Growing up in '64

My Summer as an Archery Instructor

Experiences with a bully, a pervert, a wacko, a traveling brothel, and a lot of wildlife

After my sophomore year in high school I was sent off into the great unknown to be a Boy Scout camp counselor. It was unsettling not knowing a single person or what my duties were going to be. It was my ﬁrst time away from home for a whole summer, and I would be on my own and taking care of everything, even my laundry. Well, except I would be well fed. There was considerable uncertainty about the job, but it sure sounded a lot better than the mindless agricultural ﬁeld work of previous summers.

Teenage boys have more energy than brains. Like a bunch of puppies, they get into a lot of mischief when left on their own. More things happen if there are two like-minded boys that play off each other, so these stories are more about what my new friend Bernie and I cooked up together.

Changes

The mentoring bit was fun, and the menial tasks hadn’t become a burden yet, but that was about to change. The archery range instructor was asked to round up the youngest counselors, and he did that by shooting a broadhead-tipped arrow through the wooden door of their tent cabin. Being terriﬁed, the youngsters climbed out the back and ran off into the woods. The idiot was ﬁred on the spot of course. However, I felt this behavior was so criminal that he should have been arrested. I suppose the potential for lawsuits and other legal expenses kept the organization from pursuing justice. In any case, my instinct that I considered him a wacko from day one was now vindicated.

A staff meeting was convened in the cafeteria where the camp director asked if anyone knew how to shoot a bow. I vigorously raised my hand (as in, pick me, pick me!), and he looked at me doubtfully, undoubtedly due to my obvious youth. He wanted to know more, so I pointed at the big plaque on the wall where my name resided at the top of the list for the highest archery score of all time, that I had the rarely earned archery merit badge, and that I was an Eagle Scout. All of that sealed the deal. He was relieved, and I was ecstatic. I was out of the KP duties realm and now in charge of my own schedule. It was awesome, a dream come true. However it came with the substantial responsibility of preventing arrows from piercing things they should not. Like other Boy Scouts.

One of the junior counselors was a kid named Bernie who had equal outdoor, hunting and ﬁshing skills as me, was highly creative, and was full of energy. Getting into mischief is always more fun if you have someone to share it with, so I was very lucky to ﬁnd a like-minded soul. We were always up to something. Following are a few of the events that unfolded during that very memorable summer.

Hooker Rocks

One evening in the cafeteria, some of the over 21 staff were playing poker using match sticks for chips. The truck driver mentioned that a brothel from across the Columbia River in Dallesport had a travel trailer parked up the road in a meadow adjacent to a logging operation. What a tasty morsel of information that was. Bernie and I carefully exchanged looks, and I knew we would soon be checking that out.

When we had a free evening, we donned our drabbest clothing and headed out with slingshots. Sure enough, the trailer was right where the truck driver said it would be. We hadn’t been there long when a pickup rolled up and a large man got out with a bottle of liquor in his hand and went in. We got close enough that I could hear the ticking of the truck engine as it cooled off. Bernie wanted to look in the window, but I was too chicken for that. Apparently nothing could be seen through the curtains anyway, so we backed up to a good launching spot behind bushes and started lobbing rocks at the trailer just often enough to be a complete distraction.

It took a while, but that same logger came roaring out with his suspenders down and was mad as hell. And he was waving a really large handgun around and hollering. Bernie was a smart kid and did not move a muscle. Not seeing anyone, the logger cast his glare all around and eventually went back in.

So, did an angry man with a gun scare us off? Not hardly. We waited for things to settle down inside, collected a nice pile of rocks, and ﬁred off our cluster of rocks as fast as we could, and then ran off like scared deer. When we got far enough away to be safe, we collapsed into a ﬁt of laughter. What a lark.

Was that the end of the story? Not quite. We came trooping into camp right at dusk, sweaty and out of breath, and ran smack into the state game warden**. We had already made friends with him, and he could see that we had been up to something. Well yeah, we were always up to something. We ended up telling him we had been throwing rocks at the brothel trailer up in the meadow. He excused himself, went over to his truck and got on his radio. The trailer was gone the next day, and that was probably a good thing.

**= There was a small cabin at the scout camp set aside for the warden. He was trying to catch poachers who were jacklighting deer nearby to harvest antler velvet for the Chinese trade. We sometimes heard gunshots in the night, and he asked us to keep our eyes open for evidence, seeing as we roamed far and wide more than any of the other staff. And we were observant. Besides, he was a good guy, and we got along well.

Gestation of the Green Weenie Patrol

Each incoming troop was assigned a counselor to help them get acclimated for their one-week stay. Each troop was the size of a bus full of kids accompanied by a couple of parents. The counselors would eat the ﬁrst two meals with the troop in order to assist the troop in getting adjusted to the food delivery and pickup process. The mentoring was a good process, and I enjoyed answering questions from the adults and kids alike.

Near lunchtime I was sitting there with one of the troops watching a kid who had brought a very large ﬁshing outﬁt with heavy line, hooks so large the local trout could not possibly get their mouths around them, and sinkers larger than the pebbles in the nearby creek. I guessed his father had set him up, but the gear was completely useless there. I casually asked the kid how it was going. He replied very dejectedly that there were no ﬁsh here. I didn’t reply directly. Instead, I got out my pocketknife, stepped over to some willows, and cut a branch for a rod. I always carried a length of two-pound test line knotted to a tiny single-egg hook and a small jar of salmon eggs in my coat pocket. The kid watched closely as I set up. I stepped over to the tiny creek, which had a deep enough pocket of holding water within a couple steps from their table. I dipped my salmon egg and immediately pulled out a wriggling, shiny seven-inch cutthroat. The kid was astonished. I handed him the rig and told him to go ﬁnd some ﬁsh and that any kind of bug big enough to stick on the hook would work just ﬁne.

