Report of an Inquiry into an Injustice by Kulchyski Peter;

Author:Kulchyski, Peter;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
Published: 2018-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

A Sheep Hunt

One time, midway through a lazy morning, David mentioned to me casually that we would be hunting sheep that day. They had spotted some. “Where?” I eagerly asked, knowing that we had been on the lookout for sheep since our arrival. “Up there, on the trail,” he replied, gesturing to the mountain behind us with his usual broad smile. It was only then that I made out the thin thread-like line of a sheep trail with, as I could see through my binoculars, several white spots on it. Until now I had never even spotted the trail, which every day the elders and hunters in camp had been keeping watch over.

We travelled as two groups in one boat downriver. The first group, with David, Theresa, and David Jr., was dropped off, and Kimberly, James, and I continued about a mile or so further downriver. We started hiking up; though I offered to help, he carried the rifle all the way and I carried a small pack with gear we’d need. As we climbed up the dry creek bed, up the first wooded slope, up the next ridge, further up, ever up, I remembered a story James had told about some hunters who had slipped a large and heavy pipe wrench into someone’s pack so that he inadvertently carried it up a mountain; I could almost hear the laughter when he discovered the trick, everyone watching his face . . .

We finally started to get high enough that we were approaching the trail. We were on a narrow, stony, sparsely treed ridge that went in a vertical direction. James left us on the south side and climbed further up, then whistled as a sign for us to join him, staying on our side. When we reached him, we were in position to see a good portion of the trail made by sheep over years and years of walking the same narrow path along sheer cliffs and steep slopes. The other hunters were working their way to a spot a half mile or so northwards. Since the sheep were between us, they would run sooner or later into the rifles of waiting hunters. Even if the hunters missed, the sheep would turn around and end up in the sights of the other team. The trick was to give enough time so that both teams could be in place, so we waited.

The night before James had showed Kimberly how to use a rifle, and she had had a bit of target practice for the first time in her life. He had asked her if she wanted to hunt something and she answered that yes, she did. So when the sheep appeared he used the bolt action to put a bullet in the chamber and wordlessly handed her the rifle. I could see that it was a moment of ethical crisis for her: she had never killed anything bigger than a mosquito, I guessed. She took the rifle, though, and aimed it. But she was unsteady, the heavy rifle was unbraced, and she found it difficult to sight.

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