Diary of Bud's Hunt …

© Jeff R. Filler, 2004

Moscow, Idaho

October 7, 2004

I drove to the cabin to meet my dad. I'm going with him on his guided sheep hunt. Beautiful Indian Summer Day, high 60s - 70s, clear, calm, and warm. Saw some coyotes, geese, and deer on the way to McCall. Some of the geese where on the lake but wouldn't give me a shot.

Reading Journey of Desire by John Eldredge.

October 8, 2004

Awoke at the Cabin with Bud…and had a nice breakfast. Then we headed to the McCall Airport. It's a clear, still day with some fog on the lake and the ground but not on the airfield.

In time McCall aviation opened; before long Jim Weaver arrived at the airport, but not to fly us. He was taking a Forest Service employee from Big Creek to Cabin Creek. As it would be, he would return before we would get off the ground.

At length our pilot, Mike Dorris arrived, but we hesitated and were told we needed to wait for a rafter with whom we could combine for business efficiency. We were scheduled for 9 a.m. The rafter was going later but was told us to show up early. When it looked like he wouldn't show up, Mike loaded us up and taxied us onto the runway. But, when he got the headset on, he was told to return because the rafter had arrived.

We changed planes to accommodate the rafter, raft, and gear. The plane now was the Islander, a high wing, two engine plane. After 9 we were in the air. Jim Weaver advised us that RP, our outfitter, was waiting at Cabin Creek.

The flight was beautiful. Mike's practice is to cross the divides at about divide level. We flew northeast, over Browns Pond, Lake Fork Creek. South of Maki Lake, just South of Fitsum Peak, and on. We came right over Logan Lake in the upper end of Big Creek; I had the rafter get footage of Logan from his side. Then we went over Edwardsburg and the area we had hunted at the upper end.

Then the terrain changed and the Big Creek Canyon appeared and it looked tight and bottomless, a gray, very deep and narrow place to fly, much less land, a plane … like something out of a science fiction movie. Off my side I saw the Dewey Moore strip. Essentially, a place where some have landed planes going uphill on what was probably long ago a slide coming out of a gulch.

As we lower and nearer to what must be Cabin Creek, there didn't appear to be a place to land, and indeed there wasn't in the Big Creek Canyon. But, for the experienced pilots, there is a place to land on Cabin Creek itself - Alas the Cabin Creek Strip. Mike circled above once, and then brought us in. As with many of these landing strips, there is no going around once you make the approach.

On the ground we met RP of Horse Mountain Outfitters. After introductions and chat while RP readied our horses, we headed down the creek to the main camp across Big Creek.

After an hour or so of fuss and a few more introductions, we were headed down Big Creek with a string of pack animals. I rode Bonnie; Dad was on Larry. I had to assume that Bonnie knew what she was doing as we rode along cliffs - quite scary to look down on, or from; especially when you are looking at it from a horse. I found out later a few basic instructions for riding a horse which, in retrospect, I'm glad I didn't know at the time.

After about five miles and huge amounts of beautiful scenery, we stopped at Taylor Ranch where we were to meet Guide Stan Potts. After a rest, or maybe during,
Dad found a note from Stan instructing us to come up the Cliff Creek Trail to the third basin - and that "excitement awaits."

We waited a few more minutes for Dave to arrive with a saddle horse for Stan, and then headed up. We reached Stan at the third basin, a thousand or vertical feet up. Stan had spotted and had been watching some rams on the other side, up on Horse Mountain. He had also been camped right in some elk, … cows, and a nice bull.

We set up camp on some nice benches between the trail and the creek. Stan and I found access to water. Camp was set up and Dad and I went to the edge of the basin at day end where the elk were for a look. As dusk we saw our first sheep - a ewe and lamb came out about 300 yards away and anxiously grazed for a while. Then they went back into the scant timber. They were probably there the whole time we all came up through the basin. - pack string and all.

At dark we returned to camp.

October 9, 2004

Bud and I got up before light, or just as it was turning light. We headed to the edge of the basin while RP made breakfast, etc.

Bud spotted a "something" in the cliffs on our side. By the time I got optics ready, he claimed there were fifteen or twenty more. Indeed, there was a whole bunch of sheep in the cliffs on our side of Cliff Creek. They appeared to be mostly ewes and lambs, though it did look like perhaps one legal ram was with them. Bud went back to camp to report the find. I followed.

