The Screamer
The screamer really existed. He isn’t one of those creatures of lore that the local boys talk about over a cold one at the corner bar. I have been in the presence of the screamer.
Early in my Elk hunting career I stumbled onto a spot I have since claimed as my own. This area has done well by me, and I’ve come to know just about every inch of it. Over the years I have probably called in ten or more bulls there. I remember some of them better than others, but the screamer, well; he will always be a special memory.
It seems I only came across him on the seasons when everything was going right. Every time you go out you’d get at least one bull going, and sometimes two or three at once.
What that translates to is most of the Elk in the surrounding area had concentrated in my spot. The screamer was probably a dominant herd bull, and although I have never actually seen all of him, I have seen parts of him. Once I got a good twenty yard look at the top thirds of his antlers. He was big that’s for sure, and although his antlers weren’t all that long the mass was incredible, they looked to be as big around as baseball bats, and that’s the top half! He also had a neat feature on that rack; the tips on each side branched out into a matched crown of three points. I know this is a feature that a sub species of Elk known as Roosevelt Elk typically have, and there is talk that some of these animals were released in our area years ago, so maybe he’s a crossbreed.
But it’s not his size or his elusiveness that makes him stick so vividly in my memory, it is his call. The screamer never bugled, he screamed. And when he screamed, he really screamed! Swear you could hear him from a mile away.
But more impressive than that unearthly mad bull call was his strange knack for timing. You see the screamer seemed to always catch me off guard.
I remember one morning I had walked in well before daylight and all was quiet in the two or three miles I had covered, so I figured I’d have to instigate the calling myself. After getting set up, checking the wind etc., I prepared to let loose a call. Just as I inhaled, the screamer let her rip just thirty yards beside me.
After throwing my bow straight up into the air, peeing my pants and sucking my call into my lungs I prepared to go after the screamer, but by this time he had gotten down wind of me and I could hear him crashing through the bush as he beggared off to parts unknown. The screamer never gave a second chance.
I know of one other hunter who had a crack at the old boy, and he almost got him too! One glorious September day my old pal and brother-in-law Daniel called him in, he suckered him with his famous horny cow call.
The screamer was in love and as I recall the story, he answered Daniel’s cow talk in his usual manner, one mighty bellow and a low rumbling chuckle and he was done with the foreplay and was ready to do the nasty. There he came, forty yards, still moving, thirty yards, behind some brush, twenty yards, picking a target, CRASH! See you later sucker. Hey! He falls out of love fast too!
One bad thing about an encounter with the screamer was he wasn’t all that hard to entice with a call, but he didn’t get that big by making many mistakes and he would figure you out pretty quick. When he caught on that you weren’t who you were supposed to be he was gonzo; the trouble is he’d take all the other Elk with him. I never got to meet the ladies he hung out with but he must have had lots of them. Bulls tend to gather quite a harem, and younger bulls zip in and out of the herd trying to steal a cow or two if they can.
This causes the herd bull a lot of grief and when the rut is in full swing most of his time is spent guarding his cows.
Most of the times I’d get the screamer going I’d also have answers from other bulls at the same time. That old bugger screwed up more hunts for me than I’d care to remember.
I’d have a bull bugling off to my left at about eighty yards and way off to my right still another would join in just to make it interesting, then, out straight in front of me, maybe two hundred yards or so I’d hear that God awful call. Then the bulls I was calling would go quiet, after ten or fifteen minutes I’d hear the screamer way to hell in the next valley squawking his fool head off, and guess who were answering him? The bulls I was calling, of course.
I haven’t seen or heard the screamer for the past three or four seasons, and these memories of him go back about eight years, so I imagine he is dead and gone by now. But when I roam those familiar foothills I still expect to hear that gut wrenching call at any moment. I always needed the screamer a lot more than he needed me, because without creatures like him out there hunting is just hunting.
You may think the story of the screamer should end right about now, but I’m not so sure. You see, last season I called in a spiker and he gave me a chance to get a good look at his headgear before he spooked and ran off to parts unknown.
He was just your typical one-year-old with three-foot spikes, but on the left side there was a nice little cluster of three points at the very top. After he ran off and all was quiet. I swear, over some distant hill I heard the scream. And one way or another I’m sure I always will.
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