I Shot a Limit of Mallards, then Tagged the No. 4 All-Time Record Buck

This story, “A Good Day for Ducks: How I Shot the No. 1 Deer,” appeared in the November 1964 issue of Outdoor Life.

When the Creator molded the land, He blessed the Flathead Valley with aluminum ore, and with hunting and fishing supreme. I live in Columbia Falls, Montana, in the northeast corner of the valley and about 21 miles west of Glacier National Park, and I work in the refining plant of the Anaconda Aluminum Company. When I’m not working, I’m likely to be out hunting or fishing.

A large percentage of us at the plant are on a rotating-shift schedule. This means one week of day shift, one week of afternoon shift, and then one week of graveyard shift. Some men would probably prefer the unemployment rolls. But for those of us who love hunting and fishing, this schedule provides extra daylight hours for enjoying the pleasures of the Flathead Valley.

As a rule, when I get off graveyard at 8 in the morning, I head for home to hit the sack and get my sleep while five of our six children are in school. But the morning of November 19, 1963, was different. The ground was white with a layer of soft snow that had fallen during the night, and there was still an occasional flurry in the air. Conditions were ideal for jump-shooting ducks.

As I walked in the door, my wife Joyce said, “Well, it should be a darn good day to catch up on your sleep.” “Not this morning,” I replied. “It’s too good a day for ducks.” Without waiting for an argument I headed for my gun closet and got out my shotgun and rifle, a Remington Model 870 Wingmaster 12 gauge and a Model 88 Winchester in .308 caliber.

As I started out the back door, my wife asked, “What are you expecting to run into with all the artillery?”

I could see her slight smile, and I didn’t stop to answer. She knew well the purpose of the two guns. It had been only a few years ago that she had gone along with me one morning to drive the car while I hunted the creeks. I had taken only my shotgun and, while driving a backcountry road, I spotted the biggest whitetail buck I’d ever seen in my life. He was lying about 75 yards out in a stubble field, but my shotgun doesn’t have that kind of range. I learned my lesson well from this experience; from that day on I carried both of my guns.

My deer-hunting experience goes back 20 of my 35 years. At age 15 I was living in Great Falls, Montana, where we hunted mule deer in the open, coulee country. I was fortunate enough to shoot some very fine bucks, but none of record proportions. Ten years ago I moved with my wife and children to Columbia Falls, and since then I’ve learned a lot about whitetail hunting. One thing I know for sure: shooting muleys in open country was like shooting fish in a barrel compared with getting a good shot at a whitetail in the brush.

Before leaving town, I stopped by at a couple of friends’ homes to see if they were game for a duck-hunting trip. They were already asleep. So I headed for Creston and what I hoped to be some good duck shooting.

As I crossed the bridge that spans the Flathead River, I noticed a few fishermen trying for salmon (landlocked kokanee that spawn every fall in the many tributaries of Flathead Lake). Since I’d done my share of salmon fishing the previous month, my thoughts returned to this morning’s hunt.

Instead of taking the highway straight to Creston, where I planned to hunt, I turned onto a back road that would take me past Lake Blaine and along Columbia Mountain. This road runs through the foothill fringes of the backbone of our state, the massive continental divide. As I had anticipated, there had been quite a bit of movement of big game after the snow. Intermittently, there were tracks crossing the road.

As I drove along, absorbed in the scenery, three does bounded across the road in front of the station wagon and into the brush. The brush here was so thick I couldn’t see how they could possibly run through it.

I parked the car hastily and went after the deer for a possible shot. But after a few frustrating minutes of battling the brush, I returned to the car.

There is very little hunting competition in the middle of the week. I’d been traveling for about an hour and I had met only one car, and that was Al Gustafson, the rural mailman on his daily run. I’ve been out some days and not seen another hunter all day. This is another advantage of the graveyard shift.

As the road approached the fringe area separating heavier timber from farmland, I looked up ahead just in time to glimpse a whitetail buck. He was sporting an enormous headpiece. I started to ease the car to a stop, but then I remembered the incident with the does. I figured it would be a wild-goose chase, and I continued on toward Creston.

Creston is about 15 miles south of Columbia Falls on Highway 35. The town is small, but for the sportsmen of the Flathead Valley it’s a focal point. Within a five-mile radius of Creston a sportsman has everything he could ask for. There is excellent fishing for bass, rainbows, and cutthroats. The hunting includes pheasants, ducks, geese, elk, bears and deer. On this day, I was to find the area contained one of the largest deer on the continent. The back road crosses the main highway at Creston. Five minutes later I reached the creek I planned to hunt. I parked the car by an old, vacant farmhouse and set about getting all my gear together.

When hunting ducks in the snow, I wear a white, army-surplus ski parka and a pair of white leggings my wife made out of an old sheet. I find this outfit as essential for successful duck hunting as camouflaged clothing is for bowhunting.

As I trudged down the creek, the flash image of the monster buck crossing the road kept coming back to my mind. I rounded a bend in the creek; suddenly, a brace of mallards flushed and headed into the trees before I had a chance to shoulder my gun. After giving myself some verbal abuse, I decided to concentrate on the ducks and put the big buck in the back of my mind.

