Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/554642
with tall, yellow pines, with spruce, fir, and aspen thick in the canyons. There, the big fellows would stay until the snows fell. T he next morning we were back at the corral and ready to start before daylight. The fall had been mild, but even "mild" weather is pretty nippy in late October a mile and a half above sea level. That first couple of miles, before the sun came over the edge of the mesa to melt the hoarfrost, we shook and shivered. We saw but a few deer that second day, as the cold and the approaching winter had driven the does and fawns lower, though snow was yet to fall. When we'd strike a good-looking canyon I'd hunt on foot, as the country was so thick that a couple of bounds would take a buck out of sight. Once I saw a fair buck lying on the top of a ridge between two shallow canyons. He was completely unconscious of my presence. He looked lazily about, wiggled his big ears, got up to browse for a minute and lie down again. I left without disturbing him, bent on getting a larger one. Around 10 o'clock we were riding along a ridge when I heard a buck snort in the spruce to my left. Then I heard the thump of running feet and the crash of brush. None of us saw him, but his tracks told me he was a big fellow. Cautiously we followed, working upwind, circling to head him off. Eventually we lost his track on a rocky ridge and gave up. But we knew we had hit paydirt at last and that the day would bring us shots at the big buck we wanted. J ust to compare notes with my previous Kaibab trips, I counted the deer we saw that day. There were 51 in all. And those 51 deer weren't all does and fawns by any means. Four or five times I bounced off my horse, grabbed my scope-sighted rifle, and followed bucks as they flashed through thick timber. I fired only one shot and that was an error on my part. Jimmy and my wife were 50 yards or so ahead of me when I heard Jimmy yell, "There goes a big one!" I got off and saw four deer running through the timber. When they disappeared, my wife said the last one was a buck and I thought she meant the big one. From the way they were headed, I knew they would cross an opening in the timber about 250 yards from where I sat, ready. One by one they dashed through the field of my scope. The first two were does. So was the next. My finger itched on the trigger. Then the last came out. It was a confusing experience. I pulled the trigger just as my brain registered that I didn't want that buck. He was a four-pointer, but a small one. I probably would have missed him even if he had been wearing a rack like a rocking chair, but I did miss. I was glad. Afterward, Jimmy told me that the good buck had been in sight a fraction of a second and he had left the others to go his own way. At 4 o'clock we reached the corral. We had ridden almost 40 miles over rough country, and we were tired. But we were in big-buck country at last—a wide, beautiful plateau covered s P o R T I n G C L a s s I C s 6 2