The next day I saw him parading around with a very stinky trout on a string. A ﬁsherman had been born. But this story gets better. On competition day near the end of the week, I saw him carving a round chunk of wood, so I asked him what he was doing. With a big smile he held up his project. It was the most amazing lifelike tumescent penis carving I had ever seen! I congratulated him on his excellent carving skills. I wanted it. I immediately offered to trade two squirrel tails for it. He was all about that and accepted immediately. After the trade he sprinted away to show off his prizes, and I went back to show off my dubious trophy. Bernie took it to the maintenance shack to drill a hole in it so we could hang it on our trophy wall.

One day after my afternoon archery range session, I noticed the “woodie” was missing. Bernie, who had been painting benches, had dipped it in green paint and hung it in the sun to dry. Our cabin was known thereafter as the Green Weenie Patrol and became a meeting center where stories were told, plans were hatched, farts were lit, and trophies accumulated. Esprit de corps had blossomed.

A Second Bad Apple

There was an older gentleman, not a scout or a parent, who served as the camp minister and doctor. He held services in the outdoor amphitheater, none of which I ever attended because he creeped me out. Few would choose to sit at a table with him in the staff cafeteria, which made him look pitiful and lonely. Part of his problem was his constant stream of bullshit stories. Finally Bernie and I heard one story too many and decided to set him up. I had a large queen conch with a mouthpiece chiseled into the apex so it could be blown like a trumpet but also could be used to make realistic, hair-raising, lifelike snarls and growls. And Bernie had a preserved bear foot on a stick. You can probably guess where this is going. Since the minister always got to breakfast late, one morning while everyone else was eating, we proceeded to growl and snarl, rake a stick over his tent, snap branches, and make a prodigious number of bear tracks all around. He never made a sound the whole time. I had a really hard time not laughing and blowing our cover. We stopped the commotion after a while, and eventually he peeked out, and seeing the coast was clear, scuttled off to the cafeteria. With him now gone, we swept away all of the bear tracks.

Of course at breakfast he proceeded to relate how he had been attacked but fearlessly scared a bear off. Everyone was disgusted with yet another story, but he insisted everyone should come look at the tracks. This was something different, so reluctantly the staff followed him out, and if any of them had closely looked at Bernie and me, they would have known something was afoot. We were having a hard time holding it in.

With everyone assembled back at his tent with no tracks to see, he looked crushed. He knew right then that he had permanently lost his audience. He looked like the fool he was. But don’t feel sorry for him. Shortly thereafter, a scoutmaster who happened to be a medical professional became suspicious and caught him fondling one of the young scouts. He was immediately ﬁred and escorted off the camp property within the hour. It was a life lesson in detecting the signs of perversion that I never forgot.

We never told a soul that we were the cause of the bear story. That was an event best kept secret permanently. You never know how a story like that might spread with unintended consequences. Clearly our instincts were on the mark, though. With that fool gone, the cafeteria became a more genial place for the staff to hang out.

The idea to make bear tracks around the tent did not arise out of thin air. A couple of times I noticed mountain lion tracks circling our tent cabins as if it were snifﬁng the sleeping humans. However, I was sure the lions were there for the deer. The deer were attracted to the salt at the barbecue pit and came in during the night. It was dangerous to walk through that area in the dark because the deer would panic and race around willy nilly. The lesson here is that where there’s prey, expect to ﬁnd predators. With our large mouse problem, it’s not surprising that hearing owls hooting at night was pretty common.

Drumming in the Forest

After dinner one ﬁne sunny evening we were lounging around, and I heard a grouse drumming somewhere in the forest not far off. Now if you want to do something requiring stealth, it’s best not to advertise what you are up to. So I looked over at Bernie, and he had heard it as well. We exchanged a look. Without a word I got up, casually picked up my bow, and sauntered as nonchalantly as possible out of camp and waited. Bernie followed soon after having looped around so as to not make it look like he was following me. Then it was on to wait for more drumming to locate the bird. We found it soon enough, and when it saw us, it ﬂuttered up into a ﬁr tree. This is typical of Ruffed Grouse that have not been hunted. They get off the ground out of reach of land predators and just watch. From their elevated perch they can easily reach escape velocity to get far away. Having only one good bow in camp, the two of us took turns, and it was Bernie’s turn. We soon had our grouse and were rather pleased with ourselves.

Walking back into camp, we ran into a problem. The warden was in camp, and he was in a mood to chat. In a hurry Bernie stuffed the grouse down his shorts (we mostly wore shorts and knee socks regardless of the weather) and covered the bulge with his longish wool coat. As we stood there uncomfortably, blood was draining out of the grouse and down Bernie’s leg. He suddenly scuttled off, and I was left to explain that Bernie was having G.I. problems. I’m not sure the Warden was convinced, but he did not press the issue. After dark we snuck out of camp to build a ﬁre and roasted our bird. Tail feathers went up on the Green Weenie trophy wall, of course.

Mutiny in Dead Man’s Canyon

Partway through the summer some of the staff were beginning to grumble, especially the older counselors. The labor agreement was that a certain amount of time off would be granted during the summer, and it had not happened. Talk of a walkout began. We all came together and agreed to participate. The plan was to wait until Saturday at noon when all the scout troops would depart and we would hike into Dead Man’s Canyon, which had no trails or roads. We planned to stay until Sunday afternoon, by which time the camp director would be in a panic. We rounded up food and stuffed our packs beforehand so we could make a timely exit. One of the older counselors related that he had been down there the previous year and hidden a bottle of beer under some rocks.

