Hunter's Journal

HUNTER’S JOURNAL Hunting Stories From The Early 1900’s

February 2010 - $4.95

Buck For A Pal... page 8 Alaska Gave Us Everything...

SEE PAGE 28

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February 2010

EDITOR’S CORNER

Hunter’s Journal

How about Dinner and a Show?

Phone # 717-692-0527

P.O. Box 127 Millersburg, PA 17061

No, I’m not talking about a night out on the town at the nicest eatery and then go take in the latest movie,…(which we all should think about doing, to gain some points for next hunting season). I’m talking about the various outdoor sportsman shows that will be coming up in the next several weeks.

I would be willing to bet that there is a show within 2 hours of just about everyone reading this. Several years ago the sports shows were limited,… now it seems like there is a show every week somewhere. These venues offer the hunter and fisherman a very unique opportunity when it comes to picking an outfitter or a new piece of equipment. They also offer the manufacturers the ability to showcase their products in front of a very specific crowd. Cabin fever has set in just enough for us all to be hungry to at least “talk” about next hunting season. Without a doubt the number one topic at most of the shows is the outfitting business. Most hunts take a year or so to plan and this is the perfect time to do it. Having been in the outfitting business for the last 20 years, I think I’ve just about heard every question that the would be hunter can ask at the shows. (but nothing surprises me). If you are thinking about taking a trip this coming year and want to talk to an outfitter about it,…here are a few key questions that you should ask when you meet him at the shows.

1. How long have they been in business 2. How many hunters can they handle at one time 3. How many hunters do they handle all year 4. Can you get a reference list of at least 20 hunters from the past 3 seasons 5. Have they ever personally had any type of game law violations 6. What do they do to reinvest back into their game and land.

7. How do they manage their resource.

If you touch on all of these subjects you will at least get a feel for the person you are dealing with. The typical questions like transportation, food, lodging are always taken care of, but you should want to learn more about the person you are dealing with , than just the business itself. This is a great opportunity to meet the person face to face,…not through the internet, or over the phone, but face to face. Remember any good business man will tell you,….they are in the people business FIRST, and the success of the businesss depends on those relationships. Nothing will ruin a hunt quicker than someone with a bad attitude, ….no matter how big of buck you have laying on the back of the truck.

Pat

Fax # 215-240-7955 Email Address info@thehuntersjournal.com Reproduction or use of editorial or graphic content (for other than personal use) without written permission of the publisher is prohibited.

Information for this publication is gathered from other sources believed to be reliable, but the accuracy of the information is not guaranteed and the publisher cannot be responsible for errors or omissions.

The annual subscription rate is $20.00 for residents of USA, residents of Canada, and other countries may write for a quote. Single issues, when available, are $4.95 each.

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Hunter’s Journal

P.O. Box 127 Millersburg, PA 17061 Hunter’s Journal is published eight times per year by Hunters Journal Publication, Hunter’s Journal, P.O. Box 127, Millersburg, PA 17061-9509. Single copy price $4.95 or $20.00 per year. Application to mail at periodicals postage rates is pending at Millersburg, PA 17061 and other additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Hunter’s Journal, P.O. Box 127, Millersburg, PA 17061-9509.

Publication Issues • January, 2010 • February, 2010 • April/May, 2010 • June/July, 2010 • August/September, 2010 • October, 2010 • November, 2010

• December, 2010

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February 2010

HUNTER’S JOURNAL

MAGAZINE

Features

C 3 8 14 19 23 28 33 34 42 53 57

OVER PAINTING BY NED SMITH (“Closing In”)

Mr. Smith has long been admired for his love for the outdoors and possessing the talent of placing his heart’s passion on canvas.

HONEY THE HARD WAY Any way you look at it, wild bees do fascinate a fellow. Once you’ve found a tree and helped cut it, you’re an addict for life - and this hilarious story will tell you why

BUCK FOR A PAL There it was, a rack to stir anyone’s heart! But who would take it - the vet eran who had waited so long or his greenhorn friend?

THAT LONESOME PINE -

Is no safe place for a mountain lion wanted alive

TRAGEDY AT TIMBERLINE - Rarely does the mountain goat risk a descent from the heights

to the stalking ground of the cougar. And even more rarely is a man on hand to witness the onslaught of the killer, the losing struggle for survival

I LEARNED ABOUT HUNTING FROM HER - We had a show-down right there. The beagles and I went to hunt the plum thicket while Miss Belle went off ot the brier patch

ALASKA GAVE US EVERYTHING - Burk was as cool and unruffled as though he were on a shooting range, and I saw a flash in the sun as he bolted in a third cartridge ON A LIGHTER NOTE Need A Good Laugh!!! Check “The Funnies” CURRENT NEWS Read interesting articles of what’s happening in the world of hunting ROUGHNECK HOLIDAY - It might have been breakneck holiday for this ace guide when he went out on his own

ACROBAT WITH WHITE WHISKERS - All about mountain goats and how – and how

not – to hunt them. Authentic lore, fascinating detail based on many years of experience in northern British Columbia.

HE JUST MOVES IN - Lots of hearty laughs and some rip-roaring action, too, when a canny, masked opportunist blithely uses his wits and claws to solve a housing shortage

OTHER STORIES INCLUDED IN THIS ISSUE...

62 CUTTHROATS 65 ROUGH SHOOT

69 THE WHITE ROCKING CHAIR 72 RECIPES/CLASSIFIEDS

February 2010

PAGE 3

HONEY THE HARD WAY Any way you look at it, wild bees do fascinate a fellow. Once you’ve found a tree and helped cut it, you’re an addict for life - and this hilarious story will tell you why

By ED MASON

The vinegar-jug cork made a couple of businesslike dips. As the ripples widened across the still pool under the big maple, I grasped my hickory pole with both hands and dug my bare toes into the mud. The cork bobbed again and started nodding across the water in a steady pull.

I gave a mighty heave. The hickory bent, stood arched for a brief moment, then sent a big, yellow-bellied catfish whishing up into the branches of the maple to land

against the trunk with a slimy thump. There he lodged.

The line was tangled in twigs and bark. There was much tail-flapping and fluttering of leaves.

Dropping the pole, I scrambled up the tree to dislodge my fish. Halfway up I became conscious of a loud and angry buzzing.

The sound didn’t register until a wicked whine zoomed past my ear. Something made a suicide dive into my hair and lashed down at my scalp with a hot little

PAGE 4 needle of fire. There was another buzz, followed by a stab on my cheek. I shot a glance upward and saw the air around my catfish filled with irate bees, pouring from a hole not far from his flapping tail. About that time the seat of my pants fairly caught fire.

The decision was instinctive. I jumped. The cool waters of the creek cut out the savage drone of a thousand warriors and let me concentrate on certain specific areas of my anatomy which seemed to be getting tighter and hotter by the moment.

Only one thing was certain. I’d found a bee tree - the hard way! I was whimpering with pain and grieving the loss of my fine, fat yellowbelly, yet a little surge of elation swept through me.

I’d heard granddad, dad, my uncles, and the neighbors casually mention finding such a treasure-trove and had once been present on a sharp autumn day when a snaggly elm fell before the axes. There’d been honey, a tubful of it, golden and drippy; much laughter, joshing, and yells when someone got stung. Since that day I’d craned my neck till it was stiff, trying to discover a “whopping big swarm” in every likely-looking tree along the creek. Now I’d found one.

February 2010 If you’ve never found a bee tree and helped to cut it, you’ve missed part of living. Hunting wild bees is emotionally akin to looking for gold. Once it gets in your blood, you’re like a sheep-killing dog - after it until the end.

The tree is generally discovered by accident or diligent search in summer when the workers are active and create noise enough around their home to attract attention. Experts resort to the use of a bee box and bee-lining. When the find is made it’s a bonus in outdoor living.

There’s a mental mapping of location, and a long wait till the bees have finished their work and the weather is chilly enough to render them only mildly dangerous.

During this period you have time to see the neighbor or acquaintance who owns the land and find out whether he’s willing to have the tree cut - and, of course, be in on the fun. A fishing trip or squirrel hunt past the place can reveal whether cutting the tree will destroy a valuable coon or squirrel den. In many cases you need saw off only the actual limb where the bees are, leaving the rest of the tree intact.

Some Come to Kibitz Even if you are one who cringes at the very mention

February 2010 of bees, a poor soul who swells up like a poisoned pup from the lash of a single stinger, don’t be too sure you wouldn’t enjoy cutting a bee tree. I have a friend who will just about break out in welts if he passes strained honey in a grocery store, yet he’s nuts about bee trees.

He doesn’t stay close when the tree is ready to fall. Neither does he help “ladle ‘er out of the hole.” He stands back at a safe distance, alternately shouting instructions, guessing the size of the take, and trembling in terror.

Of course he’s usually the first man in the party to get socked. But just mention a bee tree and he wants to know when you’ll cut it.

Like the gambler who remembers only those times when luck was riding high, the bee-tree addict recalls most easily those occasions which yielded lots of honey along with the fun. Those are the ones he’ll tell you about when he reminisces. The amount of booty, however, generally has little to do with the actual humor connected with this warped sense of adventure.

Cousin Nick and I left a duck blind on a hot fall morning and gave up hunting as a bad job. On the way home we forded the creek where a sizable ash hung over the bank. It was a bee tree we’d known about for months. It had been on the agenda for this week-end. Mother had emphatically vetoed the idea. Her beloved son would be half of a high-school debate team on Monday. Knowing the ways of boys - and men, for that matter - with bee trees, she ruled it an inopportune time to flirt with bumps and swellings around the face and head.

This ultimatum went through our minds as we looked up at the slick bee hole where a few lazy workers droned about, sunning themselves.

It was my fault we couldn’t cut the tree. I felt guilty.

Nick was older, had shed such foolish activities as school, debating classes, and other afflictions of youth. He had a job. Monday he’d have to go after the fall plowing.

A couple of stingers meant little to him. Probably a big flight of ducks would be on next week-end, anyhow.

We went home for dinner. Thus fortified, we caught up the guns, detoured by the barn where the axes and crosscut saws were kept. With the guns stacked in the corncrib in exchange for a galvanized bushel basket, we were off, disobedient but at a fast trot.

Peeled down to shirt sleeves under the ash, we fell to work. It was evident the tree would fall to span the little river from bank to bank. Just before she toppled, Nick had a pang of conscience. “Maybe you better stay back and let me take it from here,” he cautioned. “If you get stung in the face there’ll be a hefty price to pay.”

It was only a gesture on his part, and he knew it. Instead I volunteered, once the tree fell, to run out on the log and stuff the hole with a couple of cotton flannel mittens, then take my chances with the few sentinels already

PAGE 5 in the air around the hole. This was flimsy planning, since you can’t get honey out of a tree without cutting the thing open.

Up above, the warm sun plus the jar of axes on the trunk had produced quite a cloud of bees. They looked a little dopey but definitely on the prod.

Nick hit a final lick with the ax. The tree toppled. Its top crashed with a bounce on the far bank of the stream.

I was across the log like a cat, the wad of mittens in my hand. The bee hole was about over midstream. One stride from it I met head-on a little jet demon who was really on the beam. He hit me just under the right eye and socked in his dagger up to the hilt. The shock fairly knocked me backward off the log, and there I stood up to my armpits in November creek water.

An Irresistible Target My husky cousin charged out on the tree trunk and flopped crosswise over the log to extend me a helping hand. In so doing his muscular and somewhat ample fanny was pointed at the treetop. Up there half a hundred thoroughly aroused insects had been diving in circles, looking for their home, for the last thirty seconds. Who could resist such a target, including a mad bee?

I felt rather than heard the pair of words Nick uttered a few inches above my face. We went to the bank, he by wood and I by water. The time was nothing flat.

Did you ever try making a serious point in debate before an audience of your peers with one eye swollen completely shut and half your mouth so thick the only way to get a sound out was to pucker up the good side to meet it until you looked like a stranded sucker in a mudhole? But I guess it’s no worse, at that, than riding a plow seat all day long with a lump, egg size and sore as a boil, located precisely at the point of friction.

That experience should have cured us then and there, but we went back a few days later, only to cuss the coon who’d had sense enough to wait for a cold snap before robbing the robbers.

Another time some gentlemen of our acquaintance found a bee tree while fishing on Lotts Creek in our home county. During the summer they got permission, gathered a few select recruits, and set the appointed day.

It was Sunday. The day was ideal, with snappy weather, but not bitter cold. Since it was a congenial crowd, each member had thought of the welfare of his buddies, putting in his pocket a little something to take the bit out of the air. It was along walk to the tree, and spirits were passed around throughout the journey. When the party reached the bee tree all the buzz wasn’t inside it.

In the next half hour more bottles were handled than axes. When they finally beavered off the stump, there was a resounding crack of splintered wood. The whole trunk split wide open.

PAGE 6 It ever wild-bee hunters struck a bonanza, this was it. The old shell was full of honey. With lusty yells half a dozen tipsy and even benumbed gents dashed forward with tubs and pails to scoop up the prize. The bees in their protected hollow, numb but not dormant, arose in threes and sixes and went to work.

Every handful of honey meant a stinger. Every stinger meant a swig. The tree was full of honey, but the supply of anesthetic was ample to see the party through.

The ensuing hour mashed hazel brush down over half an acre, filled all the tubs with honey and chips, emptied all the bottles, and left countless stingerless bees buzzing feebly in the drippings of their own ravaged storehouse.

Seldom has the eye of man seen a stickier, more wobbly, or more swollen caravan than the one that finally staggered back up Lotts Creek bottom.

A drippy jalopy stopped by our house just before sunset. It disgorged three unrecognizable citizens bearing a tub of honey, twigs, and bark. Knobby welts puffed their faces and hands. No pity could have subdued the laughter we pealed into the chill evening. In disgust they climbed aboard their crate and went chugging off.

Grandfather, a veteran wild-bee hunter and a keeper of tame bees, emerged from around the house as the three got under way. He’d missed the sight and I was in no condition to talk. He saw the honey tub at the front gate. With a professional gesture he dipped a finger into the golden stuff and licked. The smile that came over his face was almost ethereal.

“Stop ‘em! Stop ‘em!” he shouted. “Find out where that tree is,” he thundered. “I’ll give twenty bucks for the queen to this hive!”

Instead I dipped my finger into the tub of honey and sampled. The stuff was half bourbon!

I’ve been in on quite a few bee-tree cuttings, and somebody invariably pays. If it’s too warm, you know the chances are against you. If it’s too cold, you get careless and sit or put your hand on a bee, who saves his last breath to power the stinger. Even the ultra-innocent bystander often gets tagged.

Disregarding property rights as well as conservation practices, a couple of professional poachers decided to steal a bee tree from a big and rugged Missouri farmer known around about for his extreme good nature and easygoing ways.

On Sunday just before church time they parked down the road till his car pulled out. Certain he’d be in the regular family pew, they sneaked through the fence and fell to work in a frenzy of basswood chips.

The farmer, however, had remained behind to repair the corn picker. The sound of chopping down by his line fence on the branch seemed to indicate that his neighbor had chosen this time to fix the water gap left by fall rains.

February 2010 So he left his work of the moment to go and help. He was a devout man, but liked a mess of squirrel. Along with the hammer and staples, he carried the old double-gun.

It was an opportunity to get in a shot on Sunday without setting a bad example for the kids.

While still some distance from the choppers he perceived that neither was his neighbor and that they weren’t working at the water gap. Curious, he approached through a convenient corn patch to look the situation over. The tree under attack was his favorite squirrel den. He’d never noticed the bees, but a few minutes of watching revealed the situation and the identity of his uninvited guests.

His first impulse was to dash up and boot the two bums over the fence. But he wasn’t that kind of a fellow.

The tree was cut half through anyway, so it would fall in the next stiff wind.

He just waited, and as he did a slow burn came over this good-natured son of the soil who’d give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. But indecision was still mixed with his mounting anger.

With furtive glances in all directions, the choppers worked up quite a lather before the tree fell. Expertly they notched out a six-foot section and pried it open.

Lifting out a fat length of honeycomb, one of the thieves remarked on the future emotions of the owner when he discovered their work. Included I this phrase was a reference to the farmer’s ancestry, plus some derogatory stuff about church-going. All this was audible in the near-by corn patch. A decision was made.

It took the robbers several minutes to clean out the hollow and place the honey carefully in a tub, taking a few stingers in the process. When the job was done they picked up the tub between them and started to beat it.

The cornstalks rattled with the charge of a big man moving fast. One of the trespassers later confessed that the barrels of the old 12 gauge looked as big as sewer pipes.

Orders were brief and direct. The poachers carried the tub of honey up the long hill to the house, set it in the yard, and got helped into the road in a most effective manner.

Our friend was sitting on the porch beside his tub of loot when the family came home from church. But all was not milk and honey as he had expected. Knowing the good nature of her big, friendly husband, his wife refused to believe his story. To this day she accuses him of staying home from church to cut a bee tree.

THE END From OUTDOOR LIFE, July, 1950

Up came the head, and we got an electrifying view of its enormous antlers

Buck For A Pal

There it was, a rack to stir anyone’s heart!

But who would take it - the veteran who had waited so long or his greenhorn friend?

By BUD JACKSON This is the story of how one hunter made a friend for life. I’m the friend: “Jelly” Gatewood is the hunter; and when you read what follows you’ll begin to see why my chest swelled when he referred to me as his pal.

In a sense, I suppose, I followed Jelly around like a puppy in the early days of our acquaintance. He’s only five years my senior but he has packed a lifetime of outdoor adventure into his thirty-nine years. We got acquainted in 1943 when I - then a radio outdoor commentator - received a fan letter from him.

He had caught a baby wildcat alive, he wrote from his home town of Pawhuska, in Oklahoma. He had

Jelly, who had to make a tough decision and never hesitated for a moment

taken it away from its mother! He didn’t know whether I would be interested but he thought he’d let me in on a “true tall story.”

That sounded like one for the book, all right, and perhaps I may be excused for having doubted it. Then, one night after I’d filled a speaking engagement in Pawhuska, this little guy with the twinkle in his brown eyes and the grin at the corners of his mouth, came up and stuck out a brown hand.

“I’m Gatewood,” he said, and I knew the minute I looked at him that it was true about the wildcat. There are men who could tell you that the big dipper is full of puree of pea soup and you’d believe it unhesitatingly. He was that sort.

“They call me Bud,” I told him, matching his grin.

“Good! My nickname is Jelly.”

In ten minutes, we knew nearly all there was to know about each other. Everything I liked, he liked, and vice versa. We even rooted for the same major-league ball club, held the same political views, believed in the same things.

Rather naturally (it seems to me in looking back upon it) the months which followed found us together a good bit - on hunting trips for quail or squirrels or doves or ducks, on fishing trips for bass and bluegills, catfish, or crappies.

Jelly turned out to be one of the gentlest-natured men I’ve ever known. If he found occasion to offer gentle criticism of something, he’d usually preface it with : “Maybe I’m all wet,” or “I guess I shouldn’t say anything.”

He was always a fellow for fading into the background, for playing second fiddle. When we went fishing, he’d always grab the paddle, and I’d literally have to argue him into taking his turn at casting. When we camped, though, it was always Jelly who was first to the creek and back with a bucket of water, the quickest to grab up an ax and rustle firewood, the earli-

PAGE 10 right. Yet, for all his friendliness, he’s somewhat reserved too. He’s not particularly talkative and he treats everyone alike, with the same unfailing courtesy. Once in a while, when I was tagging along after him, I’d get a vague feeling that he was tolerating me and some of my blunderings only because I was “company” and worthy of that courtesy. Psychologists might call it an inferiority complex. Whatever it was, it required a deer hunt to convince me, finally, that I’d not only become a partner but had acquired one.

That was several years ago. A party of us moved into the Gunnison National Forest of Colorado in search of mule deer. We were eight, all told. Five were Oklahomans: Buster and Bill Stone, brothers from Coweta; Herman McCall, from the same town; Jelly and I. The others were from Colorado: Pete Steele and Barney Hurford, who were game wardens, and Vic Steele - Pete’s brother - who was a district game superintendent.

Buster, Herman, and Barney filled their licenses the first evening that we hunted on the Netick Ranch. That helped, for we’d already spent three unprofitable days without so much as getting a shot. And then, next day, Pete also came in with a buck. That left only three unsuccessful deer hunters. (Vic Steele was confining his activities to scouting for elk.)

Well, Bill decided to hunt with Vic the following day, and Jelly and I agreed to work together. I had never bagged a deer and I wanted one - bad. So we left camp early, moved off to the east, and swung into a long, dark canyon.

There was lots of sign but few deer, and all these were does. After three hours of fruitless searching, Jelly on one side of the canyon, I on the other, he crossed over to my side and we took time out to get our wind. High altitudes are a little rough on the low-country man suddenly transplanted to the mountains.

We sat there side by side, looking off down the valley, rimmed by snow-capped peaks and a study in natural grandeur. For a long while neither of us spoke. We just sprawled, soaked up sunshine, and gazed off down into the valley below.

Just a Little Forkhorn

And then my eyes caught a flicker of movement at the edge of a clearing 200 yards beneath us. Gradually the form of a deer began to take shape there in the shadows.

As I watched, the animal stepped out into the open. He was small, a forkhorn, and he fed along on the fringe of the clearing, all unsuspicious.

For some moments, I sat motionless, my eyes still probing the dark recesses behind him in the hope that a more worthy buck might emerge. But nothing happened,

February 2010 so I turned to point the forkhorn out to Jelly, my hands tight on my rifle, quick resolve in my mind.

Jelly, of course, was quite aware of the animal’s presence. His gaze had been riveted upon the little buck but he looked toward me as I turned, his eyes twinkling as usual.

“Just a sprout,” he said. “One for the future book.

This year it’s a big buck or nothing for me. I’ve taken small ones before - lots of ‘em. But I’ve never got one with a head worth taking to the taxidermist. This year I’m gonna get one. Either that or I’m not going to slip the safety off.”

I nodded. Something in his voice, some challenge in the set of his head, moved me to say words I’d never intended saying.

“Me too,” I commented, and put the little buck out of my mind.

“Let’s be at it, then,” he said, and we scrambled to our feet. The buck down in the glade lifted a startled head, watched us for perhaps ten seconds, then wheeled into the timber and was gone.

“Could be you’ve passed up your only chance to bag a buck this trip,” Jelly reminded me.

“Could be,” I agreed, without any real regret.

The next half hour produced nothing, although we worked the canyon to its very end. Then we decided to head back west toward a spot that none of the party had staked out. Jelly led the way, stopping now and then to listen and to scan the countryside with eyes that didn’t miss a single detail. Our progress was slow, for we took considerable pains to keep noise at a minimum. The woods were dry and the leaves underfoot crackly. So we put our feet down softly and took no step until we’d looked about us carefully. In this fashion, we crossed a long sagebrush flat, actually a knoll, and started working our way into the aspen thicket on its far side.

