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Evidence of Absence: Chapter 4
Chapter 3 is here.
He visually followed the parting of tall grasses to trace the bear’s path. The animal had crossed straight over the dried swamp and reentered the woods on the other side, heading west, opposite the way the moose was going.
Satisfied he had a bead on the bear’s location, Jim returned to the moose tracks heading east from that point. He rose from his squat and followed the moose through the swamp and into a copse of white birch trees. Tracking grew more difficult as the ground got rocky full of big clusters of ferns, but moose are hardly creatures of finesse. Beyond the birch trees spread wide meadow. Beyond that, denser evergreen forest.
Jim didn’t like the idea of crossing the meadow’s open space because the moose might see them out there. He also didn’t like it because there’d be no place to hide if the moose, or the bear for that matter, decided to get froggy.
Most hunting guides wouldn’t be too concerned about that kind of thing. Despite popular myths and horror movies, animals rarely attack human beings. One of the things Jim had picked up from eight years in the 2nd Ranger Battalion, however, was an obsessive level of caution. His desire to take chances had disappeared years before in Mosul, Iraq, the very first time a sniper’s round cracked the air over his head.
