Mustangs Rule
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- Feb 4, 2021
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The Japanese Akita is one of several breeds of dogs that are so close to wolves. They were once bred to fight Japan’s Brown Bears in pits. These bears are close to Grizzlies and still found on Japan’s large island of Hokkaido
I had a big male Akita long ago when I lived in Wyoming. His name was “Nick” short for Nikko-san. When first going afield with him, his wild awareness and desire to interact with me on more complex levels were both obvious.
He seemed to be offering me an invitation to hunt with him. I accepted it.
We used to hunt buck antelope in Wyoming’s Wind River Range. This is grizzly country and in the not-too-distant future it became wolf country again.
By river and lake, with aspens in fall color, Nick and I accessed the best wild areas by canoe. He would have made a good sailor.
Typically, we landed at one of several snow melt creeks draining the high country. They were dry by fall. We used the steep sides as cover to gain elevation unseen and un-smelled. In early morning, with the heavy cold air falling, a world of wild scents was in our faces.
I smelled nothing.
Nick’s big nose was filled with “wild knowings” that helped put meat in the freezer and kept us safe. How high the hair on his back stood up was an indicator how close we were to bears. We always hunted into the wind. If the hair on his back got too high, I shifted our direction.
In that pre-bear spray era, my rifle was a FN Mauser in 35 Whelen. On top of it, was my favorite “lucky scope”. Near or far, running or still, what I chose to fire at with it was the walking dead.
This scope is a fixed 3X Weaver made in El Paso, Texas. It has been on so many of my rifles over the past 45 years.
I sent it back to “Iron-sight” in Tulsa, Ok. to have it serviced and have my reticle of choice installed. Now it sits on top of my Safari grade Belgium Browning bold action 30-06. I bought it used in 1970 for $180. The rifle of my life.
I really trust this scope. I feel I am inside it, looking out, not just looking through a narrow straw. Fixed scopes are, stronger brighter and lighter with one less lens.
If something went “Grizz-wrong”, I knew I could count on my 35 Whelen and Nick’s wild wolf pack loyalty and ferocious strength. He would stand right with me, no matter what. Memories of hunting buck antelope with him in those high colorful fall mountain meadows will never leave me. They were wild and raw hunts. Even smelly with Nick farting like crazy when he got excited.
Nick and I were reliving primal man’s very first deep bond with wolves, that led to dogs. Modern man has forgotten, broken, even dishonored that bond.
We always hunted up, then easily dragged our buck antelope quickly down the steep grassy slopes to gut him out in the open, far away from the forests’ edge where bears could approach unseen. Nick was always looking backwards and upwind, covering our backs.
We shared some lesser adventures when late season doe/fawn antelope tags were almost dealt out to Wyoming hunters like a hand of poker cards.
Wyoming can get bitterly cold and snowy right at the end of those late season doe/fawn antelope hunts. By then the great antelope migration was over that took them down to their wintering grounds in the Red Desert. Lots of deer and elk too. Game animals by the thousands,
“The Path of the Pronghorn” is the longest natural big game migration route in the lower 48. It goes from Grand Teton NP for almost 200 miles to the Red Desert wintering grounds.
I once bought 40 acres of rolling Wyoming sagebrush with a natural pond on it for 20K. I did not know it then, but this land was right smack in the middle of a bottleneck along a major corridor in the “Path of The Pronghorn”
If you have never seen a major big game animal migration, words from somebody who has seen this, can’t really work, but I will still try.
One of the first things that happened to me seeing this migration was, the hunter in me, the one who puts the crosshairs on an animal and squeezes the trigger, went somewhere real quiet and just did want to disturb that peaceful, even sacred procession.
I put my rifle down and there they were. Antelope by the many hundreds engaged in an ancient, ceremony of connection with each other, and the earth. I was firmly committed to taking in every second of this and patiently hoping for more to come into this valley. So many did, back then! Their numbers have so shrunk over the past few decades. Less than half even before the 2023 winter kill.
Nick was at peace too watching them. Surely, he could see and smell them. I could see his nostrils flaring wide open when lufts of wind came from them to us, yet he was at ease. Back to being a puppy.