A couple of hundred yards down the creek, I jumped a flock of fat mallards, and I managed to drop three.

I set to work retrieving the ducks from the creek. In my knapsack I carry a cut-down spinning rod, an old spinning reel, and a wooden plug with good sharp hooks. With this outfit, it is only a matter of some practice casting. I get my ducks on shore and I don’t get wet feet wading silt-bottom streams. I have lost only a very small percentage of ducks during the last 10 years.

With the three mallards in my knapsack, I headed down the creek to a spot where I anticipated more ducks. Approaching in a wide circle to keep a screen of trees between me and the creek, I crawled up to the bank and peered around a tree. About 30 yards away there were five nice mallards chuckling to each other without a care in the world. When I stepped into the open, the ducks strained to get up fast. I took my time, knocking down two ducks and filling my limit.

On my way back to the car, the vision of the big buck was again in my thoughts. I daydreamed. What if I went back to where I had seen him? I might just happen to jump him. This sounded fantastic to me. But after I got back to the car, I found myself returning to the place where I had seen the huge rack.

I was soon back at the spot. I parked the car on a skid trail. Then I slipped off my white leggings and parka and replaced them with a red hunting shirt and cap. I was now ready for deer hunting.

As I loaded my rifle, I issued myself some mental reminders. This old boy might be five miles away by now, or he might be around the first hogback. Take it slow and deliberate, and use the old stop-and-go method of stalking. It was just noon, which gave me a couple of hours before I had to start for home.

I picked up the buck’s tracks on the edge of the road and walked into the woods after him. I was fortunate on two counts. First, the snow had stopped soon enough to allow me to follow the buck’s tracks easily. Secondly, unlike the does that I had tried to follow earlier, the buck had gone into a newly logged-off area. If I jumped him in the sparse timber, I would at least be able to get a decent shot.

I’d traveled about 100 yards, when the buck’s tracks joined with those of another deer. Close observation showed that the two deer had been eating browse and weren’t in any hurry. Since it was late in November, I speculated that the second set of tracks was that of a doe.

There was complete silence in the woods. At the Anaconda plant I work as a potman, and a part of my job is running a pneumatic jackhammer to break a crust that forms on “pots” used in the aluminum-refining process. After a night’s work with the roar of the hammer and the hullabaloo of plant horns and machinery, the quietness of a secluded forest seems deafening.

I was traveling along at a snail’s pace when the serenity of the forest was shattered by the scolding of a squirrel about 100 yards ahead. Automatically, I dropped to one knee and brought my rifle up into shooting position. I froze, and waited to see what the little tattletale was complaining about. I soon saw a flash of movement through some low-growing brush. Then a good-size doe came into view. She headed across an opening that was about 15 feet wide. At this point I went through the agonies of a boxer waiting for his bout to begin. Wondering if the monster buck was with her, I held my breath for what seemed an eternity.

Suddenly, there he was.

One thing I will say — I never had time to worry about getting buck fever. There was no time to debate what to do. The doe was already in the safety of the brush on the other side of the opening, and the buck, with his horns down, was now pussyfooting for the safety of the brush. I leveled my sights on the vital spot behind the front shoulder, and I squeezed the trigger. The buck disappeared into the brush.

I can’t say I heard the thud of the bullet. I think that as the size of the buck soaked in I went into a state of semi-shock. I paced off the comparatively short shooting distance, 90 paces to where I’d seen him go into the brush. All sorts of thoughts rushed through my mind. Had I really shot at this big a buck? If so, had I missed him, or hit him?

I looked around for telltale blood spots in the snow. When I couldn’t find any sign that he’d been hit, a lump started to form in my stomach. Then, after a little closer scrutiny, I noticed a small splotch of blood about waist high on some snowy brush. As I worked my way up a small ridge, the splotches got bigger and more frequent. Finally there he lay, draped over a large windfall. He was a magnificent buck.

It took quite a bit of doing to load the animal into the back of the station wagon by myself. I tried again and again to lift the buck, but this was futile. I finally slid him up on an old log-loading platform, and then I backed the wagon to the platform and managed to slide the buck in. I congratulated myself for my clear thinking and drove off for home.

It was worth every bit of effort and lost sleep to see the look on my wife’s face when I drove into the back yard. “Say,” she remarked, as she eyed the large antlers extending out the rear of the station wagon. “I thought you were going duck hunting.” I handed her the ducks on my way into the house for my camera.

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Field dressed, the buck weighed 212 pounds, but this was only the beginning. District Supervisor Don L. Brown and District Game Manager Faye Couey of the Montana Fish and Game Department measured the antlers and came up with a Boone and Crockett Club score of 192 3/8. I entered the head in the club’s 1963 competition, and how close Don’s and Faye’s measurements were is attested by the fact that the club’s judges, whose scoring is final, gave the rack a total of 191 5/8 points. My buck won first place for 1963, and the head rates fourth place in the all-time records for typical whitetails. A good day for ducks turned out to be a great day for a record buck.

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