One Heck Of A Ride

44 More Antlered Game we probably would not be able to shoot. Our only alternative route was a parallel trek along the hillside. Fortunately, heavy gusts of wind helped cover our movement and blew our scent away from the deer. We crept closer, staying out of sight, and narrowed the distance for my shot. It still was a long way in the wind, but after a couple of shots the buck was down. It took us a while to reach the deer. After taking Author’s guide correctly judged the main beams on his axis stag would be close to thirty inches long photos, Richard pulled out his tape measure. He had been correct. The main beams were close to thirty inches long. We gutted and caped the buck, and packed the cape, meat and antlers back to the four-wheeler and were back the hotel in time for showers and dinner. Richard worked most of the night, and did an excellent job of fleshing and salting the hide to prepare it for shipping to my taxidermist. In an article I wrote for the July/August 1992 issue of SCI’s Safari magazine, I recommended this short hunt for anyone who, after a few days of soaking up sun on a Hawaiian island, wanted to get away into the bush. It was a super hunt and a great experience. Mule Deer On The Sonoran Desert The guide who outfitter Carlos Gonzales Hermosillo had assigned me was an older man who spoke only a fewwords of English, but I could not have had a better guide for desert mule deer and Coues deer in the Mexican state of Sonora. “Timmy” was an excellent tracker who could sort out the tracks of a single deer walking among the tracks of twenty other deer and never lose the buck we were following. We got along well by using only body language and hand signals. The area we hunted was near the farming town of Caborca, forty miles or so east of the Sea of Cortez. To reach it, I flew to Tucson in January 1990 and hooked up with Carlos, who drove me and four other hunters to the Arizona-Sonora border crossing at Sasabe. He had our firearms permits and hunting licenses, and helped us get past the Mexican border agents with our rifles and ammunition. From Sasabe, we drove about two hours on dirt roads to the ranch house that was our “camp” for the next two weeks. When I wanted to check my rifle before we hunted, Carlos and I took a board he found behind the house and walked a short distance to where it would be safe to shoot. To pin a target to the board 150 yards away, Carlos stabbed it with one of the knife blades on his new Leatherman multi-tool. “That’s not good choice for a nail,” I said. “You won’t hit it,” he said. My first shot sent that Leatherman into orbit and the two of us into a laughing fit! (After that, I picked up the pieces of what was left of his tool and —without Carlos seeing me do it — I put them in my pack. The next Christmas, I gift-wrapped them in a box with Christmas paper and ribbon and mailed the package to Carlos to remind him I’d taken his “you won’t hit it” as the ultimate challenge.) Timmy and I hunted by driving out onto the