Our giddiness level was high as we skirted along the rimrock looking for a place to descend into the canyon. Being in an oak zone, the ground was very dusty. I looked down and saw turkey tracks. Lots of them. I nudged Bernie. We would return later, of course. Reaching the bottom, we found a stream larger than most in the area. It looked like good trout fishing, but we didn’t come here for that. We found the bottle of beer, and we all got a swig, which tasted pretty lousy. We found a nice wide area with room for all of our bags (we had no tents). We were feeling good. After sunset somebody suggested that a nearby fallen tree, still with all of its needles, be lit off. Whew! What a bomb. What a bad idea. Flames shot high into the night sky, and the heat was intense. A few things got charred or melted. Hair got singed. It was a mad scramble to get away from the searing heat. Green leaves on nearby trees and shrubs shriveled up. It was out of control and could have set off a forest ﬁre if the tree hadn’t been well isolated in the river bed. I’m sure the nearest ﬁre lookout saw the sudden ﬂare-up in the night sky, but since it died down quickly, hopefully no alarm went out. In the end we had a great bonﬁre that was so warm we stripped down to our underwear and danced around in the chilled night air and sang songs. Maybe it was a bit like “Lord of the Flies,” but it was remarkably good fun. We returned to camp the next day right when the troops were arriving. I’m sure management was scrambling trying to keep the ship aﬂoat and was relieved when we all trooped in. Nothing was ever said about the walkout, and getting time off was no longer a problem.

So, about those turkeys. Bernie and I had learned our lesson with the grouse, so we went out prepared to cook in the ﬁeld. That meant bringing butter for basting, some spices, and, to avoid any more leakage issues, some plastic bags. Moving slowly through the oaks, we found a ﬂock near where we had previously seen tracks. As luck would have it, it was again Bernie’s turn to take a shot. Yes, he plunked a nice tom. It’s a good thing we didn’t know that turkeys are supposed to be impossible to sneak up on. We quartered it for faster cooking, built a nice hot ﬁre, and sat down to eat our ﬁll. Life was good. Now we had a tailfeather patch and a beard to add to the wall. The odd thing was that no one ever queried us on where we found the turkey feathers. The tail feather patch containing distinctly barred feathers was the size of a platter. Personally, I cannot imagine not noticing that, but then most people don’t seem to be very observant.

Finger Licking Good

Yes, my bow got used a lot, but really I spent more of my free time plucking wild trout out of nearby streams. I carried thin line, small hooks, a jar of salmon eggs, butter, and salt packets in my coat pocket wherever I hiked. After catching two or three and stringing them on a willow branch, Bernie and I would build a tiny twig ﬁre and cook the trout. Even though the ﬁsh were very small, they were sexually mature, ready to spawn, and very tasty. Their tiny environment, short growing season, frigid water, and low food supply kept them small.

With the ﬁsh easy to catch, the novelty eventually wore off, and I came up with an idea. The camp had a very nice man-made lake, shallow at one end with plentiful trout food and deep at the other where the trout could overwinter. The problem was that the inlet screened out trout access, and the outlet was a stand pipe that no trout could climb. There were plenty of salamanders and a horde of aquatic insects in the lake, but no trout. Instead of eating the trout, we started carrying them in ﬁre buckets to the lake and setting them free. Soon we were rewarded with visible rings on the surface from trout rising for bugs in the evening calm. Cool. Everyone was used to the idea that there were no trout in the lake, so it was our little secret. It always amazes me that people don’t see what’s right in front of them.

The Case of the Pestiferous Pack Rat

One day Bernie and I walked by the camp store that sold candy bars, scout neckties, and t-shirts. The counselor that ran the store came out and said he needed some help. He related that many of his candy bars had a ragged little hole in one corner and didn’t know why. I was incredulous. The camp was awash with a horde of rodents, and a daily war was being waged.

The day shift comprised chipmunks and California ground squirrels. I’m not talking about a few individuals. It was a full-on invasion. Taking out several a day with traps seemed not to diminish the problem at all. I’m sure if we had had a resetting mousetrap, we could have caught 50 a night. I had a cabin mate (Skip) that was ﬁxated on trapping the mice, and I got really tired of his middle-of-the-night trap tending and excited exclamations. Also, I put the kibosh on his stapling tails to the wall because that attracted ﬂies. We resorted to keeping our goodies in a tin bread box. The ground squirrels ﬁgured out how to open it. We got boxes with a latch. No luck there either. We were training smarter squirrels. We built shelves only a quarter inch higher than the box so the lid could not be lifted. We came back to ﬁnd empty boxes on the ﬂoor. They had gotten behind and pushed them off the shelves. We tried ﬂooding their burrows with a ﬁre hose, which just swallowed unfathomable amounts of water. They became trap averse. We were losing the war.

I got even with Skip one day when he forgot to put a brand new package of Oreos away. I laid in my bunk one afternoon and watched a chipmunk open the package and run off to its burrow with a cookie. One at a time, it emptied that package. Back and forth it went. It was cute. Skip was volcanic with both me and the chipmunk when he discovered the empty package. I showed him where the burrow was, and with several of us digging out an old stump, we got most of his cookies back. Skip was a good guy and got over it. We had considerable fun together that summer.

So back to the store problem. The store manager was a very wimpy-looking, highly effeminate kid that never seemed to be around during our free time. I never got to know him, and he never participated in our Saturday afternoon capers when the scouts were out of camp. We were usually at the lake swamping all the rowboats and canoes while playing gladiator games. Or taking the camp bike off a jump into the lake. Ya know, typical active boy stuff. That he did not immediately understand he had a rodent problem was beyond my imagination.

Bernie and I agreed to check things out while he stayed outside. Clearly a rodent had been nibbling just a tiny corner from rows of candy bars. That would deﬁnitely put a dent in the store proﬁts. We started looking the structure over for an entry hole. Eventually I went up into the overhead crawlspace, and there looking back at me was a beady-eyed pack rat sitting in its nest. I hollered down to Bernie, “Hey, it’s a pack rat.” WHAM! That was the sound of the front door slamming shut. And that SOB store manager put the padlock on the door. He was so terriﬁed of the “R” word that he locked us in. We pounded and hollered. There was no answer. Bernie looked at me, smiled, and said, “Hey, at least we are not going to starve to death.” We found a couple of sticks and went after the rodent. After going round and round for a bit, I ﬁnally got in a good hit and dispatched the cute little guy.

