I Work Hard for All My Deer. This Buck Humbled Me

This story, “I Work for My Bucks,” appeared in the October 1962 issue of Outdoor Life.

I had caugt two fleeting glimpses of the big buck. The first was when he went sailing in long bounds across a clearing in pursuit of a doe, and the second was one afternoon when he walked right up to me in the timber as I was working on the winter woodpile.

The first time I was hunting, but the range had been too long for the offhand snapshot that was offered, so I didn’t even try to shoot. The second time I had just finished trim­ming a fallen tree and was standing with ax in hand when I saw him ghosting through the aspens, ob­viously curious about the racket I was making. He came almost to the edge of the clearing and stood screened by a saskatoon bush while he looked over my slashing. My rifle was 20 feet away leaning against a tree. When I tried a sneak for it, he exploded away in the high, springy bounds so typical of mule deer. His horns were massive, beautifully bal­anced, and long in the points. He was the best buck I had ever seen on my Alberta ranch, which is on a hill overlooking a great sweep of plains and mountains adjacent to Waterton Lakes National Park.

When I looked at his tracks I recognized them, for he was the same buck that had been coming down through the hills close to the lodge very two or three days for a couple of seasons. Several times he had been within 100 yards of my door at night. He was big and fat. Besides having the makings of some delicious venison feeds, he had a head that would look mighty nice over my fireplace. I decided to go after him.

Every chance I got, I slipped out before daylight and prowled the hills just back of the ranch, playing hide and seek with that buck. I couldn’t decide whether he was smart or just lucky. Several times I’d been close to him, but he always slipped away, leaving me looking at those big, splayed hoof marks. One morning, as I sat glassing the country from a high butte, I was ready to admit it might be a combination of both.

I’d seen his tracks at first light cutting up into a meadow by a small lake, and they led me straight into some folded hills and meadows along our south-boundary fence. He was poking along feeding on browse, so I left his trail and made a quick circle up onto the butte where I sat in a belt of wind-bent pines with the whole spread of meadows and little hills within range of my rifle. I combed every inch of the place with my binoculars, but not a whisker of him did I see. There were plenty of hidden pockets out of sight, so I waited.

For half an hour nothing moved but a couple of ravens, and I began to wonder if he had given me the slip again. Then, from behind a patch of aspens not 100 yards downhill, a fine buck stepped out and jumped the wire fence. I swung the rifle on him, but a glance through the 4X Weaver scope showed me this was not the same buck. For a long moment the crosshairs hung solidly just back of his shoulder and my finger caressed the trigger. But then I lowered the rifle and watched the buck saunter away completely unaware of my ex­istence. I wanted the big buck, and maybe he was coming along behind his smaller brother. When another half an hour went by and no buck showed up, I headed back to see what he’d done.

When I got to where I’d left his trail, I saw his tracks along with those of three does heading back along the trail he had made that morning. Apparently he met the does and their escort in a heavy patch of aspens inside my circle, drove the other buck away, and took the does for himself. I trailed them for a mile and then spooked the bunch half out of their skins by nearly stepping on one of the does bedded in some brush. The hunt was over for that day because I had some work to do. Besides, my empty belly was flapping against my backbone.

The big buck was giving me a run, and if I ever hung his antlers on my wall they were going to be earned. Thinking back, I could recall other bucks that had made me work, and one that had come within a whisker of killing me. But this buck was getting in his licks while he was alive.

I remembered the first buck I’d ever killed. A long-geared kid with a burning desire to be a great out­doorsman and with an inborn love of hunting, I was out early one clear, cold morning riding along a ridge. Reining my horse down into a willow­-filled hollow, I heard the sharp snort of a frightened doe, and the place literally exploded with deer. White rump patches were flashing in every direction as I piled off my horse and jerked the little .250 Savage out of its scabbard. As I jacked a cartridge into the breech, the whole open hill­ side above was a pell-mell scene of running deer heading for the skyline 300 yards away. 

