Back in the year 1999, I went on my first hunting trip to shoot grouse, with a good friend of mine, and hunting partner. I had recently completed my firearms license exam and hunting exam, passing both tests with high marks. I had bought a cheap shotgun, which was a black Churchill pump action 12 gauge shotgun. I had always wanted to own my own guns and now I did.
We headed out to hunt in mid October, and drove north up the opening of the West-Fjords in Iceland, up to a open heath. The weather was cold with a bit of wind, there was slight snow coming down. There were heaps of snow scattered around the landscape. We had line of sight for about 2 kilometers, so we decided to split up and head west from the car, to see what we could find. My friend headed northwest and I headed southwest. For the first 20 minutes we were in each others line of sight, but then things got interesting.
I felt something in me click. I felt I was not entirely alone out here and that I was being watched. My instinct was to walk a little bit slower, looking around me at the light snow and wet ground. The time was around 15:00 and the weather was still cloudy with a bit of wind coming in the the west. I continued to walk to the east, holding my shotgun in a relaxed position. I had the safety on, but with my finger on the trigger. I came to a small river that ran from the north to south, down the hill into the fjord.
All of a sudden a white grouse flew up and headed away from me to the south. The bird had startled me, but with a sudden reflex I raised the gun, aimed at the bird and shot. Thankfully I hit the bird and it fell down right away. I was happy to have managed to shoot a bird in my first hunt and started to walk over to the bird. Then I saw the thing and it was not dead. I had injured the bird and would have to ring it’s neck to kill it. But that wasn’t the really bad news. The bird has fallen down and landed on a sheet of ice on top of the river, that had frozen over the river. Basically, it landed on top of the river.
I could easily see that this icesheet would not hold my weight and if I would try to step on it and retrieve my bird, I would definitely fall into the river and die. Well, I was not willing to die for some bird, so walking onto the ice was out of the question. I looked in the direction of my friend and hunting partner, but he was well out of my line of sight at this point. He was evidently somewhere interesting because I heard several shots coming from his direction. He was shooting at something, several shots. He had found some game. No help would be coming from him anytime soon.
I had to think quickly, because we only had one hour of daylight left and I was probably 30 minutes away from the car to the west. I decided to walk all over the riverside and find a way to get to the bird, but found nothing that would work. I tried to find a dead tree branch but found nothing. I tried to throw snowballs at the bird from the east, to get the bird to the river bank, but it did not work either, because the bird was too big and heavy.
At my wits end and out of sensible options, I walked to the nearest Birch tree of a reasonable size, found a long branch. I tried to break it off using my weight to break it and tried using my hunting knife. I didn’t work. As a last ditch effort I reached into my bag of shotgun shells and found some shotgun shells size no. 2 Magnum. It was a powerful shot and which are usually intended for geese. I loaded three of the into the shotgun and aimed for the bottom of the branch. I looked at the tree and said outload: “This would better work”, while the tree didn’t care to reply to me in any manner. The wind blew up in my face and surrounding nature was curious what was gonna happen next.
I took aim at the tree, knowing full well that the shotgun was not intended for shooting at a tree. I aimed at the bottom of the branch where it connected to the tree itself, standing about 4 meters from the tree. I fired the gun. The shot took a chunk off the branch but it was not enough. I decided to take one step closer and aimed again, this time at the lowest part of the branch and fired. The wind blew some snow in my face and I had to close my eyes.
After a few seconds I saw that I had gotten much more of the branch this time, but the damn branch sat there still. I tried to brake it off with my hands, but it was stone cold and wet. I had one shot left of the Magnum. This had better work. I could see dark clouds coming over from the north. I thought to myself, “fuck it”, and with anger I stepped close to the tree and shot my last shot at the bottom part of the branch. I fired the gun. The branch fell down this time, but a sliver of wet wood still connected them together.
I sighed and grunted, then loaded a regular hunting cartridge into the shot and shot the damn branch loose. The branch was about 3 meters long and it was not too heavy. I then moved quickly to the riverbed from the west where the bird was. I managed to reach the bird with branch and could slowly drag it towards me. The bird moved in pain as I dragged to my position with the branch. and there was some blood trail on the ice.
Eventually I got the bird to me and took it in hand. It was a beautiful bird and good health, but it was injured and bleeding. I grabbed it and rang it’s neck until dead. I could feel my adrenalin pumping all over my body and the feeling of having hunted game on my own was a great feeling. I looked around at the site on the river and took it all in.
After having taken the time to be proud of myself, I started to make my was back to the car. My compass came in handy then, but it always came in handy while hunting. I reached the car around 35 minutes later and found my friend waiting for me there. He had shot 3 birds himself. I told him my story and showed him the bird. He smiled at the bird and then he smiled at me. “Good work” he said laughed out loud at my story. We emptied out our guns and put them in our gun sacks. Daylight was almost gone and we headed home, back to a settlement and civilization.
I remember this day with affection still to this day. I look forward to go hunting with my sons in the future and teaching them these fundamental capabilities that all men should know.
A.G. Munson