After being in there all afternoon we were getting a little cross. Pounding and hollering recommenced around dinnertime. Eventually the camp director heard our racket and let us out. Having eaten our ﬁll off the good ends of the damaged bars, we thought ahead and stuffed our pockets with as much inventory as we could manage. When the store manager later whined about the missing inventory, I told him that if he ever crossed us again, we would take him into the woods at night, tie him to a tree, and coat him with peanut butter because bears really like peanut butter. Being terriﬁed of a mere packrat, he was clearly working in the wrong place. The subject of the missing inventory never resurfaced, and we carried on as if nothing had happened. There was no reason to harass that tender soul and make him more miserable than he already was.

Of course I skinned that cute little pack rat, and his skin (preserved with borax) became one of the trophies on our cabin wall.

Ehhh, What’s Up Doc?

We had a camp rabbit, a varying hare (a.k.a. snowshoe rabbit), that liked to sit out in the open in the middle of our compound of staff cabins during the day. It was there most days. It seemed like odd behavior to me, but then I would see that behavior again a few times through the years with that species. Eventually I learned about the human shield effect, where prey species learn to hang around humans because predators are put off by the sound of human voices. Even putting speakers in the forest to play recordings of human voices will move predators out. However those same recordings will attract mice because they have learned that humans have food. In this case our camp rabbit did not have to fear the usual risks of bobcats and coyotes, and us humans were much too slow to be a problem.

Until one fateful day, that is. At lunch someone suggested we catch that rabbit. It was like having a pet, so I wasn’t particularly in favor of driving our little buddy away, but I joined the crowd anyway. We got everyone together and formed a really large circle around the cabins. Then we slowly advanced, drawing the circle ever tighter. When the bunny ﬁnally recognized the peril, it turned this way and that looking for an escape route. At last, it made a run for it right at me. I dove on it getting my hands around it just behind the front legs because I was afraid it might bite with those very sharp and large front teeth. With all the squirming, I had to hug it to me, and it proceeded to kick the daylights out of me. OK, so I had the rabbit. Now what? After we all got a good close look at it I released it into some bushes. I was glad when it came back a couple days later, albeit a lot more wary than before.

The most recent example was at Harts Pass in 2023. I observed a Varying Hare under low-hanging conifer limbs right next to a lot of foot trafﬁc going back and forth from the campsites to the outhouse. No one ever gave any indication they were aware of the rabbit. It was content to remain put and munch on plants. Eventually I joined an entertaining and amiable group of Paciﬁc Crest Trail through-hikers at one of the large tables when one of the ladies went, “Ewwww, a rat!” I assumed she had seen a woodrat (a.k.a. pack rat) because I knew there was a nest of them in the ranger hut, but when I turned around to look I saw it was a tree vole. I explained what it was, but she was obnoxiously resistant about it. I explained, “Look, it has a very short tail. Her response was, “Why then was it not in a tree?” Oh, boy. I didn’t want to get into mansplaining, but I was backed into a corner. I further explained that only females and the young live in the trees and rarely come to the ground, which is why they need old-growth trees spaced closely together, and the males generally live on the ground in dense brush. Then it was, “Why are you such an expert?,” which I explained. There were a lot of rodent species and small birds around, so the hikers got into it and asked me what they all were. I showed them the difference between the Golden Mantle Ground Squirrels and the Chipmunks which were constantly trying to steal their food. Eventually I told them there was one species larger than all the rest that could be seen from where they sat that they had not yet asked about. They looked diligently but failed to see the rabbit. They were amazed when I pointed it out. I didn’t want them to chase it away, so I told them if they left it alone and did not try to take a photo with their phone, it would stay put. Get too close and it will hop away. After hiking 2,600 miles from the Mexican border over several months, how could they collectively be so ignorant of the wildlife around them?

Rocky the Flying Squirrel

There was one pine tree far enough away from other trees in our compound where a squirrel could not jump from it to another tree. Bernie and I had been watching for just the right opportunity, and ﬁnally we had a chance to chase a squirrel up that very tree. Bernie and I wanted to see what it would do if one of us climbed up after it. As I clumsily climbed the tree, the squirrel would scamper higher in short bursts. As I neared the top, it proceeded to scream at me and shake with apparent rage. Finally, it went to the very top and jumped straight out. It spread its legs as if it were a ﬂying squirrel and landed with a whump and a puff of dust. It bounced, and when it came back down to earth, it ran off as fast as a rocket, apparently completely un-injured.

If you have ever tried eating squirrel, even if slow-cooked for hours, you know how tough they are. Tough enough to shake off a belly flop from on high. Since we had our answer, we had no reason to repeat that caper. It was more fun to pick on each other, which is what boys with too much energy and time on their hands do at that age. But I wondered why that squirrel jumped instead of outmaneuvering me by dropping to one of the plentiful limbs below me. I think I know the answer. One of their arboreal predators is the very agile Marten that will dine on squirrels with relish. This is all supposition, of course, but I’m guessing squirrels would rather jump than get eaten, and Martens being much larger and heavier, are not likely to take that leap. It’s how squirrels might escape.

No-Wheel Drive

One Saturday afternoon when the scouts were out of camp, one of the food delivery truck drivers and I went out for a surreptitious joy ride in the camp jeep. This was one of those old WWII jeeps with no doors or windshield. We were over at the deserted old camp driving through the trees when he tried to squeeze between two young pine trees. He hit a large bump just before the trees, which bounced the front of the jeep off the ground, and it came down wedged between the trees with all four wheels off the ground. We weren’t supposed to be out joyriding, and now we were stuck with no tools and in danger of being found out. It was at least a mile back to camp, so I took off running back to camp to find some sort of tool. I entered through the back of camp and retrieved an axe from the tool shed and then ran back. We took turns swinging the axe at a frantic pace and got one of the trees down, which released the jeep. I did not want to be seen riding the jeep back into camp, so I ran back on my own. Whew! That was not one of our better ideas.