Bud was excited to get going, so after breakfast we headed back to the basin. Stan, meanwhile, headed a bit out of camp to look for the rams we had seen earlier. Before long he waved us over. Stan, RP, and I watched the five or so rams way high on the other side in tough territory.

We called Bud back over with the FRS. We didn't know how we could exactly go after the rams, but we knew we hat to get several thousand feet higher and evaluate options before going after them.

We saddled the horses, packed lunches, and got ready to hunt. We gained another thousand feet or so. The weather was turning. By the time we got to the ridge, the wind was strong and it was bringing some seriously bad weather. From the top I spotted some sheep about 800 yards below and stopped the string. We got out optics and there was at least one nice ram in the group.

We put on rain gear.

We took the horses on to a saddle of sorts and got ready to go down after the sheep. The weather was VERY threatening. RP, Bud, and I went down; Stan would stay with the horses. We descended several hundred yards carefully, but, we were not entirely clear as to where we had descended to relative the sheep. I used the video camera in VCR mode and played back the view of the sheep; we weren't seeing the same terrain. In the VCR there was a predominant downed tree, which we couldn't see yet.

We spotted a group of nine or so across and higher. They might have been the same group, except no ram. More of them, and it seemed while certainly possible for the sheep to move that far, they wouldn't have on that amount of time. I kept looking low, and finally the terrain in the video appeared; I now knew where to focus my attention.

At length the sheep showed up again where they were before on the side hill this way of the big drowned tree. Bud and RP slid forward for a rest; I got ready with the camera. I was worried dad's first shot would chop a limb off the tree in front of them; so were they, so they moved forward. I took the camera off auto focus and was able to get the ram through the near branches and far brush.

At the shot the ram ran uphill a short distance and stopped. Even though I couldn't see an impact, I had that feeling that the ram was mortally hit. He then collapsed backward down the hill, and stumbled down and across the slope. Before Bud could locate him for another shot, the ram laid down and died. The range of the shot was 254 yards, down and across hill. Bud and RP were equally excited. It was my dad's first ram, and RP's first ram as a guide.

We made it down to the ram, took pictures, video, and then caped and boned him, and then had to figure a way out. As we did this, 8 or 9 sheep watched about 500 yards up the hill. Another group, probably the one from which we had taken the ram, were feeding about 200 yards to the west.

We figured that we had to take the ram down…maybe a bit across, perhaps to the more open south slopes, but definitely down. It was tough…with loose rocks, chutes we had to slide down, brush, rocks, ledges, boulders, loose rocks, thorn bushes, loose rocks, ledges …yuck. Eventually we made it to the bottom where it flattened out onto a shelf that led down to camp. Three saddled horses were waiting for us. Sweet. Potts knew what to do where and when.

At camp we celebrated with coffee, whisky, and beer, and dad with a planned smoke. It snarled of cold. We brought everything inside the tent and went to bed. It was 7:50 p.m. mountain time and 6:50 p.m. my time. It was a world record for getting to bed so early.

RP guessed the ram to score about 140.

It didn't snow!

October 10

We awoke well before light. RP went about breakfast and his other duties while Dad and I checked the basin to the East at daylight. Beautiful clear night with a crescent moon and stars gave way to a blue-bird day. Nothing was going on in the basin, but we spotted nine or so sheep atop the cliffs on our side of Cliff Creek. By the time the sun hit the cliffs they were gone.

After breakfast Stan Potts headed back to Cabin Creek and to go on out. We packed lunches and headed up the big basin to get on top, by horseback. On the way up we met a bull moose coming down, in the opposite kind of terrain on would expect to see a moose. He took a wide switchback and let us pass by. Then he continued his wander down toward Taylor Ranch.

From on top we looked into Cougar Creek - beautiful country, but didn't see any elk. We looked down on the Soldier Bar landing strip - incredible. I called home to report the success of the day before. Lounging by a log Dad spotted an elk about a mile away, or more. We got out the optics and spotted three or four more, one of which was a nice bull.

The plan was for me to stay put with the spotting scope, and horses, and watch the elk while Dad and RP made the sneak. The country was open with scattered snags and brush; the sneak would be basically straight on. The distance was about a mile.

I watched a female graze uphill and to the right and then lay down, looking northwest. Probably the herd cow - she was looking out for the group. It looked like another animal behind some snags, but it sure didn't move. After a while, RP's horse wandered off; I went and got him. When I resumed glassing I saw an elk-looking stump that looked more like a stump, but as I looked farther left, I spotted some more elk lying in the sun. Six, eight, nine…a lot of the terrain features that I thought were stumps were actually elk. Then the brown spot behind the snags became the bull.

