It’s an epic that begins in March and culminates in October. Bootes the Hunting Farmer chases Ursa Major the Big Bear across the Butler sky.

Both constellations are in the low northern and western portions of the early evening sky and they’re easy to see, although some imagination is required.

Ursa Major, Latin for big bear, contains the most famous star pattern in the sky — the Big Dipper.

The Dipper’s the brightest part of the bear, outlining the rear end and the tail of the great beast. The rest of the stars in the Big Bear aren’t nearly as bright, but if you have a dark northern sky and low flat horizon, look for a skinny triangle that allegedly outlines the bear’s head and the two faint lines of stars that make up the legs.

The front paw and one of the back paws are made up by tight pairs of stars. The front paw stars remind me especially of cat’s eyes.

Right on the bear’s tail, literally just after evening twilight, is Bootes the hunting farmer looking much more like a kite.

Arcturus, one of the brightest stars in the sky, is at the tail of the kite. Just follow the arc of the Big Dipper’s handle beyond the end of the handle and you’ll run right into Arcturus, a red giant star 36 light years, or roughly 209 trillion miles away.

According to legend, Bootes invented the first ox-pulled plow. Before that, people were forced to hand till and plow, making for really long days.

Bootes was the son of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture. His father was a mortal man that Demeter fell in love with. One thing led to another and Bootes was born to the unwed couple, making him a half-god.

Back in those days when that sort of thing happened, these godly love-children were placed into adoption. It was more for convenience than any shame. The gods were much too busy running things to raise their “accidental” children.

The goddess of agriculture placed Bootes in a wealthy farm family and for the first few years everything was great. The crops were good and the profits were high, but then tragedy struck.

Bootes’ foster parents were killed in a car accident on New Year’s Eve. They willed all of the money and the farm to Bootes and his older half-brother, who served as executor of the will since he was their oldest son.

Things would have been OK, except that Bootes’ big brother was a crook. About a month after the terrible accident, he took all of his parent’s money out of the bank, and he and his girlfriend were off on a global spending spree.

Bootes was on his own on the farm, broke and unaware that he was half divine since he was adopted as a baby. It was a real struggle.

That spring Bootes had to do all the tilling himself by hand since he had no money for hired help. He kept thinking, there’s gotta be a better way to do this. It was a combination of his half godliness, his ingenuity, and his desperation that led him to invent the plow that could be pulled by an ox rather than a person.

Bootes really had something. He was able to plow his own fields in much less time with much less wear and tear on his body. Other farmers saw Bootes with this new invention and wanted Bootes to build ox-pulled plows for them.

Word spread even farther and pretty soon, Bootes had a booming business. He sold the farm and concentrated on his plow business. He was loaded.

As the business got better and better, he was able to take time off to hunt and fish, which he did a lot of before his foster parents were killed.

The gods on Mount Olympus got word of this and eventually it reached Demeter, his real mother. She was so proud of her son, especially because she was the goddess of agriculture.

When Bootes reached his golden years, Demeter rewarded her son by transforming his body into stars as the constellation we see in the nocturnal sky.

Every summer and fall Bootes gets to enjoy the ultimate hunting experience, stalking the Big Bear, Ursa Major. He’s one of the happiest constellations in the heavens.

This time of year Bootes and Ursa Major are much lower in the northern sky than they were in the summer. According to lore, that’s because Bootes has nailed the bear with his arrows and the bear sinks to the ground with Bootes in hot pursuit.

It’s also said that the reason the leaves on the trees turn to shades of red every fall is because the Big Bear is bleeding. The lack of chlorophyll may have something to do with it too.

Ursa Major is one tough bear though, because every winter he manages to lick his wounds and recover to rise up high in the northeastern skies every spring, with Bootes right on his tail. The great hunt goes on and on and on.

Make the stars your old friends

If you have any astronomical questions or want me to write about something you’re seeing in the night sky, drop me a line at mikewlynch@comcast.net.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul and is author of “Stars: A Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and at www.adventurepublications.net.