One Heck Of A Ride

45 More Antlered Game A huge chunk of quartz found among the saguaros, ironwood, mesquite and palo verde trees in Sonora, 1990 Author needed only a quick glance to see this desert mule deer’s antlers were wide and tall beautiful Sonoran Desert until we found the fresh tracks of a big deer, and following them on foot until we came upon the buck that had made them. The second day we did this, we followed for three hours a deer that had left especially large tracks. (As we did this I remembered I had learned the hard way after walking for miles across Zimbabwe that big tracks did not always equal an old animal with heavy tusks.) Visibility in the usually arid drainages (“arroyos” in Spanish)that mule deer use for traveling and bedding is seldom more than a hundred yards, and often much less than that. The lowlands are covered with thorny brush, palo verde and ironwood trees, cholla (“jumping”) cactus and tall, multi-armed saguaros. At noon, we found some shade and ate lunch. Before we resumed tracking I pulled out some of the cactus spines I’d collected that morning. My guide had no way of telling me we were approaching the buck we’d been following, but I sensed it from his body language. At about 3:00 PM, he stepped to the left and I stepped to the right – it was the smoothest transition from guide to shooter I ever experienced when hunting with anyone – and immediately spotted the buck in its bed in the shade of an ironwood tree no more than fifty yards away. Its antlers had four long tines and an eyeguard per side, plus a “kicker” that came out between his rear forks on his left antler. All I could see in the instant it took to raise my rifle was that they were wide and tall, however. I shot him with my .300 Weatherby while he was getting to his feet and he dropped in his bed. The hunt I had booked also included a Coues deer, so the next day the guide and I switched to hunting the low rocky hills a few miles from the camp. We found a big buck the second day, but it gave me only a quick glance at its massive antlers when it ran off before I could raise my rifle. It was the only big buck we saw in a couple of days of hunting there. The hills apparently were on another ranch where the outfitter might not have had permission to take his clients because a lot of hand waving and shouting in Spanish took place when the owner showed up. I had no intention of being arrested for trespassing – or worse – in Mexico, so I grabbed the guide’s arm and got him into his truck and we drove off. When we reached the gate, we found the ranch owner had locked it behind him so I shot the lock off and we continued on to our camp. According to Carlos, the conflict with the rancher was a mistake because months earlier he had gotten permission for us to hunt there. The problem was there were five owners and not