Nathan, my 15-year-old grandson, attends Hillcrest High School in Idaho Falls. When I was his age, going to school in Rigby meant actually attending school. Not so with Nathan. He has Mondays off due to the virus. Not that he has a virus or is likely to get seriously ill if he gets the virus, it is just that virus management by committee has upset everything real and turned us into an irrational virtual world fueled by a plandemic. Nathan can actually attend school for the rest of the week. I guess that means that the Chinese Virus only attends school on Monday.
Well, Nathan drew a moose permit and seeing how he was out of school on Monday anyway, he went moose hunting with his father last month. The area they drew the permit was not a roadside hunting area. They hiked up and down hills and through meadows and willows for miles before spotting “the big one.” It was just after the moose fell that they realized that they were miles away from any road and would have to pack this large animal out. Now, realize that while Nathan is a hard-working, strapping lad that towers over six feet and plays lacrosse, his father is a surgeon who has a more sedentary lifestyle and stands somewhere south of six feet. They both were tired after trekking miles through the bushes to get there and now had to move a moose that weighed at least four times more than they did. Fortunately, they had cell phone coverage and found a man who came with enough pack horses to carry the dismembered moose to their truck where it was eventually packed in 100 pounds of ice.
That evening, my daughter, Jamie, mother of Nathan, was greeted by two smiling and victorious, but very tired, hungry men in hunting gear, covered with bloody moose-gore. She was not impressed. Jamie was not raised in a hunting house. Adventure at the Tall residence consisted of travel, watersports, tennis, and going to BYU football games and musicals. To please her husband, several years ago Jamie went with about six adult family members to the shooting range just west of the Elk Creek Station. She shot a few rounds from the 9 mm pistol, found it to be too loud and uncomfortable, and turned around to tell us that shooting was just too painful, unconscious that she was pointing the pistol right at us with a live round in the chamber. When we all dove for cover, she realized the gravity of her error and dropped the gun into the dirt, shrieked, and began to cry. That is Jamie’s entire experience with weapons, hunting, or anything like that. Her husband, Mark, father of Nathan, does the hunting and fills their freezers with wild game. He also locks the guns in a safe to protect them from Jamie.
Tuesday morning, the moose had an appointment with the butcher and was still on ice in the back of the truck. Mark had a full surgical schedule and Nathan was back to in-person school. Someone had to drive the moose to the butcher for processing. Jamie, that lucky woman who married Mark, approached her assignment with reluctant trepidation. She got into the truck without looking at the tarp. She was driving away and became queasy when in the rearview mirrors, she could see trailing streams of melted ice water and moose gore as she drove down the street. It did not get any better at the butcher shop. Apparently this time of year there are a lot of game animals being processed. Discarded meat processing by-products are difficult to conceal. During the winter, it is not so bad, but on a warm September morning, the trip to the meat packer's was more than Jamie had signed up for. Buzzing flies only made things worse. She started to gag when she arrived and could hardly give directions to the workers. She ran back into the truck and was just beginning to feel like driving home when a worker appeared at the truck window. He said that there were still four legs in the bed of the pickup and wanted to know what she would like him to do with them. Jamie will not tell me what happened after that. Let’s just say that the four legs are no longer in Mark’s pickup and Jamie has refused to have any wild animal parts, memorabilia, or trophies in her home. She still is a little queasy whenever she talks about this, but has stopped gagging and is doing her best to put the moose hunt all behind her — until next year.
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