There must have been 35 head, with five or six bucks, in the bunch. Swinging my sights on a big buck, I cut loose and saw the snow fly under his belly — a clean miss. In the next bound my target was hidden behind a couple of run­ning does. I swung on another buck running in the clear and shot again. This time my bullet went home, and the deer piled up on his nose.

There is nothing that quite matches the elation of dropping that first big game. For a while I just stood looking down at my buck, ad­ miring him from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail while my horse hung her head over my shoulder, rolling her eyes and snorting at the smell of him. Cleaning him out was a long, slow process, but I made a good job of it because I had often helped my dad butcher animals on the ranch. A deer’s insides are, after all, basically the same as those of a steer or a pig. I even relished the bloody job in anticipation of leading my horse into the yard burdened down with that big fat buck; just how big and fat I was soon to appreciate.

Leading my horse up beside him, I tried to pick up one end of the buck to slide him over the saddle, but the horse blew out a great snort and shied away. I brought her back, hobbled her front feet with my rope, and tried again with the same re­sult. Next time, I hobbled her and then blindfolded her with my jacket. This anchored her successfully, but I could no more get that buck off the ground than I could have lifted the horse.

Just the same, I tried heaving and laboring till my eyes stuck out, but it was no good. I finally slipped and fell flat on my back, gasping for breath, with the hind end of the buck across my middle. Why didn’t I just throw my rope around the buck’s antlers and drag him home by the saddle horn? Because from the time I was knee-high to a coyote, I had devoured every outdoor magazine and book I could lay hands on, and invariably the illustrations showed the buckskin-clad mountain men tri­umphantly bringing their deer into camp lashed to the back of a horse. That was the way it was done, and that, by gosh, was the way I was go­ing to do it if it killed me.

I got another idea. Skidding the buck down along the slope of the hill to the foot of two or three big cotton­ woods growing on a little bench, I put the loop of my lariat over his antlers and tossed the other end up over a fork. Mounting, I dallied the loose end to the saddle horn and jerked the buck clear of the ground. Then I rode the mare around a tree, wrapping the rope around it to hold him there. My idea was to lead the mare under the buck, lower him into the saddle, and lash him down. It was a perfectly sound idea, but my horse thought it was terrible. I couldn’t get her within yards of the place. So I blindfolded her again and heaved, pushed, and even picked her feet up one by one to edge her into position. Finally she was standing tremblingly under the buck. Very carefully, I loosened the rope and gently eased the buck down over the saddle. My rope’s hitch was original, but finally the buck was tied down with his antlers twisted around back of the saddle so they wouldn’t gouge my mount.

With a great sigh of relief, I swung my rifle over my shoulder, pulled the blind off, and started to lead the mare home. She took one horrified look at what she was carrying, bawled like a mad grizzly, bogged her head, and blew up like a stick of dynamite. She was well broken to lead, and when she hit the end of the bridle reins she swapped ends and came right back over me bucking like a three-star rodeo bronco. Hanging on grimly, I kept dodging out from under her trying to stop her, but then the buck’s head came loose and the sharp antlers raked her along the flank. What she did then, no horse could do and stay on its feet. When she came down, she lit on the buck on her back with her feet uphill. There she lay heaving for breath with her eyes rolled up in her skull, and I had the job to do over again.

By this time I had lots of practice and the mare was somewhat sub­dued. I finally got the buck loaded again and headed for home, where I arrived in the late afternoon covered with blood, hair, and exhaustion. It had taken me but a few seconds to kill that deer and most of the day to bring him two miles.

Two or three years later, my brother John and I had a somewhat similar ex­perience. We were running a trapline at the time and were hungry for fresh meat. The morning deer season opened, my brother brought a horse along so we could cover more ground hunting as we tended traps. If we got a buck, we could pack it home.

