2020 was by far the worst year for pretty much everyone. In my case maybe 2014 was worse since I was sick the entire year but 2020 has been one thing after another mostly hijacked by the Coronavirus pandemic. I had such big plans starting the year, I had stopped working (again) and was looking forward to several big hunting trips, camping and travel to the LA sunshine. All that lasted about eight weeks.
After a failure to see elk in Oregon back in August, a blown mule deer buck in September and then a follow up elk trip moved by the outfitter then taken out by winter storms I was onto Plan C in order to avoid a meat crisis in a few months. I started looking into Axis deer hunts in Hawaii or Texas and ended up finding a special being run from Southern Buck Outfitters for Axis does and figured. It was a free-range hunt instead of a high-fence hunt which I liked and also semi-guided which meant we’d be hunting more or less on our own but dropped off by the outfitter. I put the trip together with my nephew Dalton and hunting partner Lisa in a matter of days and then quickly I found myself on an Alaska flight to San Antonio.
I was given a shotgun the day I was born, that is how much my dad was into hunting back in 1960. I grew up having him teach me to shoot and ultimately tagged along on many a hunting trip going after squirrels, rabbits and pheasant. By the time I was 14 or 15 I was going out with friends fishing or hunting, sometimes both in a day. My parents would drop us off in the woods with loaded shotguns and come back to pick us up hours later, it is amazing no one ever got hurt. I did my last hunt as a teen home from college break, some college friends wanted to go bird hunting so I went along and bagged a pheasant which was possibly the first thing I ever shot on my own.
I stopped hunting shortly after that trip and didn’t do it for decades. I kept fishing most of my adult life but it was almost all catch and release trout fishing. I even gave up fishing for part of the time but ended up back into it since I just loved it so much. When I got sick and needed to eat meat I got back into hunting which was a bit of a challenge as an adult even having grown up doing it. Now there are aspiring adult-onset hunters or fishers out there and they face a big challenge getting into the sport. Having done it I hope I can offer a bit of advice.
Growing up all we ever shot was lead and when I started hunting again I have to admit I used lead shotgun shells where I could and took my first deer with a lead bullet. After that though I got religion and went lead free this season and found that non-toxic worked just as well as lead and is much better for the environment. For more info on hunting with non-toxic ammo check out the Hunting With Non-Lead Ammunition website or this MeatEater blogpost.
Locally for pheasants I needed to use non-toxic shot because of the wetland habitat we hunt but this year I’ve only used non-toxic anywhere bird hunting. I like the Federal Premium Prairie Storm FS Steel and that is all I’ve used now for two seasons. The stuff takes down birds with either my 12 or 20 gauge shotguns.
For elk hunting I used a 140 grain Barnes TSX-BT bullet loaded with 55 grains of IMR 4831 powder in a .270 cartridge. This bullet knocked my cow elk down in it’s tracks at about 150 yards no problem. I had also loaded 130 grain Hornady GMX bullets for use with deer during Modern Firearm season, these use 56 grains of IMP 4831 and are great because I can use the lead SST bullet at the range and switch to the all copper GMX for hunting.
For muzzleloader I switched to a Federal Premium B.O.R. Lock 270 grain bullet and it knocked down the doe in its tracks no problem. I had tried several bullets and found this one gave me the best patterns at 50 and 100 yards at the range plus performed well in the field so I am sticking with it.
After filling my elk tag I kind of figured I was done with big game hunting for the year and that my Washington deer tag would go unfilled. I had hunted a few days during early muzzleloader season without so much as seeing a deer and figured that would be it. When we thought we may have had a mix-up on the elk samples for CWD then I realized that late muzzleloader season was my last chance to put some meat in the freezer should I have to throw out my elk so I started looking again. I put out cameras locally again but the farm was flooded so I started looking east of the mountains back to special unit 3372 by Sunnyside and unit 130 over by Cheney. I opted for Cheney since I had seen no deer at all in 3372 so I made a plan and set up a trip in early December for a few days to hit unit 130. I had scoped out the small amount of BLM land there and gotten a bit of intel and also found Miller Ranch which offered access to its private land mostly via guided hunts. I talked to Scott Miller and he was very busy with bird hunters and another doe hunter but gave me an offer of a small trespass fee to hunt on my own and I took him up on it. (I know this wasn’t a Public Land hunt which I fully support but I’m taking baby steps, on my own in private this year, on my own in public next and I’d so far struck out on public looking in early season.) Of course a few days before the trip we finally got resolution on the elk, mine was safe, and I really didn’t need to do the hunt but decided to go anyway since it would be my first totally solo multi-day hunt and I had scouted out some nice looking canyons where I hoped the deer were hanging out.
Three years ago I ran my last half marathon, at the Redmond Watershed in fact, in 1:54:40 which was a PR for me on a trail half. Right after that half I got injured which wouldn’t heal and then I got SIBO which took forever to heal so three years later I was finally ready to run another half marathon. The Watershed was the perfect place to do this since it is one of the easier courses around and doesn’t have too much elevation with only 1100′ of gain, I often do that in a 4-5 mile run at Tiger.
In one of my recent posts I talked a bit about exercise in relation to the Primary Foods concept and a bit about how I slowly got back in shape as I healed up from SIBO. I thought this topic deserved a bit more discussion since it is an important part of my life and I know many people who are currently struggling with how to get back in shape after being ill for a year or longer.
Before SIBO I was in the best shape of my life. I had come off a solid year with a personal trainer, I had run several trail marathons and an ultra marathon and was pretty much doing 13+ mile trail run every Saturday. When I got sick all that fitness went out the door. I lost a lot of weight, down a total of 35-40 lbs and with that weight went a lot of muscle mass. With Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV)( coursing through my system I was exhausted and seriously unable to get up and do much of anything so all my cardio conditioning went out the door too. After a year of this I went from being in great shape to being in the worst shape I’d probably been in for most of my adult life.
For the last few weeks we have spent pretty much every afternoon sitting by the river watching salmon. Our little stretch of river has become prime spawning ground for the pink salmon which were in huge numbers this year, upwards of 6.5 million fish in the Puget Sound rivers. The Raging was so low that I wasn’t expecting to see any but a week or so after they appeared in the Tolt we got our first fish. Now we have a dozen or more which provide us with a few hours of entertainment every afternoon. I shot the video with my iPhone a few days ago so you can see a bit of what we sit and watch every afternoon.
Sunrise on Tinkham Peak from Mirror Lake
In May when Catherine and I were in Portland she brought up the idea of maybe doing some backpacking again but trying to go ultralight instead of dealing with the heavy gear we had before. We went to REI down there and it just so happened they were having a huge sale the next day and there is no sales tax in OR so we jumped in and bought gear. Finally yesterday we got a chance to use it for real aside from setting up the tent in the backyard and lighting the stove just to be sure we could do it.
Really sick at the start of the year.
I had a lot of plans for 2014 when I did my review at the end of last year. Unfortunately within a few days of that post my gut revolted in a big way and I started on a downward spiral that led to the toughest year I’ve dealt with. Just after Christmas when we finished with a 30-day cleanse diet I started having a lot of pain and churning in my gut every day after I’d eat. I was dropping weight fast and was going to the doctor every few days as we tried to figure out what was going on. Finally after an ultrasound, CT-scan, colonoscopy and at least a quart of blood work I found that I had Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth or SIBO in February.