By Ralph Yeager

In Bernard DeVoto’s Across the Wide Missouri, there is a reprint of an 1830’s watercolor by Alfred Jacob Miller, depicting an Indian youth standing atop a dead bison. The young hunter’s face is turned to the sky. His bow is held in his left hand and raised high above his head. His right hand is cupped near his mouth, which is wide open and obviously exhibiting a loud cry. Several adult hunters surround the youth and the animal. It is apparent that they too are letting out a loud yell. The picture is so good you can almost hear the cries. The caption reads, "Yell of Triumph: A Demonstration that the Conventions of Your Boyhood are Sound."

On an October evening in 1970, I crouched with my father and older brother at the base of a low, grassy rise and watched my uncle walk down railroad tracks that wound past the rise and through the central Montana ranch where he and my father had grown up. This was the beginning of carrying out a simple plan: my uncle would move along the tracks until the rise gave way to a gentle swale in which five mule deer-three does and two fork-horned bucks-were feeding. He would stroll casually into the swale, in full view of the deer, spooking them toward the hills where he and my father were certain they would flee.

Having spent many years on this ground, my father and uncle knew that mule deer tended to escape by charging up the steep slopes of the hills that ran through the center of the ranch and into the open country past the hills. Unlike the ranch whitetails that always plunged into the heaviest brush, the mulies typically did not seek cover for protection-like antelope, they counted on distance and the ability to move quickly for their survival.

Perhaps a minute passed before I was shocked by the "crack" and "roar" of my uncle’s seven magnum. In the split second of wondering if he had decided to shoot one the deer, all five suddenly were streaming past me, single file. Although my father was crouching behind me, I knew, somehow, that he had risen and stood. On seeing my father’s movement, the last deer in the line-one of the bucks-turned towards us and, as mulies strangely do, stopped to get a last look.

The next seconds remain more vivid in mind than any other life experience. From a kneeling position, I fired from 70 yards at the chest of the buck as he stood facing me. A spray of dirt erupted between his forelegs. As I levered a second round into the old .250 Savage, I remembered my father’s target shooting lessons, and I knew that I had to do my job. Holding higher this time, I squeezed the trigger. My next image was the buck, obviously shot, turning slowly to the left and taking just a few a steps.

"Finish him," the voice behind me said.

A final shot to the neck put the buck on the ground. He raised his head only once. And following the few, brief seconds of our encounter, he was dead. My father still tells me that I went from a kneeling position to a jump that carried me two feet into the air.

The lessons I learned after the kill, like how to gut and skin and butcher have remained with me for more than a quarter century. But my final memory of that first hunt relates to eating the deer. The day after my first kill, my fourteen-year-old brother took a very nice four-point whitetail. At home, when we cut and wrapped the animals, each package bore a note on the butcher paper telling the particular cut of meat and the name of the hunter who had taken it. My mother cooked the venison dinners for our family, and in doing so, always used meat from a specific deer-one boy’s kill was never prepared with another’s. At the beginning of each meal, following the prayer, she would remark that "this casserole is from Randy’s whitetail" or "these steaks are from Ralph’s mule deer." At age 12, I understood, symbolically at least, what it meant to feed my family.

September 26, 1998. On this morning, my 12-year-old son Joe passed his Montana Hunter Education field examination and qualified for the purchase of his first hunting license. The afternoon was spent in one of my favorite places on earth-the mudflats of the southeast shore of Lake Helena. Montana, like many states, recognizes the value of recruiting new hunters and sets aside the Saturday before the regular waterfowl season as Youth Hunt Day; young hunters between 12 and 15 years, accompanied by a non-shooting adult, have the opportunity for a marvelous introduction to duck and goose hunting.

Youth Hunt Day was a big success for Joe and resulted in his taking two large mallards over decoys we had carved ourselves. I haven’t asked Joe, but I’m sure he would tell me that day provided the one defining moment that caused his path to take a sharp and unexpected turn. And while it was all I had hoped for over the many years I had dreamed of introducing my son to hunting, it did not provide the distinct mental image I now carry with me to remember Joe’s first season. That came a bit later.

By mid-November, Joe had become a duck fanatic. We hunted every weekend-sometimes both days. His shooting had improved and he had killed more than 20 ducks-mallards, teal, wigeon, bufflehead and gadwall-all of which he now could identify on the wing. He was becoming a strong paddler and a good hand with a canoe. He carved decoys every evening, his efforts dedicated to creating his own set of his new favorite species-wigeon.

On a sunny, windy afternoon just a few days before Thanksgiving, Joe and I stood at the Lake Helena put-in, disappointed that waves and whitecaps would prevent us from canoeing to our favorite spots on the southeast shore. Reluctantly, we shouldered our packs and for once wished that our decoys were hollow plastic instead of solid cork and wood with lead keels. After a half-mile slog through flooded cattails and bog, we reached the slow flowing canal that feeds the lake. I set out the decoys and we both hunkered in the tall grass on the bank, waiting for ducks but feeling very much out of place.

Perhaps a half-hour later, Joe asked "How much farther is it to the south shore?" I told him only about another half mile, but over easier ground than we had already covered. "Let’s leave the decoys here," he said, "and just see if any ducks are around the flats." It was a good idea.

The canal was chest-deep in the middle. Joe rode on my back for the crossing and it was a struggle to carry him high enough to keep the water out of his rubber knee boots. I crossed the canal once more and returned with our guns. In ten minutes, we arrived at the flats-and the ducks.

I shot a towering drake mallard as we moved to our favorite blind; Joe shot a greenwing hen. After a minute or two of getting situated, Joe handed me his double gun and removed one his boots and his wool socks which needed wringing out. In the middle of this unpleasant task, a hen wigeon winged in from my side and I took her less than 20 yards from the blind with Joe’s gun. I handed it back to him and said, "Hey, that works pretty good!"

As late afternoon approached the wind faded and finally died out completely. I was a bit nervous about leaving our decoy spread unattended for so long and finally asked Joe, "Would you rather slog back to the truck or get a canoe ride?" He assured me that the canoe was his preference. And so, after specific instructions that he hold Scout-my willful old golden retriever-by the collar until five minutes after I was out of sight, I was off to the canal, picking up our spread, lugging it to the canoe, and paddling across the lake at a pace that left me soaked in sweat. Rounding the last cattail covered peninsula before the mudflats, I spooked a common goldeneye drake which flew straight towards Joe’s blind. I wondered if he was paying attention. He was.

Focused on the duck, Joe was unaware that I was watching this situation unfold. From several hundred yards, I saw his head rise above the cattails, and I saw the whistler fold before I heard the report of the gun.

My memory of Joe’s first season can be distilled down to a single image of him, alone on the south shore, shotgun raised above his head, hollering for pure joy.