Unwise Dealings With Raven
© 1997 Clint Hollingsworth

While sitting listening to Jon Young one evening, he recounted to me one of the old sayings of the native peoples (and I'm paraphrasing terribly here) "The hunter who makes a friend of Raven will feed his family. The hunter who scorns Raven will go hungry".

Cute story eh? Those wacky ancients and their tales,... but hey, it's just an old saying right? No bearing on us modern woodsfolk at all. Right? Ha.

In early 1992, after taking the Standard Course at Tom Brown's Tracker School, I was jazzed up to go and try out all the new skills I had been taught. Specifically those skills that would get me close to animals. ( I should note here that I'm not really a hunter, I just like to see wild animals close up.)

I drove back to my old haunts on the East side of the Cascades to a large tract of DNR land near I-90. It was early May and the snow had only been gone a few weeks so I left my car at the gate, not wanting to get bogged down in a terribly muddy road. I had been hoping to see deer or elk and I was quite excited to find elk tracks all over the muddy road. Their tracks were every where. I tried to read some of the micro-pressure releases that Tom had taught us with little luck (at this time I couldn't tell male tracks from female or front hoof from back). I moved from the road and began following the deep trails that the elk had made. It was easy to follow the trails, but staying with the tracks of one elk was very difficult. The problem wasn't finding tracks, the problem was staying with a specific individual because there were tracks everywhere! I eventually came to the joining of two draws. I was listening to my gut to tell me which way to go, when a Red Tail Hawk which had been circling over me (hoping I'd flush mice I think) went straight as an arrow over the left draw. Good enough for me. I went left too.

I started following an old elk trail that looked like it was a couple hundred years old (deep and rutted) and after wandering among the deep pines for a while I came out just below a flat plateau. I was hiking up to see what was on top when a couple of mule deer wandered past me. The pair of does were only about 20 feet from me, but they didn't seem the least bit concerned. I watched them for a while and they watched me, taking a nibble and then looking up to keep an eye on me. While I was watching, I heard a scratching noise on the pine limbs behind me and turned to see two ravens sitting only ten feet above my head. After a few seconds of mutual observation, they began croaking at me and seemed just a bit vexed that I couldn't understand a bit of what they were saying. I was keeping an eye on these two when I noticed that my deer had disappeared. Suddenly the raucous chorus above me didn't seem so interesting and in fact I was more than a little irritated. I turned to the two blue-black rascals and said "Will you two PUH-LEASE shut up!?" They stopped for a moment, seeming just a tad surprised at my rudeness and then began croaking even louder. Was it my imagination or did their noise seem to have an edge to it now?

I turned and moved up the hill, using the foxwalking techniques I had learned and my jaw dropped as I crested the top of the plateau. At the far end of the "tabletop" about 30 cow elk lay, peacefully enjoying the sunshine. Inspiration flooded over me. Tom Brown told in his class how people who really practiced his walking and stalking techniques could literally sneak up on a deer and touch it. Heck! I'd go one better than that, I 'd sneak up on and touch an elk! (Considering the ability of Elk to kick really hard, this may have not been the smartest thing I've ever done...)

I left my daypack at the edge of the meadow and slinked out to a large granite rock partly out on the plateau. After a quick look at the area, I decided my best bet was to crawl stalk upon them like a lion on the veldt. I began using the standard crawl, but the dry grass rustled under me so badly, I had to use the "push-up crawl". In this stalk, one goes up like a push-up, rocks forward and gently lowers oneself to the ground about a foot forward of the starting point. The only problem with this was that I had to cover about 300 feet just to get close. The difficulty with the push-up stalk is that you have to do a push-up every time you move forward. After about 50 feet, my arms were burning and as I looked up through the grass, the doe I had chosen to stalk seemed a mile away.

I lay face down and rested when I began hearing noises above me. Kind of a ...croaking sound! I turned over and directly above me in a tight circle were my two raven friends, making as much noise as ravenly possible. I hadn't taken Jon Young's Awareness: Voices of the Birds class at this time, but I knew the message these two were sending. "Hey everyone! Bonehead human right over here!"

I rubbed my face with my hands and silently pleaded "Aw c'mahn guys! Please, gimme a break here!". No such luck. I heard a noise in front of me, and sure enough, my elk was on her feet and looking in my general direction nervously. "Go away!" I telepathically transmitted to my tormentors. "Croak croak croak!" they replied. (nontranslatable in this family format publication) I looked back towards the elk but she was gone. She'd slipped over the hill while my associates and I negotiated. ARRHGH!

I stood bolt upright to shake my fist at the ravens, and as I did, cow elk burst out of the grass all around me frightening me at least as badly as I'd frightened them. (Hey! Elk are big!) They all ran over the hill and as I foxwalked up to look down at them, I was stunned at what I saw. 25 feet below me, the old trail was packed with elk moving right to left. With a running jump I could have landed on their backs. They passed below me for what was probably only 5 minutes but seemed much longer.

But back to the ravens. As I listened to Jon almost 5 years later he told us that hunters who left part of the gut pile of a kill in the trees for the ravens actually were able to work in partnership with these very intelligent beings. The ravens would actually signal the position of game to the humans so they could share in the bounty. The selfish or rude hunters didn't receive this help and in fact were hounded by the ravens who constantly gave them away in a hunt. Glad my lodge wasn't depending on me to bring home an elk that day.

Postscript: A few weeks ago, I was heading to my secret spot when a large old raven landed on tree above the trail leading to the river. He began croaking at me in a way that I will swear to you seemed that he was trying to communicate directly with me. "I'm sorry elder,... I just don't understand" I said softly. I pulled my ham sandwich out of my lunch and tore the slice of ham in two, leaving half at the base of the tree. I moved down the trail and the raven hopped down and grabbed it, flying off down river.

Hey, it never hurts to make amends.