Just outside the thicket, Jelly threw a look back over his left shoulder - and froze. I turned to see what it was that had caught his attention.

A deer - a great, slab-sided, gray-bodied deer - stood belly-deep in willow and sagebrush just under the crown of the knob. We had passed within a few feet of the spot, but the animal, being beneath us and well concealed, had escaped our notice. However, we’d escaped his too thanks to the Indian silence we’d maintained in crossing that brushy knoll.

The deer’s head was down as he fed, but we knew that a heavy, thick body like that could belong to no doe.

Jelly dropped to one knee.

“We’ll wait till we see his horns,” he murmured.

“Range?” I asked, thinking that I might back up Jelly if he missed his first shot.

February 2010 “About 125 yards. Hold for the shoulder. Here, kneel down - you can hold steadier that way.”

He Was Giving Me the Shot!

My jaw dropped in amazement. “Who, me? Say, that’s the buck you came all the way out here to get.

That’s your trophy.”

Jelly gave me a level look as the deer, all unaware, grazed happily.

“I’ve killed lots of ‘em,” he whispered. “You haven’t.

Take him.”

Then the deer raised his head for just an instant and we got an electrifying look at it. What a rack that was the trophy of a lifetime. The buck would weigh around 300 pounds - a great, hulking beast with antlers that were heavy and wide and many-tined.

I didn’t argue with Jelly. I knew he wanted me to have that buck. And I knew I wanted it.

Looking back, I cannot recall a single tremor of hands or body as I leveled the rifle. Like a guy in a dream, I laid the cross hairs on his shoulder and squeezed the shot away, holding dead on. I had sighted in for 150 yards, so my bullet was a little high for the 130 yards’ actual range.

Just as I fired the buck stepped forward, and I caught him

PAGE 11 in the middle of a stride. He leaped high in the air and fell back out of sight in the heavy brush.

“You got him!” Jelly whooped. “Nice shot! Oh, a swell shot!”

Well, if I didn’t have buck fever before shooting my first deer I certainly got an acute case of it afterward.

When I tried to unsheath my knife to bleed him, my hands shook as though palsied. It was many minutes before I got them under control. Even when the deer lay field-dressed and my knife and hands had been wiped clean, I was still a nervous wreck.

Jelly stood there, a delighted grin on his face, his eyes sparkling.

“How does it feel to be a deer hunter?” he asked, happily.

“Pretty good,” I told him, “if my nerves would stop jumping. I’ve never had a bigger thrill in my life.”

The Thrill That Comes But Once

“Nope,” he concurred, “and you probably never will again - not even if you kill the biggest moose in Canada.

I wish I still had my first deer to shoot!”

That remark brought me back to a sharp realization of what he had done. Not until that instant did I realize its full import. I felt very humble then. How many sportsmen, eager for a trophy and confronted with one, would have refused the shot in order that a novice companion might have the pleasure of bagging, in his very first deer, a buck to be forever remembered? Would you? I doubt that I would.

A distinctly unpleasant thought came to mind. Suppose now that Jelly failed to get his buck. I almost groaned at the grim thought. But he was still grinning that cheerful little smile when I glanced up. “I’m gonna drift over to the next knob,” he said.

“You ease on down to camp and get a pack horse and come back up here with one of the others to help you load your kill. Maybe I’ll have some luck while you’re gone, eh?”

He turned away.

“Look,” I called out to him, like an embarrassed schoolboy. “Look, Jelly. That was pretty white back there. Thanks. Thanks a million.”

PAGE 12 He stopped my further comments with a wave of his hand. “You’d have done the same thing yourself.” And he stepped off across the knoll.

Ten minutes later, as I moved toward camp, I heard several shots ring out on the hill behind our spread. Maybe, I thought, he’s connected - I hope so. But I found that wasn’t the case when I got back to camp. Bill Stone had just come in. He’d found a fine five-pointer, had emptied his gun, and, with the last shot, had nailed the fleeing deer less than 200 yards from where my own buck lay.

We went up the hill to bring them in.

I kept listening for another rattle of gunfire or, more likely, a single sharp “spat” from Jelly’s .300 Savage, but none came. At dark, when he stepped briskly into camp, he returned as the only hunter in the gang without a buck.

He didn’t seem glum or downcast. He’d score tomorrow, he assured us, or maybe the day after. There was lots of time. But, as it developed, there really wasn’t.

Two of the gang had driven into Gunnison that afternoon and they came back with bad new. We’d have to pull out tomorrow, they said - they had business troubles at home. And we were in their car!

“It’s O.K.,” said Jelly, as explanations were being made. “I’ll roll out early in the morning and hunt until time to go. Maybe I’ll count.”

His bed was empty when we arose. We immediately started breaking camp. We had most of our duffel loaded and ready to go when, around 10 a.m., a rifle cracked once, in the gulch east of camp. Minutes later Jelly appeared, his smile no brighter than usual but blood on his knife. The buck was a fat monster of 275 pounds, five points to the side. It had nearly run over him, and the

February 2010 shot - at 100 yards - had divided its heart.

At noon we rolled away from the cabin in our friends’ truck. Down through the mountains and back into the rolling prairies we moved. By midnight we were in Kansas, stopping in a small town to gas up. Two of the boys were riding up front in the cab of the truck - the rest of us dozed in the fragrant alfalfa we’d spread in the back.

I wakened to see Jelly sitting up and reaching for a smoke, so I rolled over and sat up too. We lighted up and sat there, the crispness of the night sharpening the flavor of the tobacco, the rich smell of the alfalfa, the faint musk of the deer back by the tail gate.

“You know,” he said after a bit, “I was pretty lucky to get that buck back there in that gulch. Last morning and everything. I guess I’m really lucky.”

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t luck.”

He looked a question, and in the dim glow of his cigarette I could see his eyes, crinkled at the corners and twinkling with that ever-present good humor.

“There was no luck at all,” I repeated. “You actually got that buck back there at the edge of the aspen thicket when you gave up your shot to me.”

He laughed softly.

“You do things like that for your pal,” he said simply.

THE END...

From Outdoor Life, January, 1950

PAGE 14

That

February 2010

The silence was shattering. All you could hear was the dull crunch of hoofs on the crusted snow and the scurrying of our dogs as they labored up Horse Draw’s harsh ascent. No sign of life flickered in the vast, craggy wilderness, yet the three of us, Dad, Marvin Dilly, and I, felt sure that somewhere we’d come onto the tracks of the mountain lion we’d been trailing since yesterday.

I pulled out my cigarettes, and my ungloved hands stiffened. It was forty below, cold even for the arid Colorado Rockies.

Dad reined up abruptly, squinted ahead, and put a hand to his forehead to protect his eyes from the glare of the morning sun.

“Here we go again,” he announced.

Almost sixty yards beyond, I could see tiny depressions in the snow which to Dad’s trained eyes spelled CAT. Dad swiftly interpreted the tracks. “Big male. Maybe 150 pounds. Passed by sometime during the night. Same one we trailed yesterday.”

A slow grin spread over his leathery face.

“No smokes this time, boys,” he said. “We’ll take this one alive.”

We’re not exactly boys. We’ve both voted once. But both Marve and I knew that was Dad’s way of kidding us about the female cat we roped last year. We hog-tied her hind feet and, figuring she was fast, stopped for a cigarette. But the lion suddenly revived and took a swipe at me with a free forepaw. As I jumped back Marve grabbed the hemp. In the ensuing scramble the cat tumbled over a cliff and hung herself.

Our determination to take a mountain lion alive was provoked two years ago when the town of Rangely built a million-dollar high school after its oil boom. One night at a school gathering a rancher recalled that Dad had once figured out a way to catch lions alive. Somebody suggested a live one would make a fine mascot for the Rangely High Panthers. In that isolated community, practically snowbound

Lonesome Pine

February 2010

PAGE 15

Is no safe place for a mountain lion wanted alive

By John Caldwell four months a year, the result was inevitable. Ever since then hunters have been vying for the honor of supplying the school with a mascot.

The pressure was on us because we had some advantages. Everyone agrees that Dad, who’s been hunting lions all his life, probably knows more about them than anyone in our area. And our dogs are tops. Toughie, the Airedale, is phenomenal, while Buster and Lead were bred to Dad’s specifications. They’re a cross between bloodhound, for size and speed, and fox hound, for just plain cussedness. In a dozen battles, no lion has ever stayed with them.

Now, as anyone who’s tried it knows, capturing 150 pounds of screaming, clawing mountain kitty ain’t easy. It’s one of the most dangerous sports in North America. Normally a lion will stay clear of humans, but when he’s cornered he’ll take on anything and anybody. A more worthy or more destructive opponent would be hard to find.

Ranchers and government trappers have driven them from many ranges, but they still flourish in the wild, rocky heights of northwestern Colorado, and the state still pays a $50 bounty for each one killed. It’s strictly a winter sport since in summer the lion has no rival to dispute his reign over the hard timberline ledges which hold no spoor for dogs to follow.

We’d been in the high country three days when we picked up the cat’s trail a second time. We’d wasted a

whole Saturday working back and forth on the mountain with Doc Monahan and Hank Storey. Then, after a night’s rest, we’d switched horses and started out again.

We ran onto tracks in midafternoon. But after coldtrailing the big cat for three hours, Hank and Doc said they had to get back to work. So we returned to the jeep and took them buckety-buckety down the long wagon trail to town.

“Listen you bandy-legged, weasened-up little varmint,” Hank said to Dad when we dropped him off in front of his house, “just leave that old tomcat be. We’ll get him next week.”

“Git the bur out from under your saddle,” Dad replied. “Why if we git the chance you had. . . .”

We all laughed, remembering the “expedition” Hank led the year Dad was in the hospital.

The dogs chased a big kitty up a large ponderosa pine. Hank grabbed a stick, gulped, and climbed after him.

The trick in getting a lion like this is to keep him bluffed with the stick the way a wild-animal trainer fools the big cats with a chair. You let him bat at the stick like a kitten does a broomstraw. Then you lure him back from the limb, where he usually retreats, until he’s close enough for you to flip a lariat over his head. After he’s fast, the ground crew hauls him off his perch, using a crotch in the tree as a fulcrum. He’s lowered slowly, and as he comes within reach his hind legs are roped and tied.

The only trouble with Hank’s lion was that it didn’t

PAGE 16 retreat. Hank was pretty well up in the pine when the lion started down. They passed on opposite sides of the trunk - Hank climbing, the cat descending - and then the lion crawled out on a lower limb and left Hank treed. A volley of carefully placed shots ended the trouble.

Dad fumed about that and vowed that when he came out of the hospital he’d show us how it was done. And that was the very thing he was doing right now.

A glow of excitement lighted Dad’s keen eyes when we struck the trail again. As for me, my stomach was as calm as a bucketful of rattlers. And the next hour of hard, silent riding didn’t help it any. That spoor was plenty fresh.

Finally Dad pulled up for a breather.

“Notice how there’s no break in the tracks?” he asked. “That cat hasn’t stopped once. He’s heading directly for the deer herd around Douglas Pass. He’s hungry and likely mean.”

He gigged Baldy forward. Soon the tracks veered upward onto a ledge. We strung out Indian fashion, dodged around jagged rocks, and held parallel course while the dogs scampered along the thin shelf. Toughie set a steady, jogging pace.

We covered six miles in the first two hours, a lot of it over boulder-infested, sharp-angle grades which forced the horses to mince slowly. For 100 yards we traipsed along a ledge in the rimrock that had a sheer drop of 200 feet to the jagged stones below.

“Anybody ever fall off this?” Marve yelled with false bravado.

“Nobody ever claimed to have done it,” Dad shouted back.

Toughie became impatient, as he always does when the scent gets warm. Suddenly he let out a yelp and took off like a big-tailed bird with Buster and Lead right behind him.

“We’ll see kitty soon,” Marve cried, grabbing his saddle horn as his horse swerved around a bold upthrust of rock.

Sure enough, we caught a quick look at him a minute later. He was about a quarter of a mile ahead, a beautiful, tawny brute running belly low to the snow. He bounded over some shale and streaked around a ridge out of sight.

The chase really got going then. The horses lathered and the dogs yelped as we dashed around pinons and stony outcroppings and galloped through interlocking washes. Occasionally we got glimpses of the cat as he leaped over rocks and tore over wind-swept ledges, in attempts to confuse the pack. Rounding a sharp turn, my horse skidded and fell kicking to the ground. I lit free. Seconds later we were going again.

We covered three miles this way, miles of treacherous, tortuous running. Once the lion paused dramati-

February 2010 cally on the edge of a shelf, silhouetted against the drab sky, to survey the enemy below. Then he disappeared.

Moments later the dogs boiled over the same spot, but the footing was too tough for the horses. We circled the blunt face of Patch Mesa and picked our way up a centuries-old landslide at the side. The yapping of the hounds sounded farther and farther away.

I was the first to make the mesa, and by then the yammer of the dogs had a new shrillness. The noise seemed to hover in one place.

“He’s treed,” Dad yelled, spurring Baldy. Speed became more essential. Often when a cat gets his second wind he’ll shove off again with a flying leap which sometimes leaves a dead hound in his wake.

We found our dogs leaping around the base of a fiftyfoot ponderosa. Dad shot off his horse with his carbine in his hand. At first the dogs seemed to be jumping at nothing. Then I saw the cat. He was stretched along a limb twenty feet above, half hidden by the gray needles.

“Want to try him, son?”

Did I want to try him! I nodded.

“Keep your stick pointed.”

Still facing the lion, Dad backed over to where Marve was tying the horses and extracted a yard-long pinon whip from his scabbard.

I’d done it once before and Dad’s done it a dozen times, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared when I started up that pine. The cat crouched as though about to spring. His murderous yellow eyes kept staring at me. But I knew Dad had his carbine ready. I kept the stick pointed and climbed slowly, paying out rope with my left hand and staring as steadily at kitty as kitty stared at me.

It may be true that a mountain lion won’t attack a human unless he’s provoked. But I was provoking him.

He was eight feet long but looked eighty. At 160 pounds I had about a ten-pound edge on weight. For what was seconds,, but seemed like hours, he crouched there while I inched toward him. Then, with a low growl, he gave way and retreated a couple of steps along the limb.

I felt young again.

Working to a crotch just above him, I poked at the lion with the whip. He swiped it like a monstrous kitten.

Since his head was obstructed by little twigs I didn’t have any play for the rope. I rapped the limb in front of him. He slithered out to grab the stick. I tried to coax him nearer to the base of the tree where the limb was bare. But he hunched back and looked around nervously.

“Steady, son,” Dad yelled above the dogs’ yelping.

I poked at the cat again. A second later he quit the tree with a powerful leap which carried him over a boulder. He lit running. Toughie went berserk with rage at the cat’s surprise move and went squirting after him

February 2010 while Dad and Marve ran for the horses.

The second race stopped short when the lion ran out on a long, rock ledge which simply stopped in mid-air.

When he tried to double back the dogs cut him off, so he leaped into another pine.

Dad had run ahead on foot while Marve tended the horses, and when I reached the scene the cat was pacing the limb in plain sight. An easy shot.

“This will be tough,” Dad counseled. “He’s trapped good, but in a spot like this a cat don’t always behave like he ought to. Don’t press him too fast.”

Fast? I started up that tree so slowly Toughie practically boosted me with his frenzied leaps. And I kept that whip pointed - my puny bluff against the lion’s steel-muscled might.

In an eternity of seconds I got close to him. He hissed and spat like a tomcat, batting the stick with blows that would have stunned a horse. The rod burned my hand, but I hung on and kept jabbing it in his face.

“Don’t crowd him,” Dad coached.

I teased that cat for five tedious minutes. Twice I had my hand raised ready to flip the loop of rope over his head. But he finally decided to make another run for it. He made a wild leap. The cat-crazy dogs practically met him in the air, but he dodged like an All-American halfback and darted under a ledge.

Toughie followed and got a raking wound on the head. All three dogs made suicide charges at the lion’s narrow cell. The cat clamped down on Lead. Toughie grabbed the cat’s jaw and was maneuvering for his throat. But the quarters were too cramped, so he just hung on to the jaw and ripped the skin. Lead finally broke free. Almost instantly all three dogs had grips on the cat and they dragged him out on his back.

They’d have killed him, but Dad rushed up, roped the cat’s hind feet and tried to jerk him out from under the dogs. I looped his front feet and we stretched him tight, bracing ourselves against his wild thrashing. Marve dashed in to beat off the dogs. I kept wondering what would happen if the ropes slipped, but Marve stood almost within range of the cat’s glistening teeth. Once he was raked on the hand. Toughie finally retreated, curled back his lips, and looked as disgusted as an Airedale can look.

Holding the lasso tightly with his left, Dad did an expert one-handed job of hog-tying the cat’s hind feet.

“Rope his head,” he ordered.

Marve complied and held those wicked jaws out of the way while I moved in to bind the forepaws. Dad and Marve kept the lion taut between them while I looked for a stick.

His fur was silky to my touch, and I felt his chest straining against my legs as, working from behind, I jammed a thick stick into his mouth. He struggled

PAGE 17 violently even though every movement he made almost choked him. After a while I got a half hitch around his jaws so he couldn’t spit out the stick. As soon as I completed the knot Marve dropped the rope and clamped a hammer lock on the kitty’s neck. Dad sat on him while I bound the makeshift bit over his head.

“You and Marve make sure those front feet are tied securely,” he warned, busying himself with the rear ones. We used enough rope and knots to bind eighty bales of cotton. That turned out to be fortunate.

We stepped back to look at him, an eight-foot, 150-pound beauty built like a greyhound. His ribs heaved like his lungs were bout to burst, and a crimson smear spread in the snow under his lacerated jaw.

I think the letdown hit us simultaneously. Suddenly I was so tired my knees almost gave in. Marve reached for the smokes.

“Not yet,” Dad directed. “That cat’s just calm because he’s winded. He’s still got plenty of fight left.

We’ll get him on a horse before he fires up again.”

He strode over to Baldy. The old mare walked stiffkneed against coming close to the lion, but Dad talked her into it.

Marve took the hind legs and I grabbed the front ones and we swung the lion over the saddle. He twisted in mid-air and gave Baldy’s flank a sharp scratch. The mare shot from under him like a greased pig. Then the lion put on a real show of strength.

Even though his feet were bound together he had enough balance to gallop down a little grade. Marve and I dashed after him while Dad headed off the dogs.

We caught him after about fifty steps. Marve bowled him over with a kick and held him down while I checked over the ropes. Dad led the very skittish mare up again.

This time we hung the lion over the saddle and tied his feet together underneath.

Dad overruled our protests and took the first turn walking as we started the five-mile trek back to camp.

The sun was sinking behind Texas Mountain and the raw cold bit us as we transferred the lion to the jeep and roped him down. In the distance, a coyote yowled mournfully. The gagged cat growled a disdainful answer. Dad made a fire while Marve and I unsaddled the horses. We warmed up over steaming cups of coffee before starting the jolting forty-mile trip to Rangely.

Marve was so tired he sagged against the lean-to while Dad slapped some iodine on his scratched hand.

“Do we try for another one tomorrow?” Dad asked.

Marve grunted. “They only got one high school, ain’t they?”

THE END

PAGE 19

February 2010

TRAGEDY at Timberline

Rarely does the mountain goat risk a descent from the heights to the stalking ground of the cougar. And even more rarely is a man on hand to witness the onslaught of the killer, the losing struggle for survival

by FRANK GABLE The wariest of our North American big-game animals! That’s the way quite a few experienced hunters rate the mountain goat. Those of you who have gone out after him know how elusive he can be. And you also know how fast he can be - and how incredibly surefooted - when he takes to the heights in alarm.

As a resident of Waterton Park, Alberta, I have come to know the big goat pretty well. There are plenty of them in the near-by mountains, and it is not unusual for me to spot a dozen or so in a single band. But it isn’t often that I come upon one near or below timberline. Timber is definitely out of bounds for the goat, and there’s a good reason. It’s the stalking ground of one of his deadliest enemies - the mountain lion, or cougar.

Once in a while, though, a goat will come down into timber, for reasons best known to himself. When he does, drama is generally in the making. Sooner or later a prowling cougar will scent his presence; very little of importance escapes the notice of the big, cunning cat.

And that includes man. More than once I have been stalked by a mountain lion - a fact I never discovered until I happened to double back. In each case, I found his fresh tracks paralleling mine. A disturbing experience, believe me! Particularly so for me since the day I saw one of the big cats making a kill.

Not many men get a chance to see a cougar close in on a mountain goat. But I did, about a year ago. And what I saw then I’ll never forget.

I was hunting in the Kishenena country of southeastern British Columbia. It was a day in the late fall.

Several inches of powdery snow covered the ground, making things ideal for a deer stalk. So I picked up my Winchester .30/06, stuffed some cartridges in my pocket, and started out for a look-see. Almost immediately I spotted a big buck deer moving across a small clearing some 600 yards away. Before I could get my sights on

The mountain lion leaped, hitting the goat’s back in a snarling fury

him, though, he was out of sight in a ravine that ran up a sharply angled mountainside.

In no time at all I was in the ravine, too, on the fresh trail and climbing steadily. But the buck kept well ahead of me, and I never did get another glimpse of him. After a while I thought, “Forget this!” I’m not going to catch up with that buck, and even if I do, how am I going to drag him down through this ravine?” So I reversed my course and started downhill. Near the bottom, I glanced up toward the mountains and saw seventeen goats on a high shelf, and then two others on a rough-hewn cliff down near timber. “A pair of darling lads,” I thought, “to come down so low.”

A Cougar Had the Scent Well, I wasn’t after goats, so I put them out of my mind. That is, until I hit the timber belt. Almost immediately I ran across brand-new cougar tracks and saw they were heading in the general direction of that low cliff. A wandering cougar, with the wind in his favor, had picked up the scent of the two goats, and he wasn’t wasting any time. Neither did I, as I followed up his trail, which was sharply defined in the snow.

After I’d gone several hundred yards the trail veered. It was evident that the cougar planned to climb and come down on the goats from above. That was a shrewd move; he’d never have got near them otherwise.

“Well,” I thought, “if he can get above the goats, maybe I can get above him.” But it was not to work out that way.

I was still climbing, and had reached a small clearing, when I heard a sudden clatter of rocks on the hill above. I looked up and saw one of my goats; the other had disappeared. This one was on a shelf about 300 feet up the rough cliff. I hurried toward the shale slide at its base, hoping to get ready for a shot at the cougar.

The goat spotted me and started to move up the slanting shelf. But it was too late. A flash of brown landed right in front of him - the cougar had arrived from above.

