Merle Aus’ book, previously reviewed, belongs to a genre or sub-genre I would call “heirloom books,” that is, books that compile stories and facts in the same faithful family way that has preserved the seeds of classic plants down though the centuries. Dan Aadland’s book, “The Best of All Seasons: Fifty Years as a Montana Hunter” would fit into that category as well. On the other hand, it’s a bit different, written for sales as individual essays by a rancher who is also an English teacher. And a hunter.
Only a hunter/English teacher could keep his high school boys awake with a fantasy about where the biggest whitetail bucks go when it’s hunting season: “...to vast underground excavations, huge caves, normally located right underneath areas with the highest density of hunters. Presiding over this underground assembly was the Grand Dragon, King, and Emperor of all whitetail bucks...” The fantasy goes on, getting into dangerous territory when the subject of a “shapely doe” is raised.
True enough, Aadland is a family hunter, first going out with his wife and finally ending up with his three sons and a few close friends. And he hunts on his homeground where the terrain is known well enough that family members can talk about “the little basin” or “that thicket where the muleys hang out.” After all, the animals fatten on Aadland alfalfa in winter. It’s as though the animals themselves are family members. They are certainly IN family members, since all deer, elk and moose are ingested with zest.
How does he bear to shoot them then? Here’s the key passage in the whole book:
“Those who have experienced hunting at its very best have known its poetic side. The art of hunting can seem almost transcendental, its truths going directly to the gut with startling, unsparing honesty. ...
“But there is at the very base of the hunting experience something more primitive and simple, and it is not to be despised. Hunting is, after all, the gathering of meat. It starts there and it ends there. ... This basic fact about hunting is its major strength, not a weakness. Hunting retains its honesty only when it remains rooted as a basic act of nature, and it is not made more legitimate by the gathering of trophies or by introducing the competitive elements of television sports.”
Aadland tends towards the kind of ethics (aretaic) that is based on the behavior of a hero, so he often asks himself, “What would Teddy Roosevelt do?” An excellent guide in a context where Teddy excelled. Hunting doesn’t come out of the hatred of animals, or the dominance of animals, but from the love of them and the desire to stay alive oneself.
Interestingly, Aadland mentions something that Aus also talks about: the need for action. Not to see one’s self starring in some grand event, but the joy of using one’s muscles, the pride of accomplishment, what Frost called being “twice warmed” when one cuts wood: once by the cutting and once by the burning. Or in the case of meat, once by the hunting and once by the eating. In fact, there is a nice essay about cutting old dead aspen running parallel to thoughts on human frailty and a vivid account of a horse autopsy. It was a mare, the veterinarian was female, and there is a moment that reminded me of Aus’ “Little Orphan Annie” lying with her dead mother. This autopsied mare had a colt in her and after the veterinarian had removed the small body for examination and sampling, she put it back in the mother -- not just any old way, but in the pose of a real horse, with an arched neck. It says a lot about Dan that he noticed.
So there’s more than a little poetry in this essayist, but also he is a careful technician when it comes to many things, like guns or horse training or packing. One whole chapter is about specific makes of guns and their proper loads -- I skipped it, but many will find it valuable. He speaks of strategy, terrain, animal minds as understood by humans, and weather -- but is always aware that even the most masterful planner can be upended by chance. In fact, the best hunting stories are about the “sure thing” that goes wrong, but sometimes allows a last minute recovery due to luck.
Including many reminders that human laws must be obeyed, at the risk of major fines, he is mindful of boundaries, good judgment, and caution when it comes to being tempted. But he starts us off with stories of a teenaged meat-hunting boy who kept his family fed year-round and he’s not pretending to be a purist. Later he tells us a story of a poached sheep (he didn’t do it!) and the cold blunt disregard that carried it off.
Aadland hunts on horseback, which is eminently sensible when one is over forty, but he has been known to start out with a packstring all by himself which is a level of courage that ranks about with that daredevil millionaire who took off in a small plane that hasn’t come back, so that as I write everyone is out searching. In short, nuts.
In the dim past I was both an English teacher and a horseback hunter, and these essays drew up many memories. Nothing is so powerfully nostalgic to me as the sound of horse gear creaking and jingling on a cold morning or the snapping of a stick fire after supper and the sun gone down. Deep and hot as blood itself.
(University of Nebraska Press, 2007. ISBN978-0-8032=1069-1)
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