One Heck Of A Ride

65 Other North American Game the neighbor called, he wanted Levi to repair the fencing the bull had torn down. Both of the bulls we shot were big mature bulls with thick hair and heavy horns, and they could have been twins. The horns on mine scored 71 2/8 SCI; Bud’s bull scored 72 7/8 SCI. They both had thick hides that had to be removed and the warm meat chilled as soon as possible. Levi had a backhoe, and he used it to haul the two beasts to his garage where they were skinned and hung in a cold room and cut up before they froze. On the way back to his lodge, I spotted a mule deer with four-by-four antlers on a hillside above us. I had bought a Montana deer license “just in case,” but I didn’t feel comfortable about taking a long shot with the .45-70 without knowing how much the bullet would drop. I wanted my .300 Weatherby. I had left it in Levi’s barn, so I trudged back to his place retrieved the rifle and ammo, and went back to where I’d left Levi and Bud. The deer was busy watching the backhoe and the men below him, which allowed me to approach to within 200 yards or so. It was an easy shot, and he ran only a few yards before dropping. All things said, this trip was another experience, thanks to using the Sharps rifle and hunting in all that deep, cold snow. We also returned to Lompoc with several hundred pounds of good meat and more good memories while adding one more trophy in my quest for SCI’s North American Twenty-Nine award. Since our hunt, Levi Britton moved his Pine Mountain Outfitters operation to Saskatchewan. He later sold it to Joe Hardesty. GreenlandandBarrenGroundMuskoxen The first live muskoxen I ever saw was like suddenly coming upon escapees from a Jurassic Park featuring prehistoric arctic animals. There were perhaps a dozen females, calves and a couple of bulls in the little herd. Their long hair hung from their bellies, hiding their legs in the snow, and it literally flowed as they ran past guide Jimmy Hanilliak, and me. I remember my first impression was that the deeply curved horns and heavy bosses on the two bulls in the herd resembled those on an African Cape buffalo. It was November 1989 and Norm Epley, Bud Dyer and I were hunting the mainland of Victoria Island in what then was Canada’s North West Territory (it became the territory of Nunavuk in April 1991 when it split from the NWT) for Greenland muskox and arctic islands caribou. The temperature was minus 35ºF, and although booking agent Jerome Knapp of Canada North Outfitting had warned me that it could get very cold, I really wasn’t prepared for such bone- chilling weather. Counting layovers, we had spent nearly twenty hours traveling to Cambridge Bay via Los Angeles, Edmonton and Yellowknife. After landing at the hamlet of some 1,500 hardy people, we met Jimmy and spent two nights in the village. The first day was spent buying our licenses and tags, shopping for native-made gifts, and sightseeing. The second day, we loaded our gear on sleds and drove snow machines to Canada North’s camp, a collection of plywood cabins heated by cast-iron wood stoves. Before leaving the village, we had been instructed to load our rifles and leave them on the snow machines. It takes very little moisture to freeze up a rifle, and if we took them inside they would thaw out and then freeze up when exposed to that extremely cold weather. Incidentally, when I said, we “drove,” I meant our guides drove the snow machines while dragging the plywood boxes with runners on each side. Norm, Bud, and I each rode in our own boxes. There were no cushions and no springs in my box. I felt every bump in the ice, and there were many. When we approached the first muskoxen I ever saw, they quickly formed