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
 February 2010 PAGE 1

EDITOR’S CORNER Hunter’s Journal

P.O. Box 127
Millersburg, PA 17061

How about Dinner and a Show? Phone # 717-692-0527

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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, Email Address
to gain some points for next hunting season). I’m talking about the various info@thehuntersjournal.com
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 Reproduction or use of editorial or
everyone reading this. Several years ago the sports shows were limited,… graphic content (for other than personal
use) without written permission of the
now it seems like there is a show every week somewhere. These venues publisher is prohibited.
offer the hunter and fisherman a very unique opportunity when it comes to Information for this publication is
picking an outfitter or a new piece of equipment. They also offer the manu- gathered from other sources believed
to be reliable, but the accuracy of the
facturers the ability to showcase their products in front of a very specific information is not guaranteed and the
crowd. Cabin fever has set in just enough for us all to be hungry to at least publisher cannot be responsible for er-
rors or omissions.
“talk” about next hunting season. Without a doubt the number one topic at The annual subscription rate is
most of the shows is the outfitting business. Most hunts take a year or so to $20.00 for residents of USA, residents of
plan and this is the perfect time to do it. Having been in the outfitting busi- Canada, and other countries may write
for a quote. Single issues, when avail-
ness for the last 20 years, I think I’ve just about heard every question that able, are $4.95 each.
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 Subscriptions/
outfitter about it,…here are a few key questions that you should ask when
you meet him at the shows.
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seasons
Hunter’s Journal is published eight
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If you touch on all of these subjects you will at least get a feel for the rates is pending at Millersburg, PA 17061
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person you are dealing with. The typical questions like transportation, POSTMASTER: Send address changes
food, lodging are always taken care of, but you should want to learn more to Hunter’s Journal, P.O. Box 127, Mill-
ersburg, PA 17061-9509.
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 Publication Issues
man will tell you,….they are in the people business FIRST, and the success • January, 2010
• February, 2010
of the businesss depends on those relationships. Nothing will ruin a hunt • April/May, 2010
quicker than someone with a bad attitude, ….no matter how big of buck you • June/July, 2010
have laying on the back of the truck. • August/September, 2010
• October, 2010
Pat • November, 2010
• December, 2010
 PAGE 2 February 2010

HUNTER’S JOURNAL
Features
MAGAZINE

C 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.

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

8 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?

14 THAT LONESOME PINE -

Is no safe place for a mountain lion wanted alive

19 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

23 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

28 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

33 ON A LIGHTER NOTE
Need A Good Laugh!!! Check “The Funnies”

34 CURRENT NEWS
Read interesting articles of what’s happening in the world of hunting

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

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.

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

OTHER STORIES INCLUDED IN THIS ISSUE...

