Striptease

Bowhunting for elk is hard.

There’s a thousand analogies, memes and inspirational quotes that could go here. “Nothing in life worth having is easy. The obstacle is the way. It’s always darkest before the dawn.” We've all seen them. Generic little inspirational nuggets, placed over a photo of a sunrise and shared by elderly women on Facebook. We scroll right past, every now and then giving them a courtesy like (or an equally encouraging comment if you’re another elderly woman).

The reality is, most of us don’t really face hard things on a daily basis. Traffic is a first world problem. Publishing deadlines are not life threatening. Gym workouts rarely push us as hard as we can go. The majority of folks haven’t faced real challenges for decades. Things like World War II, the Great Depression or settling the Wild West. For me, elk hunting is about as close as I get to a real, raw, old-school challenge: simple in nature, yet daunting in scale. 

The mountains will strip you bare. 

Those rugged peaks strip you of your resolve, your reserves and your cell service. There is no Uber, Google, Instacart or YouTube…just a bugle tube. There is no diner, coffee shop or repair shop. I can’t even imaging what it took for the Native Americans and early American settlers to thrust themselves into this primitive wilderness without an OnX offline map showing them where to go. 

The elk will tease you. 

Bull elk tease you with an unexpected bugle, raising your spirits and surging your adrenaline, only to drift deep into the dark green recesses of a north facing slope. They fire back at a challenge bugle, rush in to defend their cows, only to turn and round up those same cows and push them up and over the ridge, the sound of their bugles echoing as they leave. They tempt you to chase them into the bottom of a canyon, only to leave you empty handed and alone as darkness falls with the daunting task of hiking 1,000 vertical feet back out by headlight. Yet we get up again each morning, fueled by an odd combination of optimism and ignorance, only to do it all over again. It’s like a Groundhog Day that requires preference points.  

Every night, Kim and I take turns putting our two kids to bed. Towards the end, there's a magic window of time when they’ve stopped squirming, stalling and asking silly questions. They’re tired, sweet and vulnerable. During this brief window, can get any information you want out of them. It’s also a time for me to be vulnerable and open with them as well. Here’s a recent example with my 8-year-old son:

“Hey Rhett”

“What Dad?”

“You know when I was working on the tractor this evening and said those bad words when I busted my knuckle? You know you’re not supposed to say those, right?”

“Yeah Dad, I know. You did it last time too.”

“I know buddy, I’ll try to do better next time, I just want you to be better than me.”

Every couple months, I’ll ask them a simple question at bed time: “How do you know that your daddy loves you?” Often I’ll get a canned response like “I just know” or “You play with me.” But I never settle for their first response, always asking again and prodding for something deeper. What I really want to know is this: what specific actions or activities do we do together that make you feel loved? As a busy dad with lots of commitments and a business to run, I want to double down on the things that really matter to them; those few activities that really make an impact on them. One night I asked Rhett this question and he threw me a curveball

“You teach me to do hard things.”

That hit me. Rhett is at an age where he needs to start growing out of little boy stuff. He needs to take on physical challenges to gain confidence and learn mental toughness that will carry him through high school and beyond. I make him help me chop wood and maintain our home and property. I coach his tackle football team and push him to play hard and embrace the physical challenges of the sport. This summer I let him operate our 35 horse tractor solo for brief stints. Next summer he’ll run a weed eater. These things can be hard, even scary, the first time he does them. 

And that’s the point.  

As an artist, husband, father, entrepreneur, boss and a man living in a world that seems to think less of men all the time, I’ve had to deal with countless challenges and personal failures. It’s like finding yourself empty handed at the bottom of a lonely, deep canyon at dark and facing the hike out. Excuses, blaming and whining won’t do you any good. You better take a breath, get your mind right and put one foot in front of the other if you want to make it back to camp.

In those respects, I think elk hunting is a great metaphor for life, especially if you’re determined to live a remarkable one. Hunting the mountains is training ground for adversity in pursuit of a goal, even a goal that seems out of your control and out of reach at times. 

We didn’t kill an elk this trip. I didn’t even have a tag (I punched mine last year, and you can read about it here). But as I sit here in the Denver airport at gate B26 with my body and my laptop recharging, I feel stronger. I feel extra definition in my quads and leanness in my shoulders from hiking for 10 days. I’ve learned a lot about elk hunting this trip Probably just as much about life. In an odd way I feel more prepared for the first-world challenges that await me back at home. 

Elk hunting is aften a push and pull of opposing forces. Like knowing when to call and when to shut up...when to force the issue and when to be patient…when to go up and when to go down. So I feel it’s only fitting to start this story with the word "striptease" and end with a passage from the Bible: 

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. – James 1:12

Good luck to all of you chasing big game this season. Whether you're after elk at 9,600 feet or ducks at sea level, I hope the challenges of the outdoors make you stronger and more resilient when you eventually come back to civilization. 

View my entire lineup of Elk and Western Big Game Art inspired by hunts like this one.