Startled, the goat whirled and moved a few steps

PAGE 20 down the shelf. Then it stopped and faced the aggressor. All its instincts were, of course, to try to get past the cougar, to reach the heights above. The big cat crouched, awaiting a move. The shelf was narrow at that point and I could see that the cougar didn’t want to risk a tussle and a 300-foot fall. Actually, though, the cliff was not an abrupt drop, for it was cut by a series of shelves almost all the way down to the shale.

While the cougar bided his time, I tried to make the most of mine by getting within effective rifle range.

There was a 180-grain, hard-point cartridge in the chamber of my Winchester, and it had Mr. Cougar’s name on it. Eventually I managed to approach within 300 yards. But by now the cat was slowly crowding the goat down the narrow shelf, and I couldn’t get my sights on him. Once or twice, the billy tried desperately to evade his tormentor and move upward, but the big cat reared up and blocked him. The profile of the whole mountain favored the cougar, for he could go anywhere the goat could go.

Time and time again, the two antagonists stood and stared at each other for what seemed minutes on end.

Then the cougar would apply that slow pressure and the goat would back away. Soon they neared the bottom of the cliff. And then the goat seemed to realize how desperate was his position. Suddenly, with a frenzied burst of speed, he started up the shelf - and almost got by the cougar. The cat whirled and just managed to head him off with a huge leap that landed him almost on the billy’s head.

Now the frantic goat whirled and ran downward.

The great cat leaped and was on his back in a snarling fury. Over the cliff went both animals, landing in a flurry of action in the shale. Then each regained his feet and raced into a small ravine.

The ravine was only a short distance from where I stood, and as the animals disappeared from sight I hurried toward it. In a few moments I was on its rim and looking down at a whirling, one-sided fight. The cougar had sunk its great fangs deeply into the goat’s neck, and the billy was scrambling around in a desperate attempt to escape. Vainly I tried to get my sights on the cat; the swirling movement made shooting impossible.

Abruptly, the cougar shifted his hold, getting his jaws into the goat’s spine and his sharp talons into its side. I fired. The cat leaped into the air. As it hit the ground I fired again. But in a flash it was on its feet and streaking off into a heavy growth of jack pine.

I climbed down the side of the ravine and stood by the inert form of the goat. I was angry - angry that I hadn’t killed the cougar with the two bullets, even angrier that I hadn’t tried a shot when he was up on the

February 2010 cliff. Suddenly, the goat lunged to its feet and made a feeble dash for me. But it couldn’t get far. It stood wearily for just a moment, then tumbled down for keeps.

By this time, I was mad at the cougar, mad enough to decide to go into the second-growth jack pine after him.

“Mad” is the right word. For if I had a grudge against the cat, he certainly had one against me.

Nevertheless - into the timber I went. I moved with infinite caution, looking in all directions, including up.

There was a slight blood trail in the snow and I followed it warily. It led to a particularly heavy thicket - an ideal spot for a cougar ambush. With the rifle at ready, I slowly crouched and peered beneath the brush.

There was my cougar - poised to come at me. I got off the quickest shot of my life. The cat snarled, leaped, fell over on its side, and lay still.

The tragedy was over, and a slow curtain of snow began to fall.

THE END

From Outdoor Life, January, 1950

I Learned About Hunting From Her

We had a show-down right there. The beagles and I went to hunt the plum thicket while Miss Belle went off ot the brier patch.

Miss Belle was a redbone, small for her breed, a foxhound cull. She belonged to a neighbor of mine who followed the old-time Southern tradition of going out afoot with a slat-ribbed pack to hear them make hound music all day and all night. But Miss Belle invariably would get thrown out of a race and then would run after rabbits. Convinced that a dog is a good hunter only if hungry, my neighbor had brought her to a stage of undernourishment. My private opinion was that Miss Belle’s failings in the

field were not attributable to any weakness of character; she was just hungry and rabbits were food.

I pitied her and bought her, for I have always believed that kindness to dogs is somehow rewarded.

Miss Belle confirmed that belief beyond my wildest expectations, and that’s what this story is all about.

But I didn’t buy her solely out of compassion. I had a use for her. I wanted her as a tutor for a pair of problem pups. I began by feeding her all she could hold, once a day. She soon recovered from a skin

PAGE 24

disease, her sunken, crazy-looking eyes brightened, and she became sleek, sensitive, and dainty. That was the first intimation of my reward. I found that I owned a real beauty of a redbone hound.

The pups I wanted her to teach were a sad pair of orphaned beagles. I’d tried every training trick in the books to get them working, but they had no interest in rabbits. Sometimes I was convinced that they didn’t even know there were such things. Once I even put a live rabbit in the henhouse with them.

Ever offer a friend a mess of fish and have him say, “Are they cleaned?” Janie and Willie reacted to the rabbit that way. They were positively disgusted.

For as long as I watched, the rabbit sat in one corner and they in the other - apprehensive, noncommittal, polite.

But as soon as I went into the house the dogs began barking at the rabbit, trying to make it leave.

Instinct? No instinct ever told them that a rabbit was their natural prey. They didn’t know what it was and they didn’t like it. I gave up.

That was before supper. The barking went on, I don’t’ know how long, but about 10 p.m. I noticed it had ceased. I got a flashlight and went down to the henhouse to have another look. There was no trace of the rabbit. He’d evidently made some false move that finally got through to some primitive impulse in Willie. Not Janie. Willie, who previously had hardly been bigger than a rabbit, was now as bit as a beagle pup plus a rabbit. But he hadn’t burst, so he must now know that rabbits are good to eat, the bread of the forest. Would he ever learn, as beagles

February 2010 are supposed to, that rabbits are also a sporting proposition?

My firm belief by this time was that hunting dogs are not born that way. They don’t find out themselves that paths of scent usually lead to food and fun, any more than we humans are born knowing that to live we must track down the 8:10 every morning, trail the boss’s wishes all day, and ultimately tree at the cashier’s window.

The first day I took Miss Belle out with her pupils she substantiated my belief that they needed an elder to hunt with. Their hunting instinct came alive. True, they hunted with dependence upon her, as her assistants.

They imitated her. But when she overran a rabbit the beagles immediately behind her made the check, announced it, and called to her for help.

That was fine, but the best was yet to come. Soon Miss Belle began teaching me. When I let her out of the kennel she would run off swiftly, for about fifty yards, slow down, raise her head, and let out a deep-toned baying.

To me, and I suppose to others who think that dogs are the best part of the love affair with nature known as hunting, this was clear language. With her single a-hoo, Miss Belle eloquently and with beautiful simplicity said: “Here we go. I’ll find us something, and the fun will begin. We’re off!”

She sniffed the ground, swerved, and babbled.

Babbling is supposed to be a vice. But by her vices I had acquired her. She briefly babbled a cold trail.

The she babbled another, and a third, announcing them in a way that made clear their insignificance.

Then she took off. She undertook to lead me: “This way - the rabbits are on the other side of the hill.”

It was a sunny, cold day. On a day like this, Miss Belle told me, rabbits are always on the south side of a hill. They favor grass clumps or the edges of brush piles where they bask in the sun. She knew these things.

It was news to me. I’d always assumed, having been a walker-up of rabbits all my life, that they’d

February 2010 be in good cover or, if not that, then they were just plain scarce. But this isn’t so. I learned in a season’s hunting with Miss Belle that although a community of rabbits may forage in all the good cover of a farm, they are likely to pick out just one area - say an old sedge-grass field with brush piles scattered about - where they’ll all lay out. Unless I chanced to hunt that very field out of six or a dozen others, I’d come home empty-handed and conclude that rabbits were mighty scarce. But Miss Belle’s coldtrail system, when I learned to follow it, would take us directly to that field. With her there was no such thing as a scarce year for rabbits.

That first day she trotted to a brush pile, head up, alert, expectant, and said “Boo.” She spooked a rabbit. He slashed down the hill with all three dogs in full cry, their long ears flopping in the wind.

The chase circled out of sight in brush. Now came the careful, methodical tonguing of dogs in a hurry - but not too much of a hurry. Miss Belle was in front, Willie at her heels, and I could tell by the voices that Janie was crying along, announcing checks which Miss Belle overran. The rabbit ran out of the thicket, in sight but out of range. Then the dogs burst out and we had a pell-mell sight race, hound harmony in presto time.

The rabbit hit the edge of the woods and made a sharp turn. Then, with further escape tactics in mind, it turned again while the dogs went back to work out the check. Janie found it and shrieked for help. While this was going on the rabbit tiptoed out of the thicket - back-tracking to get behind the dogs.

That was the rabbit’s fatal error. My first shot was too long, but the rabbit kept on. I tried once more and failed to reach him, and again he came on. I reloaded, and crippled him. He turned and ran into the thicket. I went in and found Willie guarding the quarry and looking to me for a pat on the head. Miss Belle, more mature and less demonstrative, just gave me a glance. Then she went off to hunt up another rabbit.

Next I wanted to get a rabbit out of a plum thicket off to the right. Miss Belle, however, felt differently. She believed the next rabbit would be in a brier patch rimmed with red-berried buck

PAGE 25 bushes. To train a dog properly, as all sportsmen know, you must insist that your orders be obeyed.

So I insisted. Wasn’t she my dog? Hadn’t I bought a new Marlin over-and-under simply to compliment her? But all Miss Belle would do when I called was stop and listen, turn, and make for the brier patch once more.

We had a heated show-down right there. Miss Belle won. The beagles and I hunted the plum thicket. It was empty. Miss Belle went to the brier patch and got up a rabbit.

This kind of thing, repeated many times, taught me a lot about rabbit cover. The Br’er Rabbit fable about the brier patch is soundly based on the fact that he has advantages in it. He is safe in his network of paths covered with barbed entanglements which will stop dogs or foxes. When buck bushes grow there, with red berries that rabbits love, it’s as cozy for them as an apartment with kitchenette.

Miss Belle also knew that rabbits like to dodge along fences and hedges, crossing and recrossing.

By this means they delay pursuit by larger animals which must climb over. All during the period between season, Miss Belle trained the pups on a rabbit she regularly scared out of an old garden heavily grown over. The rabbit would cut across the corner of the field, run along one side of the fence, then along the other side, and finally retrace his route until he came to an open spot which he crossed in slow hops to reach a multi-flora rose hedge. This was basic strategy which he employed in many variations. When the dogs eventually began to boo under the hedge, the rabbit would be back in the old garden.

He always escaped, as Miss Belle evidently intended him to. Remember, her job was training two green pups, and this elusive rabbit served her purposes to good advantage.

The longest-ranging rabbit I ever saw was one wild buck I chased for a whole afternoon. Before I saw him I thought he was a gray fox. He took the dogs out of hearing - first in one direction, then another. He came back four times, but the sedge grass was too thick for me to get a shot. Once Miss Belle came so close to catching him that he squealed. Finally, on the fifth round, I knew his course exactly.

PAGE 26 I set my aim on a bare patch I knew the old buck would cross and, sure enough, managed to loop him.

When hunting alone with hounds, I like a warm day with good sun after a cold night. On such a day the rabbits are settled down in places where they figure they can bask in safety. There are not too many crisscrossing cold trails to confuse the dogs, since the rabbits have been holed up. And if there is a mild wind, so much the better, for it seems to whip the scent up off the ground without taking it away completely. On such a day Miss Belle, head up, truly leads the pack.

She has also taught me how to foretell the weather - at least so far as rabbit hunting is concerned.

For example, a rabbit doesn’t hole up according to what the weather is right now. He goes by what it’s going to be. What rabbit hunter hasn’t tramped miles on a day which he thought would be ideal for rabbits - real picnic weather - only to find the little monkeys scarcer than hen’s teeth? I’ve noticed that a day like that is generally followed by a very cold night. I’m convinced that rabbits know this and take pains ahead of time to warm up their burrows. But after a spell of such weather there usually comes a warm, sunny day. That’s a natural, as Miss Belle is well aware, and on such days she sets the beagles on fire with the wish to go hunting.

A day of light rain also is good. Trailing is sure and certain. Never is Miss Belle more efficient at whatever cold-trail deductions she makes, and she and the beagles give a rabbit no rest until they bring him around to the gun. I’ve heard that many experienced men refuse to hunt with dogs on rainy days.

They claim it is a waste of time since rain washes away the scent. Miss Belle has taught me otherwise. There are good reasons for believing that a little rain nails down the scent.

Miss Belle lives only for the chase. She is strictly a sportswoman - though I’m not sure that’s the proper word. Anyway, there’s no place in her life for rough talk. If I speak roughly to her she will go off and hide. She will give up her food rather than fight over it. She doesn’t care about chasing cars or howling at the moon. All she’s interested in is taking off at breakneck speed for the nearest place

February 2010 where she thinks she can get up game. Nothing distracts her; she never quits.

And on occasion she makes one of those lightning decisions whose aftermath is spectacular to watch. Take the time a rabbit ducked through a fence and cut back, and a small redbone hound swept in one clean leap over a fence impossible for her to jump, except that it was done this time, and down she came, with beautiful timing, right on top of the rabbit. It was as good as the most thrilling end run I ever saw.

Of course dogs react to one another and when they hit if off right they put on superb performances, each seeking to outdo the rest. Miss Belle and Willie periodically fall in love, and Willie’s role for a long time was that of a devoted assistant to her. But one day all of Willie’s experience at rabbit hunting merged. He got on the trail of a fast and far-ranging buck rabbit. A new note came into his voice. It deepened from a raspy yip into something more mellow - something with authority. He never wavered, never missed a turn. The rabbit was one of those old smarties that survive to carry on the breed.

I had all I could do to drag Willie in that night.

All of a sudden he advanced from just a member of a pack, relying upon Miss Belle for final decision, to a principal. And Miss Belle knew it. I’m sure she wanted it that way, and I’m also sure that she hasn’t told Janie anything about it. But that’s all right.

Janie is a good rabbit dog too, and her specialty is to come along behind dogs which have overrun, to find and to announce the check.

I happen to live where birds are scarce. So my hunting is rabbit hunting. I hunt every day of the season and enjoy the fun of handling an informal trio of dogs that can give a rabbit a run for his money. But I never knew the fun I was missing until I was taught the fine points by a flop-eared, babbling hound who only needed a good feed and a little loving-kindness to make her behave.

THE END From Outdoor Life, March 1952

Burk was as cool and unruffled as though he were on a shooting range, and I saw a flash in the sun as he bolted in a third cartridge

ALASKA GAVE US

EVERYTHING by

by Dr. D. B. ELROD Burk, my 13-year-old son, had the black bear square in the cross hairs of his scope. The bear was feeding in a blueberry patch on the tundra and Burk was sprawled on the crest of a low ridge 100 yards away.

Twenty feet behind him, on the slope of a hummock, Bud Branham, our guide, was stretched on his belly, holding a movie camera steady on boy and bear. That film was going to be something I’d prize for a long time to come. I lay beside the guide, my rifle ready in case anything went wrong.

The bear was bulky and surly-looking, big enough to make trouble, more than big enough to upset the nervous system of a hunter far older and more experienced than Burk. But the boy showed no sign of nervousness.

For me this was a dream coming true. This was what I had planned and hoped for when I put his first .22 into his hands at ten and taught him to shoot it. Now he had a .270 - his Christmas present from me - and this would be the first shot I had seen him try at big game. How would he behave now that his big moment was at hand?

Burk lay at the every top of the ridge. He slid the rifle ahead, laid his cheek on the stock, and spread his legs wide to steady himself. Then, for the first time, he revealed that he was not quite a veteran after all. He threw one quick look back across his shoulder to make sure Bud and I were there behind him.

The shot hit the bear low in the neck and knocked it off its feet. It went down with a bawl of pain and anger, rolled over, scrambled up, and came headlong at us. Wounded black bears have been known to charge,

PAGE 30 but I think this one was running blind for cover. The nearest cover happened to be the low fringe of brush at the foot of the ridge, and the bear headed that way.

Whatever its motives, it certainly wasn’t going to be a good neighbor at close quarters. Bud held the camera steady and ground away, but I flipped the safety on my own .270 and brought it halfway up.

Then Burk’s rifle blasted again and I heard the shot smash solidly into flesh and bone. The bear staggered, but recovered and came on. Burk was as cool and unruffled as if he were on the target range back home. I saw an empty case flash in the sun as he bolted in a third cartridge. It took him a second to pick up the bear in the scope once more, a slow second that seemed a minute long. Then another rifle report rolled off the near-by mountainside and the bear piled up in a heap forty yards in front of us.

I knew then I had a big-game hunter in my family! Burk was ready for whatever Alaska had to offer.

There were five of us on the hunt, camped at Bud Branham’s Rainy Pass lodge, some 125 miles northwest of Anchorage. Burk had spent a month with Bud before I reached Alaska. The month had been well invested, too. The instant I saw the boy I Anchorage I could sense his growing self-reliance, the initiative and resourcefulness that come from living in the woods.

Dr. Paul Nussbaum and his sixteen-year-old son, Paul Jr. (we called ’em Big Paul and Little Paul around camp), Roy Cain, and I had driven from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to St. Louis, Mo., and boarded an airliner there for Minneapolis, Minn., and Anchorage. We got there August 9, thirty hours after leaving home!

Our plans had been made months before. Branham agreed to guide Burk and me. Bob Steinbecker of Anchorage was to guide the Nussbaums, and Cain had engaged Luke Elwell of Upper Russian Lake.

Burk and I had .270’s, both Mauser actions, equipped with 2 X Stith Bear Cub scopes. We would shoot 150-grain Core-Lokt ammunition. The Nussbaums and Roy Cain carried .30/06’s. Big Paul’s was a Model 70 with a Weaver 330 scope, Little Paul’s a Springfield, custom-barreled and equipped with a Weaver K-2.5. Cain’s gun was another Model

February 2010 70 with Lyman Alaskan scope. The three of them relied on 220-grain Core-Lokt ammunition.

Tops in Rainbow Fishing Dall sheep were our first objective. But we arrived in Alaska ten days ahead of time, so Branham flew us to Iliamna Lake, at the base of the Alaska Peninsula. We spent a week in that vicinity - and had rainbow fishing that is probably the best remaining in North American today. I’m a fast-water fisherman. I like the sound and feel of current, and best of all I like the slashing, tough-mouthed battle of a big river fish on a fly rod. The rainbows in the Kvichak River, where it pours out of Iliamna on its way to Bristol Bay, gave me exactly what I wanted. They rose to a fly like hungry wolves, and that week we took few less than twenty-five inches long. For that kind of trout fishing, even in Alaska, Iliamna and near-by Naknek stand in a class by themselves.

In addition to the rainbows we landed Dolly Vardens until we were tired of it, and took a fair catch of grayling. Eager as I was to get into sheep country, I quit fishing with genuine regret.

On August 17, with the sheep season only three days away, we loaded our gear into Branham’s Grumman Widgeon for the trip back to Rainy Pass.

From there two days later we flew up to what Bud calls Sheep Lake, a little patch of blue water without outlet or inlet, in an incredible high-walled valley about fifty miles northwest of Rainy Pass and only a dozen miles or so from the south fork of the Kuskokwim River.

We were now in what, a few years before, had been part of Alaska’s best sheep country. The valleys were deep, with sheer walls and snow-covered peaks soaring up 6,000 to 7,000 feet on all sides. But this region, in common with the rest of Alaska, had lost the bulk of its white-sheep population.

“Sheep in a Bad Way” Between Rainy Pass and Sheep Lake, on his last flight before donning a Navy uniform in 1941, Branham had counted more than 700 Dalls. The day we made the flight we saw less than forty and they were all ewes and lambs.

“Sheep are in a bad way,” Bud admitted, “but we ought to find a few good heads if we hang around a

February 2010

PAGE 31

We climbed into the icy water, then tugged and wrestled until we got the little plane free of the gravel bar

week or so.”

None of us guessed, when we started out to scout the country on foot, that this would be Alaska’s last sheep season for the time being. Some months later the Alaska Game Commission, backed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, clamped down with a close season, to save from extermination the sheep that remained.

We saw a few ewes and lambs that day, but not a ram. The following day was different, at least for the two Pauls. The rest of us had returned to camp after a fruitless hunt when, just before dark, we heard one shot, a signal, from the far end of Sheep Lake.

Branham taxied the plane down and brought the two Nussbaums and Steinbecker back to camp. They had killed not one ram, but two, within a space of thirty seconds!

They had spotted the sheep at a distance, crossed two canyons, and climbed above the rams. When they reached a place where they could get shooting one ram was feeding in a shallow wash. The other

had disappeared.

Big Paul took the shot and anchored his sheep in its tracks. At the report of his .30/06 the second ram flashed from behind a rock, leaving the country in a hurry. It was Little Paul’s first chance at big game, but he picked up the running sheep in his scope and nailed it with one 220-grain bullet from his Springfield.

Hunting Dall sheep is exciting, but it’s also hard work. The hours of climbing, the scrambling across treacherous shale slides, the high altitude, the everpresent need to guard against a misstep take a lot out of a man. At the end of three days of it Burk and I had seen only two rams, both “sickle heads” with a half curl of horn.

On the fourth morning, leaving Burk in camp, Bud flew me north in his second plane, a two-place Taylorcraft on floats. It was bud’s hunch we’d find more rams up there along the south fork of the Kuskokwim.

We landed on the river, moored the ship, and shouldered fairly heavy packs for the four-mile hike to a lean-to shelter Bud knew about. On a gravel bar

PAGE 32 we found an abandoned life raft from a big plane that had been wrecked there a year or so before.

Among other articles, the raft still held some strong light rope; and on a lucky hunch Bud cut off a length and stowed it in his pack. It was a good thing he did.

Without that rope, the white-sheep head that now hangs on the wall of my den would be bleaching high on an Alaskan mountainside!

Arrived at the tumbledown lean-to, we dropped our packs on the dirt floor and went outside to glass the surrounding country. It was wild and rugged, framed by steep mountains and snow peaks, and I wasn’t surprised when Bud picked up two white sheep on the side of a mountain some six miles up the valley. He judged them to be good rams, so we started the stalk immediately. But we never finished it, for on the way we spotted a third ram lying down on the rimrock of another peak a little more than a mile away. He promised an easier stalk than the one we had begun, so we headed for him as he lay in solitary grandeur far above us.

Let me say it again: The man who takes a Dall ram earns his trophy! Bud and I climbed steadily for three and a half hours, and in that time I did enough huffing and puffing to blow down any house in Cape Girardeau!

We finished the stalk by clawing our way up the steepest and most treacherous slope of shale I had yet encountered in Alaska. At the top of it I halted to get my breath, while Bud swung his 9X glasses slowly along the rimrock 500 yards above us. The glasses came to rest; I knew he had located the ram.

He’d Picked a Splendid View No mountain sheep in Alaska ever chose a more breath-taking lookout! It was at the very edge of a sheer cliff, which dropped almost straight down to the shale slope where we were resting. Snow peaks lay across the way, the south fork looped through its flat valley like a giant silver snake, and off to the northwest, in the direction of the distant Yukon, the vast empty spaces on Alaska simply reached on and on.

