The next day I was groggy. I hung around brewing coffee. There was at least one grouse drumming right near camp! Of course, there’s no hunting here. I can live with that. Nobody needs to be sound asleep in their 5th wheel when some grungy freak starts blasting wildlife with a shotgun.
I procrastinated for several hours but finally rolled out on Honey Badger. I have figured out how to easily stow a hunting implement (hereafter referred to as a pool cue) on tiny Honey Badger. It works very well, but deployment is slow… if I see a grouse while riding, the bird will have time to make a cup of tea, lay an egg, and still have time to scamper off into the brush while I’m messing with straps. Not to mention only in fiction can one aim a pool cue while wearing a full face helmet.
Not knowing where else to go, I rode about 10 miles to one of many ghost towns in the area. Call it “Champion”. Champion is now nothing but a picnic table under a pavilion, an outhouse, a collapsed building, and a place to park my truck. But it’s a good marker from which to navigate this area. You can’t help but recognize it.
Champion also has the nicest outhouse you’ve ever seen. Something like “the ladies auxiliary of Champion supporters” maintain it. There’s decent woodwork, a broom to tidy up, plenty of extra fluffy toilet paper, and potpourri! I’m a fan of anything done well and I declare that all outhouses should have potpourri. In fact, if a person wound up homeless, there’s a lot worse places to hang out than this outhouse. It’s just so pretty. If there was a coffee can there, I’d leave a buck as a tip every time I use it… in support of the ladies auxiliary .
I didn’t take any photos. I just plain forgot. Sorry.
I thought about hunting right there but it’s a ghost town. I’d probably fall in a well. So I rode a few miles away and set out on foot. There was a nice trail. Everything looked good. I did flush a few. But in the end, I came back to the bike empty handed. Honey Badger was like “what the hell was that all about?” What can I say, I tried.
It was unusually hot and I’d worked up a sweat. I’d only hiked a couple miles by the trail but I’d beaten the brush all around and was worn out. When some rando on the internet says they’ll ride out social collapse “living off the land”… they have no clue. They’ll be dead in a week. Skeletons in excellent matching camo, carrying two AR-15s and six full mags. Give ‘em a week and they’d trade it all for a Cliff Bar and a water filter. That’s the truth of it; hunting is hard work! Everything outdoors is hard work.
I wolfed down a couple handfuls of gorp and headed for greener pastures.
Ten miles to the east I found a road that specifically bans ATV’s (a rarity in these parts). It took a bit to puzzle it out. I think the land accessed by that particular road is managed by some slightly different agency than the others. It probably applies blanket restrictions written by Yalies in DC.
“We’re a stiff uptight wildlife oriented agency. We can’t have Deplorables riding around having fun!”
“OK sir, so you want to close every road?”
“Yes!”
“This will reduce our funding to the same as roadless wilderness. It was nice knowing you.”
“Wait, what?!?”
“Nobody wants to fund absolute wilderness at a higher per-acre rate than more heavily used land. Do you want a gate on the road or shall we have excavators dig a hole to block it?”
“We gotta’ protect our phoney baloney jobs! What do National Parks do?”
“They allow licensed vehicles on some roads, ATVs on none, and hassle everyone while they do it.”
“OK fine, do that.”
“Very well sir.”
That’s how I legally rolled past a sign that bans 1,500 pound ATVs but allows a 6,000 pound Ford Truck. This happened in a forest that overall has more ATVs (UTVs) than all the cars/trucks/Curmudgeons combined. Does that make sense? Of course not, it’s the 20th month of 2020 and nothing makes sense!
I don’t make the rules but its handy when I can use them to my advantage. The license plate on the back of a street legal Yamaha TW200 sometimes does magic. At the moment I could go places that are denied to mechanically superior UTVs. It’s not fair but life ‘ain’t fair.
In case you’re wondering, Honey Badger probably weighs 500 pounds counting my fat ass and all the gear I’ve strapped to it. Ridden the way I operate it, my outfit is probably lighter on the land than almost anything with wheels. Not that such things matter to regulators, I’m just sayin’.
I’m glad I took this path. It was such a pretty road! Like every good scenic road, it went nowhere and took it’s sweet time getting there.
After several miles I found a spot, hopped off, and went hunting. By now it was blistering hot. I hunted my ass off… no dice. Sometimes earnest effort don’t mean shit.
When I got back to my bike I’d had enough. I was roasted and maybe a little dehydrated. When the game is outwitting you that bad you’re not hunting at all, you’ve devolved to armed hiking. I was tired of that!
I drank a ton of water, took a Tylenol, and ate a Cliff bar. I decided the rest of the day was “riding time”. The fresh breeze would cool me down. There would be no grouse dinner tonight but that’s why God created Mountain House freeze dried meals.
Two miles later a rabbit flashed by Honey Badger’s front tire so close I could see his beady little eyes. No chance I’d get the shotgun out in time. He was gone. Rabbit dinner would have been cool.
The road got gnarly. Any truck could have handled the first part. Now it was lifted Jeep terrain… which my bike shrugged off like it was no big deal. There were deep ruts that might eat a stock SUV. Despite this, I rode like a King on rails; navigating the easy 2’ wide raised center between brutally deep wheel ruts. Sometimes that’s a hard peak to stay on (they get pointy) but this one was flat at the top (probably shaved down by someone’s rear differential) so it was like a highway just for me. I felt smug dodging deep treacherous ruts without much work at all. After the rough patch it smoothed out. I passed some abandoned cabins and a well maintained little graveyard but I was enjoying the cool breeze too much to stop and faff about. Eventually my sweet little road ditched back out on a main system dirt road.
By now, the sun was low in the horizon. The wise choice was to head for camp. Of course I didn’t do that…
I noticed something on Miss Marple the other night and it jogged my memory: do you and Mrs Curmudgeon have grouse claw kilt pins?
That is officially the best most unexpected question I’ve ever received!
I pin my kilt with the proximal phalange from the middle finger of a dude who shoulda’ known better. Mrs. Curmudgeon says “I don’t wear a fucking kilt”.
The equivalent of Armed Hiking = Woodsroaming. The latter being not intending to kill edibles, just be ready in case it shows up and is available for harvest. All while looking about at the pretty scenery.
Some of my hunting becomes woodsroaming. Year of arrowhead hunting conditioned me to begin scanning the ground, looking for evidence of worked stone edges. I walked myself onto a young buck yeas ago, not figuring the stop – start gait of arrowheading hunting does not sound like a hunter steadily walking.
Thank you for the description of your walkabout..