11/13/1979 Deer Hunting with LaJuan (journal entry, somewhat edited)
Deer country, north-central Colorado
LaJuan
Me
Four-point the next weekend
Much like last year we shuffled up through the aspens under a partial moon, flushing one or two
unseen deer as we approached the ridge. LaJuan lugged a shiny, new and heavy 30-06. I parked her
on the ridge where Bill shot his four-point last year then traversed another couple hundred yards
across an open slope before sitting down in the sagebrush to await the dawn.
The velvet dark night yielded to mauve and purple before fading to pearly gray. Does and fawns
assumed form among the aspen trunks not far below me. I sat chilled and still watching them
placidly graze until finally, wandering too close to me, they take alarm and clear out. I move
upslope. A fork buck is browsing along the ridge with four does but at 250 yards the shot does not
interest me so I sit beside an old snag and lean my rifle up against its silver trunk. Sunshine
begins to warm my fingers.
I hear gunshots below me then watch a man in an orange coat walk across a meadow and kneel by a
prostrate deer at the edge of a little spruce grove. I note the spot intending to return and
retrieve the heart for supper. After we move on, the man, one of six similar head-hunter types
from Georgia, will stash his buck in the spruces and go after a bigger rack. This one was only a
two-point. We know this because the hunter confessed his strategy to LaJuan after she pressed him
with innocent but persistent questions.
Jim helped another member of the same party skin out a large fork buck on a distant ridge. That
hunter also left the deer to hang while he sought more points. When I later returned to the first
hunter's deer I couldn't find it. Perhaps he was unable to find a bigger one. None of us were
subsequently summoned to testify against the point hunters so I guess the game warden either caught
them red-handed or didn't catch them at all.
Back on the ridge two bucks are browsing on russet chokecherry bushes in the sage at edge of the
aspens. I study them through my scope, a two-point and a 3x3. Their faces and necks are sleek
brownish-gray and black, their antlers small and gracefully curved. I watch them for long time,
savoring the moment of quarry sighted. I had hoped for a four-point in case I don't get an elk but
decide to settle for this three-point. The shot is never quite right, mostly head-on at about 150
yards, so I hold off. They angle up the slope towards me and disappear into spruces, reappear and
traverse down in front of me not 50 yards away. I had intended to shoot behind the head but the
right shot never presents itself and I am too possessed by the moment to change my aim, too aware
of the grace and fluidity of the bucks, their soft and slightly tentative steps with noses held
high to test the breeze. They slip into the aspens and I do not see them again.
The rest of the day I see no more bucks and one more doe. Aware that we have to return to Fort
Collins the next afternoon I regret my hesitation over the three-point. Also that LaJuan and I
didn't stick together. She saw no deer all day - discouraging, though she is very happy to be out
of biochem lab for a few days, out in the woods with gun in hand.
In the evening I stumble into a meadow hopping with grouse and shoot one out of a spruce tree with
my 243 after chasing it uphill with rocks in hand until my lungs burned. I hadn't wanted to expend
a bullet for just a grouse. Back at camp Jim has a spike buck and six grouse, having shot them all
by noon. He keeps exclaiming that his deer is barely bigger than a squirrel. He had seen another
spike but nothing bigger than the two-point the guy from Georgia shot. Long after dark Eric wanders
into camp (Jim was getting worried) having seen only one buck which he'd been unable to shoot
because a doe was in the way.