FROZEN SAND crunches under our boots as we walk, following the dancing beams of our headlamps into the darkness. It is cold. Frost bites at our noses and fingers, and our breath forms ghostly clouds of steam. Blacktop roads and city lights are many miles away; here lives only the pungent smell of sagebrush and the hope of a monster buck at dawn. That hope draws us on, my son and me, down the desert trail and across rocky canyons. The Big Dipper rides above my left shoulder and Orion, the hunter, over my right. I offer a silent petition for a good day’s hunt.
We’ve been bivouacked in the backcountry of southern Utah for over a week now, living from our packs and hunting elusive desert mule deer. The bucks come big here, but the desert is bigger. A couple of days ago my 14-year-old, Josiah, tracked down and killed a giant with extra mass and heavy, bladed tines by himself. I am ridiculously proud of my son; he has the eyes of an eagle, the instincts of a lion hound, and the heart