His mount was a sort of nondescript buckskin mare, tough as a boot, un­predictable as the weather, and with the disposition of a rattlesnake. We had a 20-mile circle to make, and it was late afternoon when our trail swung up along the edge of a heavy aspen forest below some open slopes on a ridge. A quarter of a mile ahead of us we glimpsed a big buck heading into the mouth of a brushy draw. John gal­loped away on his horse to head the buck off while I hurried along its trail to cut off any possible retreat. Just as I started up the draw, I heard John shoot above me and a few minutes later found him standing over a big-bodied, buck which we promptly dressed out. 

Blindfolding the mare, we loaded the buck across the saddle and tied it down. She looked a bit sour when John pulled the blind off, but no fireworks resulted. Everything went well for a quarter of a mile, but then the buckskin gave a huge sigh, got saggy in the knees, and lay down. We did everything but build a fire under her to get her up, but she just subsided into a sulky heap and re­ fused to budge. We unloaded the deer. The mare then leaped to her feet, kicked at it, opened her mouth till it looked like a bear trap, laid her ears back, and lunged at John. He dodged, and her teeth clicked shut with an ominous snap about an inch short of his ear. He jerked her down and, after telling her in most colorful language what a mean, aggravating old blister she was, brought her around to the deer again. Once more we loaded the buck and proceeded on our way. But before either of us could do anything about it, she suddenly got rubbery in the legs again and down she went.

An old mountain man once told me never to trust horses. “Sure as you do,” he said, “you’ll be afoot.”

I took his statement with some res­ervations, for in my book horses are a bit like people. They’re good, bad, or indifferent, and it all depends on how you handle them. But that day John and I were about ready to concede the mountain man was right, at least as far as that buckskin was concerned. There was no doubt the load was heavy, but she was strong and perfectly cap­ able of carrying it. However, she had her own ideas about the whole business, and after we had loaded and unloaded that buck three times we were both in just as ornery a mood as she was.

Finally, when we’d wrestled the load onto her and tied it down for the last time, I got an idea. I broke off a length of dead aspen, leaving several little pointed snags sticking up on the broken end. Carrying this in my hand, I walked along beside her holding onto her mane as John led her away. Sure enough, I soon felt her starting to sag. Quick as a flash, I slipped the stick un­der her belly to prop her up. When her weight started to come down on it, she had no choice but to pick herself tip and get going, which she did with a great lunge and a snort. I ducked just in time to avoid getting my head kicked off. We arrived home long after dark, tired but triumphant.

Looking back over the years, some­ how the killing of a buck has always been the lesser part of the hunt. I re­call another episode that gives me a chill when I think of it — and a chuckle too.

I was guiding a hunter on a moun­tain ridge one wintry day when a snowstorm was blowing out of the northeast and the tops of the mountains were shrouded in scudding clouds. He wanted a good mule-deer buck, and we were in excellent buck country. The visibility was so bad, however, that we often had to stop and let the clouds lift a bit before we could go on. We came to a basin above timberline and were huddled in our saddles wondering if we should proceed or go back to camp when a caprice of the wind lifted the clouds like a curtain, revealing a fine buck feeding at the foot of a lone fir 500 yards up the slope above us. It was too far for a shot, and we wouldn’t have had time anyway. Just as fast as it had lifted, the fog dropped again and hid the animal. But it helped us too. Under its cover we stepped off the horses and headed up the slope by dead reckoning. When we reached a spot by a little gully, we stopped to wait for another break.

When it came, it was good enough to show us the dim outline of the buck still feeding broadside just above the tree. From a sitting position, my hunter neatly shot the buck through the heart. It stumbled, sagged, and rolled over dead against the tree. A foot either way and it would have slid clear to the bottom of the basin and this story would not be worth telling. When we finished cleaning him out, my hunter opined it was going to be a slippery job getting the buck out of there. It would have been easy just to turn the buck loose, but I suddenly was bitten by sheer genius.

“Nothing to it,” I told him. “We’ll ride him down like a toboggan.”

