There, in the open, is a herd of elk.

“Elk,” I hiss in a whisper, and we all crouch down and freeze. The trees offer some cover but there’s still a clear line of sight for the elk. No good way to move without being seen. Dad ranges the elk at just over three hundred yards—out of range of Tucker’s gun and abilities, and near the limits of mine. But with no way to get closer, I decide to take the shot.

Reclining on my backpack, I rest my rifle on my knees, pointed downward at a considerable angle. I watch the elk through my scope, waiting for a cow to turn broadside. When one does, I take a breath and pull the trigger.

The shot booms out into the empty expanse of the canyon. The elk move away over the ridge, out of range and out of sight. Except for one. The cow I’d shot at  has moved farther down the hillside, away from the rest of the herd. We can’t make out any hits, but clearly something happened. We stay and watch her until she beds down in the brush at the bottom of the bowl. Darkness is approaching and we’re still five thousand feet above camp, so we decide to leave and return the next day.

Every hunter has a code of ethics by which they align their actions. It is this code that ultimately makes hunting sustainable. Unethical hunting leads to overharvest and extinction. The ethics themselves differ slightly from person to person, for they are not inherent in the hunt. Rather they come from the hunter’s experiences. Often it is through being an unethical hunter that one learns to be an ethical hunter.

For me, the defining feature of an ethical hunter is respect for the animal and the ecosystem that supports it. An ethical hunter sees as animal as a separate entity, a being with its own life, independent of human wishes and desires. To an unethical hunter, the animal is merely a resource for human consumption. Ethical hunters respect the animal’s right to a fair chase, using primarily their own wits and physical abilities to stalk and kill an animal.

This right does not exclude the use of horses or dogs. At the end of that chase, ethical hunters respect the animal’s right to a quick death. They choose their shots carefully and pull the trigger only when reasonably sure of a quick kill. Unethical hunters are not careful with their shots and often wound or maim animals, prolonging death. After a kill, an ethical hunter uses as much of the animal as possible.

Ethical hunters take measures to preserve the health of the ecosystem. They do not pollute, damage, or destroy the earth, waters, plants, or animals any more than is necessary for daily survival. Nor do they advocate for the irrational extermination of wolves, mountain lions, bears, coyotes, and other predators. This does not exclude selective culling or responsible hunting of these animals. Finally, an ethical hunter, in the interest of ecosystem health, actively works to restore ecosystems that have been unnaturally damaged by human actions.

Quietly, we sneak around the backside of the ridge until we’re out of sight. And then down we go. After dropping a thousand feet, we come to the top of a series of rocky outcroppings. Lo and behold, in the middle is another herd of elk. The sun has just faded behind Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains in the west and there is barely enough light to shoot by.

With my elk down on the hillside behind us, it’s Tucker’s turn to shoot. The elk are out of range for his gun, so I hand him mine. Five shots later, a cow staggers, falls, rolls down the open hillside, and comes to a stop in a brushy gully. By the time we reach her, it’s fully dark. We pull out our knives and headlamps and get to work.

Two hours later, at 8 pm, we leave the gully with loaded packs. Around 9:30, I reach the trail. Dad and Tucker are not far behind me. Around 11:30, I walk into camp, drop my pack, briefly fill in Chance, who’d stayed up waiting for us, and head back up the trail to help Dad and Tucker. At half past midnight, we’re all back in camp, with one elk done and another one still on the mountain. It doesn’t take long to fall asleep.

At seven the next morning, we’re on the trail, heading back up the hill. It takes us all morning to get back up to the bowl where we’d last seen the elk. We spread out, and after a few minutes of searching, I find a spot of blood. I follow the trail into the brush, and there I find the cow, right where we’d left her. I take a moment to say a brief mental thank you to the elk and Earth, and then I begin skinning.

By 3 pm we’re heading back down the ridge, again with fully loaded packs. Slowly, taking time to consider every footstep, we make our way down to the trail. We reach it just as the last gray rays of light are fading. Tired and wanting to make the rest of the trip easier, we hang the two hindquarters in a tree.

From here, the trail dips down into a creek bottom, then up to the ridge on the other side before the final two-thousand-foot drop to camp. We follow it by the light of our headlamps. I’m in the front and Dad and Tucker are a few hundred yards behind. Hiking at night is an interesting experience. The headlamp creates a bubble of light that extends about fifty feet ahead and beside me. Details fade in distinction as the eye moves toward the edge of the bubble. Beyond the edge is only darkness.

An instinctual fear surfaces, making me hyper-aware of every shape and sound. A branch or log that I would barely glance at in daylight takes on a new look in the dark. The wind has disappeared, leaving a quietness in which the smallest sounds seem amplified. I know there’s probably nothing out there but you can’t fight instinct.

There’s beauty, too, though. When we reach the ridgetop, we shut off our headlamps and rest for a while. The removal of the light-bubble allows me to see fewer details but more in general. The canyon walls rise up before and behind me, a solid mass of black. Above them the stars are out, with not a cloud in the sky. In the crisp November air, they seem close enough to touch. A few ponderosa pines stand tall, silhouetted by starlight. It’s been a long two days, but there, with stars above me and family beside me, I feel happy and at peace.

We’re back in camp at 8. The next day, Dad and I retrieve the hinds in time for lunch. With that, our hunting season is over. These two days have been among the physically hardest in my life, but I think the same thing every year. The previous year, I carried a hundred-pound pack six miles during hunting season.

In the moment, I definitely wanted the hard day to end. Yet looking back, I wouldn’t trade those days for anything. The hard days of my life have been critical in shaping me, and I wouldn’t be who I am today without them.