60 pages • 2 hours read
Open Season
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Prologue-Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, death, and animal death.
Game warden Joe Pickett hears a gunshot while building a rancher’s elk fence in Twelve Sleep County, Wyoming. Joe hopes he won’t hear a second shot because he would then be compelled to investigate. Since his predecessor Vern Dunnegan’s departure, Joe has been inundated with work and wants to finish his current task. When Joe hears a second shot from several miles away, he hitches his rifle to his truck’s gun rack and buckles on his holster. His dog, Maxine, jumps in the truck, and Joe drives toward the shots. On the way, he hears two more shots hitting flesh. Joe worries he’s about to encounter a dangerous poaching situation.
Joe finds a gruff man, Ote Keeley, standing over three dead deer. Ote claims he was hunting for food, but Joe suspects Ote wants to sell the prize buck antlers on the illegal market. Joe starts writing a ticket, which shocks Ote, who is used to Vern Dunnegan letting him off with a warning. Ote recognizes Joe from stories about him ticketing the Wyoming governor for fishing without a license. Ote tries to convince Joe to stop writing the ticket since his outfitter’s license will be taken away because of the infraction, but Joe refuses.
As Ote passes his wallet to Joe, he grabs Joe’s arm and takes the revolver from his holster. Ote aims the revolver at Joe. Joe tries to coax Ote into giving the gun back, but Ote stands firm. Terrified and believing he’s about to die, Joe thinks about his daughters and his wife.
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
Joe makes Sunday breakfast for his daughters in their isolated Saddlestring home. Seven-year-old Sheridan tells her three-year-old sister Lucy about a nightmare she had the night before: A monster covered in leaves and dark liquid came down the foothills into the backyard. The monster carried a white container, and Sheridan made eye contact with him as he approached the house. The monster fell into the woodpile, and Sheridan thinks he’s still there.
Joe’s wife Marybeth returns from her morning walk with Maxine and is annoyed that the dog kept pulling toward the woodpile. Marybeth also saw Sheriff Barnum speeding down the nearby dirt road, and a caravan of other police vehicles followed in the same direction. Marybeth and Joe wonder why the dispatcher didn’t call Joe to join them.
At Sheridan’s suggestion, Joe goes outside to inspect the woodpile. Joe follows a trail of dried blood from the door to the wood, and he discovers the dead body of Ote Keeley. Ote holds an open cooler in his hand, which has animal scat and scratches inside. Ote’s tired horse stands at Joe’s horse corral. As Joe looks at the gruesome scene, he recalls the outcome of his standoff with Ote in the summer. Ote returned Joe’s gun with little fuss, but the near-death experience changed Joe. Ote promised not to tell anyone about what happened, but a colorful rumor started circulating about Joe losing his gun and begging for his life. Joe’s superiors heard the story and put it on Joe’s permanent record. Sheridan startles Joe out of his reverie, and he yells at her to go back inside. He follows her in to call the police.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary
Joe calls the police station, and the dispatcher, Wendy, informs him that the entire police force is out investigating a report from Crazy Woman Creek. Campers saw a wounded man riding through their camp the night before. Neither Wendy nor Sheriff Barnum thought to call Joe, despite his proximity to the camp. Joe tells Wendy the man was likely Ote Keeley, who is lying dead in his backyard.
Joe goes back outside before the police come to collect scat samples from Ote’s cooler for analysis. Joe asks Marybeth to take the kids to a motel for a couple of nights while the police work, so they won’t have to see Ote’s body. Marybeth worries they don’t have enough money to pay for a motel room, but she agrees to use their nearly maxed-out credit card.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary
The police arrive, investigate the crime scene, and remove Ote’s body from the property. Sheriff O.R. “Bud” Barnum asks Joe a few questions before dismissing him. Inside the house, Marybeth rubs her pregnant belly and thinks about Ote’s wife, who is also pregnant, and the two other Keeley children. Joe brings a cup of coffee out to Barnum as the sheriff angrily hangs up his radio. Barnum has been the sheriff in Twelve Sleep County for 24 years, and Joe recalls some of the legendary cases he solved during his tenure.
