One Heck Of A Ride

135 My Introduction To European Hunting how many stags and boars our group shot on the drive, but there were only a few. I still didn’t understand Ricardo Medem’s fascination with a monteria, but long before I boarded my flight back to the States I promised myself I’d return to Spain. Until this trip, I’d not realized it had so many hunting opportunities. Ibex in the Gredos mist I kept my promise to myself when I returned to Spain in 1996, this time with my wife Marty, and Lad Shunneson and his wife Lenka. It was November, and the weather made hunting and traveling difficult. We were met at the airport in Madrid by our guide and outfitter, Juan Toquero, and the five of us with all our luggage and my gun case were squeezed into his Range Rover for the 150-mile drive south to the Gredos Mountains in drizzling rain and fog. Juan could not have chosen a better place to stop for lunch than the Hastal del Cardenal, just inside the main gate in Toledo mid- way to our destination. Our wives were impressed with its well-kept garden, heavy beams, thick walls, huge fireplaces and other amenities. The building was built for the region’s cardinals and other Catholic dignitaries in the 14th century and was an archbishop’s summer home until it was reborn as an upscale accommodation for 20th century travelers. From Toledo, Juan drove us to a village at the foot of the Gredos Mountains, where we spent the night. Before saying goodnight, he said he’d checked the weather reports. If the rain and fog didn’t let up by morning, we would be wasting our time trying to hunt in it and might have to change our plans. And that’s exactly what happened. The fog on the mountain was so thick when we awoke there was little chance of seeing anything more than a few feet away. My hunt for a Gredos ibex would have to wait for another day. “The weather up north is better,” Juan said. “If you want, we could hunt a Cantabrian chamois up there this afternoon if we hurry.” It meant backtracking, but our next stop was a house between the towns of Leon and Luis, north and east of Madrid near the country’s northern border. We left the women there and picked up a gamekeeper and drove to the end of a road in the Cantabrian Mountains, parked, and started hiking up a canyon. It was cold and windy but, as weather forecasters had predicted, there was no rain or fog. On our hike up the mountain we passed two red stags that stared down at us on the trail. A few minutes later, Juan showed us the tracks of a wolf. By the time we reached the summit, I had counted twenty-two red deer, but none was a mature male. After glassing from the other side of the ridge, the gamekeeper told Juan we needed to check another area nearby. We had not yet started our descent when we took one last look with our binoculars and spotted a billy on a snow-covered peak across from us. Silhouetted against the blue sky as he was, a close-up photograph of him would have made a great poster for a travel agency. Even without a spotting scope, I could see his horns made him worth going after. We were approaching where we’d last seen the chamois when he suddenly peered down over the edge of a cliff above us. I was carrying shooting sticks and quickly set them up, found the billy in the scope and fired before he could take flight. Juan and the gamekeeper were watching the billy with their binoculars and were surprised when it suddenly dropped, but I knew if I didn’t act quickly that chamois would be gone. I was even more surprised that the 180-grain Nosler Partition bullet traveling 3,450 feet per second from my new rifle, a .30-378 Weatherby, had exploded inside the little animal without exiting. I used Partitions on game of all sizes with my .300 Weatherby and this was the first