We were too far below the ram to risk a shot. We circled cautiously, climbing on rock and shale, until we had halved the distance. And now he was no longer in sight. However, we found a sheep trail leading down and followed it until we reached a point where, using our glasses, we could see the ram’s horns shin-

February 2010 ing in the sun atop the rocky barricade where he was lying, but no more of him than that. Bud estimated he was 300 yards above us.

We could find no other vantage point within shooting range, so we sat down to eat lunch and wait him out. Sooner or later, Bud reasoned, he’d stand up. It was an awkward spot even for eating.

We were sitting on a 45-degree slope of shale, and I twisted over on my side to get stuff out of my pack.

As I did so I looked instinctively up toward the ram again. He was standing - standing at the very brink of the drop, looking out over the sweep of country in front of him, silhouetted against the deep blue of the mountain sky like a sheep carved of snow!

Bud’s Hunch Pays Off I rolled over on my belly and pulled the .270 to me. The way I was lying it was impossible to get the stock low enough to bring the scope to bear, unless I dropped the butt under my shoulder. So I did just that, and lined the cross hairs on the ram.

By that time he had seen us. I knew what was likely to happen when the recoil brought the scope back into my face, but there wasn’t a second to lose, and I reasoned it was worth the risk.

The .270 doesn’t kick hard, but this time it drove the eyepiece of the scope to the bone just over my eyebrow. I didn’t even know it until I felt blood trickling into my eye.

We heard a solid whock! from the 150-grain bullet , and the ram went out of sight. For maybe five seconds I held my breath, wondering what had happened. Then he came running headlong over the very rim of the cliff!

He sailed out into the empty space and dropped, turning end over end, and my throat tightened as I watched. Three hundred feet below the rimrock he struck a narrow ledge and lay there, motionless.

How to get up to him? He was perhaps 200 yards above us, and the last 100 feet of the climb was up an almost vertical slope of shale. We took our packs off and pulled them up behind us from one vantage point to the next, using the rope Bud had salvaged from the life raft. We even used the rope to help each other, and I cussed myself for getting into such a situation. But when we stood at last beside the ram,

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ON A LIGHTER NOTE! Three Kick Rule...

A big city lawyer went duck hunting. He shot and dropped a bird, but it fell into a farmer’s field on the other side of a fence.

As the lawyer climbed over the fence, an elderly farmer drove up on his tractor and asked the lawyer what he was doing.

The lawyer responded, “I shot a duck and it fell into this field, and now I’m going to retrieve it.”

The old farmer replied. “This is my property, and your not coming over here.”

The indignant lawyer replied. “I’m one of the best trial lawyers around, and if you don’t let me get that duck, I’ll sue you and take everything that you own.

The old farmer smiled and said, “Apparently, you don’t know how we do things in these parts. We settle small disagreements like this, with the Three Kick Rule.”

The lawyer asked, “What is the Three Kick Rule?”

The farmer replied, “Well, first I kick you three times and then you kick me three times, and so on, back and forth until someone gives up.”

The lawyer quickly thought about the proposed contest and decided that he could easily take the old codger. He agreed to abide by the local custom.

The old farmer slowly gets down from the tractor and walked up to the city fella. His first kick planted the toe of his heavy work boot into the lawyer’s groin, which dropped him to his knees.

His second kick nearly ripped the nose off his face.

The lawyer was flat on his belly, when the farmer’s third kick to a kidney nearly causing him to give up, but didn’t.

The lawyer summoned every bit of his will and managed to get to his feet and said, “Okay, now it’s my turn.”

The old farmer smiled and said, “Naw, I give up, You can keep the duck!”

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CURRENT NEWS Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show Harrisburg, PA The 2010 show takes place Feb. 6-14 at the State Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg, and this year’s edition is scheduled to feature an all-star lineup that includes outdoors stars Michael Waddell, Stan Potts, Lee and Tiffany Lakosky, Mark Menendez, Bob Clouser, Ralph and Vicki Cianciarulo and a host of others who will offer expertise on hunting, fishing and equipment through a variety of seminars during the nine-day February cure for cabin fever that covers two weekends.

Pennsylvania Bear Season 2nd Highest Harvest Ever Pennsylvania Game Commission

With an additional 342 bears taken during the extended bear season that was open last week in certain parts of the state, Pennsylvania Game Commission preliminary harvest reports accounted for 3,499 bears, which moves this year’s harvest into second place in state bear harvests. Updated preliminary results also now show that the two-day archery bear season resulted in a harvest of 114, and the statewide three-day season resulted in a harvest of 3,043.

Artificial Feeding Causing Deaths in Pennsylvania Elk Pennsylvania Game Commission officials recently reported that there have been four cases involving elk that have died of rumen acidosis, which is directly related to artificial feeding that causes an abrupt change in an elk’s diet that wreaks havoc with its digestive system.

Bud climbed down a thousand feet to the ram, reached out to grasp it, and sent it toppling over for another thousand feet!

I forgot all about the climb!

I had taken a Dall sheep with a full circle. The horns were thirty-three inches long. No record, but a good head just the same.

And for his way of life, for the beauty of the country where he is found, for the effort and risk entailed in taking him, the Dall sheep stands, in my opinion, well toward the top of the list of American big game. I prize none of my other trophies more highly than that head.

We skinned the ram out on the ledge where he lay and began the hazardous descent, using the rope to lower head and cape, hams and tenderloin, packs, and each other from one foothold to the next.

At 3 p.m. we were back at the lean-to, where we picked up our supplies and hiked on to the plane. Completely worn out by that time, I was looking forward to camp, a hot supper, and bed. But in taxiing for the take-off, Bud ran the floats aground on a gravel bar. There was only one thing to do. We climbed down belt-deep into the icy Kuskokwim and tugged and wrestled until we worked the plane free.

The flight back to camp was just short of a nightmare. I was cold, wet, and exhausted. But every few minutes I looked back at my sheep head in the rear compartment of the ship and my discomfort faded out of my mind.

A couple of days later my son Burk got his chance at a ram. He and Bud left camp on foot about 8 a.m., to hunt the slopes of a 4,000-foot mountain across and beyond Sheep Lake.

From the camp I picked them up with my glasses when they started the ascent. It was a steep tough climb, and I took pride in the way Burk walked at the guide’s heels all the way up.

PAGE 36 When they topped out on the ridge in the middle of the forenoon Bud sat down with the glasses.

Within five minutes he picked up several tiny white dots on a mountain eight miles away, across the valley, and pronounced them a band of sheep.

After the two moved a couple of miles along the ridge for a better look, Bud finally decided they were all rams, and the stalk was on. Dropping down into the valley, they hit a small creek and followed it up a rough, steep-sided canyon to the foot of a shale slope below the sheep.

The only way to get at them was to make the 2,000-foot climb, with no cover. So Bud and Burk, crouched over, inched their way up, picking every foothold with infinite care. They sighted the first ram at 200 yards. The head looked fair but the sun was square in Burk’s scope, so he passed up the shot.

Roy Waits Too Long From the next rise, a few yards higher, they saw the top of another and bigger set of horns, so they started to crawl up for a shot. At 125 yards the sheep must have heard the noise of dislodged shale, for he raised up from behind a rock and looked down at them. Meanwhile Burk scrambled to one knee and shot.

The ram disappeared, knocked off his footing on a narrow saddle of rock. Not until Bud and Burk worked around to a spot where they could see him lying at the foot of a shale slope 1,000 feet below were they sure Burk had scored a hit.

Bud climbed down after the sheep, but dislodged him and he fell and slid another 1,000 feet into the creek. He carried a full circle, the horns measuring thirty-five inches. It was the best head taken by our party.

When Burk reached camp about 6 p.m., having hiked and climbed seventeen miles, he was tired; but it would be hard to imagine a more elated boy.

Roy Cain passed up two or three chances at fair rams, looking for a better head, but as things turned out he waited too long. A heavy fall of wet snow shut him and his guide in camp the morning after the rest of us flew out, and Roy had no further chance to hunt before the season ended August 31.

Black in the Blueberries On September 1 the season opened on moose, caribou, and bears, and at this time the party broke up. Branham flew Roy and his guide and Dennis Branham, the cook, some sixty miles out from Rainy

February 2010 Pass to Jud Lake, to hunt moose and brown bears.

Big Paul, Little Paul, Burk, and I stayed on at Rainy Pass for the time being.

This was good bear country. There was a 700-foot peak behind the camp that we called Lookout Mountain, and from the top of it a couple of days before, the Nussbaums had seen nine blacks at one time.

Bud Branham got back from Jud Lake in time for the noon meal, and suggested we go out and kill a bear that afternoon. Burk and I took him up on it, so we started by climbing Lookout Mountain. Using the 20X spotting scope, we picked up three or four black bears, all too far away. A few minutes later, however, a nice black walked out into a blueberry patch on a mountainside directly west of us.

“There’s your bear,” bud announced, “all staked out for you.”

The stalk was downhill, easy and uneventful, and three quarters of an hour later we were closing in.

The bear had moved up into the edge of an alder patch, and acted mighty nervous. He kept swinging his head, sniffing the wind, and twice he bolted out into the open as if a bee had stung him, only to wheel and dodge back into cover again. Branham was at a loss to account for his behavior, for the wind was straight in our faces and there was no chance he had scented us. (Two days later the mystery was solved, when Big Paul killed a big grizzly - the first of the hunt - that had invaded the territory and spooked out all the blacks.)

The second time he ran into the open I put my shot into his shoulder at seventy-five yards, but failed to knock him down. A second bullet hit him in the midsection. He ran twenty yards, bawling and roaring, but was dead when we got to him. He was satisfyingly big, with a fine pelt.

Two days later Burk killed the bear I told about at the beginning of this story. He and Bud and I had gone up on Lookout Mountain, hoping to spot a grizzly. Instead we picked up a huge bull moose in the willows on the far side of the Happy River, some four miles away. We returned to camp to get hip boots for wading the river and went after the moose.

But we encountered hard going in the dense alders of a beaver pond, and when we reached the place where we had seen him, he had disappeared.

On the way back to camp we saw two bears. The first gave us the slip, but we worked up to the second after an hour’s stalk, and Burk killed him. It was a great day - for both of us! We celebrated by loafing

February 2010 around camp the next day, fleshing and salting down our pelts.

Point-to-point Race On September 6 Bud suggested we inject a little variety by going after caribou. Flying back from the Sheep Lake camp a week earlier, we had spotted a band of fifteen or twenty - some fifteen miles from Rainy Pass - coming down off the mountains onto the tundra at the upper end of Ptarmigan Valley.

Burk and Bud and I flew up there, landed on a small lake, and started across the tundra on foot.

It was bad beaver-dam country and the hard going forced us to take to the side of the nearest mountain.

After climbing 1,000 feet, we picked a sunny spot in a blueberry patch and sat down to share the feast with a colony of tiny rock rabbits that were chirping all around us.

Bud never sat long without using his 9X binoculars. We had been eating blueberries for maybe half an hour when he announced quietly that he was looking at five bull caribou down on the tundra. The heads were only fair but they were good enough to suit us, for there wasn’t much wall space left in our small trophy room back home.

The bulls were moving at a fast clip, alternately feeding and walking. If we hurried down, and out across the tundra at right angles to the course they were taking, we could intercept them at a point about three miles from where we were sitting - provided they didn’t get there first.

So down the mountainside we went, jogging through blueberry and alder thickets. The tundra was even worse, with hummocks and dips, small creeks, and an underfooting of soft moss into which we sank halfway to our knees. It was like running in ten inches of new snow, and all the while Bud, up ahead, was urging us on. “If those bulls cross ahead of us it’s the end of the caribou hunt!” he warned.

At last, breaking over a low rise, I saw a bull standing in a creek bed 250 yards ahead, but before I could square away for a shot he stepped around a bend and was gone.

I held the rifle ready and waited for the next animal to come into sight, but nothing happened. After a couple of minutes the unwelcome truth dawned.

That caribou was the last of the band. The herd was gone and there’d be no more along. By so narrow a margin - a matter of seconds - had we missed our chance!

It was a bad letdown. Bud shook his head sadly.

PAGE 37 “We should have hurried,” he declared. I couldn’t spare breath enough to answer him.

Then, 500 yards away on the tundra, a solitary caribou came into sight, a bull bigger than any of those we’d missed. He was trailing the others, head down, smelling their tracks. He went out of sight in a shallow draw, reappeared in a small opening and from nowhere the five bulls we’d been stalking stepped out of the alders and joined him. I wanted the big fellow, of course. My trophy room is not that cramped!

The range was long, 325 paces. I snuggled against a convenient boulder, slipped my arm through the sling, and held the cross hairs above his shoulder.

The shot was a clean miss.

It threw the herd into confusion and for a few seconds they were a milling bunch of legs and horns.

Two smaller bulls got in front of mine at about the time I remembered that my rifle was still sighted in at 300 yards, as I had carried it on the sheep hunt.

When the big bull was in the clear again I held at the midpoint of his shoulder and sledged. The bullet smashed both shoulders and we found it just under the skin on the far side when we dressed him out.

While Burk and I were taking pictures Bud sat down on a hummock with his glasses. “I’ll spot a grizzly,” he predicted, and ten seconds later he added, “There he is!”

The bear was a big silvertip, feeding on the mountainside where we’d started our caribou chase. That meant we’d have our stalk all over again, but in reverse. I groaned inwardly.

Bud gutted the caribou in a hurry and we left it and started the three-mile rat race back up the mountain.

But when we reached the spot on the shale where we had seen the bear he was gone. We scouted the area and rolled rocks down into the alders in the hope of moving him, but all in vain. We trudged down the mountain once more and back across the tundra to finish the job of skinning the caribou and to pack meat and head to the plane.

Big Moose, Small Room The day after the caribou hunt Bud flew the Nussbaums to Jud Lake and brought Roy Cain back to Rainy Pass. Roy had a fine moose with a spread of fifty-seven inches, and the biggest black bear of the trip. But he reported that there were no brown bears in the Jud Lake country. He and Luke had found empty cases in .30/40 Krag and .250/3000 caliber on the beach, and all the bear sign was at least two

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The shot threw them into confusion and they milled wildly around, with the smaller ones hiding my target

weeks old. We could only conclude that someone had beaten us to the brownies before the season opened.

A month to the day from the time we reached Rainy Pass, Bud took Burk and me to near-by Round Mountain, hoping for a chance at a grizzly, but three moose - two bulls and a cow - got in our way. We spotted them about noon in a sea of golden willows down in the valley of Canyon Creek. One of the bulls looked very good, so we started down toward them.

The creek alders were higher than our heads and about as easy to get through as a fish net. We wormed along and finally Bud sighted the back and head of one bull. Although I had never killed a moose I wasn’t especially interested and gladly passed the chanced to Burk. He climbed up on a windfall to get a better view and opened up at 100 yards.

He fired three shots before the moose went down, for because of the thick brush he couldn’t tell whether he was hitting. All three, we found, had connected - one in the shoulder, one in the midsection, and one in the neck that finished the job. The moose dropped in a thicket so dense that we had to hack brush away

and make a tiny clearing before we could roll him over and start the job of skinning.

The antlers measured forty-nine inches. I had hoped for about a forty-inch spread, because of that small trophy room back home, but neither Burk nor I was really disappointed. “If that’s the smallest moose we can find we’ll have to make the best of it,” Burk pointed out with a cheerful grin.

When Bud and his caretaker, Tom Smith, went down after the final pack load of moose meat the next forenoon they left Burk and me on Round Mountain to keep watch for grizzlies. It didn’t take us long to pick up two on a mountain across the valley. We watched them until Bud and Tom came back, carrying 270 pounds of meat.

“Blond or Brunette?”

Bud slipped out of his pack and glassed the grizzlies. “They look mighty good,” he announced.

“Want to try for ‘em?”

It was noon, late to start a hunt of that kind, but we didn’t hesitate. Bud left his pack where it was and the three of us went plunging down Round Mountain, along the terrible alder thickets at its foot, and then through muskeg that was fully as bad. We

February 2010 crossed half a mile of it, stepping from hummock to hummock and falling knee-deep in mud and water time after time. It took us an hour and a half to reach the base of the mountain on which the bears were feeding, and we then faced a 5,000-foot climb almost straight up!

Bud is a slave driver when there is game ahead.

He kept me in front and goaded me unmercifully.

Heart hammering, legs aching, I took what comfort I could from the fact that my thirteen-year-old son was never more than a couple of paces from the guide.

When we reached the ledge where we had seen the bears they were no longer in sight, but I was too winded to care much. Then, as a fitting climax, misty rain started to fall, turning rocks and moss greaseslippery and making travel on the steep mountainside dangerous.

Thinking the two bears might have gone higher, we pushed on to the head of a draw where we could see all of the mountain above us. There were no grizzlies on it. But 1,000 feet below, a sow and two yearling cubs came suddenly into sight, feeding toward a huge alder patch.

The young bears would weigh maybe 240 pounds apiece. One was dark, the other light like the mother.

Among the trophies we hoped to take were two small grizzly pelts for a special place on the trophy-room floor. This looked like our chance, so we started a downhill chase. Bud figured the three bears meant to work into the alders to get out of the rain, so we hurried to reach them while they were still in the open.

The mountain was really slippery by that time.

Repeatedly we sat down on our rumps and went streaking fifty to seventy-five feet at a clip down the wet, steep slopes. When we saw the three bears again they were forty feet from the alder thicket. In another minute they’d be out of sight.

The range was 200 yards but there was no time to get closer. “You want the blond or the brunette?” I asked Burk.

The kid knew I wanted a big grizzly. “The blond,” he whispered back. “You take the old lady.”

We squirmed into position and brought our rifles up. “I’ll count three,” Bud said. “Then let ‘em have it.”

The Old Lady Shows Her Mettle But in that instant the wind shifted and the sow grizzly got our scent. She reared up, staring straight at us, and I didn’t wait for Bud’s full count. I had the

PAGE 39 cross hairs centered on her chest and I slammed a 150-grain soft-nose bullet into her.

She went down like a limp dishrag, and then Burk’s .270 blasted in my ear.

For the first time in big-game hunting I took my eyes off my target. I saw Burk’s blond cub go crashing down, but when I looked back I couldn’t see my bear at all. A second later she shot out of knee-deep brush and into the alder patch, the dark cub at her heels. I was entitled to two grizzlies, so I nailed him.

It was a good thing I did!

We picked up the sow’s blood trail and followed it seventy-five yards. Then it faded out. The alder thicket was dense and fully a mile across. Was the sow somewhere in it, lying down in ambush, waiting for us? Was she dead? Or had she gone on through?

There was no way to tell.

I dislike losing crippled game as much as any sportsman can, but only a fool would trail a wounded grizzly into such a place as that. “There are pleasanter ways to commit suicide,” Bud told us. “It’s too bad, but that sort of thing is bound to happen once in a while, and there is nothing we can do about it.”

It rained all that night, too, eliminating any chance of coming back in the morning and trying to pick up the sow’s track. So I had to write her off our trophy list.

Next afternoon we took our fly rods and went down to Squaw Creek below the lodge. In an hour we caught thirty Dolly Vardens ranging in length from eight to twelve inches. When we returned, Roy and Luke were back from a grizzly hunt. Roy pretended nonchalance, but when we called attention to three empty loops in his cartridge belt he broke down and showed us the pelt of a beautiful blond grizzly.

He and Luke had made almost too good a stalk, for they came out of the brush about twenty yards from the bear! Roy missed one shot, then put one in the neck and one in the head. “It took both of ‘em to floor him, too,” he admitted.

One day’s rest served to revive Burk, and Bud took him on a long hike out on the tundra to look for caribou. But they had gone back to the mountains, so my boy had no luck.

Meantime, fishing alone in Squaw Creek for more Dolly Vardens, I was brought face to face with a peril so deadly that I still shudder when I think about it.

I had stepped to the edge of the grass on a small gravel bar and lengthened line for my next cast into

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the pool above, when I saw something shining silver-white at me feet.

There lay a big salmon with a chunk bitten out of its back. The bite we fresh, oozing blood, and I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck.

Tragedy Breathes on My Neck There were bear tracks in the sand beside the fish, tracks in which I could have lost my own footprints. And water was just beginning to run back into those tracks - they weren’t sixty seconds old! My eyes, following the line of them along the bar and up the far bank of the creek, told me that grizzly was somewhere in the brush not twenty paces away. I could feel his little ragereddened eyes boring into me from wherever he was hidden, sense his savage anger as he watched me standing over the fish he had just started to eat. I knew enough about bears to guess what would happen next.

And then, behind the shoulder-high screen of alder and willow and devil’s-club that fringed the bank of the creek, I actually heard him breathe, like a horse that has been running hard!

On the bank behind me was a little grassy knoll free of brush.

I dropped my rod and ran for it. I knew it was a foolish thing to do, but it seemed my only chance and I still think it saved my life!

As I stood on the knoll, expecting every second to see the bear come bursting out of the brush, I could still hear his hard breathing. But after a while the sound faded away and it occurred to me he might be circling, stalking me in complete silence. When five minutes passed and nothing happened I eased gingerly down to the creek, grabbed my rod, and dashed up the stream bed.

Luke went down the next day to look things over. The partly eaten salmon was still on the bar, indicating that the bear had cleared out for good after our encounter. His bed was not more than ten feet back from the creek bank, in tall grass, with several half-eaten salmon lying around it. He was just one grizzly that didn’t choose to fight.

Two days before we were due to leave camp, the Nussbaums came back from Jud Lake with two fine black-bear pelts and a moose with a 59inch spread.

Bud and Burk and I went back that day to Ptarmigan Valley, hoping for a caribou for Burk.

It started to rain, and we had about decided My blood ran cold as I spotted the savagely bitten fish and the fresh prints

February 2010 take off, when Bud spotted two bulls with good heads.

The stalk was fairly easy. Burk made a fine shot at 175 yards, anchoring one caribou in its tracks.

But when we got up to it we were disappointed to find the antlers still in the velvet. Through our rainblurred glasses they had looked polished and good.

We dressed the bull and left in a hurry, before the rain could really go to work on us.

And Then the Jackpot We were due to return to Anchorage September 15, so we had only one more day in camp. But it had been a great hunt. Burk and I had taken a Dall sheep, a caribou, a black bear, and a small grizzly apiece.

Burk also had a moose. Roy Cain had chalked up a moose, a black bear, and a grizzly. Big Paul and Little Paul had killed two Dalls, a moose, two black bears, and a grizzly between ’em. We could hardly have asked for better luck. Still, there was one thing lacking, so far as I was concerned. I wanted Burk to get a chance at a really good grizzly.

What happened the last day sounds like a storybook ending, but I’ll take oath it occurred exactly as I’m going to relate it here.

