BONES IN THE RIVERBED

Author's note: We had our first good snowstorm on Monday and whether that knocked out my internet access, I don't know. I was not able to log on for a couple days. I'll have a report about the deer hunting season as soon as I can write one up. In the mean time, here is a true tale about the river that runs past my house.

BONES IN THE RIVERBED
By: Ray Hansen

The inspiration for this blog came from something I observed this summer while wading in the river behind my house and casting for smallmouth bass: deer bones lay scattered in certain sections of the riverbed. Moving slowly along, I’d spot part of a ribcage here, and a hip bone there. Longer leg bones often lay oriented with the flow of the current, and smaller bones sat wherever the high and roiled water flow during the spring would fling them.

Later in the fall I went to a place more than twenty miles upstream and found even more evidence – old and new – on the dry bed of a reservoir that had been drained. I had some hunches about how they got there, but I haven’t lived here very long so I decided to consult the Mystic Oracle, otherwise known as the Past President of the Old Partridge Hunter’s Society. He lives a grouse flush down the road from me and has spent many years on the river. I found him out in his workshop, tinkering with reloading press.

“Ah yes” he said, mulling the question over on a warm October night. “Bones in the riverbed. Well… a few come from coyote kills during the winter, and maybe a few more from deer that make it to the river after getting hit by trucks on the road. Most though, are put there intentionally.”

“Put there intentionally” I repeated, somewhat surprised.

“Yup” he replied, picking up a twelve gauge hull from his reloading bench and examining it under the light of a sputtering lantern. “Do you feed birds in the winter” he asked?

“Sure” I answered.

“And what do you feed them?”

“Seed mix, suet, dried corn, peanut butter”, I said while thinking about supplies I’d buy for the upcoming cold months.

“Great for jays and juncos” the President postulated, “but what if you wanted to feed eagles?”

“Aha” I exclaimed, grasping the significance of his calculated question.

“People here watch for roadkilled deer once the river freezes over. Pick up a small deer if you’re alone, or a bigger one if you have help. Toss it in the back of the truck. Skid it across the snow and slide it over the riverbank”, he explained, staring out past the lantern light.

“Eagles, sometimes four of them, strip the carcass fairly clean and ravens get the rest. Once in a while a pack of coyotes scare the birds off but there is usually not much left for them. Mice and small nesting birds carry off the hair, and the river claims the bones.”

So the river flows along unceasing. New water constantly keeps the current moving. Each time I look at the surface, it really is a new river. The bones I see are the only sign that some particular deer ever existed, but they don’t last forever. Maybe the words on this page are the only thing that can ever lend them any kind of permanence…
Copyright Ray Hansen, 2008