As the sun got hotter, the elk started moving west. Finally the big cow got up and went down with them. I reported their movements to Dad and RP via FRS. They were about 500 yards away them, trying to get on them, but the elk had moved out of their sight.

The elk moved permanently and deliberately out of my view, so I started packing up. I hoped any minute that I would hear a shot and then the call to move horses and self forward. RP's horse had again moved off, now some distance, so I went and rounded him up.

A good while passed and I became a bit worried that the elk had got out and underneath them and therefore away. Then I heard three shots. I waited a while more and then called to see what was happening. In short, Dad got the bull, a nice 5 by 5, and it had rolled down into the draw about 300 yards below where we had first seen them.

RP and Dad called for me to bring the horses up the ridge and around the head of the basin they were in. I then broke off the trail, tied the horses about were we saw the elk, and then headed down to help RP work the animal. We got it quartered, caped, and skinned. Then we stashed the meat in the bottom where it would be cool, and climbed out.

The afternoon was fabulous. The Bighorn Crags loomed on the eastern horizon. We were in a sense on top, though the highest peaks were another 1500 to 2000 feet higher…but most of our immediate terrain was below us. It looked like a summer afternoon about 6 pm, not October and 4 pm. We had about 2 or 3 miles to go to get back to camp. I guessed we'd been rolling in at dark; Dad guessed "just as" getting dark. It was warm in the sun, but the air was cold. Dad was right on arrival time.

From the top, now on the descent, the upper slope of the basin looked so steep it was unreal. It looked like a rock rolled would go easily 800 feet vertical, and maybe farther. How could soil even cling to such an incline? It was amazing. Near the bottom of the slope, as it was getting dusk, two chukars launched from high up and flew over us, hundreds of feet in the air, to some unknown destination down Big Creek.

Dad and I ate sandwiches and other stuff while RP watered the horses. Then RP and I shared a great meat loaf dinner. It had been a good day. We had got a sheep in one day, and a bull elk the next. We could go home early if we wanted to.

October 11

We awoke to the start of yet another blue-bird day. After breakfast we broke camp and headed down to Taylor Ranch, then on to Cabin Creek Camp. The ride was beautiful, though long, as this trip was the first for me on horseback. Getting off the horse would be welcome.

At Cabin Creek we arranged for a plane to pick us up the morning after the next, as we would wait for RP to get the elk and our stuff down from the camp at Cliff Creek. We would both have loved to have gone back with RP, via Whiskey Springs, but we were to sore, and we knew we'd drag RP down.

Stan Potts showed up. Evidently the plane he wanted to go out on was full. We listened to flying and other stories through the afternoon and dinner. Robert, our planned elk guide, it turned out, quit. But we didn't need one now anyway.

We slept to the clomps and other noises of the horses and mules, and some distant howls of either wolves or coyotes.

October 12

God, you are good…and you are so fabulous. Win, do, be a great God in our midst. Show yourself mighty, strong, and awesome. I pray it - ask it. Bring RP and Dave back safe - and all of our stuff.

By the time we emerged from our tent it was light outside. Dave and Stan had left for the Cabin Creek airfield for Stan to fly out. Breakfast was nonetheless waiting. Great.

We milled around camp, washed dishes, swept, cleaned up. I decided to climb the ridge east of camp to find a knob and read and write. I decided to take Dad's 30-06; he handed me 3 cartridges - the only ones he had. I took my knife, sharpening steel, small thermos of coffee, and a couple of access bars. I took the wool coat dad gave me, binos, hat, and a flashlight. I started out kind of low, but quickly started climbing. It was 10:30; I said I'd be gone 3 hours max, and about 11:30 or so I'd turn my radio on.

I climbed up and east on good game trails and a pack trail. It seemed like it took quite a while to get to the elevation of the Cabin Creek airfield across the valley. I spotted a person along Big Creek with a stringer of nice fish. (Big Creek is catch-and-release only.)

As I climbed I came across some nice deer sign that was relatively fresh. So I kept going in anticipation. Then I saw 3 deer above me to the east. They where all bucks, one probably had a 25 inch width, good length, but not necessarily heavy. However he was still a nice buck. Behind him there was a four point, probably, and the third was probably a 3-point. I watched where they went and came up with a plan to get them. They looked like they'd cross the ridge and bed.

