Chapter 38

I jumped on the ATV and left before anyone else could stop me. I was about a half mile from their camp and I stopped and said, ‘George, I’m ready, please take me to the plateau about half a mile from my hunting party.’

“My pleasure Bob, here we go. You can open your eyes now Bob.”

‘Thanks George, it does help to close your eyes. Tell Fred we should be home soon.’

“Bob I could tell when you were close to winding down with the talk with Dignar and his people. I went ahead and had Barbara get the hunting party going long before you left Dignar’s camp so they are about a half mile to your right, just at the ridge at about 20 degrees from your position now,” came Fred’s reply. I looked in that direction and saw a dark area on the ridge. That must be them.

“Thanks George and Fred. You guys are too good to me.”

“No Bob it is the other way around, you are too good for us.” George continued and said. “I too love your comedies. Some of the Benny Hill you have is very good. We are all enjoying your DVD and VHS collection. I heard from one of our people about 10 parsecs away that they had just started on your Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin VHS tapes. You know we downloaded your whole collection into our data repository. Now all of our kind has access to your collection. We are all enjoying it immensely, thank you for making it available to us Bob.

“It was my pleasure George. There is much more available on my home world. I understand there is someone on the moon that is transmitting all of our data back to the repository so some of it may not be all mine.”

“It all started with you Bob, so thank you from all of us,” said Fred.

I rode up to the truck and saw everyone standing around except for two guys on the ridge with my binoculars. I stopped and crawled up to the ridge and asked for the glasses. Joulnar handed them to me and I could see an auroch herd about a quarter mile to my left. There was a bison herd about a half mile to my left and in between the two herds were a large male and a smaller female saber tooth stalking the bisons. I decided I wanted the saber tooth couple first. They were the most dangerous. ‘Fred, have Barbara bring me the Barrett and two clips please.’ Shortly Barbara came up with my gun and the two clips. I asked the guys to please cover their ears and stay down. Barbara backed down the slope and had everyone cover their ears. I pulled my ear plugs out of my pocket and put them in. I sighted on the big male cat first. I tried for a head shot first. My first shot was a little low and I got his leg. I aimed a little higher and the second one did it, right in his ear. One dead saber tooth. The female looked around and then started to lick the male’s head. I needed her to turn a little more to the right. I wasted a shot behind her and she jumped right. Good, now I had a shot. I aimed a little high for her head because of the range and squeezed off another shot. This time I was dead on. I think it went in her left eye and came out just behind her ear. They were both down. I grabbed the glasses and scanned around the area. No hyenas yet; good. I then moved back down the little ridge and we took off for the kills. We could always get a bison or two and then come back for the aurochs on the way home. Pauloa drove close to the two cats and I started to put up the hoist. Joulnar and Harlou helped and soon we were dragging the male cat up in the air. Joulnar’s butchers came in and soon it was ‘assholes and elbows’ in the cat. About twenty minutes later the cats was skinned and the meat was cut into chunks and put into the wagon. We didn’t even have any scavengers come in; too many people around. We saw a few buzzards circling, but that was all.

We moved on toward the bison herd. I climbed into the bed, again with the Barrett, and said, “Hold your ears it’s going to get loud again.” Everyone covered their ears and I shot 2 young bulls and one female. We moved up and the herd wandered away from us. I lifted the first one of the bulls and then it was a fast and furious work and before an hour and a half was up we had all three cut up and skinned and we were ready for the auroch herd. There were only about 10 people doing the butchering and skinning, but they were very efficient. Tovar said it was because they didn’t have to cut the meat small enough to carry back home. They could cut it into large chunks and put it in the wagon. Therefore they were much faster. As soon as the skinners were through with an area it was cut out and moved to the wagon. He said, “This makes for an easy butchering, we don’t have to worry about scavengers too much because we are done so fast they barely have time to find the scent and we are gone.” They left most of the good parts still in the carcass and only removed the parts we couldn’t use. Everything else was left in the carcass until we could get back to camp.

We came up on the auroch herd and I had Barbara and I do the shooting. Barb and I shot four of them and I left one last auroch for Joulnar to shoot. I had him sight in on one and let him shoot it. He did pretty well too. It was a neck shot and I had him put another shot into the head to make sure it was dead. These five took almost 2 hours to skin and cut up. But you figure we came to the plateau and once we started shooting we were through in just over 4 and a half hours and we had 2 cats, 3 bison, and 5 aurochs on board.

We headed back to the cave and I rode the ATV back. Once we arrived it was a mass of activity. I let the people have at it. They knew this job very well. I did have them leave the cuts larger this time as we did not have to smoke thin pieces like jerky. I grabbed Teague and Haritof and went over to the first smoker. I had Teague make sure we had a pile of hickory chips for the smoker fire the other day. I had dried grass and bark to start the fire with and once I had a small fire started, I started piling on more hickory chips on the fire. I told Teague to get a bucket of water so we could soak some of the chips so they would be ready once the fire was burning good. Once we had the fire about right we added the soaked chips and covered the fire pit with the oak planks leaving about 1 inch between the 3 inch planks. We closed the door and waited a while. Soon some women were bringing the smoking racks filled with meat. We opened the door and a lot of smoke billowed out. We hurriedly placed the racks on the shelves and moved the meat around some to make sure there was plenty of room around each piece. Then we closed the door and left it until later. I explained to Teague and Haritof that after about 1 hour we would need to move the bottom rack to the top shelf and move all the others down one shelf. Then an hour later do the same until all the racks had been 1 hour on a shelf. Everything should then be done. We might have to keep the thicker pieces in for another couple hours but most everything should be done. By then it should be supper time and we could eat fresh smoked meat for supper.