I have spent a lot of time in bathrooms over these thirty-seven years and figured I had experienced everything they have to offer. Bubble baths with books, shower beers, the Perfect Shit. During COVID, the bathroom was an escape hatch where I could lock the door and zone out, steal a fleeting moment away from the endless nightmare of getting my daughter through remotely learned first grade. This past Saturday, though, I spent a few short minutes scrubbing blood from my hands in a bar bathroom in Kremmling, and it was by far my favorite bathroom experience ever.
To tell the story entirely, I must start on Friday, September 30, 2022. It was the eve of opening day for antelope season, and my hunting buddy Jeff and I spent the afternoon driving up to his family cabin in Kremmling, CO. The jaunt was full of hopeful chatter about what might happen the following day, or maybe the morning after: would I finally get one this season? I had spent the last five years of my life trying to find some success at big game hunting and always came up empty-handed. Hunting public land is a damn tricky thing to figure out on your own in your thirties. With no old-timer to show you the ropes, it's a whole lot of guesswork that becomes a tad more educated every new season. You seem to asymptote towards the goal, always getting closer but never attaining it. I get a few days per tag, and if I fail, all I can do is hope for better luck next year. It's strange to have a hobby that I cannot spend every day practicing until it is mastered, but that's just the nature of this peculiar pastime, and I have accepted it. Jeff and I usually have a strong positive attitude on these drives, sanguine even. Friday’s conversation felt a little different, though, and Jeff was surer than ever that this time I would actually get the chance to pull the trigger.
We arrived at the cabin and proceeded to get fucked up. Actually, we started drinking as soon as the tires of the Land Cruiser we call HAEUG hit dirt roads, a good five miles from the cabin itself. It was a great night; we got hammered and stoned while the rain drenched our shoes and the golden aspens that surround the little A-frame, chain-smoking and passing the phone back and forth to blare our favorite songs through a blue-tooth speaker. “This is your year, Bryan, I know it," Jeff kept saying, to which I would reply, “Man, I really hope so." I kept my responses simple to try and not jynx it, drinking hard to settle the nerves and so I could later say that even if I failed, at least we had a good time, right? That’s usually what happens, anyway, and I love it no matter the outcome. So far, it was just hunting-as-usual, Big Jeff and the B Man style. But the next day would break the mold.
I awoke at 1:30 AM with a raging headache in the La-Z-Boy in the living room. Jeff was sawing logs on the second, identical La-Z-Boy next to me. His parents own the cabin, and like true best friends, they have identical everything from the La-Z-Boys to their matching Toyota Highlanders. Kinda like Jeff and me, actually, and I couldn't help but think about this as I got up to pound a few glasses of water and pills of Ibuprophen. I shuffled groggily to bed up on the second level, now with Jeff’s mom on my mind. She is sick with cancer and might die from it sooner than later, dissolving that long-standing best-buds club of two. One day the same will happen to Jeff and me, my brain reminded me… but tomorrow, we should both be alive, and we would be hunting, so I pushed the thought away and tried to get some rest.
It didn't work. I was too excited to sleep. I crawled out of bed ten minutes before my alarm was set to annoy me conscious at 5:50.
After some quick coffee, bananas, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, we made our way to the truck. I went through my mental checklist:
- Orange vest, CHECK.
- Loaded gun, CHECK.
- Quiet voice, CHECK
Forgetting these three things has fucked me over in the past, which is full of enough dumb-fuck hunting mistakes to fill a goddamn encyclopedia of how not to hunt, but we won’t get into that here. The point is that, at least on this day, I wouldn’t be making these blunders again. We got into the car and made our way to a vast swath of public land where we have seen lots of antelope in the past and where Jeff shot one last year. Jeff repeated again for the millionth time, "this is your year, Bryan.”
“I really fucking hope so.”