Roy and Luke decided to hunt Round Mountain that day. The Nussbaums and their guide and Burk, Bud, and I flew back to Ptarmigan Valley, using both planes, and then split up. Big Paul, Little Paul, and Bob headed south down the valley, while Bud led Burk and me up the west slope of the mountain.

When we had seen no game by noon Bud went on alone, explaining that he wanted a real look around.

A couple of hours later he came back at a hard run.

He had spotted two head of game out on the tundra, too far off for identification. They looked like caribou, but they might be grizzlies.

It was worth investigating. We dropped off the mountain and crossed three or four miles of rolling tundra. From an alder patch half a mile from the two animals we got our first good look at them. What we saw sent our hopes rocketing. They were grizzlies, both dark, well furred, and big enough to make good trophies.

We moved up a draw to within 400 yards, slipped out of our packs, and started to crawl. At 100 yards Burk wormed his way through the scarlet fireweed and huckleberry brush to the crest of a low ridge and settled into shooting position.

One bear was slightly smaller than the other, so we assumed they were mates. Burk picked the big-

PAGE 41 ger one and put a shot into its spine. The bear went down with an earth-shaking roar of pain and rage.

Then Burk drove a second shot into its back, higher up toward the neck. The grizzly fell back dead.

The second bear, feeding 100 yards off, paid no attention whatever to Burk’s two shots. But a few seconds later it started to mosey toward the carcass.

We could hardly believe our eyes as it walked up to the dead grizzly, lay down in the grass, and nuzzled at her belly in an attempt to suckle! He would certainly have weighed close to 600 pounds and must have been at least three years old. Yet for some reason she had failed to wean him at the normal time!

It was plainly hunger and not affection for his dead mother that held the youngster there, for he persisted in his efforts to get milk and would not be driven off. Bud kept the movie camera grinding away while Burk and I jumped up and down, shouting and waving our hats. The bear’s only response was to rear up on his haunches and growl.

We moved in to within fifty yards and he showed definite intentions of charging if we came any nearer.

Determined to bluff him out instead of killing him, we circles cautiously upwind to give him our scent.

He got it all of a sudden. Sitting on his haunches, he pointed his nose skyward and sniffed curiously.

What he smelled must have surprised him half out of his wits, for he bolted to his feet with all show of fight fading out of him like the air from a pricked balloon. He galloped across the tundra a few yards, stopped, took one quick look in our direction, then lowered his flaps and pulled both throttles all the way out!

“Well, I’ll be,” Bud said softly. “I never in my life saw anything like that before!”

The sow’s pelt squared an inch more than eight feet. As we were skinning her out I remembered that Burk had not looked back across his shoulder, to make sure Bud and I were behind him, before squeezing off, as he had done when he shot the big black a month earlier. My thirteen-year-old was a graduate big-game hunter now!

THE END From Outdoor Life, January, 1950

The Indians gathered around.

I was no longer a “crazy” man

It might have been breakneck holiday for this ace guide when he went out on his own

By FRANK GOLATA For more years than I care to admit, I’d been guiding visiting big-game hunters from the city in their quest for the elusive ram, grizzly, caribou, wolf, and other animals of the Canadian Rockies. In all these years I’d never found time to hunt on my own. Of course, I get almost as much pleasure out of a good stalk and a grand trophy as do the sportsmen I guide.

But planning the hunt, and the responsibilities involved in managing an outfit, take up most of my

time and leave me little opportunity to join in the sport.

On many of these British Columbia hunts I often dreamed of shedding all responsibilities and going off on my own. I’d fish or hunt or loaf without worrying much about trophies, foul weather, or the bickerings of time-pressed city sportsmen.

It was just a dream. But shortly after the last war, for the first time in years, I found myself without a

The grizzly bear pricked up his ears and started down the trail, interested in a quick kill and some warm meat

party to escort. Without stopping to argue with myself, I picked out two horses, gathered some gear, plus my .30/06 Winchester Model 54 rifle, forty cartridges loaded with 180-grain hollow points, and food. I put up enough grub to last a month, and I could always hunt meat if I wanted to stay out longer.

It was a fine, sunny day when I set out from my homestead, a few miles north of Dawson Creek. But overnight I was driven to shelter by a violent snowstorm that neither my horses nor I cared to buck.

These unseasonable fall storms, which sometimes come howling down from the Aleutians, are reminders that winter is not far away. Old settlers in this area refer to this season as “squaw winter,” and usually it is followed by Indian summer, a period of nice warm days and frosty nights that make hunting in the mountains ideal.

Most likely I’d have had to keep traveling through this storm, if I’d been conducting a trip for hunters from the city. Time is of utmost importance to them.

But now I just sat back and waited for the storm to

blow itself out. I was in a small meadow surrounded by timber that made a good shelter for my camp and pasture for my horses.

In a few days the storm ended as suddenly as it had begun. The sun was warm and bright, and soon the snow in the valley began to thaw. The trail was wet and slippery and every bush was bowed down with snow and ice. Crossing the swollen Pine River late that day, I emerged into a hidden mountain meadow occupied by a tribe of Beaver Indians. All the dogs in camp rushed out to greet me with a howl. The surprised inhabitants of the tepees tumbled out to see what the commotion was all about. The squaws and the children hung back, content to stare, but some of the men came over - warily - to talk.

“Hello, you game warden?” one of the Indians asked.

I replied: “Nemoya” (No).

“Maybe you policeman?”

Again I said, “Nemoya,” and added, “I’m going to mountains to hunt sheep.”

He nodded and waved his hand toward the camp.

“All my people go to mountains pretty soon, hunt caribou,” he said.

Now I learned why I’d been looked on with suspicion at first. A month or so before, a game warden with two horses had ridden into camp and arrested one of the men for interfering with a white man’s

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trapline. Since I was a stranger, and had two horses, had a bullet hole in his forehead. After a thorough I was to be approached with caution. investigation, it was concluded that the Mexican had I guessed that each of the dozen tepees in camp shot the American while he was asleep. Before he housed three or four children besides the squaw, and died, the American apparently roused himself sufpossibly as many dogs. These men must be kept pret- ficiently to take a shot at the Mexican, killing him ty busy, I thought, providing meat for such a camp instantly. A miners’ jury buried the bodies near by, all fall and winter. I kill one moose a year for my and erected a wooden marker. Although the lake has family. Indians probably kill hundreds of caribou. It an official map name in honor of some distinguished helps to explain why wildlife is scarce around Indian government official, since the tragedy it has been camps, and why they move camp so often. Well, I known locally as “Deadmen’s Lake”. had to be going.

The surrounding mountains were still covered “Bon jour, good luck,” I said. “Hope you kill with snow where the rays of the sun were too weak plenty caribou.” to thaw it. From the trail I could see tracks in the “Bon jour, plenty sheep,” the Indian replied. snow where caribou had wandered around pawing I rode on down the trail, knowing well that they for moss. These did not interest me just now. First I thought me “mooniyas” - crazy - to travel alone in wanted a good specimen of Stone sheep and also, if grizzly country. possible, a grizzly.

I rode along for several days, camping at night After following a small stream downhill, I turned in bunch-grass valleys and fishing for rainbows and off into a small meadow surrounded by low sprucegrayling in the cold, rushing streams. Along the trail covered hills. I was peacefully admiring the scenery I saw the tracks of mule deer, black bears, moose, when I was rudely jarred from my reveries. A large and an occasional timber wolf. But the mountains brown grizzly was walking along the trail toward me, were still too low for sheep, goats, and grizzlies. not more than 100 yards away. I drew up, startled.

Two days more travel brought me to the summit of The bear saw the horses about the same time. Evithe main ridge. dently he thought they were caribou, for he hesitated One night I camped in the mountains by the shores of a body of water known as “Deadmen’s Lake.” This beautiful spot was the scene of a tragedy which took place about 1915.

A couple of prospectors, an American and a Mexican, were working the area for copper.

They had been brought here by a guide who left after helping to set up their outfit. The guide reported later that he had found them very quarrelsome, and was glad to leave. Both men carried arms, and frequently threatened to kill each other, but those who heard them thought they were just talking tough.

About a month later some prospectors looking for stray horses stopped by the camp.

They found both men dead in their beds, guns gripped in their hands. The American was shot When I snapped the stick the moose leaped as though he’d been hit with a bullet in the chest, and the Mexican

only a moment. Then he pricked up his ears and trotted toward us, interested in an easy kill and warm meat to feast upon. I dismounted hurriedly, grabbed my rifle from the scabbard, and walked a few steps ahead of the horses.

The horses had not yet noticed the bear, and they stood by quietly. But I knew that as soon as the shooting started they probably would bolt. So I laid the rifle on the ground and quickly tied them to the nearest tree, wondering meanwhile if the grizzly would take off before I could get a shot.

The bear saw me detached from the group for the first time. He stopped short, looked me over suspiciously, and then started to retrace his steps. He was about fifty yards away and was just turning from me as I fired. At the crack of the gun he gave an awful growl and came tumbling downhill with a roar. Hearing the shot and getting a whiff of bear, the frantic horses struggled to get free.

One managed to tear himself loose, and he started down the trail. But I caught him as he hesitated a second, undecided whether to go it alone or to stay with friends. After retying him, I walked toward the grizzly and shot it through the neck.

Then I got down to the job of skinning. I found that the first shot had hit the bear in the flank and, quartering through the body, had shattered his backbone and lodged in his front shoulder on the opposite side. The finishing shot had severed the spine.

As this was to be one of my prize trophies, I took special care in skinning out the head, ears, and claws. The fat was thick, and the flesh looked good enough to eat, so I cut off a big chunk. That would be enough to eat until I could get some mountain mutton - which hunters consider the finest big-game meat there is.

When the skinning was over I packed my horses

again and proceeded to Redfern Lake, about five miles farther west among the high peaks. It’s a beautiful spot at the foot of a mighty glacier, and it was there I hoped to find some big Stone rams.

I spent most of the first day in camp fleshing and preparing the bear hide for drying. The rest of the time was taken up in making camp comfortable, gathering firewood, and cooking bannock in preparation for the next day’s hunt. In the evening I walked along the lake shore to look over the mountains.

They rose almost perpendicular from the water’s edge. I located some goats feeding on the mountainside, but there was no sign of sheep, large or small.

My first hunt for sheep turned out to be a flop. I spent a long day in the high country above camp, but saw only ewes and lambs. The absence of large tracks in the snow indicated that the big rams had not descended to the lower ranges.

It was on my return from this hunt that I had the narrowest escape from death that I have ever had or ever wish to have. I had decided to take a shortcut back to camp to avoid a canyon that had been difficult to cross on the way up. For some distance the

to go forward. There was no possibility of turning back, and yet there was no foothold ahead. I stood there wondering what would happen if I slipped and fell 100 feet among the broken rocks below.

It would mean curtains for me, and my body probably would never be found. My horses would either starve to death tied up at the camp, or they might break loose and in a couple of months wander back home to give my family notice of the tragedy. I began to get hot flushes, and my knees felt weak. Then I began to talk to myself.

“Now just you calm down,” I murAt the shot the ram tumbled and lay still. I started to take a bead on the other one, then hesitated. mured. “Take it easy.

You’re in this alone, going was better than I had expected, but gradually the terrain roughened until finally it got so rugged I and nobody’s going to help. If you get excited you’ll didn’t know which way to turn. I was confronted by never get out. Go slowly, and use your head.”

In a little while the mild flurry of hysteria left me, a bit of cliff rock, steep and dangerous.

Beyond it the footing was safe and sound. If I and I began to figure what I could do to get out of hadn’t had a pack on my back it would have been this mess. The rocks above were loose and broken, relatively easy to negotiate this nasty place. But with and in some places were like shale. I took my huntthe pack, and a rifle in my hand, I wasn’t so active ing knife and gouged footholds in the shale places. or sure-footed. I figured that if I went slowly I could It was hard on the knife, but that was the least of my worries. I made a foothold large enough to put both make it safely.

Slinging the .30/06 over my shoulder so that I feet into before I advanced, and then I worked on the could use both hands, I started up the rocks. The next one. I did this several times, but then I ran into drop-off below was far and steep, but I tried to keep rock too hard and smooth to carve with a knife. By my mind on the immediate objective instead of now I was only about two long steps to safe ground, thinking what lay beneath me. The going wasn’t too but there was no place for the first step.

One small rock protruded from the smooth wall. difficult at the beginning since the rocks were broken and afforded some good places to step. But the It didn’t look very safe and was no bigger than a farther I went the smoother the rock surface became, shoe heel. But it was my only hope. I had to make it. There was no turning back. I put my knife away, until finally I came to a spot that stymied me.

The small ledges which served as footholds sud- shifted the gun out of my way, balanced the pack, denly ended. I looked back to where I’d come from, and got ready to jump. I made up my mind not to put and the sight made me catch my breath. I just had any more weight on that little rock than was abso-

PAGE 48 lutely necessary, and to get off it as soon as possible.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped out.

My foot hit that projecting rock on the fly - in less than a split second I was off and on safe ground!

Behind me I could hear falling rock, but I didn’t stop to look. All I wanted was to get away from there forever.

Afterward, as I gave my heart a chance to calm down, I made a solemn resolution never to get caught in another predicament like that. If a place looks at all doubtful, I said, I’ll keep clear. There’s an old saying: “A scared mountaineer lives longest.”

I can see the reason why.

On return to camp I found my horses resting contentedly in the lush bunch-grass meadow between camp and lake shore. One, the leader, was tied by a long rope to a picket stake, the other was hobbled and carried a bell. Since there was no one in camp to look after the horses while I was away, these precautions were necessary. In the event of attack by grizzly, the picketed horse would break loose and run off with its mate. The hobbled horse could keep clear of bear in most cases. If anything like that should happen, it would mean that I’d have to track the horses until I could hear the bell, then circle and come upon them in a different direction from the bear. Actually there is little danger of losing horses to wolves or bears, for the sound of a horse bell usually scares them away.

Next day I decided I’d pay a visit to the goats across the lake. From my camp I could see several of them feeding on the steep hillside. They were about a mile away as the crow flies, but the way I had to go put them about twice that distance from me. When I finally reached the base of the mountain the goats were still about 1,000 feet above me. I sat down and studied them and the terrain through my binoculars.

The group included several nannies and kids, and one medium-size billy that looked as though it might be good enough for a trophy.

To get to the goats I had to go up a small ravine, but when I reached their level I was still about 300 yards away with no cover between. The nannies and kids were in plain sight, but I couldn’t spot the billy.

“Must be in that gully over there,” I thought. “Now if I just walk along deliberately I may gain another 100 yards and be near enough to locate the billy and get a shot at him before he spooks.” I started across.

Before I’d gone many feet the nannies and kids saw me, and darted up the mountain in alarm.

I advanced quietly to the gully and peeped cautiously over its rim. There was my billy, feeding

February 2010 placidly, not more than twenty-five yards away. I lined up the sights - gold bead front, Lyman 48 rear - against his shoulder. At the crack of the gun he dropped without even taking a step. It was so easy I felt almost ashamed of myself.

Two days later I started to hunt sheep again. At the first streak of dawn I was on my way to a high basin on Redfern Mountain some three miles away.

The basin is about 2,000 feet above the valley, and is a hangout for big rams on their way to the lower ranges. In the autumn the rams, which have isolated themselves in small bands in the summits, get restless and begin working slowly down to join the ewes and lambs. The basins afford shelter, food , and sanctuary, and hence are the most likely places to find the rams during this season.

Upon reaching the edge of the first basin I saw snow patches scattered all through the place. Such a pattern of white and black makes it hard to spot the animals you’re after. Looking over every foot with my binoculars, I noticed a string of tracks on one of the snow patches which evidently had been made by a large ram not long before. That ram couldn’t be far away. I moved from one high point to another and studied every hump and rock. The Stone sheep blend so perfectly with the limestone that they are almost indistinguishable unless they are moving. I saw nothing.

I’d about decided that the ram had gone out of the basin when I saw a white speck that moved. It was about 500 feet above me. I got my glasses focused just in time to see what looked like the rear of a sheep moving out of sight. I had a feeling that I’d been seen, and that the ram was trying to slip away. But after watching the area for perhaps half an hour, I concluded that he’d bedded down. If that was correct, then it was likely he didn’t suspect my presence.

I dropped out of sight, maneuvered into position to take advantage of the wind, and began my stalk.

The basin was a succession of steplike benches, and I guessed that the ram must be lying on one high above me. By this time I was certain that it was a ram, since the tracks were too large for an ewe. But so far I had seen no horns.

I walked quietly from one bench to another, stopping to look up once in a while. The nearer I got the more tense I became, for there was no telling if and when the ram might hear me. Now I was going up the last slope and should see him when I reached the rim. I hoped he would be in a position for a fair shot.

Suddenly there was an eruption. Not more than

February 2010 fifteen yards ahead, a large ram was getting up on his legs. The next moment I saw another ram a few yards away. I could see only their heads and horns, so I stood up straight and walked toward them. Both rams wheeled and began to run. The nearer one was the larger of the two. I took aim and fired. The ram faltered, but kept running. At the second shot he tumbled and lay still. I took a bead on the other ram, but hesitated. Did I want another? I’d intended to get two, and the bag limit permitted two. But one good ram should be enough for any man. I decided against the second kill, and lowered my gun.

My kill was a fine specimen of Stone sheep with heavy, broomed horns measuring thirty-nine inches, a prime skin, and fat meat. I carefully skinned out the head, cut the meat into quarters, loaded up, and came back down the mountain.

I spent the next few days in camp preparing the skins and scalps, salting, drying, and packing, and between times wandered down to the lake and caught grayling. My fishing tackle consisted of only a few hooks and a willow pole. I had no boat, so I didn’t try for trout. But the longer I thought about those big boys the more I wanted one. The only way I could hope to get one was to build a raft and fish the deep water.

I decided to do that, and spent the next day searching for dry timber. When you haven’t any nails or wire, building a raft isn’t easy since everything has to be dovetailed and wedged. But after nearly a full day’s work my little raft was ready for launching.

I put her in at the upper end of the lake and let her drift as I sank my line into the deep water. I had baited the largest hook with a chunk of raw meat the size of a golf ball.

Suddenly I struck what I thought was a snag. My pole bent like a bow. I didn’t have any line to play out, so I pulled hard. The pressure eased a bit, and I was delighted to feel an uneven tugging at the line.

I had a fish on - a big one. The line cut through the water in a circle and the fish surfaced, but not clearly enough for me to see just how big he was.

Once I caught sight of a shadow as long as my arm leading the line around the raft. I could never land that fish with my outfit, and I knew it.

But I wasn’t going to give up. The fish finally made a half circle, dived under the raft, and pulled my line against the rough logs. I held on, hard. Suddenly the line snapped, and I flopped backward into the wet. Now wouldn’t that beat all! I’d lost him. I made up my mind that the next time I came this way I’d bring a hook large enough to hold a quarter of a

PAGE 49 sheep for bait, pack rope for line, and a teepee pole for a rod.

Meantime I gave up trying for big fish and contented myself with the small fry in the shallows. Occasionally I heard the splash of a big trout as I sat by my campfire that night, and I wondered if he might be looking for more meat. A stray moose or caribou approached close to camp, lingered a minute or two, and then galloped off in a frightened rush at the tinkling of the horse bell. Timber wolves cried in the distant hills, and were answered by coyotes.

I was well along on my return journey when I met two ranchers. They were brothers, and although both were over sixty, they were known locally as “The Boys.” They told me they were heading west for caribou. I camped with them that night, and before bedtime they’d talked me into going with them. If I’d show them where the caribou ranged they promised to pack my share of meat.

We made a cache in a tall tree and left my pack, and in the morning the three of us started off. It took us 2 ½ days to reach the high muskeg meadows above timberline which form ideal summer pasture for caribou. Our plan was to kill our limit of bulls, save the scalps and antlers, process the skins, cure the meat, and render the fat.

We decided that since there were three of us, one would stay in camp while the other two hunted. I was elected to camp duty the first day. The Boys came back that night with news that they’d seen about fifty caribou and killed two large bulls. The next day all three of us took the horses to the meadows to pack meat.

While we were loading up the horses at the first kill, I saw a grizzly on the run a quarter mile away. I wasn’t sure whether he had seen or heard me, but he was soon out of sight over the ridge. I suggested that two of us go after him while the other stayed with the horses. But they weren’t interested, so this left the field clear for me.

Since the ground was too soft for horse travel without making a wide detour, I decided I’d make better time crossing the muskeg on foot. When I got to the ridge I stopped to study the terrain, expecting to spot the bear at any moment. But he was not to be seen anywhere. I turned and looked back at my friends. They signaled me to return, indicating that the bear had long since gone. From their point of vantage they could see the grizzly still on the run and about a mile away. When I got back they remarked that it was lucky for me I hadn’t caught up to him with my “peashooter.” Evidently they con-

sidered my .30/06 too insignificant a weapon for a grizzly.

When we returned to camp we put up drying racks. We cut the meat into strips, trimmed and rendered the fat, and fleshed and dehaired the hides. When properly handled, caribou meat will last six months to a year in dry climates. It is excellent in mulligans and stews.

We cooled the rendered fat into hard blocks ready to pack. This fat makes fine shortening for cooking.

One 600-pound caribou will process down to 100 or 150 pounds, and with the dry hide, head, and antlers, this makes a fair load for one packhorse.

On the day of my hunt I was up on the meadows just as the sun came over the hills and had located several caribou about a mile away.

I stalked them, but they weren’t suitable. I scanned a point farther on with my glasses and saw an animal lying on a knoll. It looked like a moose, but it seemed strange to me that a moose would be lying so exposed and so far from natural cover. I had to get a better look. After a long walk I climbed the knoll, and got my gun ready. I peered over the top of the ridge. There were the antlers of a bull moose! Since I could get moose a lot nearer home and had no intention of packing one 100 miles, I reached out and snapped a twig. The moose jumped as if a bullet had hit him, and in one leap he was over the hump and hitting for timber.

After that I glassed the surrounding country for other prospects.

Far to the west I saw a couple of caribou, but I couldn’t distinguish antlers. I didn’t think they were worth further investigation. I wandered from one point to another for hours, but saw no game. I was about to cross a small valley on my way back to camp when I spied a fine bull caribou on a ridge about 500 yards away.

February 2010 The day was getting late, and there was no time for a careful stalk. I had to get there fast. It took me an hour to get over to the ridge from the leeward side, but there was my caribou in almost the exact spot where I’d seen him earlier. At about 150 yards I took careful aim and fired. He looked up, surprised, and turned. I was sure I hadn’t missed him, but to be on the safe side I shot again. The bullet spattered in the mud below him. I’d missed.

By this time the caribou decided things were getting too hot for him, and he started off. I slammed another cartridge into the chamber, took hasty aim, and pulled the trigger. At the crack of the rifle he made a mighty jump and landed on both knees. He rolled over, and without another kick lay still. I watched him awhile, and then walked over. He was dead all right, with his back and head wedged in a narrow crack in the rocks. The antlers were perfect.

