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DENTRY: Patience in short supply for 'motorized morons'

The Rocky

Published May 8, 2008 at 7:33 p.m.

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Author and backcountry champion Dave Petersen hunts turkeys with a traditional longbow in a forest charred by the 2002 Missionary Ridge wildfire.

Photo by Ed Dentry / The Rocky

Author and backcountry champion Dave Petersen hunts turkeys with a traditional longbow in a forest charred by the 2002 Missionary Ridge wildfire.

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A pair of aging veterans crept into the heart of Rocky Mountain turkey country and found . . . ATV tracks and ruined gobblers.

As if the cold and a relentless wind weren't enough to hinder spring hunting, there are suspicions that a heroic winter, still undead, culled many turkeys hereabouts.

And to make matters worse, the undisturbed gobblers Dave Petersen scouted up a few days ago have been disturbed. Toms that danced at his feet are scattered, nervous. Even the goofy jakes refuse to talk or display.

You could blame the weather, but those tire tracks implicate other suspects. Petersen generously calls their clan "motorized morons" in his latest book, A Man Made of Elk.

Because of them, silence is not golden where the wild things are (where they were, before the pistons hammered through).

Road hunting is de rigueur these days on public lands, even where there is no road. Leave it to sloth and the rolling couch.

But with the quad's engine whining, how could the interloper know he had molested what Petersen likes to call a "wad" of turkeys?

If those giant grouse had been armed, the offending vehicle would be down in that shady gulch, rusting alongside the squashed Bronco that plunged off the same treacherous track years ago and is now an archaeological exhibit.

The rough road was no problem for Petersen, 62, a hickory-fit traditionalist who prefers to leave his pickup far below the hunting area and stalk with feet and ears.

Problem was, the rough road was even easier for the simian who commanded those deep-lug mud tires.

So much for handicaps. Some would say it was handicap enough for two old veterans to be hunting turkeys with bows - real bows, not space-age catapult devices Petersen calls "wheelie bows."

Longbows and wooden arrows. He would say his way is as natural as feet.

Woodsmanship and traditional archery is how Petersen bags his turkey in the spring. In fall, it's how he makes elk meat - which carries him and his wife, Caroline, through winters in the tidy cabin he built.

The couple almost lost that home during the Missionary Ridge Fire of 2002. The inferno ravaged 73,000 acres, including most of Petersen's backyard hunting grounds. Fire inspectors blamed a cigarette tossed into oak brush.

"They say somebody on an ATV started it," Petersen said.

A minimalist, spiritual hunter and authority on traditional archery, he refuses to purchase a faux hunter's life. He lives the real thing, dreams it.

He also writes about it with artistry, insight and strong opinions (low, in the case of the human species, high in reverence for wildlife).

After a bracing few days watching elk chew cuds on a faraway slope, listening to woodpeckers and seeing ghost turkeys vanish, we hiked down the mountain and leaned the bows against Petersen's pickup.

It's the one with the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers bumper sticker: "Use the Quads God Gave You."

For the uninitiated, that would be quadriceps femoris, the four-part muscle that raises the leg and was invented before the wheel.

About David Petersen

* The man: Six-foot, 62, sinewy and surprisingly pleasant, for a misanthrope. Poor (uncomplicated) by choice. Heats with wood. Writes on a Toshiba laptop but never fiction. "Fiction writers have to write about people," he says.

* Credentials: Naturalist, traditional archer, former U.S. Marine helicopter pilot, a founding father of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (see ColoradoBackcoun tryHunters.org), Colorado field director for Trout Unlimited (dpetersen@TU.org), for whom he is a passionate advocate of conserving public wildlands.

* Writings: A Man Made of Elk, Ghost Grizzlies, On the Wild Edge and others, available at David PetersenBooks.com. Dave also writes a "Campfire Philosopher" column for Traditional Bowhunter magazine.

* Quote: From A Man Made of Elk, about bull elk in September frenzy . . . "Those bulging, rolled-back and bloodshot eyes, flaring nostrils, and grinding teeth . . . that mad-dog foaming muzzle . . . the cacophonous, rut-roaring pageantry of it all!"

Comments

  • May 11, 2008

    8:17 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    jonnyrotten writes:

    How dare Dave own and operate a gas sucking "pickup" then judge me for operating an ATV on a public road? My ATV gets over 30MPG, has a spark arrestor, is quieter, lighter and has less impact on the environment than Dave does with his pickup and his cabin in the woods. (I heard someone in a pickup started that fire) Sorry Dave, but if we all built mountain cabins and heated them with wood we would have no wilderness left in Missionary Ridge. Not all ATVers are "morons" just like all old men are not grumpy old "people hating" elitists.