In the fall I would always come here to hunt antelope with Nick but never hunted my own land or while the migration was in progress. I wanted them feeling safe while drinking from my pond. It was a rare natural watering hole they had been using for many thousands of years. Often, I pitched a 10 x 12 canvas cabin tent on my land, and we just stayed in there, looking out the windows as countless antelope were walking, all going in one direction, with ancient intentions.
My last hunting adventure for antelope with Nick was on the Red Desert. For this open country I had my “Plains Rifle”, a Pre-64 Winchester model 70 in .270 with a 6x Weaver scope. It was the full-size standard model. Heavier, better when my body and hands were cold and shivering. I lost count of antelope I shot with it.
The elk, deer, of course antelope were all there, again by the thousands. The light snow showed tracks of Mt. Lions, but no wolves. It would take 15 to 20 more years before they returned here. It felt incomplete to me without them.
If you study the history of herding societies, a few patterns repeat over and over.
All of them involve betraying nature and the natural person in themselves.
They measure their wealth amassing domestic grazing animals They always overgraze their land and kill off wild hoofed animals that compete for grazing, and predators that eat their livestock.
I saw this so clearly in the New England dairy farming communities where I grew up. Everything wild was killed off. The only predators left were red foxes released by wealthy horseback fox hunting clubs, riding around in red and black clothes blowing bugles. Oh, and there were lots of weasels. I saw their tracks in snow. With no middle predators to eat them their numbers were high. Being egg raiders of grouse nests, there were few of these iconic birds.
And last on this list from the ancient world of herding cultures, is that when their land is ruined and overcrowded, they looked for other people to go to war with, to conquer and steal their land.
Herding cultures always go to war with wild animals.
Our New World virgin continent “was discovered” when most all Old-World countries had ruined their land and eliminated most “wildlife”.
Here in America, there were some new versions of these old plots against nature, unlimited modern super toxic poisons
When Nick and I were hunting the Red Desert together, it had b been almost a decade since predator poisoning had mostly been banned in 1972. This poisoning began in 1869, over a century ago.
The actual tonnage of Cyanide, Strychnine, Arsenic and the infamous poison known as 1080 all used in the “Predators Wars” in Western North America can never be known, but even the most basic estimates are shocking. Railroad cars came from back east filled with these poisons, then their deadly cargo was transferred to heavy mule pulled freight wagons and distributed to every corner of our virgin West, Mexico and Western Canada.
For a great finale, just from 1968 to 1970,150 tons of 1080 was used out west.
All in all, our American West was subjected to the greatest ever Ecological Holocaust the world had ever seen done to land, water and wildlife. So much for our love of Cowboys. The cattle industry turned the west into a poisoned feed lot.
And as a final sin by the cattle industry against nature, in the early 1900’s, Sarcoptic mange was intentionally released in the Northern Rockies, to torture any and all predators which might try and make a comeback.
This mange has never gone away and current wolves there live a tortured life.
For further reading I suggest “Of Wolves and Men” by Barry Lopez, but you better be strong of spirit to read it, especially various ways that captured wolves were tortured. Not very different from what happened in a bar in Daniel, Wyoming February 29, 2024.
Just as that mange never went away so has our hatred of wolves, one of the greatest symbols of what was wild in nature and ourselves.
Our hatred for predators is so great that as civilized people we cannot even make it illegal to hunt coyotes by running them over with snow machines. A bill to stop this failed. Where is the outrage from the hunters, just silence.
Also where is the recognition that overgrazing of public land and the abuses of the energy companies are the real big game thieves. The predators are scapegoats, seen through a fake frontier mindset, that does not accept that our frontier has been shot dead in it’s wild heart long ago.
It felt so safe to be out there hunting antelope with Nick in the Red Desert knowing he was safe from Cyanide, and Compound 1080 Traps. But the next year, in 1982 the ban on their use was revoked.
Since 1869 there has only been ten years when our western lands were not being poisoned by the “Predator Wars”. How can hunters possibly call themselves conservationists and not be outraged by this.
I left Wyoming for so many reasons. I sold my land, but before I did, I had legal stipulations put in the deed forever preventing it from being turned into a subdivision that would interfere with the pronghorn migration.