While not of record size, they were the largest I’d ever seen in my area. Length of outside curve was 47 inches, spread 45 inches. There were ten points on each side.

I struggled with the heavy carcass in an effort to dress it out in its awkward position, but after a while gave up. I couldn’t budge it, but I did the best I could to take out the entrails. The next day, with horses and one of The Boys to help, I cut up the flesh and packed it back to camp. Then we started on the back trail.

On our way out of the caribou country we camped one night near the cabin of a squaw man who paid us a visit to hear news of the outside world. We learned that he had been born in Nebraska, had left home in his early teens to become a trapper, and had never gone back. He fell in with the Indians, and in due time married one of them. Though a trapper by occupation, he raised stock and operated a small trading post, doing business with the Indians.

He had six or seven children who followed him to our camp but stayed hidden behind the trees like scared rabbits. They’d had no schooling, and the prospect of their ever getting any was slim. Their father had explained to them the different letters and pictures on the labels of the cans and cartons he kept in his store.

Incidentally, Indians depend a great deal on the labels of cans for knowledge of the contents. When an Indian buys a package of baking soda with a cow printed on its label, you must explain to him that the package contains something quite different from beef.

The trader’s squaw spoke very little English, and

PAGE 51 had never visited with white people before. Airplanes flew over this territory quite frequently, but she had never seen an automobile. We wanted to buy some moose-hide moccasins, but the trader had none in stock. His squaw promised to make some for us and have them ready in the morning. Sure enough, she delivered them while we were having breakfast.

We paid her for them at the current price - one plug of smoking tobacco per moccasin.

Before we left, the squaw man told us that wolves had been troublesome. Two of his horses had been killed several miles away. I wanted a shot at the killers, so The Boys and I parted company.

The remains of the horses were on a gravel bar of the river, and if any wolves were working on them they could be seen from the trail. I rode out alone, and when I came to the bar I tied my horses out of sight and sat watching the bait for a couple of hours.

Nothing appeared, and since it was getting late, I left my stand and went on. At a bend in the trail the river again came into view, and I saw two animals swimming toward the opposite bank. At first I thought they were deer, but as I rode along I kept my eyes on them. Soon one reached the far bank and stopped. It was a wolf.

I jumped off my horse and grabbed my gun, but by that time the wolf had disappeared into the brush.

The other was just getting out on shore. He looked back just as a shot from my rifle slammed into him.

He dropped, and in his death struggle began to skip down the sloping bank. As I watched in dismay, he flopped into the river and out of sight.

I quickly remounted, rode down to the river and across to a riffle below where the wolf had vanished, then sat waiting for him to drift down. But he didn’t.

After a while I moved to the far bank and searched for some sign of him. I’d just about given up hope when I noticed what looked like a black rock below the surface about 100 yards above the riffle. There he was. He had stranded in a shallow above the spot where I was waiting.

This was a lucky break, for not only is a wolf a rare trophy, but losing one and then regaining it was little short of a miracle. He was almost pure black and so heavy that I had a hard time lifting him into the saddle. That night I skinned the wolf and salted the hide until it could be better cared for.

Later, on the home stretch, I rode again into the camp of Beaver Indians and was greeted by men and dogs. The men came up to talk and to see my trophies, having heard earlier from The Boys that I had killed a grizzly. They admired my fine ram head and

February 2010

PAGE 52 ran their fingers through the silky hair of the goat, but when they saw the grizzly hide with head and claws attached they were truly impressed.

“How many times shoot?” they wanted to know.

“Two times shoot,” I replied.

“Good gun,” they said, giving the rifle all the credit.

Yet I sensed that they had changed their opinion of me. I was no longer a “crazy” white man but a brave hunter who dares the terrible grizzly alone.

Out of this new respect, they invited me to stay in their camp. Although the idea didn’t appeal to me, I felt I should not refuse, and it was getting late anyway. So I told them that I’d be pleased to stay.

They helped unsaddle my horses and led me to a large teepee. Inside was the chief, and I learned that I was to be his guest. A squaw was busy puttering around, and a couple of wide-eyed children stared at me from a dark place at the far side of the tent. My host is the only Indian I have ever seen who wears glasses. He told me that “Doc” Brown, an Indian agent, suspected his defective eyesight and had got specs for him. He was so surprised at the improved condition of his sight that he considers Doc a real medicine man despite his white skin, and he treasures his glasses above all his possessions.

The average Indian has exceptionally keen vision, however. The constant smoke inside the teepees and around the open fires does not seem to affect these people, but whenever I enter their tents my eyes begin to smart. They did so now.

The chief spoke no English, but through an interpreter he invited me to eat with him. There was a large chunk of flesh hanging over the fire in the teepee, and the hot fat and juices sizzled as they dripped on the hot coals. The chief asked me to sit down. He took his hunting knife, sliced off a hunk of meat, and handed it to me. Then he passed me a battered tin cup and plate, but no knife or fork. We used our fingers and hunting knives, and got along well.

I hadn’t known what the meat was, but I soon found it was what I feared - moose muzzle, hair, hide, and all. The outside was charred and black, and I saw my host scrape this off and gnaw at the hot interior, mostly gristle and soft bone. This is considered a real delicacy, and is reserved for the hunters. In addition the Indians eat the stomach, large intestines, udder and, in the summer, the growing, velvety horns. Like the Chicago meat packer who uses every part of the pig but the squeal, the Indian uses every part of the moose but the grunt.

Being unsalted the meat was flat and tasteless.

I ate my portion without relish, but the bannock and tea that came later were good. Meantime more chunks of meat were hung over the fire, while rib cuts were stuck on sticks and propped before the flames. It is surprising how much meat these people consume when the supply is plentiful. But when it’s scarce they exist on wild vegetables and bark, and in times of famine they’re said to resort to ants, grasshoppers, the larvae of bees, wasps, and yellowjackets - in fact anything a bear will eat.

After the feast we went out to take part in a celebration in my honor. Drums began to beat, and groups of men assembled around blankets spread on the ground. They began to sway and chant and play pageshee, a game of chance. One team passes small sticks or bones from hand to hand under cover of the blanket, while the other side guesses who has the sticks. The game is played so fast it is almost impossible for a novice to follow the action. Stakes usually start small, say pocketknives, but eventually guns, saddles, and even women may change hands.

Those who didn’t take part in the games talked loudly, laughed, and joked. The men slapped me on the back and accepted me as one of their own. Not so the women, who were shy and kept their distance.

They have learned from painful experience not to pay attention to strange white men.

Late in the night the fire burned down and the drumming ceased. The people slipped quietly into their teepees. Coyotes howled on the far ridge, and it seemed to me as if all the mongrel dogs in the world answered them. The din kept me awake, but my host slept blissfully. Next morning, after a breakfast which was a repetition of the previous meal, I was glad to pack up and move on, but I put on a big show of appreciation and reluctance.

As I jogged along on my way home I reflected on the success of my little private hunt - success measured in terms of value far greater than the trophies I had to show. With no fine clothes, no expensive hunting gear, I had found peace and contentment on my roughneck holiday.

My regret is that I didn’t take it long ago, and I hope I’ll have a chance for another before the sun dips much lower in the sunset of my life.

THE END

From OUTDOOR LIFE, March, 1952

February 2010

PAGE 53

ACROBAT … WITH WHITE WHISKERS

All about mountain goats and how – and how not – to hunt them. Authentic lore, fascinating detail based on many years of experience in northern British Columbia.

By Frank Golata My introduction to Oreamnos, the white goat of the Rockies, was many years ago. I was young then and worldly wise. I could see, from the valley below, twenty or thirty white forms moving about on a steep cliff. So precipitous was the mountain side, that I was sure one or more of the white acrobats must eventually make a misstep and come tumbling down. All I had to do was wait and I’d have a nice white robe. Not only did I wait many hours that day, but I’ve waited many years since and have still to see the time when a mountain goat, unless injured or in bad health, loses his footing.

The natural habitat of Rocky Mountain goats is usually the highest and roughest mountains in their district. While at times they may feed or travel on the low, round mountains, they are really out of their element there. As soon as possible they’ll return to the rough cliffs and ledges where they feel more secure and where, in that precarious terrain, they leap and frolic about like happy children in their own familiar playground.

Many goat hunters believe that a man, with his superior brain, and the use of his feet, hands, (and teeth), should be able to climb even better than a goat. But he doesn’t – because he has too much imagination. Apparently the goat thinks nothing of slipping, of broken bones, or of death from falling, and thus is able to concentrate on his footing.

Man, though, is plagued with the constant fear of hurtling over the edge of the cliffs. Or he imagines himself falling through the air and landing, all bruised and broken, upon the rocks thousands of feet below. Professional mountain climbers are able

to overcome the handicap and can climb as well if not better than a mountain goat. But the average hunter, with his mortal fears and lack of training, is no match for them.

Some hunters have a tough time stalking mountain goats – and just as tough a time killing them after they’re wounded. The very nature of the terrain, the steep cliffs and ledges, the sharp rocks and wind-swept peaks, not to mention the rarefied air, is enough to discourage even a stroll in such surroundings. When the hunter must keep out of sight of wary game and, at the same time, scale milehigh peaks, any advance becomes doubly difficult.

No wonder even the experienced hunter finds goat stalking a very rugged deal.

It needn’t be too tough, though, if you follow a few simple rules. The principal one is this: When goats bed down so high on a steep mountain that they are beyond reach of even the surest climbers, pass them by. Look for others that are more accessible. Then maneuver into reasonable range.

Some say that a tough old billy is hard to kill, but I have not found this so. The modern high-powered rifle and a bullet placed in the proper spot will stop the best of them. Although I do not consider myself an expert rifle shot I have killed many big billies with an old .30/30 and to date have never had to fire a second shot. Nor have I lost a single goat which has been hit.

A Trophy Beyond Reach Of course the most important requirement is to

February 2010 be where goats are. But that’s never been much of a problem for me. The Bluebell at the headwaters of the Sikanni River in northern British Columbia is a region famous for mountain goats. From our hunting camp in the valley below, it’s not unusual to see as many as thirty goats in sight at any time during the day. Heavy hunting during the fall season doesn’t seem to have any effect on the apparently unlimited supply. Perhaps that’s because the mountain terrain is extremely rough and there are many remote areas where the goats are perfectly safe from their enemies. They retreat to these hideouts after a shot or two is fired – and reappear hours later when all danger seems to have passed.

A goat taking refuge on such a mountain can put a lot of steep rock between him and the hunter.

Even if the hunter can get within rifle range and shoot the animal, it’s very unlikely he will ever claim his prize. Either he won’t be able to reach the goat, or it will tumble from its high perch and smash on jagged rocks below.

A couple of friends of mine learned that lesson the hard way. They shot a goat some distance above them and the carcass lodged in the rocks.

They scrambled up, hand over foot, with the going getting tougher with every step. At last they were almost within reach of their prize. A mere twenty feet separated them. But try as they might they could not advance another inch. There was nothing to cling to, nothing in which to dig their toes.

After ruefully staring at the motionless mound of white fur, they decided to give it up as a bad job and return at once to safer terrain. They turned, looked down the mountain – and got a terrific shock. They had been so keen to get their goat and so intent on their footing that they had forgotten it’s always easier to go up a steep place than to go down. Now they realized they were trapped; they could not return.

They were stranded on a narrow ledge hundreds of feet above safety. Night was falling and a cold wind blustered against them. They could expect no outside help before morning, and to remain on a ledge too narrow to seat them was impossible.

They had to think and act quickly and above all not get panicky. Holding on with one hand they

PAGE 55 stripped off their packsacks. Then, using their pants and heavy shirts, they improvised ropes. With scant inches of protruding rock to hold onto, and a long, long drop beneath them, they began the perilous descent. The crude ropes helped them over the worst places as they groped and clawed for handholds.

Finally they reached safe ground, shivering from the cold, and completely unnerved. Looking up, they made an oath never to shoot at another goat unless they were absolutely sure of easy footing to the carcass and back to safe ground.

Once I tried to reach a goat that was shot, but still kicking and struggling to get away. It lodged in the rocks above me and out of sight behind an outcrop. The footing was steep and dangerous on the sloping rock. Besides, there was a thin layer of loose gravel that acted like ball bearings under my feet. One slip would mean a fall of hundreds of feet and that wasn’t a pleasant thought. I climbed until the footing got more and more precarious, then suddenly decided that no goat was worth the risk, and turned back.

I could still hear falling rocks echo and re-echo to the bottom of the valley thousands of feet below.

I also thought I heard the goat fall, but it was only a guess since I couldn’t see beyond the outcrop.

Eventually, though, I found my goat at the base of the mountain, so mutilated by its fall that it was just a mass of broken skin and bones. That, I thought as I looked at the battered body, could have happened to me. But I didn’t spend much time thinking about it; no goat hunter should.

I’ve noticed that goats are more static in their range than most other mountain animals. When a band of goats locates on a mountain, a group of mountains, or in a certain canyon, they will range there year after year unless they’re driven away by predators.

My observation has been that mountain goats have exceptionally keen eyesight and sensitive noses. I believe they can see through fog which the human eye can’t penetrate. Many times I have observed bands of goats before fog drifted in and hid them from view. I moved ahead, depending on the fog to conceal my stalk. But when the air cleared the goats were gone. This has happened so often

PAGE 56 that it can’t be coincidental.

However, like many other wild animals, goats have difficulty distinguishing motionless figures.

Many times have I stood in full view of them, taking pictures while they fed and played. They were unaware of my presence although I was only a short distance from them.

Goats’ strongest instinct is the awareness that rocky crags and steep cliffs mean safety. Generations of experience have taught them this lesson and the young must learn it almost as soon as they’re born. Their earliest instruction is how to maneuver when danger threatens.

I witnessed such a lesson one day while I was skinning out a goat carcass high in the mountains. I was crouched over, concentrating on my job, when I had a queer sensation of being watched. Fearing a grizzly, I lifted my rifle and straightened up. A big nanny and her kid were looking down at me from a cliff.

At my sudden movement the nanny turned and, with her kid following, trotted away at a good pace.

She made one jump that was too high for the kid to negotiate. The kid got up on his small hind legs and tried to scramble up. But he couldn’t make it.

The nanny paused a moment, then started off as if to leave him. After a heart-rending bleat brought no results from the nanny, the kid whirled back on his tracks for a few feet and made a desperate running jump that took him over the hump. Soon he was again trotting close to his mother’s heels. That was only one of the many lessons a young goat must learn.

The safety instinct which takes the mountain goat into rough rocks and crags has, in one way, been its downfall when a human predator is on its trail. Aware that goats climb when disturbed, the hunter stalks them from above. When shot at, the goats will invariably move up, thus going closer to the danger they wish to avoid.

Get Above a Goat – and Collect The goat hunter’s best tactic, then, is to get above his quarry. Once in such a position (and after his labored breathing has subsided) the hunter usu-

February 2010 ally gets an easy shot. The most difficult part may be retrieving the trophy. Sometimes it’s possible to stalk goats from below if the terrain of the mountain is favorable. But the hunter has two strikes against him right from the start. Alarmed, the goats don’t become panicky, nor do they seem to hurry as they shuffle along. They cover ground with amazing speed, though, and are soon out of range. Only if he has a lot of bullheaded luck, will the hunter get a shot.

A novice might ask why, if he has to go to all that trouble, should he bother with goats at all. In spite of the fact that a young goat in autumn is tender and tasty, and few memories are more lasting than a barbecue under the brilliant stars of a northern night, goats are not usually killed for meat.

Some hunters get a thrill from the dangers involved, from scaling the peaks, and from the sheer joy of matching their wits with a wily antagonist.

Besides these pleasures, the big billies make excellent trophies. The well furred white hair and wool is in strong contrast to the slender ebony horns. The tanned robes are nice to have in front of a fireplace or by the side of the bed on a frosty morning.

In the past, fine light skins of young goats were prized by mountain Indians who made them into hunting parkas for winter use. Like their modern counterparts, the ski troops, the Indians were almost invisible against a background of snow and thus could get much more game. Indians also used the thick undercoating of real wool, which can be spun just as readily as the wool of domestic sheep.

In days gone by Chilcat Indians wove this wool into colorful ceremonial robes – so scarce now that they may be seen only in a few museums.

While the mountain-goat trophy may not be in the same class with a big horn ram, a fine mountain caribou, or a full-furred silvertip, no game room is complete without his melancholy face. And no hunter can look up at him without a feeling of pride in a trophy hard-earned in rarefied atmosphere atop the very peakof the earth where only the toughest can go and bring him down.

THE END...

Outdoor Life – August 1950

February 2010

PAGE 57

HE JUST MOVES IN

Lots of hearty laughs and some rip-roaring action, too, when a canny, masked opportunist blithely uses his wits and claws to solve a housing shortage

By Ed Mason The farmer’s wife swung the broom and brought it down on the defiant little animal under the window. Her aim was perfect but the target surprisingly resilient. The broom bounced. An angry growl sent her jumping back as a baby coon rolled under the lilac bush.

Hardly recovered from the shock for such bravado from a thing so tiny, she turned to recover her weapon and was confronted by another little black-mask, back arched and tail fuzzed, between her and the broom. She shrieked for help.

Her husband came on the run, assured her that young coons weren’t dangerous, and asked where they came from. The woman didn’t know and didn’t care. All she wanted was to get rid of them to save life and limb and her chicken feed, which had been vanishing far faster than her pullets could put it away unaided.

While they watched, the youngster near the broom unfluffed his battle flag and took three hops to climb a twenty inch maple which stood eight feet from the side of the house. When he reached the first fork, as high as the eaves, he dived into a hole invisible from the ground. His brother emerged from the bush and followed hot on his heels.

The house, on U. S. Highway 36, is just fourteen miles west of Indianapolis, Ind. The den tree is a bare thirty yards from the edge of the road. Young coons have been hatched in this hollow for several years.

Only the misfortune of having their mother killed by a car drove the little ones to forage unsupervised and reveal their presence to their closest neighbors.

I’ll never know why the farmer never caught on when an old hound bayed under his window two or three times each fall for the past few years – and was called off by an angry voice from a near-by field. The fact remains, the den was ideally located near an excellent food and water supply. Nothing in the domestic line more formidable than a farm cat challenged the nocturnal kingdom over which the adult coons ruled after lights were out in the living room.

An Adaptable Animal The raccoon, perhaps the most singular of American game animals, is extremely adaptable to new or changing habitat. Even the fox and coyote can’t acclimate themselves to the degree the coon is able to achieve. The coon is an opportunist. He has to be, since he builds no home of his own, not even a leaf or shuck to snug up his bed, and he’s found in every state in the union.

Through it all he remains a wild, wary creature fighting wickedly when forced, but preferring to move in silence and avoid trouble.

His ideal home is a hollow in some tree deep in the woods but, like most ideals, it isn’t always attained. Some of the places he’s been found have brought many a chuckle as well as profound respect for his ability to beat the housing shortage, no matter how tough.

Even in areas where normal denning places are plentiful a wise old ringtail will often avail himself of an apartment in particularly inaccessible or unlikely spot. Two coons of my acquaintance demonstrated

February 2010 their ability to meet local conditions during the war. One of them lived out the duration in an atmosphere of international flavor.

A large farm area was commandeered near Bethany, Ohio, for the great inland site of the Office of War Information’s Voice of America. In clearing the ground, considerable earth and vegetation were moved. On the edge of a small grove was a giant white oak, smack in the way of construction for the “loudest voice in the world.” The oak, though alive and sound at the butt, was practically devoid of limbs. Near the top was an ancient hole, the size of a gallon pail, leading into a deep nest. The bark around its edges was worn smooth by many generations of coon claws.

I recall a sharp emotion of regret when the construction crew sent the ragged trunk crashing to the ground. In happier days local night hunters had pushed many a coon up that tree to safety. At the time of the cutting a huge old boar was snoozing comfortably within the hollow. He’d been its occupant, repelling all comers, for several seasons.

The old fellow rode his tree to the ground, doubtless somewhat shaken by the experience but too wise to try a dash across the bulldozer-leveled spot where the top landed. Sometime after the good cut was taken from the lower trunk, but before the worthless top was dragged off next day to be burned, he sneaked out. His tracks were plain on the freshly gouged earth.

In the face of the frantic activity of men and machines, you’d think one so wise and well along in the “coon’s age” scale would have lit out for a more secluded spot. If he did, it wasn’t for long. A few days later I chanced to glance up into a weathered ash that had somehow escaped the bulldozer. I thought there was fur in the hollow where part of the trunk was split off. Up I went to have a look.

There was our friend, blissfully slumbering in a foot-deep cup, so big and fat his curled back showed above the opening, ris-

PAGE 59 ing and falling in regular rhythm with his untroubled sleep. All this, mind you, within 200 yards of construction work for the biggest international radio building then in existence.

The tower area covered a square mile.

The nerve center, including the building, fenced and brightly lighted at night, took in some three or four acres.

One of the guards on his rounds reported seeing a big coon disappearing into the shadows. I checked the ash in a day or so but the poorly suited den had been abandoned. Yet the coon – or his tracks – continued to be seen around the tight fence where he searched for crumbs and chance tidbits.

Save for myself, and a certain neglected hound dog forced to spend most of his days on a chain nearby, no one knew where that canny old boar finally took up permanent residence. The weeds and grass of summer had grown up to cover the ends of a small culvert under the main drive 100 feet in front of the formidable, triple-locked gate leading into the great house of voltage and secrecy. The tube’s builders had provided for rainstorms which never came. So the old coon took over and dozed out the war while high personages, so secret they dared not send their pants to the cleaners, rolled over him day after day. He slept in the culvert under a sky charged with volts, sparks, and propaganda in many tongues. If this country ever has need for a raccoon that should be able to understand a dozen languages, I know about where to find him.

The other wartime coon was forced from his regular den during construction of a range where heavy ammunition was tested.

For many months big guns behind concrete emplacements lobbed missiles which landed with thunderous explosions in the field beyond.

A certain young soldier, whose trim uniform could no more purge the coon hunter from his soul than it could change the color of his eyes, happened to be jeeping along the edge of the target area during an “all clear.”

PAGE 60 He had to detour around a lone beech tree which stood right on the “foul line” of the artillery range. Scratches on the bark of the tree caught his attention. He stopped to investigate. Some creature with sharp claws had been climbing up into the beech. So did the soldier. He found a den, and in it a solitary coon.

The soldier scattered grub from the chow line under the tree daily for months. Every morning it would be gone. The coon stuck to his dangerous post and, the officer observed, grew fatter and more content while, 200 feet in front of the tree, a stretch several miles long heaved with explosions.