Pie Plates

Each Friday all the troops assembled in the center area for competition day. There were lots of activities like knot tying, plant identiﬁcation, orienteering, swimming, and a crowd favorite, canoe racing, where as many scouts as possible were squeezed into one canoe, and they paddled with just their hands. It was mayhem.

Of course I was pressed into helping with the events, but I wished for something archery-oriented. The archery range was too far away to be worked into the schedule, and having that many moving bodies surrounding a somewhat dangerous activity was not a good idea. At least not yet. On my own initiative I built a walk-through range early in the summer, way out at the edge of camp property. The targets were old tin cans hanging from limbs that moved in the wind. We used flu-flu arrows fletched with really large feathers and large-diameter rubber tips. Several of my friends on the staff would join me on evening walk-throughs for a little competitive fun.

It was on one of these walks with the last rays of sunlight raking through the forest that I made a signiﬁcant leap in understanding owl behavior. We saw two chipmunks chasing each other at a frantic pace when they ended up on top of a large stump and commenced with the process of making babies. Being teenagers, we were highly amused, but only for a second. Suddenly a large grey owl passed over my shoulder, close enough I could feel the air turbulence from its wings on my neck, and it grabbed both of the chipmunks from the stump. It disappeared, gliding downhill without a sound. It was obvious the owl had used me to screen out its approach and pounce on its targets. I’ve had this happen with owls in exactly the same manner twice more since then.

The most recent was in Dash Point State Park while mountain biking. A mouse jumped out and started running down the trail. I stopped to watch and let it go on its way without interference. While standing there straddling the bike, a Barred Owl slipped over my shoulder as close to me as possible and picked up that mouse. It ﬂew about 15 feet up onto a limb and sat there looking down at me. Our park barred owls are relatively tolerant of hikers using the trails. A lady came hiking along and wanted to know what I was doing. I pointed out the owl, and she whipped out her phone and went all ga-ga. Right then the owl bent over, picked up the mouse from its foot, threw its head back, and proceeded to choke it down. The last thing I saw was a tail and two feet disappearing. Being able to observe wild animals carrying out natural behavior is always a treat for me, but the lady started screaming and declared it a disgusting, ﬁlthy animal. She was another sad product of the Disneyﬁcation of humans.

OK, back to the main story. At some point it occurred to me that dangling target shooting with slow arrows could be part of competition day. I lobbied the camp director to set up a row of suspended pie plate targets next to the camp store, shooting into the hillside with a big canvas tarp to stop arrows if they got that far. The breeze coming off the lake made the plates spin and dance, which made hitting a plate a bit of a crap shoot. We did a test run with a few kids, and the reaction was immediate excitement. I got the go-ahead, and we now had a new and very popular event for competition day. Little kids would vibrate with anticipation as they stood in line for their turn. A hit would be greeted with cheers. It was fun for everyone regardless of skill level.

Chasing Bears

My cabin mate Skip had brought to camp his team target .22 rifle with a bull barrel, double peep sights, and an excellent trigger. We had many nice evenings away from camp plinking at random targets. One day while roaming around, we arrived at the camp dump about a mile away where a big trench had been excavated. The mess of camp trash provided a target-rich environment. For anyone who has spent time making tin cans hop around, you know how enjoyable that is. Our favorite target was spray paint cans. By nicking a can on the side, it would spin like a top, spraying a colorful spiral plume exhausting whatever pressure remained. I guess we were easily amused.

One evening three of us made plans to head over to the dump for some shooting, but there was a problem. A fourth counselor who was neither reliable, safe, nor discreet decided he was going along no matter what. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. We ditched him by running off in three different directions and then met at the dump, again from three different directions. Few counselors knew the surrounding area as well as our little group.

While nearing the dump and walking quietly, I saw the trench through the trees, and standing right there was a big glossy black bear. It was standing stock still and peering into the distance. I guessed he was listening to the approach of one of us. It did a 180 to peer in the opposite direction but did not move. It was listening again. Uh oh, we had inadvertently surrounded the bear, and it didn’t know which way to go. Then it pivoted towards my position, and I didn’t want it running towards me, so I stepped out from behind my tree and said, “Hey, bear.” The hair on its shoulders stood up, it pivoted to the best escape direction available, gave a woof, and thundered out of there. It tore out chunks of the forest ﬂoor in its haste. This is when I learned that bears can run really, really fast. Far faster than any human, uphill or down. And they don’t have to run around brush. They go right through it. We stood there in amazement listening to the diminishing sounds of limbs snapping and brush cracking as the bear sprinted off.

Now we had a new game to play. Namely, go to the dump at dusk to sneak up on bears. It only worked one more time, so I suppose the bears learned to arrive later in the night. If that bear had been sighted by any of the other staff, it might have been time to drag out Bernie’s bear foot for some mischief. Oh well, we had no end of other entertainment options. Having so much time in a forest was a treat beyond compare.

Life Lessons

Make no mistake about it, that summer was a major step towards adulthood. It was more than a series of adventures. The archery program came with a lot of responsibility. I was left to run it all on my own, and I found I liked being in charge. It was rewarding to teach the kids and watch their progress. They were so enthusiastic. It was my ﬁrst hint that teaching might be in my blood. Over the years I taught archery, skiing, sailing, soccer, kayak building, computer graphics, and manufacturing computer systems. The need to make a living, however, kept me from a classic teaching career path. Looking back on it, I’m sure I would have chafed at the time-wasting bureaucracy and the mind-numbing repetition of dealing with the same issues year after year.

