Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/554642
s P o R T I n G C L a s s I C s 6 4 The end of the hunt came far quicker than I had expected. We were on our horses and had circled wide in a vague hope of cutting the track of the buck that got away when I heard my wife say, "There's a great big buck, right over there in the timber. Want him?" I looked and there he was, a bit less than 200 yards away, standing. He was motionless, frozen, looking for all the world like the storybook buck the tyro so hopefully dreams about, but which the old hunter seldom sees. A little patch of sunshine filtering through tall pines made his great antlers gleam, and shone on the gray-brown of his fall coat. His head was a good one, but how good only the tape measure would show. It was almost a shame to shoot that beautiful buck. He didn't have a chance in the world. My 7mm came out of the saddle boot, and the picket of the 4X scope came to rest against his shoulder. He went down at the crack of the rifle, kicked feebly for a moment and was still. Then we found out why the buck had acted so foolishly. He had been bedded down to get warm in that spot of sun. Hearing us, he jumped up, and he stood there confused, still numb with sleep. He was a big buck, one of the eight or ten really good ones that had been taken so far that season. He had a symmetrical four-point head with main beams of 27 inches. We photographed him, dressed him out, and loaded him on Jimmy's horse. When we reached the Fredonia-Grand Canyon road, we took him off and sent Jimmy back to the corral with the horses to get the car. We had been hunting in a wilderness, but now we sat by a road where cars full of tourists from every state in the union streamed by. Some stopped and admired the big fellow. Others said it was a shame—little knowing that the deer of the Kaibab must be taken out to conserve their food supply. Back at the Moquitch, we butchered both bucks, skinned out the heads and stowed them away. It was an interesting hunt, but an easy one, and we had fired but three shots between us. k aibab deer are wild deer. They are never fed, never pampered; but they are watched and surveyed, and the hunting is rigidly supervised. Every year the forest service makes estimates of the increase, the losses from various causes, the condition of the range. The deer taken by sportsman are weighed, examined for health and disease, and the percentage of bucks to does is recorded. The herd is a crop and it's treated like one—something that will have to happen eventually all over the United States. All sportsmen who come to the Kaibab must check in at one of the four camps, where they can rent wall tents, horses or guides; or they may pitch their own tents and hunt on foot, as they see fit. But when they get their deer, they must check it with the forest and game officials, have the meat sealed, and surrender the deer tags on their licenses.