I will forever miss hunting with that big “almost a wolf” dog.
MR
I had a big male Akita long ago when I lived in Wyoming. His name was “Nick” short for Nikko-san. When first going afield with him, his wild awareness and desire to interact with me on more complex levels were both obvious.
He seemed to be offering me an invitation to hunt with him. I accepted it.
We used to hunt buck antelope in Wyoming’s Wind River Range. This is grizzly country and in the not-too-distant future it became wolf country again.
By river and lake, with aspens in fall color, Nick and I accessed the best wild areas by canoe. He would have made a good sailor.
Typically, we landed at one of several snow melt creeks draining the high country. They were dry by fall. We used the steep sides as cover to gain elevation unseen and un-smelled. In early morning, with the heavy cold air falling, a world of wild scents was in our faces.
I smelled nothing.
Nick’s big nose was filled with “wild knowings” that helped put meat in the freezer and kept us safe. How high the hair on his back stood up was an indicator how close we were to bears. We always hunted into the wind. If the hair on his back got too high, I shifted our direction.
In that pre-bear spray era, my rifle was a FN Mauser in 35 Whelen. On top of it, was my favorite “lucky scope”. Near or far, running or still, what I chose to fire at with it was the walking dead.
This scope is a fixed 3X Weaver made in El Paso, Texas. It has been on so many of my rifles over the past 45 years.
I sent it back to “Iron-sight” in Tulsa, Ok. to have it serviced and have my reticle of choice installed. Now it sits on top of my Safari grade Belgium Browning bold action 30-06. I bought it used in 1970 for $180. The rifle of my life.
I really trust this scope. I feel I am inside it, looking out, not just looking through a narrow straw. Fixed scopes are, stronger brighter and lighter with one less lens.
If something went “Grizz-wrong”, I knew I could count on my 35 Whelen and Nick’s wild wolf pack loyalty and ferocious strength. He would stand right with me, no matter what. Memories of hunting buck antelope with him in those high colorful fall mountain meadows will never leave me. They were wild and raw hunts. Even smelly with Nick farting like crazy when he got excited.
Nick and I were reliving primal man’s very first deep bond with wolves, that led to dogs. Modern man has forgotten, broken, even dishonored that bond.
We always hunted up, then easily dragged our buck antelope quickly down the steep grassy slopes to gut him out in the open, far away from the forests’ edge where bears could approach unseen. Nick was always looking backwards and upwind, covering our backs.
We shared some lesser adventures when late season doe/fawn antelope tags were almost dealt out to Wyoming hunters like a hand of poker cards.
Wyoming can get bitterly cold and snowy right at the end of those late season doe/fawn antelope hunts. By then the great antelope migration was over that took them down to their wintering grounds in the Red Desert. Lots of deer and elk too. Game animals by the thousands,
“The Path of the Pronghorn” is the longest natural big game migration route in the lower 48. It goes from Grand Teton NP for almost 200 miles to the Red Desert wintering grounds.
I once bought 40 acres of rolling Wyoming sagebrush with a natural pond on it for 20K. I did not know it then, but this land was right smack in the middle of a bottleneck along a major corridor in the “Path of The Pronghorn”
If you have never seen a major big game animal migration, words from somebody who has seen this, can’t really work, but I will still try.
One of the first things that happened to me seeing this migration was, the hunter in me, the one who puts the crosshairs on an animal and squeezes the trigger, went somewhere real quiet and just did want to disturb that peaceful, even sacred procession.
I put my rifle down and there they were. Antelope by the many hundreds engaged in an ancient, ceremony of connection with each other, and the earth. I was firmly committed to taking in every second of this and patiently hoping for more to come into this valley. So many did, back then! Their numbers have so shrunk over the past few decades. Less than half even before the 2023 winter kill.
Nick was at peace too watching them. Surely, he could see and smell them. I could see his nostrils flaring wide open when lufts of wind came from them to us, yet he was at ease. Back to being a puppy.
