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Show Oinoscaurland f Outdoors By Hartt Wixom , f V Vernal Express Outdoors Writer : A. ."-i : K .. V'"''V Hlf Hunting in southwest Wyoming Sometimes Utah hunters want to know best big game possibilities out of state. If you didn't know it before, I'd have to vouch for southwestern Wyoming. It isn't far from north; central or eastern Utah, something like four hours many nimrods think nothing of driving to Washington or flying to British Columbia, Alaska from the likes of Provo or Vernal, a little longer from points farther south. I was there a few days ago without license or rifle, just riding along with guide Sharon Dayton out of Cokeville, and hunters seeking moose, elk, deer. One happy Californian was enroute home with a very respectable bull moose. I didn't gather, in the next two days of looking, that it was particularly difficult, for we drove moose of all sizes from nearly every large aspen or conifer slope. . But the excitement for me came on my first venture into the timber. Dayton, with Idahoan Frank Stevens and I, had gotten a late start. Lagging behind the other hunters, we decided to " make a try s: some -shooting for Sharon. A guide seldom gets this opportunity, op-portunity, since resident license or not, he has to brush and dog for his paying guests before getting a crack at it himself. This time I brushed for him, as did Stevens. The first patch of trees I walked into (holding one hand on horse reins, the other on my 8 x 40 binoculars ) brought what seemed at first an apparition. ap-parition. Local hunters had not had too much trouble taking spike elk so far, what with a ridgeline of snow toward Star Valley producing a migration funnel southward. Yet, we were barely a mile from camp, and in relatively low terrain, so I couldn't believe what I was looking at: thick, tall antler tines. . I couldn't tell how tall because they were partially hidden in a jumble of brown stumps and logs nearly matching mat-ching color of the animal there. Then, glassing further, I found the eyes and upper throat of a huge bull! I took time to place my hands in a simulated shooting position. Yup, like even some magpies won't, he let me, vicariously at least, do him in. But, now the question was: would he remain put while I got Dayton, the only rifle-toter around? I continued on through the aspens leading my mount at the same previous pace some 300 yards from the timber, tying the cayuse up. Dayton was nowhere to be seen! But, Frank told me downslope that Sharon was coming through. By the time I got Dayton back to my vest marker, and into the trees I had walked earlier, some 15 minutes had elapsed. Yet, the story had a happy hunter's ending. The bull jumped just before Sharon could shoot, but he put one 30-0fi cartridge into him. then two more to follow up. The bull collapsed on the next ridgeline. Then, to say the work began would be a vast understatement. We spent three hours caping out the animal for mounting, as well as cleaning it out on the steep, snow-slippery slope. The next day, with one of two pack horses skitterish about it all, Dayton and I spent almost another three hours, quartering and filling meat and rack onto the animals. Preceded by several drives for deer, far up the mountain in a blizzard, it as well after pitch-black dark when we arrived at Dayton's cabin. Those cabir lights ue looked at from a mile aa were particularly welcome in that night's snowstorm. There was also much w ork after that to get elk, horses, panniers, put away. But. the satisfaction can. perhaps, be felt only by a hunter who returns with more immediate memories of success than sacrifice. Fortunately, we were also able earlier that clay to put some of Dayton's hunters into shooting range of big bucks. One bolted from a draw of chokecheeries and aspens I had brushed. Hearing the shootine. I was able to get out in time for a glimpse of the target: what at first appeared to be a middling bull crossing the upslope divide. But, taking a closer look with the glasses, I made a startling discovery. Hew asn't a bull at all, but a giant buck, with unusually high antlers. It was a definite Boone-Crockett type due to length of antlers. I didn't have sufficient suf-ficient time to study symmetry, or even thickness of those antlers, two more factors in B-C measurement. So, I can't say it was a sure winner in that competition. com-petition. But, one thing I can verify: that hunter was doggone low about missing it at a reasonable range, even on the run. I've seldom seen higher antlers, with ( one indelible exception from a Book Cliffs (Utah) late hunt a decade ago. But, in the next two drives, two smaller bucks emerged, again shot at, but not reduced to possession. The hunter who remained with Dayton and I soon scored, however. A buck attempted to elude us by hiding in a patch of chokecheeries on a steep fold on nn otherwise little-vegetated south slope. I think there has to be a lesson in there somewhere. With all the thick timber he could have hidden in, he selected little cover, providing you searched his precise hideaway. One factor which made us look closely was that we had been looking at many deer tracks, albeit we had also noticed most were in a hurry using the ridge as more of a runway to scurry somewhere else than to bed down. Yet, there is almost always a good deal of browse on any south slope, and a buck could bed near it if not disturbed the evening before. That was what had apparently happened here. Then, when the buck heard us, he did just what the bull elk had done: he tried to hide rather than run, a strategem which might have often worked. But, this time it did not. We were helped by steepness of the hill, in that the buck slid quarter of a mile after being hit in the lower neck. We pulled it down to the ravine bottom, and soon California hunter Lloyd Ileger looked happy he had to walk his horse. His wide three-pointer was in the saddle. Seven bucks greeted one other group of Sharon's hunters, yet only one of them was packed off the mountain. This is the type of hunting many serious nimrods would like to duplicate. |