I'd like to thank all you guys and gals that make this place so special. I get emails from time to time that really make me realize just what all we have here. Its easy to get caught up in our little differences and that makes it easy for us to loose sight of the big picture of what we truly have in our little cyber campfire.
No doubt this sport is composed of some of the finest folks on earth.....and I'm glad they stop by here for a visit to share and contribute.
Like I said, this email I just had to share as a token of appreciation for our membership that makes Trad Gang what it is. It makes a difference it peoples daily lives.
Take care, and God bless.
Here's an email I got from Ms Jensen.....
I wanted to let you know that my husband Lee Jensen, from McCall,Idaho, passed away June 17th from his struggles with cancer....I wanted to let you know that your web site was his safe place....Lee spent hundreds of hours on your space....he loved reading all the info and stories that your space shares...he bought several bows...boxes of arrows...met people across the USA thru your space.....so I want to
thank you for giving him some of his greatest times in his last year of life....keep up the great site.....and bless all the people he made contact with.....
Thank You........Rainey Jensen
Here's a couple more the family just sent me...
Lee and his son.....
Lee and his grandson.....
And a story......
BLESSINGS
September 15, 1986, Idaho's back country elk season was about to begin. I had just struggled through my first hike of the day, a tough 60 yds, down one of Pittsburg's Presbyterian Hospital halls. This hike seemed harder than any I had been on in Idaho's Salmon River Breaks country.
Less than a month earlier, I had undergone a liver transplant. I was still hooked up to surgical tubes and was pushing a loaded I.V. pole around, but that 60 yarder was my longest hike to that date, and I was gaining ground each day. As I inched around on the bed trying to find a comfortable position, I noticed the picture of my seven year old laying next to the FALL 1986 copy of BUGLE. I stared at his picture and the magazine's cover picture for a long time then mentally set several goals. One was that he and I would wander those Idaho hills together and another was that I would be with him when he harvested his first elk.
OCTOBER 17, 1992, three of us, my son Clayton, Neal, my long time hunting partner, and myself started up a steep Idaho slope just before daybreak. That crisp October air kept us two old guys from boiling over as we humped up the mountain side. Clayton, after two previous months of Jr. High football, breezed up that mountain side like he was on an escalator.
A thousand plus vertical feet above us was a ridge that Clayton and I needed to reach. Neal was going to break off about two thirds of the way up and contour around through some east slope old-growth timber. Clayton and I were going to hit the ridge top, work its broken timber patches, then drop down and work a north slope bedding area.
In spite of the heavy hunting pressure that this area was receiving, fresh elk tracks littered the ridge top. The only problem was that they were being made by the light of a big silvery moon.
We worked the ridge top without seeing anything, then dropped down along the edge of a open grass stringer that separated two big timbered areas. We moved down off the ridge a couple of hundred yards, and turned to the heavy dark timber. Just before entering, I asked Clayton to give me his Remington 721, a scoped 270, and handed him the peep sighted 358, a Browning lever action. The Browning, I told him, would be the best of the two in this heavy timber where the action would probably be close and quick. The 250 gr. Speer handload would be more potent and a better penetrator at the short range I expected us to have. Since Clayton had hunted groung squirrels with that rifle for three or four summers, he knew it and was comfortable with it.
"Son", I said, "we're going into their bedroom, this will be the toughest type of hunting you are going to experience. Not physically tough, but mentally tough. You've got to go slow, and I mean really slow and quiet, you've got to move like a shadow. We'll probably go for a long time without seeing anything, and you'll find yourself starting to get antsy and wanting to move faster. You'll have to fight that urge and keep your pace to that of a sun driven shadow. You'll have to use all of your senses. Listen to the forest, listen to what's going on all around you. Listen for the snap of a twig or the chirp of a cow. See the forest, look and see what's happening around you, see the twitch of an ear of the movement of an antler tine, the out of place patch of tan. Feel the forest, feel the forest's activity, feel the movement of the air, feel the stick under your foot before you put your weight down on it. Smell the forest-smell the mingled scent of duff and fir and when you catch the scent of the bull, follow the air currents. And taste the dryness of your mouth as the excitement and tension builds, the deeper into the elk's bedroom we go."
I told my son that I was putting him in the lead and that he was to pick the route through the bedding grounds. "Your hearing and eyes are better that mine", I told him, "and we're out here to get your bull." "Just remember", I said, "to pick the cleanest route, go slow, stop often, avoid the hucklebrush and downfall tangles even if we have to circle or back track", then into the shadows we slipped.
For an hour and half, we shadowed through the upper section of the bedding grounds, covering less than a quarter mile. Breaking out into a narrow grass stringer, we hunkered up behind a couple of young fir trees. We sat there in silence having an apple and a candy bar, each of us absorbed in our own thoughts.
Clayton had done excellent in leading us through that thick, decadent old-growth timber. We had ghosted through there about as good as any prowling cougar. Setting there for awhile, we watched another hunter walk down the other side of the stringer, then turn and disappear in the offside timber "Okay", I said as we got up and ready to move, "we'll drop straight down the hill about 150 yards and contour back through the bedding grounds. Do the same we did before".
