One Heck Of A Ride

35 John’s Suburban. “Good luck,” she said as we walked out the door. “Thanks,” I said. I would have liked to see her face when she saw the tip I left her. Whitetails On A Montana Island In November of 1992 Norm Epley and I traveled from California to Montana to hunt what SCI calls “northwestern white-tailed deer” and to learn if the booking agency we had launched with Bud Dyer wanted to represent River Road Outfitting, a hunting company owned by a fellow named Harold Weiss. Instead of sitting in blinds along deer trails between bedding and feeding areas and waiting for bucks to come to us, we were taken to an island in the Yellowstone River and stationed at places the guides expected the deer would use as escape routes while two guides walked toward us from the opposite end of the island and pushed deer to us. Early our first morning on the island I was sitting on a log with a tree behind me to break up my outline when I heard a deer jump into the river to escape the drivers. A few minutes later I saw the Everyone’s Deer buck move past me in the brush as he circled and returned to the island. I had only a quick glance at his antlers and, with so little time to judge them, I decided not to shoot. When I saw the same buck sneaking out again, I got a better look at his head and I killed him. He was a nine-pointer (a “three- by-four” under the western method that ignores eyeguards) and scored 136 7/8 SCI. Norm didn’t shoot a deer before our contracted hunting days ran out, so we stayed an extra day and he shot a solid ten-pointer, as did another hunter in our camp. As is typical of the bucks from this region, the coats on all three deer were pale and their antlers were wide and heavy. Coues Whitetails In Chihuahua Carlos Gonzales Hermosillo had exhibited at SCI conventions since the early 1980s and had always specialized in outfitting hunts for Coues white-tailed deer in the Mexican state of Sonora, just across the border from Arizona. Friends had hunted with Carlos and I’d known him for years when I decided it was time I hunted a Coues deer. I was surprised when he suggested I hunt a ranch called “El Tule” on the slopes of the Sierra Madres in Chihuahua, the Mexican state east of Sonora and south of New Mexico and Texas. He had recently signed an agreement with its owner that allowed him to take clients there. When Carlos, a jovial man who speaks excellent English, assured me the ranch had a good number of Coues deer that would rank high in the SCI record books, I booked a hunt during the rut later that year. After returning to Lompoc, I provided his office with the serial number, caliber, and description of my .300Weatherby Magnum as well as a copy of a letter from our police chief in Lompoc that said I was an upstanding citizen, and Carlos and his staff took care of the paperwork. My hunting license and gun permit were waiting for me when Carlos met me in Tucson and drove me and two other hunters across the Mexican border at Nogales in December 1991. From Nogales, we drove south before heading east to El Tule in the state of Chihuahua. The long drive seemed to take forever. El Tule also is the name of a village of about 200 homes and 800 residents. Although it had electricity, television and running water, the abject Northwestern whitetail buck taken on an island in Montana, 1992