The Falcon by A.G. Munson

In November of 2000 I went grouse hunting with two friends of mine. It was a Saturday and the forecast had been good, clear skies and low winds from the north. We were seasoned hunters at this point in our lives, and the trip preparation was routine. The routine consists of waking up around 4 in the morning, having coffee and breakfast, picking up the guys and heading out in the black of night. We were heading to the West Fjords and the drive up there was about 5 hours. We arrived at Trostan Fjord in the break of daylight, which was around 10:15. On the way over there, we had seen two eagles flying in circles below Trostan fjord, in all their glory. What magnificent animals these eagles were. Regal beasts.

We found a good place to park the car up the fjord, just off the revel road. The hunting grounds would be well up in the mountains of the inner fjord. Everything there was covered with ice and snow. The sun was shining brightly, and the ice outside was melting a bit. There were three of us going up there, clothed properly with backpacks and our shotguns. The area was vast, so we split up. Each went a separate way to prevent friendly fire, although this "friendly fire" is never particularly friendly. It should be named "Incompetent Fire", which is closer to the truth. I went and walked up the westward slope of the mountain. I walked up the slope at a steady pace, counting up to four, over and over. After 40 minutes of soldiering upwards, I came upon a small plateau with some boulders to the north. I sat down by a stream, open my backpack and poured myself some coffee. Took out a sandwich and munched on it. The sun reflected off the snow and life was good. Where were the birds?

The area certainly looked the part to carry grouse, some brush was there and a small stream was nearby. All the conditions were met. I looked over the individual parts of terrain and fixed my eyes on a patch of land filled with snow. I felt something was there. This gut feeling you get when your primal nature overtakes you. I pulled out my small binoculars from my backpack and scoped the snowfield for a few minutes. The grouse are very hard to spot, because they change color in winter, from brown to white. The white color protects them from their natural predators, which are three. The arctic fox, the falcons and men. This meant that the grouse (Arctic Ptarmigan) blends into the snowy environment and I couldn't see them. But I could feel them. Right there in the snow.

I decided to head down the slope and for the snowfield where I thought they were hiding. I headed toward the snowfield in a zig-zag approach, never walking directly at the prey. It was looking more promising as I advanced forward. Finally I saw a group of them together standing completely still. I continued my zig-zag approach until I was in shooting distance, then I turned suddenly left and shot three shots into the group. Five birds lay dead and the rest of the group flew away up into the Fjord. I then walked toward the birds I had shot but slipped on the slab of ice I was crossing. In a flash I landed on my right side, gun in hand. I tried to get up. I couldn't move.

I yelled out "I cannot believe that I am breaking my leg here in the middle of nowhere". I grew angry and let out a furious scream. The scene was looking more and more like a cheesy Jack London novella. I put the gun safety on and pushed it away from me. Then I flipped myself onto my stomach and got my backpack off. I used the backpack to get grip on the wet ice slab and I managed to sit up. I could feel my right leg again. It hurt like hell. I opened my backpack and ripped up my boot pikes, cursing myself for not having put them on in the beginning. Then I fixed them on each walking boot and tried to get up. On the third try and I managed to stand up. It was my anger standing up. I felt some old Berserker genes coming to life within me.

I limped over to the dead birds and put them in a plastic bag. One of them was still alive, so I rang its neck with a flick of my hand. It went into the bag too, and the bag went into my backpack. I could walk a bit better now and found out that I had in fact not broken my leg. I found a place to sit down, and I checked my boot pikes again. They held firm. I took up my thermostat and had some more coffee. Then I looked up to the sky and told the gods that I did not think that was funny. I looked over to the area where the other birds had fled and made my way over there. I had to cross that slippery ice slab again. Then I needed to head up a hill of pure ice. The angle looked about 40° upwards. Thank god I put on the pikes. I picked up my dependable "Remington 1100, G3" shot gun and checked it for damage. It looked all right. I loaded it again, put one in the chamber and put the safety on. As I walked forward a bird came flying overhead.

On a reflex I unlocked the safety, raised the gun at the bird and fired. I wasn't ready and I missed the thing. It was really fast, this bird. Quite fast for a grouse. Because of the sun, I could only see its silhouette cutting through the air. My eyes followed the bird as it flew up to the north and glided back to like a sports car. That was no grouse. That was a Falcon. That was a war bird. A fighter plane. A spitfire. Magnificent animal. For the first time in my life, I was glad I missed my target. The falcon was there hunting, the same as me. But he was better looking. Wow. I stood frozen still. Mesmerized by this sight, until the falcon disappeared from view. Then I continued over to the area where the other birds had fled. I had maybe 2 hours of daylight left at most. I had to get moving.

The hill of ice with the steep angle was before me. The rest of the birds were beyond it and there was no way to get around it. I had a cliff wall to my left and a cliffhanger to my right. It was either to get myself up this hill and get the rest of the birds, or go down the mountain again and call it quits. I am no quitter. Ever. I walked up the foot of the hill and made an attempt to step up. The ice was hard and had formed stiff a good while ago. It also had that slight yellow coloring of old ice. The grip of my boot was not as good as it could be. I had to kick it in. And so I did. I took each step up my kicking the pikes under my boots, into the ice sheet. It worked. So up I went, one kick at a time. Up I went and after 12 minutes I was on top of the hill. Finally. I took a deep breath and let out a long breath. I could have used a Red Malboro right then.

