canyon adventures

The other night Zach expressed a desire to shoot his guns.  We weren't sure where to go, but decided to go into the canyon with some rice and shoot some dinner (Zach was to shoot the dinner).  Chris came over, and, despite a foot injury from bike jousting, decided to come along.  I brought the air rifle.

We parked at the end of teton canyon road, and the lot was crammed.  A bride walked by, and we asked where they intended to be wed.  As if they were afraid we might try to join them, the wedding goers replied "up the trail somewhere."

Chris, Zach, and Indica.  

We walked in a couple of miles, found a suitable marmot hunting ground (far enough away from the wedding) and a suitable campsite, and then saw something big moving on the far hillside.  It was brown, and appeared quite large.  We all believed it to be moving.  Chris declared, "Damn, that's a big bear."  I thought it looked like a moose.  Zach didn't have his glasses and couldn't really weigh in, but he strapped his .45 to his belt regardless.

Filled with excitement of the possibility of a good large animal sighting, we hugged the creek to move out of the wind path to the creature, then came up the hill to get a visual.  It was a rather large stump.

Disappointed, we went back to camp, set up, and went hunting.  Zach walked silently ahead of me as I jumped around on rocks.  I heard no marmots, but something was squeaking uphill--likely a ground squirrel.  We were not opposed to eating such small rodents (I need to build on my chipmunk story anyway).  Zach, hearing the squeaks, carefully unholstered his revolver and took aim at an opening in the rock pile.

He motioned to me that there was a critter, and stood silently for some time.  Eventually, something squeaked above him, and he relocated.  This time he was quick to the draw, and took one shot before collecting his prey--a squirrel.

Zach headed down to clean the squirrel in the creek, and Chris and I followed at our own pace.  We reached Zach to learn that the squirrel had weird white specks on his abdomen--a diseased squirrel would not make a healthy snack.  We buried the squirrel, and moved on to fishing.

I have always wondered if Teton Creek had fish this high up in the mountains.  Today we found out that it does!  Chris spotted fish, I saw them too, and Zach took aim.  He missed a couple of times, missed again with the .45, and Chris and I left to build a fire.  As we walked away we heard him unload three rounds into the creek.  Despite semi-automatic weaponry, Zach came back empty handed from fishing.

We had a nice fire, ate lots of rice, and crammed into a tent when it started to rain at 3 in the morning.  I was pleased that there were no rangers waiting for us at the trailhead.  I felt conspicuous with an air rifle strapped on my pack after a night of shooting handguns in a wilderness area.  I'll be sure to check the wilderness regulations before we go shooting in the canyon again...