62 CUTTHROATS 69 THE WHITE ROCKING CHAIR

65 ROUGH SHOOT 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 cat-
fish 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 wa-
ters 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 ela-
tion swept through me.
I’d heard granddad, dad, my uncles, and the neigh-
bors 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, josh-
ing, 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 emo-
tionally 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 dili-
gent search in summer when the workers are active and
create noise enough around their home to attract atten-
tion. Experts resort to the use of a bee box and bee-lin-
ing. 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. Nei-
ther 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 hon-
ey along with the fun. Those are the ones he’ll tell you
about when he reminisces. The amount of booty, how-
ever, generally has little to do with the actual humor con-
nected with this warped sense of adventure.
Cousin Nick and I left a duck blind on a hot fall morn-
ing 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. In-
stead I volunteered, once the tree fell, to run out on the
log and stuff the hole with a couple of cotton flannel mit-
tens, 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 fan-
ny 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 weath-
er, 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 sup-
ply 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 stag-
gered back up Lotts Creek bottom.
A drippy jalopy stopped by our house just before sun-
set. 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 keep-
er 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 care-
less 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 ap-
proached 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 min-
utes 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 de-
rogatory 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 mov-
ing 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 elec-
trifying 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 hunt-
er; 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 hes-
itated 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 per-
haps I may be excused for having doubted it. Then, one
night after I’d filled a speaking engagement in Pawhus-
ka, 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 any-
thing.”
He was always a fellow for fading into the back-
ground, for playing second fiddle. When
we went fishing, he’d always grab
the paddle, and I’d literally
have to argue him into tak-
ing his turn at casting. When
we camped, though, it was al-
ways 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 re-
served 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 inferior-
ity 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 Oklaho-
mans: Buster and Bill Stone, brothers from Coweta; Her-
man 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 un-
successful 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 alti-
tudes are a little rough on the low-country man suddenly
transplanted to the mountains.
We sat there side by side, looking off down the val-
ley, 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 pres-
ence. 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 be-
fore 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, hap-
pily.
“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 real-
ize 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 re-
membered? 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. May-
be, 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 tomor-
row, 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 ap-
peared, 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 Kan-
sas, 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 fla-
vor 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 cig-
arette 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
 That
PAGE 14 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 la-
bored 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 some-
time 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 ciga-
rette. 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. Some-
body 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 whole Saturday working back and forth on the moun-
then hunters have been vying for the honor of supplying tain with Doc Monahan and Hank Storey. Then, after a
the school with a mascot. night’s rest, we’d switched horses and started out again.
The pressure was on us because we had some advan- We ran onto tracks in midafternoon. But after cold-
tages. Everyone agrees that Dad, who’s been hunting trailing the big cat for three hours, Hank and Doc said
lions all his life, probably knows more about them than they had to get back to work. So we returned to the jeep
anyone in our area. And our dogs are tops. Toughie, the and took them buckety-buckety down the long wagon
Airedale, is phenomenal, while Buster and Lead were trail to town.
bred to Dad’s specifications. They’re a cross between “Listen you bandy-legged, weasened-up little var-
bloodhound, for size and speed, and fox hound, for just mint,” Hank said to Dad when we dropped him off in
plain cussedness. In a front of his house, “just
dozen battles, no lion leave that old tomcat
has ever stayed with be. We’ll get him next
them. week.”
Now, as anyone “Git the bur out from
who’s tried it knows, under your saddle,” Dad
capturing 150 pounds replied. “Why if we git
of screaming, claw- the chance you had. . . .”
ing mountain kitty ain’t We all laughed, re-
easy. It’s one of the membering the “expedi-
most dangerous sports tion” Hank led the year
in North America. Nor- Dad was in the hospital.
mally a lion will stay The dogs chased a big
clear of humans, but kitty up a large ponder-
when he’s cornered he’ll osa pine. Hank grabbed
take on anything and a stick, gulped, and
anybody. A more wor- climbed after him.
thy or more destructive The trick in getting a
opponent would be hard lion like this is to keep
to find. him bluffed with the
Ranchers and gov- stick the way a wild-an-
ernment trappers have imal trainer fools the big
driven them from many ranges, but they still flourish in cats with a chair. You let him bat at the stick like a kitten
the wild, rocky heights of northwestern Colorado, and does a broomstraw. Then you lure him back from the
the state still pays a $50 bounty for each one killed. It’s limb, where he usually retreats, until he’s close enough
strictly a winter sport since in summer the lion has no for you to flip a lariat over his head. After he’s fast, the
rival to dispute his reign over the hard timberline ledges ground crew hauls him off his perch, using a crotch in
which hold no spoor for dogs to follow. the tree as a fulcrum. He’s lowered slowly, and as he
We’d been in the high country three days when we comes within reach his hind legs are roped and tied.
picked up the cat’s trail a second time. We’d wasted a 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 beau-
tiful, 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 treacher-
ous, 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 yam-
mer 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 sec-
ond 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 fifty-
foot 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 Mar-
ve 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 ner-
vously.
“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 boul-
der. 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 practi-
cally 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. Tough-
ie 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 al-
