How I Spent a Hunting Trip - Essay Example

I almost did not see the bear at first; it was standing quietly and very still watching us from within the dense bush, its dark coat blending easily with the dark background of dead and dying leaves. It was less than ten feet away and its eyes were focused intently on Kelvin, my friend was on his knees trying to figure out north using the old rusty compass. The bear was huge and its small beady eyes were focused his back with what appeared to my terrified eyes; an evil glint. My first instinct was to shout a warning; however I suppressed that as well as the urge to run since I knew when faced with a bear, any sudden noise or movement should be avoided since it might excite the animal into attacking. “Hey Kelvin”, I said in a matter of fact voice “don’t turn around, but we have company”, I might as well have said “hey Kelvin turn around we have company”, because his neck was spinning around even before I finished telling him not to. Since he was directly in front of the bear, he initially looked straight at it without noticing it, then when it suddenly dawned to him that he was staring into the eyes of a deadly killer, he gave a yelp that startled both the bear and myself and he was on his feet almost instantaneously. Unlike me, Kelvin had no reservations about exciting the bear, before I could tell him to calm down so as not to draw the animal’s attention, he was bounding past me into the forest and the bear could not have been more exited as it burst through the undergrowth looking way bigger and meaner than it had when it was half hidden. I followed Kelvin, who was by now running at full tilt and screaming his head off, I had heard that the best way to survive an animal attack was to have friend who wasn’t as fast as you were. If that was true, Kelvin had nothing to fear since I was naturally slower than him, I could hear the bear grunting a several feet behind me but I could have sworn it was inches. I slipped and fell and for a fraction of the scariest second of my life, I was sure the bear would catch up and rip me into shreds; however I sprang up almost as fast as I had fallen and kept running. Spurred by fear, I accelerated and the race was on, for the bear it was about lunch but for us it was our lives we were running for, at that moment I was so scared that I was sweating through every pore on my skin and something in my mind was telling me this was the end. Nevertheless, I felt (or thought I felt) adrenaline coursing through my veins and I run harder than ever before. I kept running into low hanging branches that my friend had brushed aside in his haste and some of them smacked me right in the face as they swung back after he had pushed them away. I was however too scared to feel the pain, many tore into my face living deep scratches which I only noticed much later. This was not how I had planned my day; I had been persuaded by my friends, Kelvin and Fred to join them in a hunting “expedition” they made it sound like we would be reliving Mungo Park’s exploration into Africa although I knew at best we would scare a few rabbits. Still, against my better judgment I acquiesced and we agreed to meet at Kelvin's place on Saturday at 7 Am. I borrowed an on old hunting rifle which my dad swore could take out an elephant from 200 yards, from experience, it was unstable and the scope was faulty such that the easiest way to guarantee you do not shoot something would be to aim at it. When I got to the rendezvous, I found Kelvin, Fred and another guy called Alex who was introduced to me as Fred’s cousin, we set off for the reservation with high hopes of bagging a few rabbits by lunch time. Two hours later, the only significant thing that had happened was that all or phones lost their signals and we had to navigate using Kelvins rusty compass. As a result we had a hard time figuring where we should be going because we could not agree on the right bearing or direction to follow. We walked through the dense bush listening for anything we could use our guns on and trying to prevent our necks from catching the dew that was falling off the leaves; the bush was quite thick in some places and damp with a musty smell. We walked for hours and it was only at around 12 pm that we spotted a rabbit, rather, Alex spotted it and signaled us to be quiet; we all slowly took out our guns and aimed at the blissfully ignorant rabbit. The rabbit was busy nibbling at some plants at the top of a grassy ledge and appeared oblivious to the imminent danger. I was quite confident that someone would hit it and hopefully we could go home. “On the count of three” Fred whispered, Then “one, two,” as soon as he said two and we were itching to pull our triggers, the rabbit suddenly decided it had no more business on that particular spot and unceremoniously ducked into the undergrowth. We all swore angrily but the rabbit had moved so quickly no one even bothered to shoot as it would have been as waste of lead, however encouraged by how close we had gotten, we kept trying to spot more game. This took the better part of the next two hours and by then we were all; hungry, tired and frustrated by our bad luck, nonetheless, the guys were trying to be optimistic, but not me. I decided I had had enough and I told the guys we should be heading back, no one disagreed, but neither were they sure where we were, Fred still had his compass but his navigational ability was clearly no better than our collective hunting prowess. After we had stumbled around for an hour Fred and Alex decided the compass was not working and that we should walk in any direction until we came to the fridges of the forest and catch a ride home. Kelvin and I disagreed, finally Fred handed us the compass and we split, two hours later we were still no close to finding our way out and the compass was proving to be every bit as useless as Fred had claimed. In point of fact, the compass was working just fine as I later came to discover, however, we were simply too used to Google maps to grasp the finer concepts behind traditional navigation. We walked around in circles trying to trace our route into the forest but every tree and bush looked just like the next one to me and we could not find a trail to follow, we kept moving back and forth since we were afraid of moving too deep into the forest, consequently, we did not make much progress. It was as we took a break to rethink our strategy that we came upon the grizzly bear and thanks to Kelvin, we were now running in a desperate attempt to escape certain death or mauling. I do not know how long we ran , but it could not have been more than ten minutes. Despite my initial paranoia that the bear was inches behind me, I could feel his bounding footfalls receding in the distance and I knew he did not stand a chance at catching up with us, not Kelvin at any rate, the guy was so far ahead I managed to follow him only because of the racket he was making. Finally, he stopped and I crashed into him, we listened with bated breath and realized that the bear must have been too far behind or had given up the chase. However, we were not reassured and as soon as we had caught our breaths, we started off running so as to put as much distance as possible between the animal and ourselves. Needless to say, at this point we were not concerned about going too deep in the forest since our priority was to escape the beast, we kept running until we were sure were safe. However, the encounter had awaked us to the fact that danger could be lurking anywhere in the vicinity and every breaking twig or other unexplained noises made us jump and clutch at each other for dear life. We had left our guns and backpacks where we had seen the bear but neither of us felt courageous enough to go back, we kept moving forward in a straight direction until I had an idea. I told kelvin who was more nimble to climb a tree and if we weren’t too far into the bush, he would probably see something to direct us to the road. Despite his efforts and motivation, (mostly fear) it took him a lot of effort to ascent the tree we though was tall enough to provide a bird’s eye view of the surroundings. It took several attempts for him to finally reach the lowest branch and from there, he hoisted himself as high as he could, I waited anxiously at the bottom, and kept looking around for any dangers since I was feeling especially vulnerable with my companion being so high up while I was alone. Fortunately, he discovered that the edge of the forest was just a few miles away from our position; we also discovered that our mobiles had regained their signals and we quickly called the other two. Apparently they had made it out hours ahead, I cannot describe how relived I was to finally breath the stuffy and dusty air outside the woods. We expected to regale everyone with tales of our escape from the bear, we were however disappointed as they treated our story with open suspicion and Fred claimed there were no bears in that part of the forest reserve. Kelvin looked at me knowingly and we did not push the point further, I just hoped my dad would be more open-minded since I was sure he would want to know where I left his beloved rifle. From the hallowing experience, Kelvin lost his enthusiasm for hunting or even venturing into the woods, I had never been much of hunter, but from that day on, I became even more averse to entering the forest for any reason whether it was camping or hiking. Read More