The sun is nearly setting on a crisp October afternoon. The mountain leaves have changed color, and the wind seizes a sharper bite. Big-game hunting seasons are still a few days premature, and thus traffic on the mountains past Lake Fernan is minimal. One blue truck barrels into the wilderness with the eagerness of a young child.
The windows down, freshman education major John Monnier can hear everything in the brush. He just turned off the main road and quietly prowls toward his base camp 18 gravel-encrusted miles away.
It’s a short trip for this outdoors addict, even though he’s driving most of the way. Normally, he says, “I’d rather find a trail and walk.”
Suddenly, the truck comes to a screeching, gravel-tossing halt. The driver’s-side door explodes open, and Monnier erupts from the truck to the bush in one bounding leap.
The forest is now eerily quiet. No more birds are chirping, the squirrels have all but silenced. Even the rustle of wind over the tops of trees has vanished. If it was a horror movie, the monster would attack … now.
Somewhere, Monnier is in the brush tracking something he spotted from the …
Boom!
A gunshot. A crackle. A broken branch. A dead bird cascades in front of the idling truck.
Then a blood-curdling shriek from the 24-year-old former Hawaiian yielding a shotgun.
“Hoorah!” he bellows from behind the bush. “How’s that for a Hawaiian punch?”
An audacious Monnier hurdles down the embankment and leaps next to his fresh kill. With a swift thrust of his hands, a stomp of his foot and a sudden yank, the bird is gutted and breasted in one fell swoop.
“I just learned that move a few days ago,” he chuckles, tossing the curiously clean bird into his cooler. “Sure as hell beats plucking the damn thing.”
Back in the truck, the smallest of tears transcends his cheekbone.
“It’s not that I’m sad,” he says, swerving around a fallen tree. “I assure you this is no tear of sorrow. I think it’s because I’m so happy that I ended the life of something. It’s like a power trip. An overwhelming power trip.”
* * *
Monnier grew up in California before moving to Maui, Hawaii, with his family. It was there, in the lush, green rainforests, that hunting became a steadfast element in his young life. He honed his skill by tracking wild boar and mountain goat.
“I’ve killed one of everything you can kill in Hawaii,” says a deadpan Monnier.
He slams his hands down on the wheel, Apparently he missed a rabbit.
“Anything that moves,” he says. “It’s a motto I live by, whether hunting or picking up women. When the bear is hungry, he will eat.”
For the next 14 miles, Monnier decides to put the pedal to the metal and rally his ’94 Dodge along the steep embankment. He shares tales of his four-year stint in the Navy and how he learned two important things: Drink fast and drive hard – in that order.
He talks of other loves besides hunting – hiking, rock-climbing, ultimate Frisbee, acting and writing. In what appears to be a legitimately brash and extreme move, he swerves his truck straight into an upcoming bush in mid-sentence.
Alas, there is a trail.
“I cover that up so no one finds my spot,” he says.
As the trees fade away, a small expanse of dirt opens up to a magnificent view of the entire valley. The sky meshes a whirlwind of bright reds, deep purples and a never-ending array of blue.
“This spot reminds me of Guam,” Monnier says.
Four years ago, the super-typhoon Pongsona hit the tiny island of Guam, home of America’s largest re-fueling stations in the Pacific Ocean, and the Navy sent Monnier to the island. Even though he was a member of the search and rescue squadron HSC25, he was far from the bloody mess that made up most of the region. Instead, he was fixing the electrical systems of helicopters, a daunting task in and of itself, the aviation electrician admits.
“When I wasn’t fixing choppers,” Monnier says as he unpacks the truck, “I was chasing those bastard boars across the island.”
He shows a scar where he was tusked from a wild boar, a nasty groove extending from his upper calf to his knee.
“It looks bad now,” he admits. “But you should have seen what I did to that damn pig.”
The sun is fading fast. With the upcoming night comes lower temperatures, and Monnier unravels his sleeping bag. He tears apart sheets of paper to start a fire, and within minutes he’s setting large chunks of wood atop the growing blaze.
The dead grouse from earlier is all that he has to eat.
“I guess if I didn’t shoot anything, I’d go hungry,” he says.
If he didn’t bring a gallon jug of water he would have nothing to wash down the game bird.
“I would have liked to get a hike in this afternoon,” he says with a mouthful. “But there’s always tomorrow morning. Besides, the birds will be used to my smell by morning. They will think of me as safe.
“And that is when I will take them down.”
It is 5:30 in the morning, and a lingering fog covers the entire valley. Monnier awakes to a deer eating from a bush nearby. Smoke is streaming from the dissipating embers inside the makeshift fire pit.
Within minutes, he has eaten the leftover grouse and cleaned up camp: sleeping bag back in the trunk (no tent, he always sleeps under the stars), and fire put out.
“If I keep my standards low when hunting,” he says, “then I can never be disappointed. And so when that magical day comes that I drop a Sasquatch or massive elk,” he pauses, looks across the valley, and continues: “then I will have truly outdone even myself.”
With his shotgun over his back, he looks over the valley before trouncing through the bush like a madman. Within minutes, the sound of a shot fired echoes throughout the valley.
Bushes are ravaged again as Monnier undoubtedly searches for his kill.
Once more, the valley is filled with the echoing reverberations of mankind, as Monnier roars again:
“Hoorah!”