most 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 com-
pleted 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 be-
cause 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 stiff-
kneed 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 an-
swer. 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
 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 ani-
mals! 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 sure-
footed - 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 timber-
line. 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 experi-
ence, 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 south-
eastern 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 pock-
et, 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
PAGE 19
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 im-
mediately 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 clear-
ing, 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 February 2010
down the shelf. Then it stopped and faced the aggres- cliff. Suddenly, the goat lunged to its feet and made a
sor. All its instincts were, of course, to try to get past feeble dash for me. But it couldn’t get far. It stood wea-
the cougar, to reach the heights above. The big cat rily for just a moment, then tumbled down for keeps.
crouched, awaiting a move. The shelf was narrow at By this time, I was mad at the cougar, mad enough to
that point and I could see that the cougar didn’t want to decide to go into the second-growth jack pine after him.
risk a tussle and a 300-foot fall. Actually, though, the “Mad” is the right word. For if I had a grudge against
cliff was not an abrupt drop, for it was cut by a series of the cat, he certainly had one against me.
shelves almost all the way down to the shale. Nevertheless - into the timber I went. I moved with
While the cougar bided his time, I tried to make the infinite caution, looking in all directions, including up.
most of mine by getting within effective rifle range. There was a slight blood trail in the snow and I followed
There was a 180-grain, hard-point cartridge in the it warily. It led to a particularly heavy thicket - an ide-
chamber of my Winchester, and it had Mr. Cougar’s al spot for a cougar ambush. With the rifle at ready, I
name on it. Eventually I managed to approach within slowly crouched and peered beneath the brush.
300 yards. But by now the cat was slowly crowding There was my cougar - poised to come at me. I got
the goat down the narrow shelf, and I couldn’t get my off the quickest shot of my life. The cat snarled, leaped,
sights on him. Once or twice, the billy tried desperately fell over on its side, and lay still.
to evade his tormentor and move upward, but the big The tragedy was over, and a slow curtain of snow
cat reared up and blocked him. The profile of the whole began to fall.
mountain favored the cougar, for he could go anywhere
the goat could go. THE END
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 From Outdoor Life, January, 1950
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 snarl-
ing 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 hur-
ried 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 an-
grier that I hadn’t tried a shot when he was up on the
 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 field were not attributable to any weakness of char-
foxhound cull. She belonged to a neighbor of mine acter; she was just hungry and rabbits were food.
who followed the old-time Southern tradition of I pitied her and bought her, for I have always be-
going out afoot with a slat-ribbed pack to hear them lieved that kindness to dogs is somehow rewarded.
make hound music all day and all night. But Miss Miss Belle confirmed that belief beyond my wildest
Belle invariably would get thrown out of a race and expectations, and that’s what this story is all about.
then would run after rabbits. Convinced that a dog But I didn’t buy her solely out of compassion. I
is a good hunter only if hungry, my neighbor had had a use for her. I wanted her as a tutor for a pair of
brought her to a stage of undernourishment. My problem pups. I began by feeding her all she could
private opinion was that Miss Belle’s failings in the 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 cor-
ner and they in the other - apprehensive, noncom-
mittal, 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 im-
pulse 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 them-
selves 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 ulti-
mately tree at the cashier’s win-
dow.
The first day I took Miss Belle
out with her pupils she substanti-
ated 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 rab-
bit 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 communi-
ty 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 cold-
trail 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 guard-
ing the quarry and looking to me for a pat on the
head. Miss Belle, more mature and less demonstra-
tive, 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 net-
work 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 be-
tween season, Miss Belle trained the pups on a rab-
bit 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 in-
tended him to. Remember, her job was training two
green pups, and this elusive rabbit served her pur-
poses 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 an-
other. 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. Fi-
nally, 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 weath-
er - 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 experi-
enced 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 other-
wise. There are good reasons for believing that a
little rain nails down the scent.
Miss Belle lives only for the chase. She is strict-
ly 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 dis-
tracts her; she never quits.
And on occasion she makes one of those light-
ning 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 performanc-
es, 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 mon-
ey. 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 feed-
ing 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 ner-
vousness.
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 an-
ger, 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 fami-
ly! 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 north-
west 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 An-
chorage 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. Bran-
ham 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 ar-
rived 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 fisher-
man. 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 Var-
dens 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 Kus-
kokwim River.
We were now in what, a few years before, had
been part of Alaska’s best sheep country. The val-
leys 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, Bra-
nham 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
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 af-
ter 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
PAGE 31
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 Spring-
field.
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 ever-
present 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 Kus-
kokwim.
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 lon-
ger 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 bul-
let , and the ram went out of sight. For maybe five
seconds I held my breath, wondering what had hap-
pened. 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,
 February 2010 PAGE 33