I came across on them perfectly, or so I thought. All of the sudden I heard the stampede of their running off. They sounded only thirty yards away. I could see seventy yards in all directions, but I couldn't see them. They were gone. BIG BUMMER. I scampered around the side hill and there was nothing. No trace, no animals running at a distance, nada. They had probably been right in the sun, which, with the terrain and time of year, was right on the horizon.

I saw a beautiful cinnamon blonde bear and decided to go over his way. I got to within 25 yards of it and then threw rocks at it to scare it off. On my way back to where I came across on the bucks there was another bear. He was coming my way so I stood still. He looked like he could be the other bear's twin. I sure hoped mama wouldn't be around and get upset.

The bear walked to within about seven feet of me. I could almost have touched it with the end of my gun. Finally he noticed me, looked at me for about a minute and then decided the appropriate thing would be to run off. I had no camera.

I went back to the ridge where I'd jumped the bucks a found a place to look and enjoy coffee, maybe read. About 150 yards below, I mean BELOW, me, were some deer. A doe, fawn, and some others. I saw to more bodies and figured one might be a buck. Sure enough, a 2-point was in there. I waited. They were off and on or only piece-at-a-time visible in the trees. If they were going to go out onto the nearby hillside I'd take the buck.

Pretty soon the doe and fawn came into the open; I figured the buck would follow. I got a nice rest. I decided that I would only take the very best 100 percent sure kill shot. I only had 3 rounds, and I definitely didn't want to go after a wounded deer.

He gave me a nice perfect shot, so I took it. He crumpled at the hit of the 180 grain bullet and rolled down the hill another 70 or 80 yards. I called Dad on the FRS and asked if he'd come up and help me get the deer out. As he came up the trail, I descended to the deer and started quartering it. I got the back straps, some neck, and three quarters off the deer and then carried the two hind quarters up the hill to the know from which I'd shot the deer. It was a grind. I was thirsty and drank the coffee. It was hot. I had an Access Bar. I got there about the time Dad came out on the ridge, another 150 yards up, I mean UP. He said he was unwilling to come down; he was on a nice trail. So, bummer, I carried the hind quarters up to him. It was about 3 p.m.

Dad took the hind quarters down the trail to camp; I descended to the knob, and then to the deer. I finished taking the last quarter off, got the neck meat, some rib meat, and the tender loins and headed up. There was a sense of urgency as the days are short in mid-October, and we had a plane to catch the next morning. I got to the knob with the deer about 4 pm. I called Tammy and told her of my success and our plans to come out early. I ended the call saying I needed to get the rest of the animal out and the sun was almost behind the ridge.

Instead of going up to the main trail I took game trails across and down. It surprised me how many draws I had come across total. I made it to camp at about 5 pm, and about 5 minutes ahead of RP and Dave, who were bringing the elk and our stuff from Lower Cliff Creek Camp.

I had a beer or several, finished tidying up the meat and then we had deer loin steak, rice and biscuits for dinner.

October 13

We awoke to a starry night well before any hint of dawn to pack for the trip to the airfield and flight out. We said our farewells to RP after a good breakfast and then Dave took us to the airstrip.

In time a Cessna 206 Turbo arrived for us; we loaded a deer, a goat, an elk, our gear, and ourselves, and took off. On the flight out we saw several groups of deer and elk, and more beautiful terrain.

Finally we crossed the McCall range just north of Nick Peak. A certain sadness hit of what was ahead…Civilization, people, and everyday life.


ENDNOTES

1. At various times through the hunt we discovered our thoughts both and strangely drifted to chocolate milkshakes - but I advised my dad that we must not let our thoughts linger long on such - it would ruin the hunt - as `chocolate milkshakes' were simply NOT going to happen - at least out there.

1-A.  My thoughts also lingered to being with my wife - which similarly I realized would simply NOT happen - at least out there.

2. Probably good that I didn't whack the bigger buck - as it might have `triggered' RP's trophy fee for trophy bucks. (Puns not intended - though there probably is one or two.)

3. While Potts was still at camp he carefully cut some sheep loin and proceeded to cook us a sheep loin dinner … the sheep batter fried, in oil. After a while, however, The Potts Factor set in, and it was discovered that he was cooking with dish soap, instead of cooking oil. Oops. His attempt the next morning was more successful.