One Heck Of A Ride

36 poverty of the place was evident as we drove through it on the way to our camp. After seeing how and where they lived, I remember thinking that it was no wonder that millions of rural Mexicans have headed north seeking better lives in the U.S. The ranch and its facilities were not much better. Corral fences were made with tree limbs stacked and tied with baling wire. The main house and outbuildings had rusting corrugated metal roofs with walls of exposed adobe blocks that were deteriorating without the plaster needed to protect them. The ranch owner apparently lived elsewhere and the little house was his foreman’s quarters. Carlos had hunted in Africa a lot, and had set up what he called a “safari-style camp” away from the ranch headquarters. A large tent that served as a kitchen and dining area, and smaller tents for the guide, a cook and camp helper, and me and the five other hunters in our camp were placed in a neat row. There also was a tent for a privy and a fire pit with chairs where we gathered in the evenings. There were carefully raked paths connecting everything, including the campfire. My guide was a man named Alvaro Cordova who spoke some English, but while he wasn’t really fluent, we managed to communicate well enough. Although we didn’t see a lot of deer I soon learned Alvaro really knew how to hunt Coues deer. He and I would drive to somewhere where we could sit and scour the hillsides and canyons around us with our binoculars. In the five days I hunted at El Tule, he found perhaps three dozen does, fawns and small bucks, and at least six decent bucks I never would have seen without him. I came to respect what guns and ammunition editor Jack O’Connor called the “most difficult of all deer to kill” (because of their wariness and the rough terrain where they live) in the articles he wrote for Outdoor Life magazine as I was growing up. I learned these deer are too intelligent to expose themselves by running off at the first hint of danger when Alvaro and I watched a buck flatten himself in a depression and allow two men to walk past him before it crawled out of danger. Any other deer would have jumped up and shown itself. In my mind, they are the smartest of all of the world’s deer. Alvaro let me know Coues deer prefer rough country with lots of cover and I believe it. The deer we saw were on rocky and steep hillsides with thorny brush cover. When he found the buck that I shot the last day of the hunt, it was bedded in the shade of an oak tree growing against a nearly vertical outcropping about a half-mile away. It must have taken us an hour to cross two small canyons to get within range. When we were in position, I shot the buck when it stood up. It was a beautiful animal with a sleek grey coat, white underparts, and a wide tail with a patch of reddish brown on top. It seemed to have larger ears and a shorter nose than other whitetails. Its antlers were typical of what I knew about its kind, Everyone’s Deer with three tines and an eyeguard on each side. (Four tines per side are sometimes seen, but five or more per side are extremely rare.) They were officially scored at 101 5/8, making it a high SCI silver medal trophy. All six of us in that camp shot good bucks. We had no problems with the food, the camp was clean and comfortable and the guides knew what they were doing. It was the third Coues deer Guide Alvaro Cordova and author with Coues deer, Chihuahua