The roads in our hunting area were garbage thanks to the previous night’s rain which was so magical under the blurred amber glow of whiskey and weed. Good thing Jeff is a fantastic driver with a dope-ass truck; otherwise, we would have never made it out as far as we needed to find animals. The easy-to-drive main roads were, as usual, being trolled by other hunters and totally avoided by wild game. We, however, were trudging through the shit, sliding around in thick sticky mud, conquering trenched-out trails, and venturing further and further into nowhere. It was just us and HAEUG out there; us and HAEUG vs The Trail. Eventually, we found a handsome hilltop where we could sit and glass for antelope. We climbed up, and I had hardly sat my hungover ass down when Jeff pointed excitedly, binos up to his face, and exclaimed “THERE THEY ARE.” He found a small cluster of antelope on the sage-spotted ridge across from us, a mile away. Good thing Jeff has a sharp eye for animals. Good thing Jeff is and has and does a lot of things.
Back in the truck, we were once again slogging our way across the landscape towards our target. As we got close, the herd heard us and started to move. Luckily, they were heading down our side of the mountain. Jeff stepped on the gas, and we met up with them a short way down the trail. Jeff’s excitement was a physical entity in the truck, a third electric amorphous hunting buddy that filled all the empty space of the vehicle. It infected me. It was then that I stopped holding my hopes at arm’s length, and I thought to myself, holy shit, I am actually going to do this. I made up my mind right there that I would make it work. I know that talk is cheap, and I am no believer in “laws” of attraction… but what happened next seems inevitable in retrospect, the events helpless to unfold in any other way simply because I fucking called it. Jeff was right. This was my year, always had been.
We were like a well-oiled machine. Jeff and I were hell-bent on success. We emerged from HAEUG, me grabbing my tripod and Jeff my gun. He handed it to me as I got set up, the same firearm I bought five years previous that had never taken the life of an animal. No need to rack a bullet; Hail Satan, I had finally fucking learned that lesson, and the rifle was already loaded with one in the chamber. Jeff ranged the herd at 180 yards. They were still on the move, but I knew I would not have to take a shot at a running antelope. I don’t know how I knew, but I was sure that one mature critter in the group would stop and look back, check us out, scan for stragglers. Probably from years of watching elk and deer run away from me and mercilessly stamp out all my hopes and dreams under their powerful nimble hooves. I clicked off the safety and waited, watching the does bounce across the hill through my scope, one after another. Finally, two stopped; one I wanted to shoot, and another smaller one right in front of her, blocking my shot. MOVE, I thought at it, willed it, begged it, pleaded with it. PLEASE JUST MOVE. She moved. I took a deep breath, held the crosshairs steady, and slowly squeezed the trigger. My 30-06 has a hell of a kick and is loud as shit even with ear plugs in, which I was not wearing. But when it went off, I barely felt or heard it. All I knew was that instantly she was on the ground, dead where she stood before she realized anything had hit her.
God, I hope I am given a death as fast and unexpected as I gave that animal.
I looked over at Jeff, dumbfounded. He was celebrating with jovial “FUCK YES”’s, which warmed my heart like last night’s peach whiskey. He wanted this as badly for me as I wanted it for myself, and at that second, it was the most obvious thing in the world. We hugged it out, unloaded the gun and stowed it away, said our attaboy’s and thank you’s. Jeff made sure I kept the empty shell that lay warm and inert in the mud, a token to remember this fine day by.
Then I hiked up to see her. My hands moved down on their own to pet her soft, thick coat. I apologized, thanked her, and gently stuffed some grass in her mouth to keep her fed during her journey through the Great Beyond. We happily harvested her gifts with care and drove back to town.
And that, finally, brings us back to the bathroom. We ordered shots, beers, and burgers at the bar, but I figured I ought to go clean up a little. There was nothing I could do about my blood-soaked boots and britches, but in a place like Kremmling, that's nothing anyone hasn't seen before. If anything, some of these folks were jealous upon glimpsing me, hoping to get themselves all bloodied up this weekend, too. In the bathroom, I slowly washed my hands with warm soapy water, watching the blood swirl down the drain, the blood that just hours before had been coursing strongly through a great, beautiful wild beast of the Colorado plains. In the mirror, for the first time in a long time, I saw a guy I was proud of. The words in my mind were simple and on repeat, echoing in an unstoppable loop that drowned out any other bullshit that might have tried to creep in and ruin my day. Words that I don’t get to tell myself very often lately, but when I do, I savor them:
You did it, man. You actually fucking did it.