I looked around the area, scoping for the birds. I also looked around to see if I could find a way back to the car. There was an area by the north hillside with brush, so the birds had to be there. There was no other place really, unless the birds had flown completely away and escaped. Another way back to the car looked impossible. I would have to go back the way I came in. Fuck it. So be it. I slowly zig-zag ’ed my way to the brush area and shot two more birds. That was seven birds in total. It would have to do. I had roughly an hour of daylight left to get back to the car. I was not going to be stuck on this mountain in the darkness, with only a flashlight and a compass around my neck. I made my way back to the car.

Walking back in the snow, I again faced the steep icy hill that took me 12 minutes to walk up by ramming my pikes into the ice. This time I was looking down this hill, not up. It was probably going to be worse going down, as any hiker or rock climber will tell you. I could not balance myself forwards any more, so I had to balance myself backward. I would do my best not to fall off the mountain. I am stubborn bastard and I made it down in 8 minutes. I had been easier than I had anticipated. Thank heavens. I traced my way back over the ice slab that I fell on before and over the area where I had shot the 5 birds. I got back to the car in one piece in the twilight. I met my friends and they had shot some birds too and came back alive. We were all sweaty and changed our T-shirts and sweaters before the sweat cooled our bodies. The car ride home should be easy we thought. No such luck.

We started trip our back home to the capital in the twilight but it soon became dark. Driving in the steep fjords makes the darkness even darker. We wanted to take a short cut back and took a turn up a fjord mountain and over into the other fjord below. Everything looked normal. The road before us was white with snow as usual. Nothing out of the ordinary. We drove ahead like normal Suddenly the car stopped. “What’s wrong, did the engine stop?” I said. My friend driving the car, looked at the dash board and turned off the radio. “Shush!” he said. We could hear that the engine was working fine. “No, the car it ok”, he said. We opened our doors and stepped outside. Something was very wrong. The road level was high and went all the up to the door. What the hell! Oh no, really? You have to be joking.

The road had not only snowed over, but the wind had created a huge snow bank on the entire road. The snowbank on the road was invisible and about 30 cm high. Our car drove right into it at normal speed and got stuck when the body of the car met the snowbank. We were completely stuck. We couldn’t back up at all. We tried to push it back, but the snow was too firm. A thousand curses echoed in the mountains. “Do we have a shovel in the back?” I said. My friend who owned the car wasn’t sure, so we checked. No. No shovel in the car. Fuck. We had to get the car loose and go back the long way home.

I was not going to use my expensive shotgun to dig the snow from under the car. I had a small compact shovel in my backpack. It was, however, intended to dig yourself into the snow in case of a blizzard and wouldn’t do much good in this situation. There was only one option left. We all got out of the car and started shoveling the snow from around the car with our hands. We had gloves on, but they got wet very soon. After a good 25 minutes of that, we still needed to reach under the car and get that snow out of the way. We lay flat down on the ground and kicked the remaining snow out of the way. All of this bullshit took us 40 minutes in total. We somehow managed to back the car up and make it do a U turn. Now we had to go back the long way, the same way we came. We had lost almost one and half hours to this bullshit. It was 19:30 at this point. We headed back. But it was pitch dark and the night frost on the roads made them slippery, so we had to drive slower on the way back. Then someone looked at the fuel gauge. It was low.

We took off in the morning with the gas tank 2/3 full. We would have able to find a gas station before it went empty if we hadn’t taken the so called “shortcut” and had to drive all the way back. But now we were still stuck driving the southern West-Fjords, which takes forever. My head was exhausted at this point. The fuel gage was dropping fast. The fuel warning light came on, so had another 50 km left. There was no gas station anywhere close enough to sell us gasoline, the next one was at least 120 km away. We drove on in the darkness, on the slippery gravel country roads in the middle of nowhere. Our eyes were fixed on the kilometer counter in the car. It was counting down kilometers fast. What the hell were we to do now? Our primitive cell phones (of 2000) did not work out the in no man’s land. We passed the 50 km marker and now we were running on fumes.

We were about to reach a stretch of land where some farms were, but no gas station. There had been a place over there, that was open for tourists in the summertime. It had a gas pump, but the place was closed now. Besides, the time was now 22:00 and late at night. We had no idea which farm it was, that we were looking for. For some reason the car kept going and the fuel light was now shining with the brightest white tone you could imagine. It looked so me. We finally made it to the farming area, consisting of 4 farmsteads shattered along the north bank of Gils-fjord. We drove the car to the farmstead nearest to the highway road. My friend went outside and rang the doorbell. The farm people ran outside expecting some major accident to have taken place. When we told them our troubles, they were relieved that no one had died. They actually started laughing a little bit, about how absurd our situation was. Soon we all of joined in. The entire thing was kind of ridiculous.

We asked if they had gasoline to sell, that we could buy from them. They said that they did. It turned out that we had stumbled on to the correct farm, which had the tourist service in summer. They said they would sell us some gasoline, but the pump had been closed in September. They said they could open it up for us and sent their 14 year old son with us to open up the pump. The son helped us get the gas, took our money and we went along our way, to try to get back home. To our pleasurable surprise, we actually managed to drive all the was back home without problems.

I came home at 2:30 in the morning, I hung the birds outside, collapsed into my bed and fell asleep. I woke up the next morning, with pain and aches all over my body. When I went into the bathroom to take a shower and took off my clothes, I saw I had a huge dark bruise on the right side of my body. I booked a doctor’s appointment a couple of days later, and he informed me that I had 4 broken ribs. Perfect. What an ending to my adventure. Pain killers for week. What a mess this trip had been. I took the birds, gutted them, cleaned them and cut the meat of the bones. A week later I cooked the meat and had mixed feelings about the taste of the meat. Each bite reminded me of my misadventures at hunting.