  • May 12, 2008

    1:37 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    Squatch writes:

    I too have never used my ATV to break the laws maybe these guys should pick up a phone and rat the lawbreakers out instead of painting with a broad brush. This guy has the same crappy elitist attitude that gives ammo to non hunters. "real bows, not space-age catapult devices Petersen calls "wheelie bows." you arent a fisherman if you dont fly fish, you not a hunter unless you use a longbow. At 62 he should enjoy the fact he had land to hunt in his youth and quit B!tching.

  • May 13, 2008

    8:01 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    kmcconnon writes:

    I have yet to meet a hunter that needs to use an ATV for anything. If you're too fat to walk, you're prey not a hunter.

    One idiot on an ATV wrecks acres for anyone actually trying to hunt, and how is an old man on foot an elitist when ATV riders spend tens of thousands of dollars on their rigs and the massive SUVs they need to haul them. What a load of crap! The old man likes doing it the right way and is calling ATV riders out on their sloth and the destructive nature of their hobby.

    Get off your ass and be a hunter is the message I got and I agree with it. Less gear, not more.

  • May 14, 2008

    2:14 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    jonnyrotten writes:

    You missed the point km.
    An ATV is a just a vehicle with pistons and tires much like Dave's truck or your Prius only better suited for dirt roads. Vehicles can be operated properly and legally on many forest roads or used illegally or unethically by some individual criminals. Let’s make the distinction and not paint everyone with an ATV or a compound bow as a “moron” just because you do things differently. Dave chooses to park his truck far below HIS hunting ground, but quite possibly in the middle of someone else’s hunting ground. Does that make him a "motorized moron" selfishly "wrecking acres" for others hunters? Dave is an elitist because he ridicules and name-calls anyone who does not conform to his own traditional methods. My Elk camp is 20 miles from the nearest paved road and an ATV is the perfect vehicle to access my camp. If you are aware of some magic way to pack out a 600lb elk over 20 miles of bad road without a vehicle I'd love to hear it.

  • May 14, 2008

    6:27 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    TCWriter writes:

    jonnyrotten:

    "Vehicles can be operated properly and legally on many forest roads or used illegally or unethically by some individual criminals."

    The problem is that the percentage of illegal and damaging use of ATVs is ridiculously high. I live on the edge of forest service land, and new (illegal) trails and racetrack ovals (which are highly banked and especially damaging) appear on a daily and weekly basis up here.

    Enforcement is (as you'd expect) expensive and difficult, and the ATV folks seem incapable of policing themselves. Driving the problem is the industry's own advertisements, which regularly feature ATVs ripping up streams, going off-road, and mudding the heck out of non-trail habitat.

    I'm hardly a prude about ATV use, but I am growing very concerned about this problem, and unless groups and the industry do something about it, fear somebody will do it for them (e.g. the feds).

    Fueling the backlash are the cries of "you're refusing us access" that arise whenever roadless designations are enforced, as if forcing someone to get off their butt is akin to denying access.

    Yeah, Peterson sounds like a bit of a crank, but he's simply reflecting a much larger problem, not the source of it.

  • May 14, 2008

    7:44 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    familyortiz writes:

    The fact is, that most ATV users, at least during big game season, are illegally using ATVs and hunting from them. This is what has dismayed me since I started asking questions to DOW and the state legislature as to what can be done. The first two posters have taken the atitude that the ATV industry has embraced, which is,"what problem?" They have had a chance to rein in their own, but as to date, many concerned hunters and outdoorsmen have enacted area legislation to control rampant ATV use. JR does have a good point when he says that it is very useful in bringing out game... this and for use by the physically impaired, are two reasonable uses.

  • May 14, 2008

    8:20 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    ric writes:

    Dave's points are good ones; very good ones if you want to keep wilderness wild. While I agree that ATVs have some legitimate uses, they have become far too, well, popular. Too many people using them improperly and without regard for their many negative impacts on nature, causes people who do not want to use them literally detest everyone who does. Same as snow machines, dirt bikes and other ORVs. But no one wants to forgo the ease of jumping on their 4-wheeler and buzzing around the mountains and desert. Everyone thinks their own impact is unimportant. We all do it!

    I own land bordering USFS land and I've grown to hate the sight of ATVs. Most riders are responsible folks, but it seems that just enough of them are not so responsible that it ruins it for everyone. I deal with them all summer, but mostly in elk season, and get extremely tired of posting new Keep Out signs, repairing fences and gates and running people out who ignore it all.

    If you are honest about it at all, you cannot deny that ORV's do have negative impacts on nature. It can't be done. You can say that your use is okay, but that simply doesn't wash.

    And by the way, I'm dubious that Mr. Rotten rides his ATV 20 miles each way to his camp very often. I owned a ranch once that was 20 miles of bad gravel road from the pavement and that gets old even in a pickup. An ATV that only gets 30 MPG, has no weather protection and doesn't carry much of a load can't be all that useful. Why not use a Jeep?

    So, let's tone down the rhetoric and admit that ORV's do impact nature in a negative way. Now, what shall we do about it? What are the options?