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!”

 PAGE 34 February 2010

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 Com-
mission 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 re-
sulted 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 hazard-
ous 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 mid-
dle 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 val-
ley, 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 Moun-
tain, 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 bin-
oculars. 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 ani-
mal 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 sec-
onds 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 add-
ed, “There he is!”
The bear was a big silvertip, feeding on the moun-
tainside where we’d started our caribou chase. That
meant we’d have our stalk all over again, but in re-
verse. 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 Nuss-
baums 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
 PAGE 38
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 wheth-
er 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
February 2010
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, carry-
ing 270 pounds of meat.
“Blond or Brunette?”
Bud slipped out of his pack and glassed the griz-
zlies. “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 wa-
ter 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 grease-
slippery and making travel on the steep mountain-
side 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 to-
ward 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 hur-
ried 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 crash-
ing 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 wound-
ed grizzly into such a place as that. “There are pleas-
anter 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 pre-
tended 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 per-
il 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
 PAGE 40 February 2010
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 sec-
onds 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 rage-
reddened 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 wil-
low and devil’s-club that fringed the bank of the creek, I actu-
ally 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 breath-
ing. 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 59-
inch 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 rain-
blurred 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 story-
book 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 cari-
bou, 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 cer-
tainly have weighed close to 600 pounds and must
have been at least three years old. Yet for some rea-
son 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, shout-
ing 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

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 guid-
ing 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 in-
volved in managing an outfit, take up most of my
The Indians gathered around.
I was no longer a “crazy” man
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 wor-
rying much about trophies, foul weather, or the bick-
erings 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

