Was - Hunting runs very strong in our family bloodlines (And now - A game warden tale)

(Stimulated by a Redbadbear discussion.)  January 1 2013

This is a little more on hunting and wildlife.

As I've indicated before, we all -- my family and its connections -- have always  hunted primarily for meat.  Never for trophies. The verve engendered by the hunt is a factor, but a secondary one.  We eat the game we take.

When I was growing up at and around then small town Flagstaff, our region, Northern Arizona, generally considered itself quite apart from Phoenix and its State Capitol, and even from slowly growing but still not-large Tucson.  This applied to a number of state laws -- including saloon hours and hunting.  Several game wardens sent into our part of the state were either killed or wounded via ambush and I don't recall anyone being arrested.  Finally, an informal detente was worked out with the state.  Game wardens who were in Northern Arizona simply didn't enforce laws when it came to local residents who almost always hunted for meat and who didn't shoot doe deer when they were "carrying".  This exceptionalism applied regardless, I should add, of the local person's racial background.  People from Phoenix, Tucson, and out of staters from California especially, were "fair game" for the wardens if these visitors violated anything.

A friend and I were camping for a few days in the mid-1950s -- south of Flag in a lower elevation. We were about the same age and had met at the University of Arizona. He was from an affluent California family and his father was a psychiatrist who had been, during his medical training, psychoanalyzed by Jung.  My friend was, however, sowing some wild oats -- although later he became (unlike myself) a most respectable citizen.  Quite out of season, we shot a buck deer for meat.  I suggested that we take a good part of it to the not far away "Hermits" -- Dick and Jerry, quite advanced in years and of limited financial means -- who lived in the Old Packard Ranch House at the mouth of the Sycamore Canyon complex.  The road to the Hermits came out of the old copper smelting town of Clarkdale, just below the mining camp of Jerome, and ended on a small hill, right above Sycamore Creek.  We parked my friend's car which had California plates.  Carrying the venison in two chunks, we went down to the creek, crossed it in the cold water, and then immediately were at the Old Ranch House.  The Hermits, who had no vehicle, were gone -- obviously temporarily.  We sat down on a log and waited for them.

And then I heard a vehicle coming on the road toward us.  I grabbed the venison and our guns and put them all out of sight behind the log.  We could see a pickup parking by our vehicle -- and a man, sort of dressed in a half-way uniform and a widebrimmed hat, came down toward us.  He was a game warden and he was obviously suspicious as hell. "Let me do the talking," I whispered quickly to my friend.

For our part, our faces glowed pure innocence.  Standing across the creek from us, he asked who we were and where we were from.  Since he was obviously aware of the California plates, I indicated my friend, who remained judiciously silent and who I didn't identify by name, was from northern California. Moving swiftly on, I gave my name and Flagstaff as my home town, mentioning my parents owned some land not far away, near the tiny hamlet of Cornville.  And I told him I was a good friend of the Hermits.

But that didn't seem to quite do it.  "So you've spent some time around here", he said.

I responded affirmatively -- and then mentioned that, not too long before, I had spent several days traveling down the full length of Sycamore Canyon.

(As I've written elsewhere:  "The Sycamore Canyon Wilderness Area well to the southwest of Flagstaff (Arizona) is -- Real Wilderness. It's long, wide, incredibly rough.    No roads, no sedentary human habitations, no fences, no mines -- beyond probably an old 1700s Spanish mine in the Canyon's lower region. . . Very few humans get down into Sycamore and it's impossible to take a horse or a mule "down in."  Although Sycamore is far from totally "boxed in", it is, in many ways, a "system unto itself" -- and still totally pristine.  I may be the only human in contemporary times who has hiked its full length and I did that when I was 21. Depending on how you want to calculate its distance -- its various "head waters" or the full Canyon itself, it's about 25 miles long or more, very deep, very wide.")

The game warden was obviously very surprised by that. Very slowly he asked, "Did you see Taylor Cabin?"  The Cabin, ca. 1930s, was a long abandoned cowpuncher "line shack", in wide and rugged Sycamore Basin, well south of the great basic gorge of the formidable Canyon itself.  Following Sycamore Creek down through the Canyon and into the Basin, there was no way I could have missed it.

"I did," I told him.  "And it was in sorry shape. Caved in and full of rats and probably snakes.  I didn't spend the night in that.  Camped down creek a ways."

"Let me ask you this," he said, very, very deliberately.  "How long did it take you to go from Taylor Cabin to right here?"

I didn't hesitate.  "About an easy day's walk."

He grinned and nodded. Half waving, he turned and went back up to his pickup.  I'd passed the Test -- honestly, ethically.

The Hermits came out of the brush an hour or so later.  They'd been exploring around the nearby Verde River.  

And they were really delighted to get the venison.

Hunter Bear

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

I have always lived and worked in the Borderlands.

See my extensive Movement Life Interview, done by Bruce
Hartford of Civil Rights Movement Veterans:
http://hunterbear.org/HUNTER%20BEAR%20INTERVIEW%20CRMV.htm
And see my reflection ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE:
http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded in Fall 2012. Photos. Material on our Native
background.)  And see Personal Background Narrative: 
http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm  (Updated into 2012) 

For the new (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial introduction by me.
 http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm