I Went Looking for a Lost Hunter, and Found the Big Buck I’d Been Tracking All Season

This story, “Judge of Disappointment Mountain,” appeared in the July 1970 issue of Outdoor Life.

THE CHILL REACHED into the shadows at Boot Lake Portage as the November sun slid down into the dark firs and aspens. My wife Lil flexed her stiffening hands, crushed out her cigarette on the hard sand, and shucked the cartridges out of her .30/30.

“I hope Andy isn’t lost,” she said quietly as she shoved the shells into her jacket pocket. “It’s going to be a cold one tonight.”

The air had suddenly lost what little warmth it had held, and our anxiety deepened. 

Andy Hill, our 23-year­ old friend from Griffith, Indiana, had started out with us that morning on his first Minnesota deer hunt, but he failed to show up at our prearranged meeting place. It was growing dark quickly, and there was no sign of him. Slivers of ice were beginning to form along the waterline of our boat, which was tied up just above the rapids that rumble down into Boot Lake.

I pulled out a wrinkled map of the Superior National Forest and unfolded it across my knees. To the south­ east was Disappointment Mountain, elevation 1,840 feet. We had been hunting near Disappointment Lake at its base.  To the west, across the four-mile expanse of Snowbank Lake, was Tom Harristahl’s dock and our pickup truck. Andy had a U.S. Geological Survey con­tour map and a compass, and he knew how to use them. But something might have happened to him, and hun­dreds of square miles of wilderness lay to the east and south where there were no roads, cabins, or people.

“He might have busted a deer way back in there and he’d have a tough time dragging it out in a straight line,” I suggested. “Let’s run the boat around the shore a way and see if he came out some other place.”

I knew it was wishful thinking. The odds against a novice’s dropping a whitetail on his. first day in the woods are pretty high. Still, it made more sense to move around in the boat than to sit, so we climbed aboard. I yanked the outboard into action, and we angled along the rocky shoreline.

Four years before, my wife and I had left Chicago to make our home in the north country. After 16 years as a newspaper outdoor writer, I had decided to head for the wilderness while I could still enjoy it. Lil and I, both 48, were living in a rustic cabin we had built ourselves. We operate a small canoe-outfitting and guiding service in the summer, and we hunt, fish, write stories, and take photographs the rest of the year. Occasionally somebody like Andy drops in to hunt with us, but this was the first time anyone had been lost or missing.

One mile slid by, and we neither saw nor heard a thing. There wasn’t even a wisp of smoke rising from the woods to indicate that he might have stopped to build a fire. The second mile went by, and we were cir­ cling back to the meeting place when we caught a faint movement on the shore half a mile ahead. I opened up the throttle, and in a few seconds we made out a hunter dancing up and down on a granite ledge, rifle in one hand and a baggy shirt in the other. It was Andy­ scratched, sweat-streaked, and bloody to his elbows, but grinning like a jack-o’-lantern. When I shut off the motor, I head him yell:

“I got one. I got a buck!”

Lil climbed out and fastened the bow line. “Where’s the deer?” she asked.

“Back in the woods,” Andy gasped. He was really bushed. “I dragged him from ten this morning to three in the afternoon. I thought I was northeast of the lake. I must have been wrong, but I stayed on a straight southwest compass line. I didn’t see a thing until I topped the last ridge – ran the last mile to the lake trying to get here before dark.”

“What are you doing with your shirt off?” I asked. He swung the soggy mass toward me.

“The liver and heart are wrapped up in it, ” he told me. “I brought them out so you would believe me. I’m almost frozen.”

I could see that he was. The loosely woven red sweat­er we had given him that morning wasn’t any good against the chilling wind. I had on a heavy quilted jacket over my thick wool shirt, and I was wearing in­sulated underwear, so I yanked off the jacket and tossed it to Andy after he slid into the boat. Lil flipped the bow line aboard, and I kicked the motor over and headed up the lake.

Half an hour later we rammed the bow of the boat up on the beach at Harristahl’s dock and stumbled over the frozen ground to my pickup. By the time we’d covered the six miles to our cabin on Moose Lake, the truck heater had nearly thawed Andy out. His teeth had stopped clicking like typewriter keys. In the kitch­en, a steaming cup of coffee really opened him up, and he spilled out his story.

“There were three deer — a buck and two does. I don’t know how far back in the woods I was, but I was sitting on a log eating a candy bar, and there they were — just like a picture in an outdoor magazine.

“I put the bead on the buck’s shoulder, said a little prayer, and squeezed her off. I couldn’t believe it. He went down stone dead — first shot I ever had at a deer, and I got him. Do you think we can find him?”

“We’ll find him if we can figure out where you were. How big is he?” I asked, separating the liver and heart from the soggy shirt in the kitchen sink.

“Just a spike, but a fat one. He isn’t the Judge, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“I can tell he isn’t the Judge from the size of the liver and heart. Did you see any big tracks back where you were?”

“Yes,” Andy answered as he poured another cup of coffee. “There were lots of tracks and one big set with splayed hoofprints.”

Lil and I looked at each other.

“Could be him,” she said. “Just where the heck were you, Andy?” she asked.

He got his map out, and we traced a back azimuth on the southwest compass line from the place where we had picked him up. Figuring he had stayed as tight to that line as he said, we traced him back to the north end of Disappointment Lake. That’s where he had probably dropped his buck. Somehow he had gotten mixed up, and instead of dragging his deer straight west to Snowbank Lake he had gone southwest, almost parallel to the lake. He had hiked three miles farther than he should have.

“Why didn’t you yell or signal with your rifle?” I asked.

 “Man, I yelled my head off,” Andy said with a groan. “And I shot the rifle six times. I guess I was too far away.”

Against a strong west wind and with a couple of granite ridges between us, the shots from Andy’s .30/06 Springfield had probably been so muffled that Lil and I didn’t notice them. Our thoughts went back to the splay-foot tracks.

“If that’s the Judge back in there,” Lil said, “he’s moved some since Bob White missed him two days ago.” 

Over the past few years, a dozen hunters had glimpsed the big buck sliding through the brush like a gray ghost. He had earned the name Judge because of the battle scars on his hide and the chipped and broken tips on his antlers­ — signs of his zeal in dispensing justice among the younger bucks during the rut. From occasional sightings of the old patriarch or his distinct hoofprints, we knew his regular judicial circuit reached from the foot of Disappoint­ment Mountain to Snowbank Lake.

Two days before Andy’s adventure, Bob White, the Aurora, Illinois, outdoor editor for the Copley Press newspaper organization, had come up to open the nine-day season with his hunting pal Norm Green of New Lebanon, Penn­sylvania. The second morning, Bob hun­kered down next to a thick spruce on a frosty hogback between Disappoint­ment Lake and Snowbank. Norm was a quarter of a mile away. Just as the sun glittered over the horizon, a big doe emerged from the blinding glare, fol­lowed by a great gray buck.

“They were backlighted against the sun,” Bob told us later. “The deer were rimmed by millions of frost particles sparkling in the air. I was stunned for a moment or two. They weren’t 50 paces from me.

“Then I slowly raised my rifle and looked through the scope. You know what? I couldn’t see a darn thing. That buck was straight in line with the sun, and the reticle was a glaring, white ball. I squinted until I thought my eye was going to bust out of its socket and final­ly made out the buck. He was so close by then that it looked as though the scope was right up against him. I squeezed off a shot and missed. Those deer went crashing down the ridge, and I’ve been cussing ever since. That was the biggest whitetail buck I ever saw.” 

Two days after Bob and Norm left for home, Andy drove in from Indiana. He walked to my cabin wearing army cam­ouflage. He was hefting a war-surplus Springfield.

“What in the world are you doing in that outfit?” Lil gasped.

Andy’s face fell a foot. For the past four summers, he and his wife Georgia had been coming to our camp for canoe trips. Their first had been their honey­moon. Andy talked incessantly about going on a deer hunt. Georgia was at­tending college part time and working as a substitute grade-school teacher. Andy has his own landscape business near Dyer, Indiana. During the pre­vious year, he had tucked away a dollar here and a dollar there for a rifle, shells, and the $50 nonresident deer license. Until his deer trip, Andy had got no hunting experience except for shooting crows on Hoosier farmland. That’s why he had the camouflage outfit.

“I thought this would be O.K. for deer hunting,” he said, dismayed.

“The rifle is fine,” I told him. “Even with military sights, that Springfield ’06 is an accurate piece of iron, but where did you get that commando suit? You have to wear red in the woods. It’s the law.”

“We’ll find you something red,” Lil said sympathetically and began going through the closet, sorting out hats and jackets. The best she could do was a red knit hat and a flame-red sweater.

“If the deer don’t mind, I don’t mind,” Andy said with a grin. “Maybe it will be a lucky combination.”

It was — up to a point. He had his deer. down and dressed out somewhere in that wild piece of forest and swamp near Disappointment Lake, but it would be a real chore to find his venison. There was no snow, and the ground was dry and hard, so there was no way to back­ track Andy from the shore of Snowbank Lake. I figured the best bet would be to cut straight across to Disappointment Lake and try to find the spot where Andy had made his kill. The ravens might possibly lead us to the offal. From there we could follow the drag marks until we found the buck. It all hinged on whether Andy had really stayed on a southwest compass course and wheth­er we would find the deer before the timber wolves did.

There was a coating of blue frost on the hood of the pickup when we piled in the food pack and rifles the next morning. When we arrived at Harris­tahl’s dock, we had to break a skim of ice to free the boat. Gray dawn was coming when we cut a wake across Snowbank Lake and tied up at the Boot Lake Portage at its northeast end. Lil moseyed over to a birch ridge where she could watch a long ravine while Andy and I headed straight east to come out on Disappointment Lake.

“You loaded up?” I asked, shoving shells into my .30/30. “We might run onto the Judge or some of his kin.”

“I don’t care about that,” Andy re­plied. “Think we’ll find my buck?”

“No problem,” I lied, cheerfully. The more I thought about it, though, the less I believed that we would find the area where Andy had been hunting, much less the place where he had killed his deer. We pushed off in a single file, Andy in the rear.

In 40 minutes we were crossing the highest ridge and paused to view the sun coming around the side of Disap­pointment Mountain. Then we plunged across a series of ridges and swamps, sometimes skirting the swamps when we struck water or muskeg. About 1½ miles in, I paused to check our compass course, and Andy whispered, “There’s the deer.”

I froze, then moved my eyes slowly around. “Where is he?” I hissed, slid­ing the compass into my pocket and putting my thumb on the hammer of my .30/30.

“Right there — lying on the rock,” Andy whispered. “He’s the one I shot yesterday.”

“He is?” I said out loud. I looked, and sure enough, there was the young buck, dressed out.

“Gee, that took some awful sharp fig­uring,” Andy said admiringly. “You ran a compass line through all those woods and come right out on my deer.”

“Oh, boy!” I said, trying to keep a straight face. Then I started to gag and busted out laughing. “Andy,” I told him, “I didn’t have any idea where that deer was. I thought we’d have to. spend the whole day trying to find the place where you shot him and then fol­low the drag marks from there. We just blundered onto your deer. We could never do that again.”

“You mean it was an accident?” 

“Hoo boy! Do you have any idea how big this forest is? We could have been fifty feet or five-hundred feet to either side. We’d have walked right past.”

“Gosh, this must be our lucky day,” Andy said. “Let’s drag him out.”

“First we’ll tie his front hoofs up over his horns,” I said. “He’ll be a lot easier to drag that way.”

Andy lashed the feet tightly and then grabbed the loose end of the rope. With me pushing behind and Andy pulling, the buck moved along steadily. On the last ridge above Boot Lake Portage, we stopped for a breather next to a fir­ choked ravine.

I sauntered over to check a nearby deer run. Printed in the frost were the huge splayed hoofmarks of the Judge and several friends. He could be bedded down in the ravine, I thought, or maybe hej ust circled through and went up onto the ridge. But he was close — of that I was sure. It was just noon when we skidded the young buck down to the boat. Lil had the food pack open and a fire going. The coffeepot was steaming. We ate toasted sandwiches and drank coffee while Andy retold for the umpteenth time all the details of his hunt.

“That’s all very interesting,” Lil commented as she stirred the fire, “but it doesn’t put any venison in my freezer. We still have two tags to fill.”

Then I told her about the deer trail on the ridge a half-mile above us.

I think the Judge is in that ravine or at the top of it,” I said. “There’s a mess of fir saplings and blowdowns in there, just the kind of a place where a big deer would hide, especially in mid­ season with the pressure on.”

We plotted a little strategy with the aid of the map. Lil would ease in about 200 yards to the center of the ravine while Andy and I would each take an outside edge, circle around, and come back down along the ravine from the top. If the Judge was there, we might crowd him into making a slip-up. Lil rolled up the food pack while Andy and I drowned the fire. Then we moved in.

The ravine was dark, and the firs were so thick I had to turn sideways to squeeze through some spots. We sta­tioned Lil on a good trail, and then Andy and I split up. He took a line to the west and south while I worked up­ ward to the east. There was no wind, and we had to move a step at a time. Without snow, walking on the forest floor was as noisy as dancing on soda crackers. It was move a step, stop, pull the branches off pants and jacket so they wouldn’t whip. Move again. Ease over a deadfall. Stop. Listen. Outside of my own rustling, I heard only the occasional rattle of a red squirrel and the flutter of a Canada jay.

In half an hour I covered less than 300 yards. I had stopped by a small opening created by a deadfall when the cracking of branches sounded behind me. Then there was a furtive crunch, crunch, crunch of footsteps. Silence fol­lowed.

I knew Lil wouldn’t move off her stand, and there was nobody else around except Andy. I couldn’t figure how he had wandered so far off course. He seemed to be coming in behind me. Somewhat irked, I leaned against the deadfall, waiting to see what he was going to do next. There was another crunch of footsteps, and I was about to yell when I caught a glimpse of a dark gray form and a set of shiny antlers sifting through the underbrush. One thing for sure — it wasn’t Andy.

At the click of the Winchester’s ham­mer, the deer came to an abrupt halt, but as I tried to center the hooded front sight on his forequarters, the buck be­gan slipping through the brush again. I barely had time to crack off a shot as he vanished. Then, silence again.

Missed, I thought, and he’s standing in the edge of the firs trying to figure out where I am. If I move toward him and to the right, he may double back and cross over to where Lil is on stand. It was the only gamble I could think of, so I started angling rapidly to the right of the place where he had disappeared. Suddenly the big buck came crashing up from the forest floor and bolted to­ward the right.  He had been hit and down — hit hard it seemed from the blood on his neck. My second shot slammed into him behind the first wound, and he tumbled down into a ha­zelbrush clump.

With a loud whoop to Andy and Lil, I scrambled down to my trophy buck, but I dug my heels in when he lunged to his feet. With eyes rolling wildly, he lowered his antlers and came at me. I was frantically back-pedaling when I jerked another shot. The 170-grain slug socked him right between the horns. He skidded to a dead stop and fell almost against the gun muzzle. Warily, I cir­cled the motionless buck, but it was all over. A trickle of sweat ran down my neck. Over a lifetime of hunting I have shot a lot of deer, but he was the first one that ever came at me.

Andy clattered up the hill through the brush and pulled to a halt.

“Holy Jonah,” he gasped.

“Andy,” I said, “we got the Judge.” 

He wasn’t the kind of deer you would put up on the wall. He was heavy-bod­ied and thick-necked from the rut. His hide was cut and scarred in two dozen places, and nearly all the tines of his massive antlers had splintered tips. As arbiter of woodland justice, he had been swift and unbending, and he carried the marks to prove it.

My elation was tempered by a feeling of sadness as I bent to the task of dress­ing out the big carcass. Ground up into burger or made into smoked sausage, the hefty chunk of venison would last my family all winter, but there was a letdown because the Judge would no longer be out there on the fir and aspen ridges for us to hunt. It had been an absorbing game, and the big buck had held all the winning cards until he tried to sneak through us. Luck may have had a lot to do with his long success in evading hunters, but luck had cer­tainly been against him at the end. Had he remained bedded down in that fir thicket a few more minutes, I would have been far up the ravine when he moved and would never have seen him.

We checked the bullet holes when we dressed him. Both neck shots had hit solidly but had missed the spinal column.  There was no way to know if he had been deliberately charging me when I fired the third shot. Maybe he simply lost track of me and was only running off, but I still have a vivid memory of that thick-necked buck coming straight at me with his antlers pointed at my belt buckle.

On an old ice scale we found by the dock, the buck weighed 229 dressed, which figures out to about 290 in the rough. Allowing for pounds lost during the rut, his normal weight must have been right around 300. Boned out, he kept us in meat all winter, and his antlers are now a sturdy gun rack.

That is the end of the story except for one thing. Early the following fall, Lil and I were trout fishing on Snowbank Lake, and we stopped to swap yarns with Tom Harristahl.

“Guess what,” Tom said. “I saw the Judge at Boot Lake Portage the other day.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, laughing. “I busted that old buck last November.”

Tom rubbed the back of his neck. “Zat so?” he said. “Well, I could be wrong, but we were crossing the por­tage to check on a couple of boats on Boot Lake when a big buck walked out of the woods — ten-pointer — scars all over. He’d go 250 or 260 dressed out.”

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We stood there for a minute, and fi­nally Lil looked at me and said, “Well, if the Judge is still out there, what the heck did you shoot?”

“I dunno — maybe an Associate Jus­tice,” I replied.

Which is something to think about until November when court will again be in session on the fir and aspen slopes of Disappointment Mountain.   

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