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
party to escort. Without stopping to argue with my-
and slippery and every bush was bowed down with
self, I picked out two horses, gathered some gear,
snow and ice. Crossing the swollen Pine River late
plus my .30/06 Winchester Model 54 rifle, forty
that day, I emerged into a hidden mountain meadow
cartridges loaded with 180-grain hollow points, and
occupied by a tribe of Beaver Indians. All the dogs
food. I put up enough grub to last a month, and I
in camp rushed out to greet me with a howl. The sur-
could always hunt meat if I wanted to stay out lon-
prised inhabitants of the tepees tumbled out to see
ger.
what the commotion was all about. The squaws and
It was a fine, sunny day when I set out from my
the children hung back, content to stare, but some of
homestead, a few miles north of Dawson Creek. But
the men came over - warily - to talk.
overnight I was driven to shelter by a violent snow-
“Hello, you game warden?” one of the Indians
storm that neither my horses nor I cared to buck.
asked.
These unseasonable fall storms, which sometimes
I replied: “Nemoya” (No).
come howling down from the Aleutians, are remind-
“Maybe you policeman?”
ers that winter is not far away. Old settlers in this
Again I said, “Nemoya,” and added, “I’m going
area refer to this season as “squaw winter,” and usu-
to mountains to hunt sheep.”
ally it is followed by Indian summer, a period of nice
He nodded and waved his hand toward the camp.
warm days and frosty nights that make hunting in
“All my people go to mountains pretty soon, hunt
the mountains ideal.
caribou,” he said.
Most likely I’d have had to keep traveling through
Now I learned why I’d been looked on with sus-
this storm, if I’d been conducting a trip for hunters
picion at first. A month or so before, a game warden
from the city. Time is of utmost importance to them.
with two horses had ridden into camp and arrested
But now I just sat back and waited for the storm to
one of the men for interfering with a white man’s
 February 2010 PAGE 45
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 suf-
possibly 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 spruce-
grayling 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. Evi-
the 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 “Dead-
men’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, in-
terested 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 qui-
etly. 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 griz-
zly would take off be-
fore I could get a shot.
The bear saw me de-
tached from the group
for the first time. He
stopped short, looked
me over suspiciously,
and then started to re- again and proceeded to Redfern Lake, about five
trace his steps. He was about fifty yards away and miles farther west among the high peaks. It’s a beau-
was just turning from me as I fired. At the crack of tiful spot at the foot of a mighty glacier, and it was
the gun he gave an awful growl and came tumbling there I hoped to find some big Stone rams.
downhill with a roar. Hearing the shot and getting a I spent most of the first day in camp fleshing and
whiff of bear, the frantic horses struggled to get free. preparing the bear hide for drying. The rest of the
One managed to tear himself loose, and he started time was taken up in making camp comfortable,
down the trail. But I caught him as he hesitated a gathering firewood, and cooking bannock in prepara-
second, undecided whether to go it alone or to stay tion for the next day’s hunt. In the evening I walked
with friends. After retying him, I walked toward the along the lake shore to look over the mountains.
grizzly and shot it through the neck. They rose almost perpendicular from the water’s
Then I got down to the job of skinning. I found edge. I located some goats feeding on the mountain-
that the first shot had hit the bear in the flank and, side, but there was no sign of sheep, large or small.
quartering through the body, had shattered his back- My first hunt for sheep turned out to be a flop. I
bone and lodged in his front shoulder on the oppo- spent a long day in the high country above camp,
site side. The finishing shot had severed the spine. but saw only ewes and lambs. The absence of large
As this was to be one of my prize trophies, I tracks in the snow indicated that the big rams had
took special care in skinning out the head, ears, and not descended to the lower ranges.
claws. The fat was thick, and the flesh looked good It was on my return from this hunt that I had the
enough to eat, so I cut off a big chunk. That would narrowest escape from death that I have ever had or
be enough to eat until I could get some mountain ever wish to have. I had decided to take a shortcut
mutton - which hunters consider the finest big-game back to camp to avoid a canyon that had been dif-
meat there is. ficult to cross on the way up. For some distance the
When the skinning was over I packed my horses
 to go forward. There
was no possibility of
turning back, and yet
there was no foot-
hold ahead. I stood
there wondering
what would happen
if I slipped and fell
100 feet among the
broken rocks below.
It would mean cur-
tains 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
At the shot the ram tumbled and lay still. I started to take a bead on the other one, then hesitated. calm down,” I mur-
mured. “Take it easy.
going was better than I had expected, but gradually You’re in this alone,
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.”
a bit of cliff rock, steep and dangerous. In a little while the mild flurry of hysteria left me,
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 hunt-
the 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
make it safely. worries. I made a foothold large enough to put both
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.
difficult at the beginning since the rocks were bro- One small rock protruded from the smooth wall.
ken 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
until finally I came to a spot that stymied me. it. There was no turning back. I put my knife away,
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 con-
tentedly 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 precau-
tions were necessary. In the event of attack by griz-
zly, 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 hap-
pen, 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 cau-
tiously 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 iso-
lated 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 fo-
cused 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, stop-
ping 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 search-
ing 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. Sud-
denly 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 con-
tented myself with the small fry in the shallows. Oc-
casionally 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 tin-
kling 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 prom-
ised 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 mead-
ows 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 re-
marked 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 ren-