During the summer I talked to just about every scoutmaster in the Portland district and found, with only a couple of exceptions, that the adults were really good and reasonable people. Scouting has received withering criticism in recent years, but mostly from those without signiﬁcant time in the program. Personally, I did not need the outdoor part of scouting, seeing as my immediate family was very experienced in that regard. But there were many kids in my troop who either came from a family without the resources or the interest to get their kids out camping. Those kids beneﬁtted immensely from the scouting experience.

Another big part of scouting was teaching leadership. In our troop the senior scouts ran the weekly meeting and provided the regular training for earning merit badges. Older kids teaching younger kids was the point, not earning merit badges.

Not everything at camp came up roses, however. It grated only being paid as an entry-level staff person and not for the loftier position of archery instructor. However, I was so happy to have the position regardless of not getting a raise that I did not make it an issue. The camp director seemed to cut corners, which might have played into the debacles of the ﬁred archery instructor, the pedophile preacher, and the resistance to approving time off resulting in a short staff walkout. However, the camp ran well regardless.

My only significant conﬂict came from the assistant camp director. He was a stocky guy with tight clothes and a military-style “buzz” cut whose pushy and cocky behavior seemed to demand attention in the manner of a drill sergeant. I had seen him from afar at previous scout gatherings and already had a negative impression. I could visualize him running a boot camp. As a result of his haircut, we referred to him behind his back as “Buzz.”

Buzz was not generally visibly involved with the everyday activities of the camp, but we were about to collide. While all of the troops that came to the camp had been well-behaved, ﬁnally a group of inner-city disadvantaged kids showed up that turned everything upside down. An attempt had been made to help these kids out by bringing them to camp using donated fees, and the supervising adults were volunteers, not parents. As soon as the kids were let off the bus, they scattered in all directions, climbed onto the building roofs, threw rocks through windows, overran the candy bar shack, and were generally a nightmare. So what could possibly go wrong with them at the archery range I thought to myself? About midweek I was horriﬁed to ﬁnd they had been scheduled for a range session. What kind of adult would think that was a good idea? They showed up with only one supervisor and were, of course, unruly. Knowing what was coming, I had locked up everything that wasn’t strictly necessary and brought another counselor along, something I had never felt the need to do before. As soon as I got the session started, the one and only supervisor left. WTF! Was this a babysitting session? I got the ﬁrst group of shooters organized with the expected difﬁculty. They were all bad at following directions, but there was one kid in particular I couldn’t ﬁgure out. He repeatedly shot his arrows into the dirt about ﬁve feet ahead. I had been gently suggesting he raise his hand to about the level of the target to get the arrows further down range when suddenly he reared back and shot his arrow straight up. Everyone scattered in a panic. I immediately kicked all of them out and closed the range. I headed off to make a report to the camp director before anyone had a chance to complain.

The next day Buzz showed up at the range, something he had never done before. Uh oh, was I about to receive blow-back for closing the range? Well, no. It was worse. He told me he wanted me to sign the paperwork for all of those kids to receive the Archery Merit Badge. Only about three kids a year are able to earn that prestigious badge at camp, as the requirements are hard to achieve in just one week. I explained to him that none had taken, let alone achieved a passing score on the written test, had not constructed a bowstring, or, using that bowstring, shot the required minimum score. Most had not yet shot a bow at all. This was one of those badges that required effort and practice to master the required skills. Like the Lifesaving Merit Badge. The idea of handing out merit badges was preposterous. He was unmoved and belligerent. I pointed out that kind of charity would mean nothing to those kids. He got loud and told me either to ﬁll out the paperwork or get ﬁred. It was now crystal clear he was a bully. After all, he could have signed off on the paperwork himself. I didn’t get ﬁred but with a strong sense of right and wrong, I was mightily pissed off! Upon reﬂection there had to be something else at play that I couldn’t discern. Buzz must have been playing some kind of angle. In any case, it wouldn’t be the last time I caught shrapnel from an autocrat. That’s life.

Much later I inadvertently overheard him in an expletive-laden racist diatribe against Jews and Catholics while speaking to his son. Only he used slurs for their religious categories, some of which I had never heard before. Hearing something that sounded like what I would expect from the Ku Klux Klan was shocking. Once again my initial instinct had been proven correct.

Venison Anyone?

After scout camp closed for the season, I heard from one of the scouts in my troop the incredible news that Oregon was about to open the very ﬁrst archery-only deer season in the state’s history. I looked forward to this more than Christmas. I had already dressed out a deer during the previous rifle season, so I was ready to do this without help. Being able to shoot ping pong balls out of the air with my bow and knowing where the deer hung out, I thought this was going to be a piece of cake.

On opening morning I told Mom I was going deer hunting. The VW was already packed for the 90-minute drive to Mt. Hood. I don’t think she took me seriously and only asked if I would be home for dinner without really paying attention to what I was up to, nor did she have a clue where I was going. “Probably,” I said, although I had no idea how long it would take. But I knew exactly where I wanted to start hunting.

It’s always more productive to hunt where you know the lay of the land right down to where the game trails are located. There was a meadow uphill from the camp that had good browse and water and cover and was off the beaten path. Deer could be found there more often than anywhere else close to camp, so that’s where I started. Five minutes from the car, I found a young forked-horn buck browsing in the brush at the edge of the meadow. It was surprising to come across a deer so close to the car and so soon. It was actively feeding in the typical manner of deer: lower head to take a bite; raise head while chewing to look around, listen for odd sounds, and pick up stray scents; and repeat. Every time it lowered its head, I took a step closer. Finally, I was close enough to see its eyelashes. I squinted so it wouldn’t see my eyes and, more importantly, catch the motion of blinking. Have you any idea how hard it is to not blink for an extended period?