As we got deeper into the timber, we started seeing recent beds and the odor of elk still lightly lingered. The elk were using this area.
My tension increased while Clayton's pace slowed. He started picking up faint game trails and using them until they faded away. His stop and looky/listens were getting longer, and I felt he was starting to tune to the actions of the forest. I kept thinking, they're here or they will be, they've been using this place, it's too good of a security area for them to abandon, we're going to bump them anytime now, anytime, its just a matter of time, anytime now!
We kept up our slow stop and go. Clayton was working along a faint trail when it faded away. He stopped and was cautiously looking for his next move when I thought I heard a faint sound. My right ear hears better and I thought the sound had come from that direction. I studied the timber and brush to the right but didn't see anything. As I turned my head back, Clayton was slowly easing his rifle up to his shoulder. He had distinctly heard the twig snap as a large hoof had stepped on it.
I looked over the top of his rifle barrel and saw a large patch of tan moving through the heavy cover up slope from us. I started sending heavy mental signals, stay calm, identify it, bull or cow, stay calm. I'm sending these stay calm messages and I was about to blow a gasket.
I had an overload of adrenaline and was just starting to warp the stock on the 270 with an adrenalin charged grip when this big six point bull materialized out of the heavy timber stand 30 yards above us. He was coming down thru the heavy timber straight toward us, acting like his only concern was where he was going to find a soft spot to bed-up on. I really started sending silent signals again, jeez!, oh jeez! stay calm buddy, get a sight picture, track him with the sights, of man! oh man! stay calm, squeeze the trigger - - - - SQUEEZE THE TRIGGER!
Ka-Pow the 358's blast rocked the bedding grounds. The big six point leaped straight in the air kicked out with all four feet and hit the ground going like Secretariat at the Derby. "Bust him again" I hollered, but he was gone.
I started up to the fir thicket that he disappeared into when, Clayton whispered "He's over this way, Dad". I looked to where he was pointing and could just make out a shade of elkish tan.
"Is he down or is he standing", I asked. Clayton said he couldn't tell. "If he's standing, put another round into him", I urgently whispered. Clayton said he couldn't because there was too much cover in the way to get a clear shot.
We inched across the slope watching the big patch of tan across us. I must have asked my son three or four times if the bull was down or up cause I sure couldn't tell. But it seemed like that tan patch was awful high above the ground. We slowly worked over to where we could see him clearly. He was down but still alive and he turned his enormous head and rack to watch us as we stepped into the open. "Finish him quickly son, put a round into his neck just below the head".
It was only a little ways up to the bull, but so many thoughts and emotions were going through my mind that they couldn't be counted. Excitement, happiness, a solemnness that bordered the edge of regret, thankfulness, and many more were all ricocheting in and out of my consciousness. I was pounding my young man on the back while thanking the Lord for both providing me the health and strength to travel these Idaho mountains with my son and allowing him to harvest one of Lord's grandest North American animals.
I have always felt a solemness walking up on one of these downed animals to take an elk's life for sustenance is sacred, to take one for the thrill of killing or just the antler size is a crime. My son was blessed with both a fine trophy and a bountiful supplement to our grocery needs. We did get carried away with the excitement of the moment and forgot to thank the Lord for the Blessing that He had generously given us, but later remembered, and on the ridge top that evening, in the softening light of dusk and evening breeze's windsong in the pines, we offered our prayer of thanks.
I waited five minutes after the last shot then fired off our signal shot to Neal indicating that we had one. Clayton circled and circled the big bull trying to comprehend the enormity of the animal. Touching the times, moving a leg, patting the massive chest, and commenting on the pungent smelling belly hair. I could tell he was awe struck by this mountain king --- but I was going thru something that I hadn't experienced in a long time.
I couldn't hold my knife steady to stroppe it on my steel and the buttons on my shirt were pinging and popping off right and left. This was the ultimate! NONE, abso-gol dang-lutly NONE !, of the bulls I have taken compared to this experience here in the bedding grounds with my son.
Neal came up out of the draw bottom a short time after. Said he had heard the shots and crashing getaway run of the elk. After another flurry of congratulating, the three of us started dressing the bull out. All the time Neal and I both kept up congratulations and good natured hardtiming for shooting such a big bull. The three of us also took turns verbally kicking each other's butt for forgetting to throw the cameras in the hunting packs.
We got the bull skinned, quartered and hung, then headed off the mountain. I suggested that we ought to take the antlers primarily because I wanted to do a little, actually a lot of bragging about my son.
We went in with the horses the next morning. Neither Neal nor I felt like trying to throw those massive quarters up on our mules that stand 16 and 17 hands high, so we took the horses. The packout was uneventful, in fact it was a breezer after we got the load lashed on. It was a bit of a gutbuster getting those quarters up on the Deckers. Clayton had packed the antlers out the previous evening, so when we got back to the truck, we just set them up on Neal's old Wolf horse's load, then starting snapping pictures.
Driving home, I thought back to 1986 and thanked the Lord again for His strong helping hand that helped me back to these mountains of Idaho, for my son and this experience with him. Thank You Dear God for the blessings You have given me.
Topic: Lee Jensen..MORE Pics added original post AND Story (Read 4157 times)
