Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/433799
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 1 6 4 blow-down infested mountains and they would be gone. About a month before the season I received a second call. Knowing I had a small cabin on my land, Kirk asked if they could use the cabin. I said yes. Then, ten days before season, the clincher: Their guides had bailed on them, and he wondered if my son would "show them the lay of the land." My son said he'd be glad to help. The day before the season, Kirk arrived along with a couple of photographers and Bruce Holt from G Loomis Rods. Later that afternoon we heard the roar of a diesel engine laboring up the steep grades that lead to my house and saw a pickup emerging from the golden aspens. As the truck got closer, I could see only a big guy behind the wheel of a white Ford pickup pulling a Harley. When he drove up, out stepped Flip Pallot. I remember thinking that southwestern Colorado is tough on a four-wheeler; but a Harley? Later, I understood that in addition to all things outdoors, Flip has been a Harley man for a long time and had spent the previous weeks riding his beloved bike through the West, including a visit to the big biker gathering in Sturgis, South Dakota. T he pursuit of the wild things often yields success but it's unpredictable, and from the beginning of the hunt the weather put us on our heels. Locals swear the jet stream itself had descended upon the San Juans. Gusts between 30 and 50 miles per hour blew day and night through the mountains and across the mesas. We hunted where we could, in the lea of the mountains and in the deep valleys. We saw elk, made even spookier by the wind, and we missed a few. The cracking sound of falling trees echoed through the mountains, but the rut went silent. Further to our disadvantage, we hunted with bows, but there wasn't a compound bow