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Allison Coil stroked the soft neck of the massive bull elk. The skin was
still warm to the touch. She felt the smooth fur on the animal's head,
looked at the crimson dot on its skull that leaked blood, then pressed
her index finger against the spot where death had found an opening.
Death in a flying cylinder, she thought.
"This is the point in the process where none of us really knows what to
do," said Vic, one of the three hunters who had led Coil to the site of the kill. They had just returned to camp for their quartering tools when she showed up, making the rounds to check on clients.
"He was still struggling when we got here," said another of the trio. "We were forced to finish him off."
The three young men seemed appropriately respectful. Too many hunters
treated animals as little more than bull's-eye targets.
"Is this your first kill?" she asked.
"First kill, first shot, first day," said Vic, the man bearing the least amount of equipment-jeans, boots, and blaze-orange vest over a heavy winter jacket. "Beginners' luck all the way."
"How did it feel?" she asked.
"Feel? I don't know. It all happened so quickly."
Coil stood up. The four of them were gathered in a grassy clearing a half-mile from their camp outside the main bowl of Ripplecreek Canyon.
"Good lung shot," she said. "Too bad he didn't die instantly."
Allison had guided these men into the wilderness three days earlier. She was a rarity in the Rocky Mountains, a female guide in macho land. Her job was to escort hunters on horseback into the high country, to help them set up tents and prepare for the hunt. This group was a welcome break from the greenhorns who tried to pretend that they had never worn a silk tie, drunk a three-martini lunch, or driven an SUV with a cell-phone sprouting from one ear. This group had an earthy, genuine feel. She remembered taking note of Vic's good looks on the day she had loaded them in, and she took a second to study them again: trim sandy-blond beard, a surfer-like shock of blond hair, square shoulders, strong hips and a solid demeanor.
"If I hadn't come back today to check on you boys, which one of you
would have taken this puppy apart?" she asked.
"I was going to wing it," said Vic.
"So . . . do you want a hands-on lesson, or do you want to watch me have fun by myself?" Coil asked.
"A lesson, please," said Vic. "You might not be around to hold my hand
the next time I bring down an elk."
"You've taken your kill for this season, mister," Coil said. "If you learn how to do this right, you can hold one of your buddys' hands." She looked over at the two other men, who took a small step away from each other, laughing.
Coil showed Vic where to make an incision in the white belly, a straight line from anus to heart-high, and how to avoid puncturing the intestines. She used a small handsaw to cut through the pelvis, then splayed the rib cage back. The hunters peered warily at the guts open to the wide sky. Like a doctor in an outdoor operating theater, Coil admired the animal's clean, shiny innards. White intestines, beet-red liver, pale-pink lungs-nature's color-coded diagram. She cut the corrugated esophagus, a windpipe like a vacuum cleaner tube, from the animal's throat. The discard pile grew as the animal was parted out. Vic took over as they emptied the viscera from the elk's cavity.
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