So saying, I swung the buck around, head downhill, straddled him, and grabbed his horns as if they were han­dlebars. “Climb aboard,” I invited. My hunter took a long look at the church­ roof pitch of the slope disappearing down into the storm with the horses just barely visible at the bottom and shook his head firmly. So I pushed off alone.

I figured the snow would hold down the speed to a controllable rate, but deer hair is slippery stuff. In about 2½ seconds I was going about 60 miles an hour. Sometimes the deer seemed to be just skimming the snow, and then we’d hit a hollow and a great burst of the stuff would slam into my eyes. About halfway down, when I was fly­ing blind, the buck hit a stump dead on. We became truly air-borne and parted company in the most spectacular outside loop a deer and a man ever made. I must have sailed a good 40 feet that felt like a mile, and then I came down flat on my back with a crash that shook the mountains. At almost the same instant, the buck ar­rived right beside me in the same posi­tion. Strangely, he stuck right there, and when I cleared the snow out of my eyes to look at him I found his horns jammed a good six inches into the sod a finger width from where my shoulder had been. A foot farther over and that buck would have had a unique revenge. His horns would have gone through my chest.

About that time my hunter, some­ what bug-eyed with astonishment, slid down to us.

To save face, I com­pounded the foolishness by swinging the buck around and straddling him again. This time I dug my heels in on each side to keep the speed down. But when our patient saddle horses, stand­ing ground-hitched in the bottom of the basin, looked up to see me come flying down out of the storm hell for leather on a dead buck, they didn’t pause to contemplate the wonder. They hoisted their tails, snorted, and took off for camp at a high gallop.

Something about the whole business struck my hunter as funny. He sat down on a log and laughed till he wept. I’ll bet he still laughs every time he looks at that trophy hanging on his wall.

From the door of our ranch, on a clear day, it is possible to see about 100 miles out over the prairies to the east and almost as far north along the east face of the Rockies. There is a backdrop of aspen — covered hills to the west and south which shoulder into the , high, jagged peaks. It’s good country for both muleys and whitetails. If I chose, I could sit in a comfortable arm­chair on my veranda and shoot my an­nual buck. But who wants to hunt like that?

Usually I single out a good buck and go after him till I get him. Sometimes I have to take second best, or miss the steaks, but there is a lot of fun to this kind of selective hunting. The killing is an anticlimax; the real pleasure is in stalking and watching.

Carrying my camera on these hunts is now a habit, and what starts as a gun hunt often ends up as a picture hunt with my trophies collected on film. Apart from the steaks, this is a most satisfactory way to pursue big game for there are no bag limits and it is much easier to carry the bag home. My 20-year-old son, Charlie, would sooner leave his rifle at home and take only his camera, and his pictures prove his prowess as a stalker. This is by far the most refined type of hunting. For one who would sooner stalk big game than eat it, it offers much because it is completely unrestricted. However, there are times when I like to have my cake and eat it too.

There are few set rules for deer hunting except to go into good deer country, move slowly, and look often. The hunter not particular about the buck he takes has little trouble filling his license in good mule-deer country. Compared with the whitetail. the mule­ deer is a pushover. He has a built-in streak of curiosity that is often his undoing. Jump one out of a patch of cover or a steep draw and he’ll go bar­reling away to the first high ground, then stop to have a look back. No whitetail in his right mind would think of doing such a thing.

After many experiments, I have come to the conclusion mule deer pay a great deal more attention to what they see and hear than to what they smell. Many times I have deliberately stalked mule deer downwind with suc­cess, but it is something you can’t al­ ways depend on. If you’re after a par­ticular buck, it is wise to pay attention to the wind, especially if the buck is big and alone. Big bucks don’t get that way without learning a few facts of life.

They aren’t particularly hard to kill, and a good shot raking through the rib cage will usually anchor a big mule buck within feet of where he is hit. Sometimes a thoroughly frightened buck will take such a shot on the dead run without showing a sign of being hit, and then pile up dead more than 100 yards away. So it is always the rule to trail an animal carefully after what might have seemed a clean miss. 