Ote had been hunting with his friends Kyle Lensegrav and Calvin Mendes at an off-road elk camp. The two other men haven’t returned yet, and Barnum suspects they’re on the run after shooting Ote. Joe wonders if the men are still at the elk camp, and he offers to take his horse to the site since the police are without their helicopter. Joe knows a fellow game warden, Wacey Hedeman, who can guide him there. Wacey is running against Barnum for the sheriff’s position, but Barnum reluctantly agrees. He offers up Deputy McLanahan to join the party. Joe says goodbye to his family before leaving to find Wacey. Marybeth reminds Joe that her mother is visiting the following day.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary
While Marybeth packs and Lucy watches TV, Sheridan observes the police through the window. Sheriff Barnum talks with another police officer and gestures at the canyon behind the house. He walks toward the house and measures his paces from the woodpile. Barnum grins at Sheridan through the window, and he retreats to the woodpile.
Sheridan worries that she accidentally manifested the events from her imagination, but she dismisses the idea because she hasn’t been able to manifest the good things she wants, like a new pet. She once had a dog and a cat, but coyotes killed both animals. Sheridan feels more comfortable around animals than people, especially since she started wearing glasses. At school, she has trouble making friends because she stands out too much, and her dad’s job makes the kids avoid her because their parents are all hunters. Sheridan also worries that Lucy and the new baby will take up all her parents’ attention, and she won’t have anyone to talk to. A secret pet would be something she could talk to so she wouldn’t feel so lonely.
Suddenly, Sheridan sees an animal run across the face of the woodpile. The police officers don’t notice the creature, and Sheridan can’t identify its species. Before she sees it again, Maybeth yells at Sheridan to get away from the window. Sheridan, Lucy, and Marybeth file into the vehicle and drive to the motel.
Prologue-Part 1 Analysis
The Prologue and Part 1 introduce Joe Pickett as a man caught between external pressures and his own moral code. His principled approach to law enforcement rankles the locals, who view his strict adherence to regulations as naïve or even disruptive. Joe doesn’t hesitate to ticket the governor of Wyoming or a violent poacher, showing his unwavering commitment to the rules. However, the town expects him to behave like his predecessor, Vern Dunnegan, who was lax in his enforcement of rules. This highlights the theme of The Pressure of Living Up to Expectations, reflecting Joe’s internal struggle as his refusal to compromise on his work or his ethics results in hostility from the residents of Twelve Sleep County.
The poaching incident also introduces the symbol of Joe’s gun, which represents Joe’s authority and self-image. The novel first mentions the gun in relation to how uncomfortable it makes Joe: “Even though regulations dictated that he wear his sidearm at all times, Joe hated driving with his holster on because the heavy pistol jabbed him in the back” (3). This depicts not only physical discomfort but also his uneasiness with his new role. When Ote easily disarms him, it shakes Joe’s confidence, and he feels as if “Ote Keeley had taken something away from him that he could never get back” (17). Joe is reminded of this failing every time he looks at the gun, and this prompts his determination to not “screw up again” (21). This motivates Joe to pursue his investigation despite resistance.
The dual mysteries introduced in Part 1—Ote’s murder and the unknown animal in the woodpile—frame the novel’s exploration of Conflicts Between Economic Interests and Environmental Protection. Ote’s cooler—with its scratches and scat pellets inside—hints that he carried a small animal—likely an endangered one, since he went through this trouble—down from his camp. The structure of the novel, too, refers to the unique status of this animal, which adds interest to its discovery. Each part of the book includes an epigraph quotation from the Endangered Species Act Amendments of 1982, signaling the broader thematic importance of endangered animals and the Game and Fish Department’s responsibilities toward them. Endangered species become a motif in the novel that emphasizes the environmental aspects of the mystery and drives the plot, and they also serve as a metaphor for Joe and his family. Like the weasels, the Picketts are vulnerable—they are isolated from the community and threatened by powerful people who are willing to eliminate them to protect their own interests.
This section illustrates the isolation the Pickett family faces as a result of Joe’s job. They live in a government-provided game warden house on a remote road outside Saddlestring, which physically isolates the family. Additionally, Joe’s job creates a rift between them and the community. The townspeople are loyal to Vern and resent Joe, the “new guy,” for taking Vern’s place. The local police exclude Joe from wilderness-related investigations that should fall under his jurisdiction. His daughter, Sheridan, experiences this estrangement firsthand: “It was understood that Sheridan’s dad could put others in jail. So far, in the two weeks since school had begun, she had absolutely no friends in the second-grade class” (32). Her loneliness will lead her to befriend the endangered weasels, whose secret existence parallels her own feelings of invisibility.
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