Of course, the raccoon is just as resourceful in peacetime. After Winchester came out with the Model 70 rifle I acquired one in .22 Hornet caliber, fitted it with one of Weaver’s 330 scopes, and set out to become a Saturday-afternoon terror of the woodchuck pastures. Numerous farm acquaintances gave me ample country over which to stalk the chucks.

One big clover field along the bank of a small creek was good for two or three shots almost any half hour I cared to watch it.

Mounds of chuck diggings humped up in a dozen places over the field.

One hole very close to the creek bank had interested me on several trips. I’d never been close up to it but the scope showed it was being lived in. After most of the other residents of the meadow had been smacked or showered with dirt till they moved out, I focused my attention on this den. Surely some grizzled old resident, wary as a fox, lived there. But he’d never shown so much as an ear. A chuck of that sort is cagy enough to pick a safe time to do his feeding.

I arrived one evening much later than usual, resolved to watch the hole till he came out or until darkness made it impossible to shoot. I hunkered down to wait behind the remains of an old plow in a fence corner.

Within a few minutes something moved in the den mouth. It ducked from sight be-

February 2010 fore I could pinpoint it with the glass. In a minute or two I saw it again. Then there was a rush of small gray animals tumbling from the den. This was no wise old groundhog of great dimensions.

Or was it? I raised the glass just as a big gray counterpart of the smaller creatures emerged from the hole. Through the scope I beheld a big female raccoon rear on her hind feet and give the country the once-over.

Five little cubs tumbled around her feet.

Satisfied the coast was clear, she dropped to all fours and, followed by her family, headed down the bank toward the creek. Small wonder the groundhogs avoided that den!

No Accounting for Tastes!

But why, with a nice woods and many den trees scattered along the creek, had she chosen to live in a hole in the ground? Any coon could give you the answer. The place just suited her, that’s all.

The most exalted spot ever elected as a rearing site for young coons, in all my experience, harbored and turned out generations of them. By all accounts they should have grown “in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.” Most of them did.

They matured into real busters and were harder to catch than $20 bills.

Some men learn about coon hunting from friends, others are bred to it, and still others stumble over an experience that ignites a night-hunting fire in their souls. In my case, when I was a boy the discovery of this unusual den started the incurable infection in my system. The den was in a church!

The peaceful white frame building stood on a hill under tall trees. On all sides oaks sloped down to near-by creeks. It was a perfect spot for raccoons, but my first knowledge that such creatures existed came when I caught a glimpse of a gray-black ringtail, fleeing headlong across the yard as we arrived early one evening for ‘meetin’.

In two or three places around the building the foundation bricks had been dis-

February 2010 lodged to leave suitable holes for entrance.

Many a hound led a furious and fruitless chase along a creek and up one of the many deep canyons, to sit baying in frustration at a hole in the bricks, which reeked with the strong smell of his nimble quarry.

Once inside, the coon climbed up between the weatherboarding and studding to safety in the loft. That place, when investigated through a small trapdoor in the high ceiling, revealed a sight only a witness would believe. The boards between the two-byfour joists were heaped with tons of dried raccoon scats. No concentration I’ve ever seen could rival that accumulation of untold generations.

The usual small boy’s distaste for churchgoing was missing in my case. I went there not so much for salvation as to be near what I considered the biggest coon den in the whole world. It was my job in winter to arrive an hour before the preacher and build a fire. Though it took a sight of wood to stoke the two big stoves, one on each side of the building, I did it in record time. Then I went outside and knocked on the clapboards with a stick. It was a poor Sunday’s work that didn’t rouse from two to half a dozen residents that had been asleep on the ground under the floor. They scurried to the loft – and safety - before the congregation arrived.

I always suspected that if a couple of stern elders discovered the coons they’d banish every last ringtail from the sacred chapel. Someone did brick up the holes one time, just on general principles, I suppose, but a post or something got knocked against the bricks before the mortar hardened.

So there was still room for the raccoons to enter. Don’t blame me for the failure of the mortar to harden properly. I was away at the time – I think. Besides, there were grown men in the community, honestly devout citizens, who knew about the repairs and also shared the secret of the church loft. Come to think of it, some of them kept a few coon hounds around.

PAGE 61 As years went by, erosion caused by the tread of countless raccoon feet in the attic wore away the plaster of the ceiling in the high vestibule. A break appeared just over the doorway at the entrance. A sharp observer might see a couple of laths sagging from the stringer above.

One bright, warm Sunday morning in July the bird songs from the trees outside were pleasantly audible. Inside, the congregation was intent upon the eloquent words of the good man in the pulpit. He was large, impressive, with a fine gray mustache, and florid face. He built his sermon to a climax, then removed his handkerchief to mop his brow in the momentary pause the situation required.

Free-for-all – in Church The silence was shattered by the thud of running feet directly above the minister’s head. The footfalls were joined quickly by another set. There was a plop of two creatures colliding and a couple of fierce snarls, then a straightaway race the length of the building. The racket progressed over the heads of the people, like the devil himself fleeing before the Word. The chase ended in a free-for-all fight above the vestibule.

The loose laths gave away and down to the floor tumbled a surprised young coon. He bounced like a soggy football, snarled his displeasure at the turned heads, and beat it out the door.

The minister, obviously shaken by his power to cast out demons, removed his specs and gaped at the retreating ringtail.

To this day when I pass the building I gaze in respectful silence at the chapel that introduced me formally to both the Lord and coon hunting. I hope to live out my days never far from either of them. I don’t think it’s goingto be too hard. They say the Lord is everywhere. And so are raccoons.

Outdoor Life – August 1950

February 2010

PAGE 62

CUTTHROATS 1200 Feet Down

Seven Mile Hole? Nobody’ll tell you where it is, but you have to be an ant to fish it, and you mustn’t take the shortcut. And don’t forget: grizzlies like trout too!

by DR. PAUL H. FLUCK When, like every other fisherman, I re-live in memory my experiences of the past, before my eyes flash visions of the trout-laden waters of Alaska, Maine, and Colorado . . . and the behemoth bass of Mexico and Florida. Then these mental mirages fade, and I see a grizzly bear munching a string of cutthroat trout. I see a precipice, a foaming torrent, and my legs ache. I see Seven Mile Hole.

Grizzly bears, broken legs, and bunions have helped to keep its exact location the best-guarded secret in fishingdom. But to a score of saddle-strained Westerners from Bozeman and Livingston, Mont., and Cody, Wyo., Seven Mile Hole is the best trout hole in Yellowstone National Park.

Although it may sound strange to Eastern ears, no license is necessary to dabble a fly among those redthroated beauties. All that a man requires to break his back lugging home his limit in cutthroats are the legs of a mountain goat, the heart of a rhinoceros, and a deep enough whiff of the high mountain air to deaden his sensible inhibitions. Just one look down that staggering trail has ended the enthusiasm of at least 99 percent of those who aspire to fish Seven Mile Hole. For that reason, hardened old-timers begin the trek in the half darkness of the dewy dawn.

One time-tested way for an Easterner to learn the whereabouts of Yellowstone’s most productive fishing waters is to sleuth about for an assemblage of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana auto-license plates. Such investigations pay off in trout of more ample dimensions than those regularly lifted from Fishing Bridge, or some equally tourist-infested stretch of the Yellowstone River.

One July afternoon, while snooping about to discover a new fishing hole, I saw my first real string of cutthroats.

Not one measured less than twenty inches, and at least two were closer to twenty-four. The white-haired gentleman who lugged them walked with a slow and wobbly

step, and he was gasping like an Indian pony with heaves.

Replying to no questions, he tottered toward his relic of a car, flung his fish into it, and vanished amid the rattle of knocking wrist pins.

A week later, my first clue to where those husky trout came from dropped from the lips of a bleary-eyed telegraph operator in a ramshackle Montana telegraph office.

After listening to my account of the gasping fisherman who carried them, the agent said, “I’ll bet he got them in Seven Mile Hole.”

No sooner had those works slid past his tongue than his lips froze like a rabbit in November. From him I learned not one word more, nor will anyone, ever. For in Montana, those who learn the whereabouts of Seven Mile Hole learn the hard way, or they don’t learn at all.

Maps of the Yellowstone Park area are supplied free by the oil companies, as well as the National Park Service. They are excellent maps; and as I confidently spread one on my cabin cot that evening, I had no doubt that the rising sun would find me tussling with the giants of Seven Mile Hole. An hour later, however, I was willing to bet that there is no such place as Seven Mile Hole, and that the telegraph fellow had strung me.

Even the rangers seemed puzzled, for although they knew the location of every other fishing hole, and of each bear, moose, and marmot in the park, they mumbled, “Seven Mile Hole? Well, let me see …I’m sorry sir, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone mention the place.”

The second clue, and the last, was the hilarity with which one old-timer, who stood on a wooden observation platform above the Yellowstone River, greeted my question. “Man,” he roared, “you’ll be dead if you ever do find Seven Mile Hole!” And he laughed, and laughed, and laughed. But while he was laughing his eyes remained fixed on some distant spot in the abyss below. “Be careful, son,” he yelled deliriously. “If you do find Seven

February 2010 Mile Hole, don’t take the shortcut.”

As the bears clashed the garbage pails that night, my mind rambled. Over and over I heard, “Don’t take the shortcut … you’ll be dead if you ever do find Seven Mile Hole,” and saw the ghastly color of the old Westerner with his string of mammoth cutthroats. Seven Mile Hole must indeed by quite a place.

I slept late the next morning, and in those luxurious waking moments when we think with our subconscious minds the idea burst within me. Leaping from the lumpy bed, I pulled on my trousers, shirt, and shoes, grabbed my binoculars, climbed into my car, and roared away oblivious of rigid park regulations.

In ten minutes I stood on the observation platform where I had interviewed my hilarious Western acquaintance, and for almost an hour I studied the abyss below.

Yellow rock, the threadlike winding river, and the beautiful violet-green swallows were all that met my eyes.

Then, slowly, I began to follow the river by climbing from one outcropping overlooking the canyon to the next.

Civilization - and breakfast - were left far behind.

It must have been 10 a.m. when I spotted the first ant in the depths of the canyon. Soon my glasses made out a second ant crawling slowly, almost painfully, over the rocky ledges. Then both ants disappeared around the yellow wall of the abyss. From a point farther downstream, I watched as they reappeared. This time they stopped to wade in the rushing river.

Without warning one of the ants fell flat in the yellowgreen water. On all fours he crawled to the bank. Here he removed his boots and, after a glance toward the precipice above, slipped behind and outcropping of yellow earth, leaving his shirt and pants clearly visible where they were spread out to dry on a rock. After nearly an hour he returned, and I saw him snatch up his clothing.

Then both the wet ant and the dry one disappeared into the lower reaches of the canyon.

While the hours passed, I strove to resist the temptation to be first in line at the cafeteria for lunch. Actually, I was the last, for when the attendant was locking the door I dashed a dead heat for the pile of trays and made my rounds, scooping up the leavings of earlier diners. But I knew the secret of Seven Mile Hole, for I had watched while those two ants climbed out of the canyon. And even while they were far below, on the trail that zigzagged up the precipice, my binoculars showed me that each ant carried a fine string of fish.

Thirty minutes later I was back at the brink of the chasm with fishing equipment in hand. Almost on a run I

PAGE 63 began my descent into the yawning abyss where the Yellowstone River twists like an infant garter snake 1200 feet below.

Scarcely two hours later I arrived, thoroughly winded, on the slippery rock ledges that skirt the river. What a walk! Already the shadows of evening were falling on the near side of the canyon. A warning thought troubled my mind. Darkness would come early, here in the depths of the abyss. But it was only 4 p.m., and I still had four hours in which to fish and climb back up the precipice.

Compromising, I decided to fish for an hour.

I tied on a big fat rubber cricket and flipped it far out on the racing water. Bang! Bang, bam - and the hook was embedded deep in the jaw of a grand-daddy cutthroat. As he rose from the white water, he shook his husky head exactly like a Florida largemouth. Never have I seen another trout with the dimensions of that one.

As he rushed for the middle of the river my automatic reel tightened. I released the spring, and shuddered. The backing was visible already. My efforts to turn the fish must have irritated him, for with one shake of his head he made a final leap and left for the bottom with ten dollars’ worth of tackle. Even the backing was gone.

Luckily, I had another fly line and plenty of leaders along, and ten minutes later the new line was on my reel.

This time there was no backing. But that knot was tied so firmly that Houdini himself would have had to use scissors to filch the line from me. Soon another imitation cricket floated on the riffles.

I Didn’t Have to Wait Long Almost at once the water boiled. A finny customer turned belly up beneath it. Down, down, down sank my bug, and coming out of my stupor, I drove the hook home.

To avoid a second catastrophe, I raced along the rocky ledges to keep pace with my hard-pulling antagonist. He turned, he jumped, he thrashed about. Then, like a giant tuna, he bored for the rocky bottom. Gently I tried to turn his head upstream, but the fragile tip of my three-ounce rod made this feat perilous. Five minutes must have passed while the tug of war hung in the balance. Suddenly there he was, not ten feet from the slippery ledge on which I stood.

Cautiously I tested the depth of the water with the toe of my boot. Could I wade in to net that enormous cutthroat which floated with his head upstream? Then a friendly current pushed him toward my rocky perch. As I reached out with the net the water parted, and the cut-

PAGE 64

February 2010

throat took off for the sky above. Striving to hold him, I tottered forward; then my boot slipped and, like the wet ant of the morning, I plunged headlong into the icy river.

I fought to regain a footing in four feet of fast-flowing water, all the while gripping my rod so tightly that, had I drowned, whoever found me would have had a fishing pole to take home to his youngster. Full boots pulled me down, and when at last I turned right side up, to my surprise I still had the cutthroat. Hastily I slipped the net over his huge head and scrambled for shore.

Biggest I’d Ever Caught

While my heart pounded in my ears, I looked for a detour. Night was really closing in, but somehow I must save those fish. It might be years before I return to Seven Mile Hole; indeed, I might never return. As I watched, the bear picked up the largest cutthroat and crunched it between his massive jaws. He growled contentedly, as he juicily ground my 25-incher into digestible atoms. I saw my chance, and sprinted with a speed that amazed me for the trail ahead. The bear had forgotten me; his mind and mouth were full of fish.

At least a dozen times in the next four hours I flung myself on the narrowest of ledges to get my breath; even my three-ounce rod felt like an anvil. At last my tortured legs, and my last breath, deposited my aching body on the brink of the chasm where the trail ended at Glacial Boulder. Stars twinkled through the branches of the pines overhead.

As the physical trials ended, mental pangs set in. That priceless cutthroat which I already had pictured as neatly mounted on the wall of my den - what did he weigh? I would never know. Why hadn’t I, a man of education and human contrivance, been able to outsmart a dumb grizzly bear? I thought of calendar pictures in which trappers fought such beasts with hunting knives, and came out of the engagement with a bearskin to cover their bones.

The dark and lifeless cafeteria turned my concentration on my empty peptic paunch. And again I thought of the bear, his mid-section bulging, while he snored the blissful sleep of the well-fed. For me there would be a box of cookies, an ice-cream cone, or a chocolate bar from the store along the highway. Seven Mile Hole had starved me again.

Seven Mile Hole is still there, a last fishing frontier buried deep within the golden canyon through which the yellow Yellowstone River sneaks away from the thousands of tourist fishermen who crowd its upper banks.

And for those who have enough sporting blood to catch them, there are still enormous cutthroats in the swirling waters of the abyss.

Am I to tackle them again? Perhaps - and yet I am reminded of the man who was asked whether he’d ever eaten carp. “Sure,”he replied. “Twice. My first time - and my last.”

Measured while he was still alive and flipping, that fish exceeded twenty-five inches from snout to tail. Here indeed was the biggest trout of my fishing career. After unloading my water-logged boots, I slugged him behind his armor-plated head with the handle of the net, and laid him on a tuft of wet grass.

Wiser, wetter, and cooler, I fished with the acumen that one of my years and calling should display. Twice more my hooks were driven deep into the jaws of cutthroats; twice more I slipped my midget net over their massive heads.

And there they lay - three of the finest cutthroats in the world, beauties for any eye to behold. But it was growing dark, night was descending. By my dripping watch it was only 5 o’clock, although it might have been an hour later.

Scooping up what must have been seventeen or eighteen pounds of fresh trout, I dashed for the rocky trail.

Within ten minutes my heart thumped ominously, my legs wobbled, and the trout grew weightier with each step.

A grain of sand had found its way into the toe of my boot, and it and the wrinkles in my wet socks rasped blisters on my feet. The trail climbed upward, ever upward, then leveled off briefly as it crossed a marshy spot where pine needles made a carpet for my aching feet. The trail turned abruptly. As I swung with renewed vigor around this unexpected corner, rod case in one hand and stringer in the other, a pungent odor stimulated my nostrils. And bang - hard - I bumped into the hindquarters of a grizzly bear.

With a roar he lurched about. Dropping the fish to speed my heavy legs, I raced for a rocky ledge. The greedy bear stopped in his tracks, sniffed, and with a pounce that THE END would have broken every bone in my body, landed with all four feet on the trout. Then, like a woman on a picnic, From Outdoor Life, October, 1949 he sedately perched himself on a comfortable cushion of pine needles and surveyed his savory dinner.

Rough Shoot

That’s what the agent called it

when he rented me the exclusive gunning rights on His Lordship’s

estate. Being a Briton, he was given a little to understatement.

By L.R. James The agent said: “His Lordship has a small rough shoot without a tenant. You can lease it for 12 pounds a year.

But you must undertake to keep the rabbits down. Will you take it?”

Would I! Why, for years it had been my dream to have my own shooting preserve, where I could go whenever I liked and invite my friends, too. That may sound like a strange ambition to you Americans, but consider what hunting is like in England.

For most Britons it just doesn’t exist. Apart from a few tidal areas there are no public shooting grounds. Those who own private land guard the gunning on it jealously or let it out at high rentals. But the estates are rapidly breaking up, since few of the old families can pay the high taxes on them. And those who hold on to some portion are not averse to gaining revenue from their acres. Thus it was that

I came to lease my rough shoot—called “rough” because of the character of the terrain.

I live in a tiny village, Peaslake, about 30 miles south of London in Surrey. It’s 10 miles from the nearest town and set in the midst of many miles of pine and bracken. Its hills are beautifully forested but there is little game to be had, and all public shooting is prohibited.

So you can see why I was excited over leasing the shoot.

It was four miles from my home: 200 acres of a fertile valley in a mile-long strip of woodland, cultivated fields, and pasture. There were coverts for pheasants, cornfields for partridges, sandy banks for rabbits, a pond for ducks, and even half a mile of trout stream.

Perhaps I should have had a premonition of disaster that day when I first visited the tract with the agent. As we opened a gate, a gray cloud scurried up a hillside—rabbits

PAGE 66 by the hundreds!

The agent shook his head disapprovingly. “The previous tenant neglected his rabbiting shamefully,” he said.

“Now the farming tenant is complaining, for he’s in a most difficult situation. The rabbits have harvested far more of his crops than he ever will.”

But I wasn’t warned. There seemed to be enough rabbits for 20 guns, and I could hardly wait to get down my first quarter’s rental before the agent could change his mind.

My tenancy was to commence September 1.

When the shooting lease arrived I noticed a most ominous clause—one that made me liable for any future damage done to the crops by rabbits. I began to wonder if I’d been sold a pup, as we say. I knew that one gunner with very limited spare time) could hardly cope with such an infestation of rabbits. But I signed up anyway and then induced a friend with ample leisure but poor health to share the shooting with me—and the headaches.

The headaches began on the first day we entered our domain, a sunny Saturday. It seems that, by ancient custom, the woodland part of our preserve was open to the public, and that on fine weekends it was thick with picnic parties, hikers, and dogs by the dozen. Shooting under such con-

February 2010 ditions was both dangerous and unrewarding. The woodland got us just three rabbits and a near miss on a courting couple from the village.

We were wandering about disconsolately when we heard the clatter of a binder, and found the tenant farmer cutting a small field of very poor barley. Our first meeting was not a social success, for when we mentioned rabbits he started a stream of adjectives that rivaled his tractor for noise and heat. As he moved through the uncut grain, rabbits began to bolt out of it in incredible numbers. We shot 27 of them before we ran out of shells. And then we killed 10 more with sticks, for now we realized that instead of a sporting proposition we had a real fight on our hands. And with all our effort we accounted for only about 10 percent of the rabbits we saw in the field.

Now, in Britain farm workers are traditionally entitled to first choice of harvest-field rabbits. Anyway, we thought it wise to ingratiate ourselves with those who might make or mar our gunning. The result was that we went home with just a brace of rabbits apiece to show for two boxes of shells.

My partner and I are relatively poor men, and we were scared of the prospect of paying for the damage done by

February 2010 the rabbits in days to come. Besides the depleted barley, we had noticed a field of kale, intended for winter cattle that had been eaten flat by the rabbits.

What had started out as sport now turned into a campaign. We bought traps and snares and enlisted the help of our shooting friends. Every evening we could spare, we’d take out a carload of gunners and shoot until it was too dark to see. We finally managed to clear almost all rabbits from the farmland hedges. But until the winter rains would flatten the shoulder-high bracken and bramble in the woods, they had an almost impenetrable fortress to feed on grass and the crops. And almost every morning I was there before sunrise to stalk them with a shotgun or a .22 rifle. By the time I got home for a bath and breakfast I’d usually have 10 or more, and then I’d start off to a hard day at the office.

As I’ve said, my partner was ailing and hard exercise was beyond him. But he was able to spend almost every day sniping rabbits from his car with a lovely Mauser .22 equipped with a Zeiss 4X scope. By the end of October we had taken more than 300 rabbits, and the farm workers

PAGE 67 probably just as many. But there were far too many left for us to be complacent.

But the bulk of them remained in this fastness, emerging at dawn and at dusk to feed on grass and the crops. And almost every morning I was there before sunrise to stalk them with a shotgun or a .22 rifle. By the time I got home for a bath and breakfast I’d usually have 10 or more, and then I’d start off to a hard day at the office.

As I’ve said, my partner was ailing and hard exercise was beyond him. But he was able to spend almost every day sniping rabbits from his car with a lovely Mauser .22 equipped with a Zeiss 4X scope. By the end of October we had taken more than 300 rabbits, and the farm workers probably just as many. But there were far too many left for us to be complacent.

Then it occurred to me that ferreting might be the answer. So we borrowed a fine pair of ferrets and sent them down an ancient bury under some oaks. Within 20 minutes they flushed out 22 rabbits, of which we shot 16. This was great compared with beating through the bracken.

Then I bought three ferrets from a near-by gamekeeper,

February 2010

PAGE 68 two jills and a hob, guaranteed tractable and good workers. At the first trial Winnie— our best lady ferret—flushed rabbits like nobody’s business, bit me seven times, then holed up to dine on a rabbit. It took more than two hours to dig her out from under a tree root.

