It was 1993. Still three years before someone built a mountain bike trail through the big meadow and forced the deer and elk to find someplace else.
I pushed the door shut, wincing at the click of the latch as it locked. We eased down the hill from the road in the dark just before dawn, and waited at the meadow’s edge as the first hint of morning colored the sky. The elk and deer that Ryan had seen the morning before were not in evidence on this day and, keeping to the timber, we went looking for them.