I’m a slow learner.
Maybe that’s why it took me so long to appreciate the value of 4-wheelers during hunting season.
After all, it remains illegal to drive them off-road on nearly all public land in Montana, and they’re about as welcome as brucellosis-infected buffalo on private land.
But open just about any hunting magazine on the rack and there’s a picture of a camo-clad hunter riding one. Turn on the Outdoor Channel and it’s apparent 4-wheelers have even become a necessity for duck hunters.
So what was I missing?
For years now -- decades actually -- I’ve been hunting without one and enjoyed a relatively high rate of success. At the least I’ve enjoyed the quiet.
Then it dawned on me that I rarely see one on the ground. ATVs are almost always perched in the bed of a pickup truck.
Last weekend it finally became clear, 4-wheelers are simply ballast, sandbags for the 21st century.
I was hunting breaks country an hour from my home where the common, albeit illegal, method of hunting is to drive the flats above the broken country and glass for game.
My son-in-law and I had just picked up his muley buck from a two-track where he had dragged it when we saw a truck speeding along a high ridge above us. At a distance it appeared there were hunters riding in the back, but a look through the binoculars showed a 4-wheeler, not hunters, in the bed of the truck.
Two muley does and a small buck ran across the bench a half mile in front of us and we stopped to watch the action. The pickup, bearing Montana plates and four orange-clad yahoos, went racing after the deer.
And then it all became clear.
The truck, high-tailing it off-road after the deer, wasn’t bouncing at all, despite the rough terrain. The ATV in the back was apparently providing enough weight to keep the truck on the ground at 50 mph across the short-grass prairie.
We watched as the pickup skidded to a halt and a hunter jumped out, resting his rifle on the hood. But the deer kept going and the hunter leapt back into the truck and off it roared.
Although we never did hear a shot, it was a pleasure to watch such a quality hunt unfold, especially now that I understood the meaning of it all.
One question, however, remains.
Aren’t sandbags a lot cheaper?
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net