dered the fat, and fleshed and de-
haired 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 pro-
cess 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 ani-
mal 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. Af-
ter 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 hit-
ting for timber.
After that I glassed the surround-
ing 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 wan-
dered 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 get-
ting 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 occu-
pation, 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. Air-
planes 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 kill-
ers, 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 swim-
ming 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 tro-
phies, having heard earlier from The Boys that I had
killed a grizzly. They admired my fine ram head and
 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 trea-
sures 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 be-
gin to smart. They did so now.
The chief spoke no English, but through an in-
terpreter 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 bat-
tered 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 con-
sidered a real delicacy, and is reserved for the hunt-
ers. 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.
February 2010
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, grass-
hoppers, the larvae of bees, wasps, and yellowjack-
ets - in fact anything a bear will eat.
After the feast we went out to take part in a cel-
ebration 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 break-
fast 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 mea-
sured 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
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 be-
low, 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 tum-
bling 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 re-
turn 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 fall-
ing, 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 imag-
ines himself falling through the air and landing, all
bruised and broken, upon the rocks thousands of
feet below. Professional mountain climbers are able
PAGE 53
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 moun-
tain goats – and just as tough a time killing them
after they’re wounded. The very nature of the ter-
rain, 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 sur-
roundings. When the hunter must keep out of sight
of wary game and, at the same time, scale mile-
high 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 acces-
sible. 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 sea-
son doesn’t seem to have any effect on the appar-
ently 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 hide-
outs 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 les-
son 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 twen-
ty 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 de-
scent. 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 un-
til 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 ob-
served 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, tak-
ing 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. Genera-
tions 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 moun-
tain 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 amaz-
ing 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 ten-
der and tasty, and few memories are more lasting
than a barbecue under the brilliant stars of a north-
ern night, goats are not usually killed for meat.
Some hunters get a thrill from the dangers in-
volved, from scaling the peaks, and from the sheer
joy of matching their wits with a wily antagonist.
Besides these pleasures, the big billies make excel-
lent 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 al-
most 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
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 invis-
ible 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.
PAGE 57
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 king-
dom 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 them-
selves 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 crea-
ture fighting wickedly when forced, but pre-
ferring 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 chuck-
le as well as profound respect for his abil-
ity 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 par-
ticularly 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, consider-
able 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 genera-
tions 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 expe-
rience 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 slum-
bering 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 big-
gest international radio building then in ex-
istence.
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 report-
ed seeing a big coon disappearing into the
shadows. I checked the ash in a day or so
but the poorly suited den had been aban-
doned. Yet the coon – or his tracks – contin-
ued 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 coun-
try 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 land-
ed with thunderous explosions in the field
beyond.
A certain young soldier, whose trim uni-
form 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 in-
vestigate. Some creature with sharp claws
had been climbing up into the beech. So did
the soldier. He found a den, and in it a soli-
tary 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 ob-
served, grew fatter and more content while,
200 feet in front of the tree, a stretch sev-
eral miles long heaved with explosions.
Of course, the raccoon is just as resource-
ful 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 Satur-
day-afternoon terror of the woodchuck pas-
tures. 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 impos-
sible to shoot. I hunkered down to wait be-
hind 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, head-
ed 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 ex-
perience, harbored and turned out genera-
tions 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 oth-
ers 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 per-
fect spot for raccoons, but my first knowl-
edge that such creatures existed came when
I caught a glimpse of a gray-black ringtail,
fleeing headlong across the yard as we ar-
rived early one evening for ‘meetin’.
In two or three places around the build-
ing 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 safe-
ty in the loft. That place, when investigated
through a small trapdoor in the high ceil-
ing, revealed a sight only a witness would
believe. The boards between the two-by-
four joists were heaped with tons of dried
raccoon scats. No concentration I’ve ever
seen could rival that accumulation of un-
told generations.
The usual small boy’s distaste for church-
going 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 ar-
rive 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 resi-
dents that had been asleep on the ground
under the floor. They scurried to the loft
– and safety - before the congregation ar-
rived.