Finally, it was time. When it lowered its head, I raised my bow and let ﬂy. The arrow disappeared in a blink, the deer twitched its skin like they do to chase off ﬂies, raised its head, and stood there on high alert, but for what, it did not seem to know. I couldn’t believe it. Was it possible that I had missed? I really wanted to nock another arrow but didn’t dare make the slightest movement. I was oozing my hand toward another arrow when suddenly the deer dropped its head to the ground and collapsed. Being surprised by these events, I approached cautiously, kicked a hind foot, and last, poked an eye with a stick. Yep, totally dead. I was using a ﬂat broadhead with only two cutting edges, and the arrow had passed between ribs both entering and exiting. Cutting your ﬁnger with a sharp razor often doesn’t hurt right away, and lung tissue doesn’t have pain receptors anyway, so apparently it didn’t feel the arrow in any sort of alarming way. If the arrow had hit a rib, the reaction would have been totally different. In this case the deer stood there until it fainted from a loss of blood pressure and quickly expired. I was elated of course, but I would have felt foolish celebrating out loud all by myself.

Getting home wasn’t all that hard. After dressing it out, I was able to drag it to the car. Room was made by folding the rear seat down and moving the passenger seat and backrest forward. Getting the deer in was awkward though, with lots of pushing, pulling, and folding of legs. Thankfully no ticks were found exiting the cooling host. The head was between the front seats, hindered shifting, and kept ﬂopping into my lap, so I stopped by the side of the road to tie the head off to the passenger door to keep it out of the way. Obviously I did not have the most appropriate vehicle for this kind of adventure.

A big grin was developing as I rolled into the driveway. I found Mom in the kitchen and told her I needed help with something. Rigor mortis was setting in and I could not get the deer out without help. Mom let out a screech and ran back into the house to call Dad. I heard her say, “Alan, you better come home right now because Ted has a deer in the car.” When he got home, we hung it in the garage for skinning and butchering. Of course we had fresh liver for dinner; only I cooked my own (sliced thin and cooked gently) because Mom always cooked the tarnation out of liver, and I also wasn’t a huge fan of my food smothered in onions.

So, while still in high school, on the ﬁrst ever archery-only deer season on the ﬁrst morning of the season, I had harvested a young buck in about the most perfect way possible. However, a larger vehicle sure would have been welcome.

The Wrap-up

This summer turned out to be more like a vacation than a job. How could I not like leading hikes and teaching archery? Dealing with the kids was so rewarding. They had such astonished looks on their faces the first time they pulled the string back and the arrow actually went somewhere, if only ten feet. Actually hitting the target generated whoops of joy.

With one foot just about out of childhood and the other reaching into adulthood, the job was a good blend of responsibility and time spent among nature. It had some oddities however. Nothing was done to establish priorities or show me how to get started other than to show me the archery equipment locker location and hand me the key. It was up to me to figure out how to run the range. Fortunately, it all went swimmingly. Since the range had to be well separated from the camp for safety reasons, it was like I had my own operation and was left on my own. Since one had to hike uphill to get to the range, people didn’t didn’t just casually wander by. All I had to do was show up for meals which meant I got in a lot of hiking every day.

I have no idea where that green weenie got off to after camp closed for the season. I’m sure the novelty had worn off by then and we didn’t care. Kinda wish I had it now though, along with a few other things from my youth. Bernie’s contract was for only part of the summer, so he wasn’t around at the end, and I lost track of him. However, there would definitely be more memorable Bernie sightings in the future.

Four Years Later

While in college four years down the road, Holly and I were pretty much inseparable. Her parents wanted to go camping and trout ﬁshing, so I took them to a productive creek near the scout camp. It was beautiful country, and I knew it intimately. I demonstrated to the parents how to go about catching trout by plucking one out of the stream in one cast right in front of them. Then Holly and I left them to it by moving upstream and fishing from pocket to pocket. We returned with several trout, but the elders had not caught a thing. Well of course they hadn’t. They were still ﬁshing right where I caught that ﬁrst ﬁsh. This was confusing because they said they were experienced from all their years of trout ﬁshing in Colorado. I was flabbergasted but tried to not let it show. This meant they lacked any fundamental understanding about trout in small streams. It boggled my mind that, having no action after a reasonable amount of time, they didn’t try moving to a new spot.

In tiny streams one gets only one cast, or two at the most, before the only trout in a holding spot is either caught or alarmed. It’s a process of taking a cast or two and moving on. It’s a pleasant and very meditative process. I didn’t know the parents very well, so I didn’t feel inclined to risk saying something they might ﬁnd insulting.

For the parent’s sake, it was time to try something totally different. Being ready for some variety myself and wanting to know how the trout I had transplanted into the lake had fared over the years, we hiked into the scout camp, which was not in session. I tied on a medium-sized spinner and heaved it out into the lake as far as I could. While waiting for the spinner to descend, suddenly my line began peeling off far faster than expected. I closed the bail, and my reel started singing. A huge trout jumped and proceeded to porpoise across the lake, shattering the calm surface. Eventually I slid a steelhead-sized trout up on the beach. It was an astounding turn of events. One of my babies had grown from a 7 incher into a monster. Walt and Clarice immediately moved to where I had been standing and started casting. I didn’t have the heart to tell them it doesn’t work that way except for hatchery-raised trout. I think hooked ﬁsh release stress chemicals, which makes any others nearby move away. Holly and I moved down the shoreline out of sight, where I caught another big one as quietly as possible. Without taking it out of the water, I released it, proud as can be that transplanting stunted trout past the barriers into the lake had been so successful. There was no reason to harvest a second ﬁsh, so at that point I quit ﬁshing and focused my attention on my other love. That ﬁrst trout would feed all four of us anyway, and with annual mortality, there probably weren’t many trout remaining. Walt and Clarice never did catch a trout in that lake, but it was not for a lack of casting. Unfortunately, continuing to thrash the calm water over and over just drives the ﬁsh away.