In the fall I would always come here to hunt antelope with Nick but never hunted my own land or while the migration was in progress. I wanted them feeling safe while drinking from my pond. It was a rare natural watering hole they had been using for many thousands of years. Often, I pitched a 10 x 12 canvas cabin tent on my land, and we just stayed in there, looking out the windows as countless antelope were walking, all going in one direction, with ancient intentions.
My last hunting adventure for antelope with Nick was on the Red Desert. For this open country I had my “Plains Rifle”, a Pre-64 Winchester model 70 in .270 with a 6x Weaver scope. It was the full-size standard model. Heavier, better when my body and hands were cold and shivering. I lost count of antelope I shot with it.
The elk, deer, of course antelope were all there, again by the thousands. The light snow showed tracks of Mt. Lions, but no wolves. It would take 15 to 20 more years before they returned here. It felt incomplete to me without them.
If you study the history of herding societies, a few patterns repeat over and over.
All of them involve betraying nature and the natural person in themselves.
They measure their wealth amassing domestic grazing animals They always overgraze their land and kill off wild hoofed animals that compete for grazing, and predators that eat their livestock.
I saw this so clearly in the New England dairy farming communities where I grew up. Everything wild was killed off. The only predators left were red foxes released by wealthy horseback fox hunting clubs, riding around in red and black clothes blowing bugles. Oh, and there were lots of weasels. I saw their tracks in snow. With no middle predators to eat them their numbers were high. Being egg raiders of grouse nests, there were few of these iconic birds.
And last on this list from the ancient world of herding cultures, is that when their land is ruined and overcrowded, they looked for other people to go to war with, to conquer and steal their land.
Herding cultures always go to war with wild animals.
Our New World virgin continent “was discovered” when most all Old-World countries had ruined their land and eliminated most “wildlife”.
Here in America, there were some new versions of these old plots against nature, unlimited modern super toxic poisons
When Nick and I were hunting the Red Desert together, it had b been almost a decade since predator poisoning had mostly been banned in 1972. This poisoning began in 1869, over a century ago.
The actual tonnage of Cyanide, Strychnine, Arsenic and the infamous poison known as 1080 all used in the “Predators Wars” in Western North America can never be known, but even the most basic estimates are shocking. Railroad cars came from back east filled with these poisons, then their deadly cargo was transferred to heavy mule pulled freight wagons and distributed to every corner of our virgin West, Mexico and Western Canada.
For a great finale, just from 1968 to 1970,150 tons of 1080 was used out west.
All in all, our American West was subjected to the greatest ever Ecological Holocaust the world had ever seen done to land, water and wildlife. So much for our love of Cowboys. The cattle industry turned the west into a poisoned feed lot.
And as a final sin by the cattle industry against nature, in the early 1900’s, Sarcoptic mange was intentionally released in the Northern Rockies, to torture any and all predators which might try and make a comeback.
This mange has never gone away and current wolves there live a tortured life.
For further reading I suggest “Of Wolves and Men” by Barry Lopez, but you better be strong of spirit to read it, especially various ways that captured wolves were tortured. Not very different from what happened in a bar in Daniel, Wyoming February 29, 2024.
Just as that mange never went away so has our hatred of wolves, one of the greatest symbols of what was wild in nature and ourselves.
Our hatred for predators is so great that as civilized people we cannot even make it illegal to hunt coyotes by running them over with snow machines. A bill to stop this failed. Where is the outrage from the hunters, just silence.
Also where is the recognition that overgrazing of public land and the abuses of the energy companies are the real big game thieves. The predators are scapegoats, seen through a fake frontier mindset, that does not accept that our frontier has been shot dead in it’s wild heart long ago.
It felt so safe to be out there hunting antelope with Nick in the Red Desert knowing he was safe from Cyanide, and Compound 1080 Traps. But the next year, in 1982 the ban on their use was revoked.
Since 1869 there has only been ten years when our western lands were not being poisoned by the “Predator Wars”. How can hunters possibly call themselves conservationists and not be outraged by this.
I left Wyoming for so many reasons. I sold my land, but before I did, I had legal stipulations put in the deed forever preventing it from being turned into a subdivision that would interfere with the pronghorn migration.
I will forever miss hunting with that big “almost a wolf” dog.
MR
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