I've been putting this off for almost two years now.

Every time I sit down to write it out, I get about a paragraph in before my hands start shaking,

and I close the laptop.

But I need to get this down, if only because I've started forgetting small details,

and the small details are the part that matters.

The broad strokes.

Those I'll never forget.

Those are permanent.

This happened in October of 2023, on a hunting trip in the Chuska Mountains along

the Arizona-New Mexico border.

If you're not familiar with the area, the Chuskas run roughly

north to south through the Navajo Nation, between the towns of Lukachukai, Arizona, and Crystal,

New Mexico. The mountains are heavily forested, ponderosa pine and spruce at the higher elevations,

Pignon and Juniper lower down, beautiful country,

remote, the kind of place where you can drive for an hour on a dirt road and not pass a single

vehicle. I had been hunting elk in this part of the reservation for six years by that point.

I'm not Navajo. My name is Eric Pruitt. I'm from Farmington, New Mexico, and I had

been getting my tribal hunting permits through a friend of mine named Dale Nez, who lived in

Sal, and worked for Navajo fish and wildlife. Dale and I had met at a sportsman's expo in

Albuquerque back in 2017, and we'd hunted together a handful of times.

He was the one who first told me about the chuskas, the high meadows up around Roof Butte,

where the elk herds moved through in early fall. The draw tags for that unit were hard to come

...