Walt and Clarice were still casting when Holly and I returned from a hike up to a viewpoint. That’s where we experienced a hair-raising encounter with a mountain lion. That amazing story is available on my website.

Five Years Later, Bernie And I Go Fishing

Walking across the OSU campus one day, I spied a familiar face. It was Bernie who I hadn’t seen in ﬁve years. He was a student there, and it was amazing that I had not run into him before. We quickly made plans to go ﬁshing in a nearby slough with which he was familiar. How? I don’t know because I never had time for that kind of diversion. While hiking through a ﬁlbert orchard with its low and dense canopy to get to the slough, I spied a goose down one of the rows. Fishing was quickly forgotten. We split up and began trying to chase down that goose. It could not get up to speed nor fly up through the canopy to escape. After going round and round, Bernie eventually knocked it down and wrapped it up in his shirt. Now what? Well, he took it back to his fraternity, where he had the cook roast it. It was such a classic Bernie event.

It’s useful to know here that Bernie had been on the university soccer team but had quit the team because of a back injury. There were a lot of male students going to school just to maintain a draft deferment from the Vietnam War and who had no real interest in college. I took his statement about a back injury at face value, but then having seen him race around chasing a goose, I began to have doubts. He probably had been injured, but he might have been milking that fact to extend his deferment past college. I didn’t want to ask just then.

Soon after the goose caper Bernie suggested a double date to go night catﬁshing on that same slough. What could go wrong, right? Holly was game, so off we went with beer, snacks, and blankets. It was a very dark night, so we put crumpled foil on the tips of our rods so we could see them wiggle if we got a bite. We needn’t have bothered. We caught catﬁsh hand over ﬁst all night long. The only challenge was listening for the splash of our sinker hitting water when we cast out. If there was no splash, it meant the line had gone into the trees. I ﬁlled up a contractor’s bucket with catﬁsh, which turned out to be a problem. I had failed to notice that Holly was getting grumpy about the lack of attention. This was not the kind of nighttime activity she had in mind, and thereafter mentioning Bernie would be met with a scowl. Okay, lesson learned. Leave Bernie at home. The only odd thing of the night happened on one cast where I was having trouble retrieving my line. There was obviously a ﬁsh on the line, but it was hung up somehow. Normally I would just pull hard and break off, but this felt different. I put constant and steady pressure on the line right up to the breaking point and waited it out. Eventually I was sure I felt movement and then signiﬁcant movement. Finally, I was able to reel in but with a lot more weight than expected. No, it was not a waterlogged limb. It was a large freshwater clam! The sinker had passed into its gape, and it closed up on it. Freshwater clams bury themselves with just the shell tips protruding, so I had to pull it out of the riverbed with slow pressure. I brought it home, and it tasted okay, but not as good as catﬁsh. Fresh wild catﬁsh are even better tasting than trout.

Later in the term I called Bernie’s fraternity, and they told me he had quit school and moved out! I could only guess why. Flunked out? Medical deferment came through? Got drafted? Who knows? That he didn’t let me know what was up was a worrying sign. Life went on, and Holly and I were having a great time.

Seven Years Later

Queue up the time machine for a seven-year jump forward. Two of my OSU graduate school friends and I took a day-hunting trip to a game refuge south of town to try pheasant hunting. Working the edge of a ﬁeld I noticed a single hunter with a young dog way over on the other side. He was too far away to identify but something about him seemed familiar. I broke away from my group and hiked directly towards him. When I got closer I could see it was Bernie. Wow! How amazing was that? I was shocked to ﬁnd he was an Oregon State highway patrolman. Oh the irony of ﬁnding the kid who skirted around the edges of game laws as a matter of course was now responsible for law enforcement. I never could have predicted that turn of events. It was also curious that he had avoided the draft but was physically ﬁt enough to get through the police academy. That was something I wanted to ask about, but maybe later.

We made plans to go jump-shooting for ducks along that same old slough we liked so much. I had never hunted ducks, and I found trying to work along the edge of the slough difﬁcult due to the thick border of ash trees, brush, and blackberries. We had not progressed very far when suddenly a deer broke into the open, barely more than an arm’s length away. Bernie pivoted with the deer and shot from the hip, killing it instantly. With birdshot! I was shocked. Being in graduate school, deer hunting was not on my radar. I didn’t know we were in an agricultural hunt zone where only shotguns were allowed, the season was three months long, and any sex was fair game. But hunting deer with birdshot sure wasn’t, not that it wasn’t effective from point-blank range. So our duck hunt was over practically before it started. I was a little put off by this turn of events, but not surprised that Bernie reacted so quickly. He had well developed predatory instincts.

Back at his house, I entered the den of a slob bachelor. There were liquor and beer bottles everywhere, piles of dirty clothes, and pizza boxes overﬂowing the garbage can. Even worse, there was a loaded ﬁrearm behind every door. Sheesh. In Corvallis? With a police cruiser parked in the driveway? I found out he was going through a divorce (very common in the police force), and he seemed morose and tense. He was no longer the cheerful fun kid I knew at scout camp. He had similar traits to two other bachelor hunting/ﬁshing friends of mine who couldn’t maintain relationships. His house looked like an alcoholic lived there. He was having marital issues. Clearly things were not going well.

A few weeks later I rung him up and was disappointed to receive the “this number has been disconnected” recording. Ah well, he had disappeared again. Holly and I were both in grad school; I was working part-time in an accounting ﬁrm, playing soccer on the men’s team, and coaching the women’s team. I hate to say it, but with all that going on, Bernie was soon forgotten. It’s too bad, but I never saw Bernie again. If the internet had been around then, I might have been able to maintain a connection. Maybe.

After all of these stories, is it any wonder that I went on to earn a degree in Zoology?