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 de-
vout 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 ob-
server 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 congre-
gation 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 crea-
tures 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
 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 munch-
ing 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 fishing-
dom. 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 red-
throated 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 sen-
sible 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, hard-
ened 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 in-
vestigations 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 gentle-
man who lugged them walked with a slow and wobbly
February 2010
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 tele-
graph 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 Ser-
vice. 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 ques-
tion. “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 care-
ful, 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 oblivi-
ous of rigid park regulations.
In ten minutes I stood on the observation platform
where I had interviewed my hilarious Western acquain-
tance, and for almost an hour I studied the abyss below.
Yellow rock, the threadlike winding river, and the beau-
tiful 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 yel-
low 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 yellow-
green water. On all fours he crawled to the bank. Here he
removed his boots and, after a glance toward the preci-
pice 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 tempta-
tion 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 car-
ried 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 Yel-
lowstone 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 an-
other 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. Sud-
denly 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
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 sur-
prise I still had the cutthroat. Hastily I slipped the net
over his huge head and scrambled for shore.
Biggest I’d Ever Caught
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 cut-
throats; twice more I slipped my midget net over their
massive heads.
And there they lay - three of the finest cutthroats in the the engagement with a bearskin to cover their bones.
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 eigh-
teen 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 blis-
ters 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,
he sedately perched himself on a comfortable cushion of
pine needles and surveyed his savory dinner.
February 2010
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 griz-
zly bear? I thought of calendar pictures in which trappers
fought such beasts with hunting knives, and came out of
The dark and lifeless cafeteria turned my concentra-
tion 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 thou-
sands 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.”
From Outdoor Life, October, 1949
 Rough
Shoot
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 break-
ing 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
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.
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 val-
ley 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 previ-
ous 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 omi-
nous clause—one that made me liable for any future dam-
age 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 in-
duced 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 do-
main, 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 wood-
land 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, rab-
bits 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 cam-
paign. 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 flat-
ten 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 be-
fore 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, emerg-
ing 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 an-
swer. 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,
 PAGE 68
two jills and a hob, guaranteed tractable and good work-
ers. 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 meat-
hungry Britain at the equivalent of 50 cents apiece. Al-
though we had “exclusive” rights to our shoot, we were un-
able 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. (Inci-
dentally, 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 Brit-
isher is extinct. In May alone I got 67 in the early mornings
with my Colt Woodsman automatic pistol.
February 2010
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 sum-
mer 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 some-
what unusual in preferring the American 2 3/4 inch cham-
ber 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 them-
selves 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 val-
ley 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
 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 al-
ready. 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 antici-
pation 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 sanc-
tuary 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
PAGE 69
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 tremen-
dous 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 in-
credulously. “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 hunt-
ers. 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 ter-
race 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 desper-
ate 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. Every-
where 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 branch-
es was deafening as the great bull galloped away. Frantically I clawed for-
ward 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 dis-
tance 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 hap-
pened. 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 val-
ley. 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 dis-
mounted 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
 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 di-
minished 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 con-
tinued 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
PAGE 71
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 mas-
sive 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 hu-
man 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 cross-
hairs 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

RECIPES
DEEP FRIED DEER LOINS
3 cups flour 12 venison loins ½ in. thick
2 T. black pepper high quality cooking oil for frying
1 tsp. onion powder (optional)
1 tsp. hickory seasoning
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 3 tbsp. sugar
2 cups bacon fat 2 tbsp. garlic powder
1 tbsp. monosodium glutamate 3 red bell peppers
1 tsp. jalapeno pepper 2 tbsp. fresh ground black pepper
3 tbsp. salt 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 con-
tainers covering the meat with plastic wrap to avoid dehydration.

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