Any accurate, deer-class rifle usually used on whitetails is sufficient medicine for the muley. In my books, the white­tail is a far tougher beast, almost as hard to kill as a mountain goat, the toughest of them all.

I have seen muleys killed with every­ thing from a .22 Hornet to a .375 Weatherby Magnum. Here in Alberta, the use of all .22 caliber rifles is now prohibited for big-game hunting, as it should be. To take care of the long shots sometimes offered in our open­ hill country, most hunters prefer some­ thing like a scope-sighted .270 or the old tried-and-true .30/06.

My favorite rifle for this kind of shooting is a fine old custom-built .257 Roberts by the late R. F. Sedgley on a Springfield action with a set trigger. With tough-jacketed 100-grain bullets ahead of 40 grains of du Pont No. 4064 powder, this is fine medicine if pointed straight. However, it is not a weapon for shooting a muley in the seat of the pants because it requires careful bullet placement.

Lately, I have used a Winchester .264 Magnum, which is a superbly accurate long-range weapon with plenty of soup for the out-yonder type of shooting. For early fall hunting in heavier cover close to the ranch where elk and bear might offer a shot, I have a neat little Savage featherweight Model 99 in .358 Winchester caliber shooting 250-grain bullets. This is a real killer at medium ranges.

It was my old favorite, however, the .257 Roberts, that I was carrying when out to collect the big ghost buck.

Regularly as time would allow, I was out early in the morning to pick up his tracks and be treated to a royal run­ around. Many times I was close to him — sometimes twice within an hour — but always some accident of footwork on my part, or plain good luck on his, saved his scalp. 

Twice I almost fell over bedded does and they spooked him. At night he prowled the open hills, but in daylight he stuck close to timber. I became convinced he bore a charmed life. When my chance came at last, it was completely unexpected.

Six inches of fluffy snow had fallen, and the morning it cleared I was out at the first squeak of dawn. Right off the bat my glasses picked up two fine­ furred coyotes. Their pelts were worth good money in those days, and, forget­ ting all about the buck, I took after them. They were mousing on a grassy, open hillside, allowing me to slip up within 200 yards where I got off a careful prone shot that dropped the big­gest. A second flying shot at his mate as she went streaking over the hill bored a hole in the scenery.

Walking up to the dead coyote, I laid the rifle against him and began whetting my knife in preparation for skinning him. The sun was lighting the sky in one of those magnificent mountain sunrises. I was standing there ad­miring it when a movement on top of a little hill 250 yards away caught my eye.

My breath stuck in my throat. A magnificent buck stepped up on the skyline in jet-black silhouette against the blood red of a great stormy mass of cloud and stood there looking at me. It was like a picture an artist would paint-dramatic, profound, and utterly beautiful. For a moment I stood com­pletely spellbound. But then I recog­nized him and set down to cuddle pol­ished walnut against my jaw. At the shot, the great buck flinched and reared straight over backward to come down in a splash of flying snow. I had my trophy.

This one was easy to get home, strangely enough it was a long time before I realized what I had. The ant­lers were massive, extremely well balanced, and with long, well-matched points on each beam. It was the un­ usual symmetry that fooled me.

One day 15 years later, my oldest son, Dick, who had grown up in the meantime, put a tape on that head. I didn’t believe him when he told me it was well past the minimum require­ment for entry into the record book, but when I measured it myself his findings were confirmed. 

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Somewhat be­latedly, my big buck now occupies a place of immortality in the Boone and Crockett Club records. It is No. 165 in the 1958 edition of Records of North American Big Game. When I look at those great antlers on my wall, how­ ever, I see him standing proud as Luci­fer on a hilltop against a brilliant blood-red sky.

The post I Work Hard for All My Deer. This Buck Humbled Me appeared first on Outdoor Life.