One Heck Of A Ride

46 More Antlered Game everyone was on the same page. We spent the remaining days of our hunt on the ranch where we’d hunted our mule deer. There were Coues deer there, too, but we saw none I wanted. When our hunt was over, Carlos drove the five of us back to Tucson for our flights home. This story has an even happier ending: Carlos offered all of us another Coues deer hunt the following year. We had a great hunt and everyone took home trophy bucks. It was on this hunt that I met Andy and Dottie Oldfield, owners of a mountain resort in California and well-known international big game hunters. When Andy saw how I caped my buck, he asked if I were a taxidermist. I said it was something I’d watched others do, and there were times when I had to skin and flesh my own capes because no one else knew how to do it. When Andy learned I’d never been to a Weatherby Awards banquet, he invited me to attend the next year’s dinner at the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel as his guest. A formal invitation was sent to my home soon after the hunt, and I sat at his table with him, Dottie, Bob Petersen from Petersen’s magazines, and outdoor writer Craig Boddington. Attending what has been called the “Oscars” of international hunting was a new experience for me, and very enjoyable. Caribou And Moose In Newfoundland As mountains go, the Long Range Mountains on the island of Newfoundland are mere pimples on the landscape. The elevation of their highest peak is slightly less than 2,700 feet. However, they’re also the highest point on the island and home for the eastern Canada moose and woodland caribou that attracted me to the region in October 1991. To hunt these two animals, Norm Epley and I traveled to a town called Corner Brook on the southwestern corner of the island and met our guides, business partners Walter Biggin and Gerry Pumphrey. Our caribou camp was a cabin in a forest near open tundra. We hunted caribou by leaving the cabin on foot with our guide and hiking in hip boots to the marshes the guides knew the herds were using. (We walked five or six miles a day in those cumbersome boots.) The problems came when we had to cross low areas with muskeg. The ground below the clumps of moss-like vegetation was more water than mud and it wasn’t frozen, which meant we sometimes stepped into a deep hole when we least expected it. I was the first to experience having my entire leg suddenly drop out of sight. It was quite a shock and I was grateful I hadn’t broken a bone. It didn’t help that Norm couldn’t stop laughing when he saw it happen. About twenty minutes later Norm stepped into a hole and the rifle he was carrying on a sling slammed into the back of his head and “knocked him stupid”(a term I’ve heard and used since boyhood). He was in shock and about half knocked out as he struggled to get out of the hole and back on both feet, and I had my turn at laughing at his plight. Neither of us should have laughed. We were fortunate that nothing more serious happened to us. There was no shortage of caribou and I passed up several good bulls before I shot one that was approaching me from behind. I had separated briefly from Norm and the guides when I crossed over a knoll to see what was on the other side. I hadn’t heard or seen the bull, but I somehow sensed he was there and turned to see him walking toward me. He didn’t take another step after the 220-grain bullet from my .340 Weatherby hit him. The bull probably weighed 400 pounds, more or less, but although his antlers had lots of points, double shovels and both backscratchers, the main beams were short, which I’ve read is typical for woodland caribou. His silver medal antlers scored 284 SCI. After Norm shot his caribou, we moved to another camp deeper in the forest where we