A ferret bites to the bone, and my bloody hands seemed to have a peculiar fascination for our three. I have a healthy respect for “tractable” ferrets, and many scars.

We spent the late fall and winter ferreting (with gloves) and took 200 rabbits. Many of them were flushed into nets, and these live ones I found to be readily salable in meathungry Britain at the equivalent of 50 cents apiece. Although we had “exclusive” rights to our shoot, we were unable to prevent local farm workers and others from cashing in on it. Our ground-game laws let the farmer take rabbits and hares on his land, over and above any rights enjoyed by the landlord or his shooting tenant. The only thing we could do about it was get up early and be there first!

In our battle with the rabbits we neglected the game proper. There were a few coveys of partridges but they were as wild as hawks. In England partridges are usually driven over the guns to provide the best and most difficult shooting there is, but we could not afford the necessary beaters. We walked up a brace or so in the early days, but the partridges soon got too wild to allow us within suitable range, and after mid-September we got only an occasional single.

We had a small flock of wild pheasants, and once in a while we were visited by some stocked birds from a neighboring estate. It was a good year for acorns and mast — we had some fine old oaks and beeches — and a walk through the coverts would always show a pheasant or two, and wood pigeons by the dozen. We kept the pheasants to impress important visitors, but if one happened to blunder into a rabbiting party it paid the penalty (when we could hit it). Some rough weather in December brought us an unexpected influx of woodcock but we were able to shoot only three before they departed.

Our preserve was also infested with gray squirrels, one of the few American imports not popular in Britain. They are rapidly spreading through woodland areas, causing great damage to timber, farm crops, and birds. Now that the polecat and marten are virtually extinct here, and the larger hawks confined to the mountain areas, the gray squirrel in England has no natural enemy to keep it in check. (Incidentally, our polecat is the wild cousin of the ferret, not a skunk.) A 15-cent bounty is paid for each gray taken, but I imagine there will be squirrels around when the last Britisher is extinct. In May alone I got 67 in the early mornings with my Colt Woodsman automatic pistol.

In spring there were still too many rabbits and winter wheat was being badly damaged. In desperation we began rather ungallantly to concentrate on the ladies. Ignoring the bucks, we did our best to pick off all the does we spotted through the 4X scopes on our .22 rifles. No mammas, no big families! The theory seemed to work, for by late summer the rabbit population was markedly reduced.

There was a fine hatch of mallard ducks on our pond, and two shoots produced seven before the flock departed for more peaceful areas. Since we never had a moment to spare for trout,we sublet the fishing rights.But in May an ancient rookery gave us some good sport. In Britain we shoot our rooks (crows to you Yankees) with a .22 rifle, since it’s considered bad form to use a scattergun. We get the young birds while they are clambering about the branches and learning to fly. Low birds are easy, but a young rook high up in a tall elm has a lot of space around it, especially on a windy day, and can be a most difficult and sporting target. Rook pie is a traditional country dish, but most of us are glad we have to eat it only once a year.

My partner and I use standard English double-barreled ejector guns of 12 gauge on gamebirds, but we’re somewhat unusual in preferring the American 2 3/4 inch chamber rather than the 21/2 inch one popular in Britain. Pump guns and autoloaders are uncommon here; by custom (but not by law) they’re barred from the game fields, and only clay-bird shooters and wildfowlers prefer them.

Our game license costs $10 a year, and a gun license $1.50; the latter covers rabbits, pigeons, wildfowl, and vermin only. Our game laws are archaic and complicated.

There are no bag or season limits but sportsmen themselves use common sense in not overshooting. Our biggest problem, as I’ve indicated, is finding a place to shoot at reasonable cost.

At the end of our first year’s tenancy, the county pests officer came around and told us we’d done a great job. Our total bag was 703 rabbits, 103 gray squirrels, 10 pheasants, 10 partridges, seven ducks, and 98 “various.” Apart from the excellent sport we’d enjoyed, we succeeded in making a small profit. We sold a good many rabbits and collected good fees by giving frustrated shooters a chance to gun.

We brought the rabbits under control and made the valley fit for farming. Do you know what happened then? The government took it over as a permanent national park, and banned all shooting. You should see the rabbits in it now!

THE END

Outdoor Life November, 1953

PAGE 69

February 2010

White Rocking-Chair THE

by Frank C. Hibben

Our pack train edged over the lip of the glacial valley and down toward the headwaters of the Prophet River. Renie Dhenin, riding near the rear, pulled up his mount for a moment to look over the terrain.

“Right there,” Renie said, as he pointed to a fold of the river. “That’s where I spotted the biggest rack of Canadian moose antlers I’ve ever seen.” He half turned in his saddle to make sure that we were impressed.

He might have saved himself the trouble, for we were impressed already. Here on the upper Prophet the moose grew bigger than in any other part of British Columbia. Not only had some of the finest heads in all Canada been taken from the valley stretching before us, but few hunters had ever penetrated this far. Even as we sat on our horses and looked down at the river below, there might be some giant bull moose lurking in these willows, carrying on his head a set of horns larger than any now on record.

Everyone in our hunting party, including the guides, felt a thrill of anticipation as we urged the horses down the side of the slope. A large caribou with his horns still in the velvet trotted across a small clearing. He turned to stare as we went past. Had we been out for caribou, that bull would have made a fine trophy. But we were after moose this trip.

Bill Burk and I had endlessly discussed the technique of moose hunting prior to this. But now that we were actually on the hunt, we had little idea of how to go about it. As we followed the trail upstream, we saw moose tracks in every direction on the gravel bars. Some of these prints were obviously of bulls that had passed only a short time before. But the banks of the river were lined with solid masses of willow and brush that grew as high as the head of a man on horseback. How would we ever be able to see moose in that wilderness?

Even as we discussed the situation, there was a crash in the alders almost next to us. At first we thought a horse had gone down. But the crash was followed by a mighty, asthmatic snuffle that sounded like a vacuum cleaner sucking up an old sock. The crashing was renewed, but more faintly, and ultimately it died away in a distant stand of timber.

“Jumped a moose,” said Art MacLean. He was one of the capable guides who were going to lead us to the big Prophet River bull moose on this trip.

This area fascinated Art, and well it might for it was moose heaven.

The river flows through a large valley carved out by ice in ages past, and it swings from side to side with graceful undulations. In the sweeps of these curves are oxbow cut-offs and numerous lakes and ponds which offer sanctuary from wolves. In these wet and swampy places the lush water grasses grow abundantly. They, and the several species of willow which were all around us, form an inexhaustible supply of food for moose.

Art had been in country like this many times before. He turned his horse away from the river bottom where the moose tracks cut through every clump of willow. We followed, belaboring our mounts up the slope on the edge of the valley. Here the sphagnum grew deep, and the horses sank to their knees in the yielding stuff. Finally we dismounted and led them the rest of the way. We came out on a sharp hill overlooking the river. Here there were scattered aspens and spruce, but we found a spot where we

could look down onto a bend of the river and a large pond that lay to one side. Art and I seated ourselves so we could see different parts of the area below, and we set to work with our binoculars.

After a while Art came over to where I was sitting. “See anything?” he asked.

“No,” I answered with some disappointment. “I did locate an old pair of shed moose antlers down there in those bushes. But there’s no moose to go with them,” I added with an attempt at humor.

Art quickly seated himself and focused his glasses on those bushes.

“Where are those antlers?” he asked sharply.

“But Art,” I protested, “those horns are pure white. They’re old, like that set we found down along the river yesterday “ “All moose horns are white this time of year, just after the velvet is off,” he answered as he combed the area with his glasses. “Later on, they get yellowish. Ah! I thought so. Look!”

I focused my own glasses again. Yes, there they were. Two white spots.

What was Art getting so excited about? I looked at the things again. They certainly hadn’t moved. Or had they? Just then—was that a flick of motion on the edge of the white? Yes, it was! it was an ear. A large, furry ear that moved forward and back.

“It’s a moose!” I said aloud. “There he is, lying down behind those bushes. Only his horns show.” The chocolate-brown body of the beast blended perfectly with the brush. Art gave me a patronizing smile.

“About 65 inches,” he said, staring hard through his glasses. “Might be 70.” I’d had experience with Art MacLean before. He was one of the most conservative guides in British Columbia, where all guides are conservative.

I knew that if Art said a moose had a spread of 70 inches, they might well be 75. Again I seized the binoculars and fell forward on my belly to steady the glasses. The horns looked enormous, but the moose was so far away it was impossible to tell with any certainty just what the spread might be. As I looked, the animal moved his head to one side. The sweep of the tremendous horns emphasized their magnitude.

“Art, they’re as far across as a tall man. Look at those palms.” I said excitedly. “They look a yard broad.” Art smiled indulgently and nodded his head in assent.

“Better get your rifle and start shooting,” he said. “That wind might change.”

Shooting had never occurred to me. “Shoot from here?” I asked incredulously. “Why it’s—it’s 600 yards, maybe 700. I couldn’t hit a moose at that distance not for sure.”

Art had learned long ago it makes no sense to argue with excited hunters. I quickly outlined a plan to him.

“I’ll circle down this ridge so as to have the wind in my face,” I said.

“Then I’ll drop down to that lower point there, and come out on that terrace of dead trees. That’ll be a couple of hundred yards from where that moose is lying.”

Art shook his head ever so slightly. Then he said, “I’ll stay up here and signal you which way he goes.”

PAGE 70 I was halfway along my circuitous route down the valley before I paused for breath. What did MacLean mean by that crack, “I’ll signal you which way he goes”? That moose wasn’t going anywhere. Not if I could help it. But I shrugged off Art’s pessimism, and continued my stalk. Already I had closed the range to about 300 yards. I calculated my position by a dead spruce that stood out over the brush like a brown sentinel.

As I dropped lower onto the terrace at the edge of the valley, I entered the first of the clumps of buckbrush. This stuff, a variety of willow, grows thick with gnarled branches and unyielding stems and has brittle leaves. I avoided contact with the bushes so that no sound might reach the fanning ears of that moose. Here on the edges of the valley were clumps of arctic birch so thick with buggy-whip stems that it was almost impossible to walk through them. Between the buckbrush and the arctic birch, I had to move in zigzags and semicircles to work my way down to the terrace. The farther I progressed, the worse it became. Not only did the bushes grow closer together, but they were by now higher than my head. I could see practically nothing. I thought momentarily of turning back, but that would never do. I’d show Art MacLean that I could stalk a moose in its own habitat.

Judging my distance by the lone dead spruce that showed above the brush, I wormed forward. By my calculations, I must be less than 100 yards from the bull, yet the slope of the valley was not steep enough to present even a fleeting glimpse of him. I realized that the closer I got to the moose, the less were my chances of getting a shot. Still I went on, with the desperate hope all hunters have that somehow luck will compensate for errors in judgment.

In spite of the coolness of the morning and the steady breeze sweeping down from the glaciers, I broke out in a sweat. It was hard going. Everywhere there were dead branches and clumps of dry twigs through which I had to wiggle carefully so as not to make any sound. It took me a full half hour to go the last fifty yards. The closer I approached the moose, the worse off I was. I had already slipped off my coat and dropped it behind so that the stiff creases would not catch on the twigs as I slid forward. I dropped my hat, also, and my gloves. I must be close, very close.

I had calculated the distance and the angle a dozen times by craning my head to see where the dead spruce stood in relation to the other brush.

Perhaps beyond that next bush or through that little opening ahead I would catch a glimpse of my prize.

I slid my body forward slowly for the next step. Then I pulled back the branches and hunched my shoulders to slip through. Suddenly there was a crash and a whip of branches and leaves. My heart stood still, my mouth open. The bull had gone. After all my painstaking effort, he had heard me and galloped away. I straightened up, easing some of the cramped muscles in my shoulders. As I did so I heard a slight sound just ahead — a snuffle.

Something moved in a wide sweeping arc just above the bushes.

They were horns! Great big horns, and coming straight at me! Sweeping tines pointed out from the edge of the broad palms, and I could see that the underside of the points was light yellow and the top was gleaming white.

The breadth of those horns must have been at least six feet.

As I stood there practically paralyzed, one massive ear swung back and forth searching for sound. I sensed that the animal’s muzzle was thrust forward, also. Perhaps it had been a whiff of human scent that had caused the great bull to jump to his feet and whirl around.

My mind was in a turmoil. I must pull myself together. I must make this good. Desperately I glanced to one side and then the other. Stiff-branched bushes hedged me in closely so that I couldn’t move in either direction. But I had to do something.

I reached up furtively to wipe the sweat from my forehead. I could see a

February 2010 bare outline of the bull’s back, and one hoof, too, below the bushes, and the outline of a shoulder. The moose stood quartering toward me, the hump of his back just the height of my head. The distance couldn’t be more than 50 feet, perhaps 40. I slid my rifle forward slowly between the branches, and glanced through the telescopic sight. I slipped off the safety of my .30/06.

The muscles beneath the brown hide twitched a little at the faint click. I shifted the muzzle slightly downward and squeezed hard on the trigger.

The blast set off pandemonium. The great horns above the willows swept in a wide arc, leaped upward, and disappeared. The crash of branches was deafening as the great bull galloped away. Frantically I clawed forward through the willows. There was no log or stumps on which I might climb to get a view. I could hear the animal now, splashing through the swamp beyond the brush. I looked quickly at the spot where the bull had been lying. There was no blood, no indications at all that the bullet had taken any effect. I had botched the chance of a lifetime. Looking up at the hill where Art stood, I focused the binoculars. He was waving his arms to show me that the moose had crossed the river and was gone.

“High-velocity bullets won’t go straight through brush,” Art said as I climbed the last few yards to the top of the hill. I could make no reply, and simply hung my head.

“Don’t feel so bad. We’ll find another maybe as big as that one,” Art said cheerfully. But as I sat there gasping after the climb, I felt that never again would I see a moose with a spread of horns that would cradle a tall man. The dubious distinction of missing a monster bull moose at the distance of 50 feet provided ample material for camp conversation that night.

Fortunately, Bill Burk hadn’t fared any better. He and his guide had seen moose, but all with small racks or no horns at all.

A hundred times I went over in my mind how the thing could have happened. I saw the horns of that moose towering above me every time I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.

We hunted along the Prophet for several days. On the evening of the third, Art MacLean and I rode down the sandbars near the river. We had glassed the country above camp where a side stream cut a U-shaped valley. There were moose in this place, too, but they all seemed to be women and children moose, with not a horn among them. It was 10 o’clock in the evening, but the arctic twilight lingered on as we jogged through the many fords of the river.

“There’s a bull over there,” said Art shortly, pulling on his reins. I saw the animal at once. He was feeding on the willows across the river and was in plain sight. Again I was impressed by the whiteness of the massive horns.

“It’s a monster!” I said hoarsely, and reached for my rifle. Art had dismounted and was looking at the feeding bull through his binoculars.

“Not bad,” he said. “About 50 inches. But we don’t want him.”

A sudden thought struck me. Bill and Deb were on that side of the river today. They ought to be coming along pretty soon. At least Burk would get a shot at the moose, even if Art wouldn’t let me take one. I focused my glasses on the bull as he circled among the bushes, gathering in mouthfuls of leaves. As I did so I caught a glint of something beneath the willows close in front of the moose. It was a gun barrel, held by a white hand.

“It’s Burk,” I said excitedly to Art. “Burk’s going to get the moose. We’ll see the whole show from here.”

Bill Burk and Deb Fleet were almost under the moose’s nose. They crouched beneath the willows, and they seemed to be moving to one side so as to get a better view. I waited for the shot, but none came. As I looked more closely, I could see that they were motioning to each other as though in argument. Minutes passed, and still there was no shot. Suddenly, the two men stood up. The moose was so startled by their appearance that

PAGE 71

February 2010 he reared back on his haunches before he whirled to go. The horns of the great animal looked like white boards on each side of his head as he plowed through the willows and disappeared.

“I didn’t think Deb would let Bill shoot that moose.” Art MacLean said confidently. “It’s too small.”

As the days passed, our requirements for a set of moose horns diminished considerably. During these trying times, we had been impressed by two things. First, really gigantic moose were hard to get, and, second, Canadian guides can be very firm about letting you shoot just any moose.

“But fellows,” Bill Burk said for the dozenth time, “any of those horns would look big in my den.”

To add to our troubles, as our hunt drew to a close, the weather turned foul. Clouds fanned out across jagged peaks at the headwaters of the Prophet, obscuring the green ice of the glaciers. The likelihood was that we would be able to make only one more foray up the valley, and then we would have to pull out or be caught in the snow that was sure to come.

On that last day, there was a sense of urgency in the air. The wind was increasing in volume every hour and it was getting much colder as we mounted the sidehills and swept the muskegs and open swamps with our binoculars. Our eyes smarted from the cold and the sting of the wind. The animals felt the changing weather, too, and had gone to surer shelter than their usual bedding places. In a whole morning of hard riding and careful glassing we didn’t see a single moose. Art and I ate a glum lunch in the lee of a glacial boulder.

“Looks like we’re skunked, Art,” I said gloomily. “We’ll have to leave without getting moose at all.”

“We’ll see,” Art answered. He pulled out his glasses and climbed to the top of a boulder.

“I’ve been watching a white thing for some time,” he commented, “and I think it moved just now.”

With new hope rising, I quickly shinnied up the stone. “Where?” I asked excitedly. Art pointed out a single white spot that showed above a clump of bushes near a bend in the river about half a mile away.

“It’s a piece of driftwood,” I said as I looked at the thing through the binoculars. I turned to slide off the boulder and resume my lunch. Art continued to look at the white spot in the bushes. “Now look,” he said.

I looked again. The white thing was gone. Only the willows tossed in the waves of cold air that moved down the valley.

“It’s horn. It’s moose horn,” I yelled. “That palm must be big, or we couldn’t see it at all at that distance.”

Art and I slid off the boulder, trampling the remains of our unfinished lunch as we untied our horses. We had difficulty turning the heads of our mounts into the wind and urging the reluctant animals farther up the slope to get more altitude. As we climbed above the river, we passed through scattered patches of spruce. Once Art slid off his horse and focused his glasses on the white splotch in the distance.

“Looks like a big one.” he said.

Near that particular bend of the river, there was a small glacial terrace which reached out above the valley. The spruce grew thickly on it, but it was an elevated place from which we might be able to look down on the moose.

In half an hour of difficult and slow riding, we came to the wooded point and tied up our horses well back in the trees. Quickly I checked my rifle and cleaned the scope, then motioned to Art that I was ready, and we walked out to the lip of the point.

“There he is,” said Art with some excitement. From this slight elevation, we looked down into a pocket where the river had once cut a channel that later dried up when the stream changed its course. It was now a grassy

depression lined with low bushes and coarse sedge. Behind this bank, out of the wind, lay a bull moose. He seemed to be asleep. His horns were massive and tilted upward from his head at a decided angle. The spread of the antlers was not great, but the horns were big and symmetrical I knew that this was our animal, but my heart sank when I mentally calculated the range.

“Art, it’s 500 yards if it’s an inch,” I said dejectedly. There was a vicious crosswind, too. Art looked at me quizzically.

“You don’t want to try sneaking up on another one, do you?” he asked.

He raised one eyebrow.

Without a word I began to make preparations. Just in front of us, a dead spruce had fallen and lay cross-ways on the stubs of its branches, three or four feet above the ground. I cleared away several dead twigs, and laid my coat on top of this natural rest. I carefully polished the telescopic sight and glanced through it. Even in the magnification of the scope, the bull looked small at that distance. He lay quartering toward us. If I shot too high I would hit his horn. If I shot too low I would miss him. And I had to figure how high I’d have to hold, for the bullet would drop considerably over that range.

Suddenly, during these preparations, the bull threw up his head. Surely no crackle of brush could have reached him above the noise of the wind.

Perhaps it was some swirling current of air that had swept a whiff of human scent past those sensitive nostrils. Whatever it was that put him on his guard didn’t come again, and his head slowly sank back to the ground.

Quickly I knelt behind the spruce log and brought the scope to bear.

Twice I held my breath for the shot, and each time sensed that the crosshairs were not quite right, for the wind was complicating things. Then, with a final feeling that I was holding just right, I squeezed off the shot.

The blast was whipped away by the wind. For a moment it seemed as though the dozing moose had not even heard. Then he slowly raised his massive head and got to his feet. I flipped the bolt and pushed another cartridge into the chamber. The big bull, apparently dazed, took a step or two toward us. One of his shoulders hung limply, but he managed very well on three legs.

He broke into a hacking run, coming diagonally toward us. I sighted the crosshairs high for a chest hit, and pulled the trigger. The bull went down. I half rose from my place with a shout of elation: “We’ve got him, Art! We’ve got our bull moose!”

But had we? The great animal got up on his feet again. Another few strides of those wobbly legs and he would be in the timber to one side and below us. Frantically I pumped in another cartridge. As soon as I found his heaving back in the telescope, I pulled the trigger. At that instant the great bull disappeared among the trees.

Both Art and I started on a run. Down we went through the scattered spruce. I just might get one more shot. I had to get one more shot. In a few minutes we broke out on the lower slopes where the trees were mixed with scattered buckbrush and willow. The top of one of these jerked violently. I saw a gleam of white among the green leaves. We parted the branches, and there he was on his side, with one white horn almost as high as my shoulder.

“If it weren’t for those white palms, we’d never spot a bull moose in this country,” Art commented.

“You can say that again,” I answered smiling. “White palms is right— and long range, too, I might add. But it’s worth it. Let’s get this old boy out of here, I can’t wait to see what’ll happen when the fellows back home fix their eyes on this!”

THE END

Outdoor Life November, 1953

PAGE 72

February 2010

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DEEP FRIED DEER LOINS 3 cups flour 2 T. black pepper 1 tsp. onion powder (optional) 1 tsp. hickory seasoning

12 venison loins ½ in. thick high quality cooking oil for frying

Mix flour, black pepper, onion powder, and hickory seasoning. Pound each loin with meat hammer to 1/16 inch thick. Lightly coat loins with the flour mixture. Heat about 1 inch of cooking oil in deep cast iron skillet. Fry loins for about 30 seconds for each side. Place cooked loins on paper towels to drain. A hunting camp favorite!!!

SPICEY VENISON SAUSAGE 5 lbs. venison, coarse ground 2 cups bacon fat 1 tbsp. monosodium glutamate 1 tsp. jalapeno pepper 3 tbsp. salt

3 tbsp. sugar 2 tbsp. garlic powder 3 red bell peppers 2 tbsp. fresh ground black pepper 1 tbsp. ground sage

Process ground venison and bacon fat together. Spread on a clean surface and sprinkle evenly with seasonings, mix thoroughly and re-grind if necessary. Test hotness by sauteing a small sample. Adjust seasonings. If the mix is too mild add seasonings. If too salty or too hot add more meat. Wine may be used to moisten the mixture. Store in containers covering the meat with plastic wrap to avoid dehydration.

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