Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/401545
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 1 1 5 Carolina white creek shrimp, cheese grits, and Tasso gravy – then rested. For the afternoon, Jack decided to hunt the higher Starner land, uphill from his morning encounter and in the opposite direction from where the wounded elk had headed. Moving up the mountain in the late afternoon, he jumped a good bull from its bed in a group of small firs. Lacking a clear shot, he let the bull disappear into the thickening forest farther up the mountain. Picking up the tracks in the snow – probably about eight inches deep – Jack saw blood. Back on the track of the bull he'd shot that morning, he followed the big elk down toward the field where he fired the shot. Somehow, in all that tangle of tracks, the bull had left the herd, doubled back into the lower aspens, and moved only a half-mile before laying down. With a radio, he called Randy. Together they tracked the bull up a mountainside, through a series of black timber benches, across a steep ridge, and down the opposite side. The bull continued across a steep canyon toward the towering San Juans. The hunters lost him at dark, which is about the time snow began to fall again, heavy and deep and further discouraging. O vernight, the clouds cleared, and the sun rised and shined on five to six inches of new snow. I intended to finish my coffee, clean up the kitchen, and guard the house from any marauding elk. But I abandoned my original plans. These are the mornings that live forever in a hunter's memory, and I felt a need – not so much to hunt – but to be in the woods. Since my hunters were already gone, I dressed, ignored anything with a scope, picked up my old Winchester Model 71 chambered in .348, and headed away from the other hunters up the steep side of the mountain into the wilderness area. The absolute solitude of the mountains in winter is impossible to resist. After climbing a short distance I headed laterally across the side of the mountain toward a series of fields – known as 1, 2, and 3 – buried in the timber. Dropping through the bottom of Field 1, I startled a very nice bull that had been resting, not 80 yards distant. I had not killed a bull in eight years, preferring both the meat of a young cow and the simple satisfaction of letting the bulls walk away. This was, however, a really nice bull (clearly in the 300s) and I decided to take him. I grew up with iron sights and still prefer them in timber, and while no shot is guaranteed, I felt confident at such close range. When I squeezed the trigger, however, nothing happened – at least not for half a second until both by denverbryan.com