Elk Hunting at Horse Camp
November 4, 1978 — American River. The Liquor Control Board honored their hiring commitment for leave without pay in elk season. Jim Hoing, the fiscal officer, a North Dakota boy by way of Boeing, also is after elk. The board members are not hunters, but are resigned to those of us who are. Good men: Leroy Hittle, retired AP bureau chief; Pete Petersen, 350-pound ex-union kingmaker; Don Eldridge, former Speaker of the House.
The night wind had been bad; windfalls were liberally scattered and I had to skirt a few on the highway to Bill Sherwood’s. We loaded his horses, Socks and Kelly, in his horse truck. Then I followed the horse truck in my VW. Lloyd’s talk of vandalism in Soda Springs campground had me afraid to leave my new truck there. I felt a little silly on glare ice on Cayuse Pass with a 4x4 at home, but there are few places a VW can’t go.
At Chinook Pass we hooked up with Joe Mismas and his cousin Johnny Mihalek. Johnny wore his wool cruiser, watch cap and sour face, the only way I ever saw him until I parked my Arizona Game and Fish sedan in front his fifth-wheel in a Yuma snowbird park. There among his retired pals I found a bare-headed, winter-tan and smiling Johnny in a gaudy short-sleeved sport shirt.
His wife said when the marked sedan pulled up: “They’ve finally caught you, Johnny.” Johnny: “Hell, there’s nothing to hunt in Arizona, so I couldn’t have shot anything illegal!” He flatly refused to believe my tale about Arizona elk.
Soda Springs is on American River, down the east side of Chinook Pass. We off-loaded the horses and burdened them with panniers and packs. Only one pack saddle; the other wore a Western riding saddle with packs lashed to it. There was room for my backpack on one of the horses; I wouldn’t have made the climb if I had to lug it. “All pretty much uphill” is the way Bill described the four-mile march to camp.
“Pretty much” to Sherwood equals “entirely vertical” for anyone else. In the first mile, Mismas and Sherwood said I looked frighteningly pale. My heart scared me by refusing to slow down when I stopped for a breather. All I carried was my rifle and the camp- liquor knapsack; I said I knew that way they’d come back for me.
The second mile I got a second wind, and at the end of that mile a ten-minute break did wonders. The third of four miles was a series of four knolls that provided an upping and downing change of pace. The packs on the saddle horse kept slipping, slowing them, so I didn’t arrive too far behind.
Johnny, 65, was canny. He knew mountain-trained horses; first thing he asked was if they kick when “tailed.” Sherwood said no, they’re good for it. Johnny grabbed a tail and the horse provided the lift. All Johnny had to do was put his feet in sequence.
We set up Bill’s big hexagonal Army squad tent with a fire going in the new sheepherder stove, replacing one crushed by a falling tree last year; fortunately everybody was out hunting. Joe packed a small chainsaw in earlier, and sectioned the fallen giant. Johnny and I took axe and maul to split the stacked rounds for firewood. Johnny swung his blade easily and cleanly, no wasted motion. I saw his little frown when I had to hit twice to split one. Thus we warmed ourselves with the carcass of the tree that nearly did some of them in last year.
I was leery of sleeping on the frozen ground with only a plastic ground cloth, foam pad and my new REI “Mt. Baker” sleeping bag. So I broke out the Thermos “sport blanket” with one reflective side to put another layer between me and the ground. It worked; I slept warm after we banked the stove and ice formed inside the tent walls. Next day after a long, sound sleep from all the exercise, we put up Joe’s big wall tent. Bill and Joe tried to get the suddenly temperamental chainsaw working, then left with one horse for more supplies. I spit firewood, then Johnny took over. Johnny washed the breakfast dishes while I unscrambled the mess the wind, snow and ice made of Bill’s blue-tarp horse shelter. Big chunks of ice cascaded, one rapping me sharply on the forehead.
I took a walk to look the country over and got lost following fresh elk sign. I traced my own boot prints back until I heard Joe and saw campfire smoke down in the trees; sign a cold front was coming.
Lloyd Sherwood rode Bill’s horse to camp with Bill and Joe, and “Stub” and Ed, brothers-in-law. Ed has been Bill’s hunting partner since high school. We celebrated arrival of the full party with smooth-as-silk Kessler right from the bottle. Then Bill acted as camp cook to serve a heavy, filling supper which I cannot for the life of me remember; only that it gave me reflux and I hadn’t packed any Tums.
Bill rolled us out at 3:30 opening morning. We had time for eggs and bacon and campfire coffee — the eggs taken out of their shells at home and stacked in a Tupperware tube, dispensed one by one into the skillet; handy. There was time to eat and talk and fall silent, just waiting. November stays dark a long time in black timber.
Then we scattered to push up to rock slides which loom above the timber. I saw nothing. Lloyd saw antler tips but was too slow with his iron-sighted Remington Woodsmaster. The bull bugled at him, then snorted and drifted into the timber. Ed and Stub heard it. Bill said they were hearing things until Lloyd told his story. Joe saw a huge cream body, yellow rump, but not the head. Later at the campfire we were told Stub and Bill both had cow tags; don’t hesitate the next time you get a clear shot whether you see horns or not.
Lloyd was the last one back, determined not to give up on that bull. Close-by shooting sent Ed and Stub looking for him, but it was two strangers who dropped down from a high vantage, walking down to Soda Creek. They never did say what they shot at. I worked slowly through a nearly perpendicular forest and ate my lunch braced against a tree on a 45-degree slope. I worked back to camp along a well-established game trail; animals know the best routes.
“The Sedro Woolley guys,” came through late in ones and twos, quietly appreciative of coffee or a beer. They park far above somewhere and hunt through, or walk the trail up by flashlight and hunt back. One of the guys was a lot bigger than me, and said he had been heavier until he started this regimen. “The Horse Camp guys,” they called us. Most of the two groups have gotten to know each other over the years; they always look forward to Horse Camp hospitality. Norm Frazer of Norm’s Resort, a guy I used to call for F&H News, showed Bill this area; Norm is passionate about pack-in hunting after elk in black timber.
Day two Joe was beginning to run his mouth, braggart fashion. I wonder if he’s nervous in this group and feels he has to measure up — that’s stupid; he’s known far and wide as a top hunter. I had a nasty, bruising fall below one of the rock slides that put dings in the wood of the Remington. I dropped into what they call “the Hole” between “the Meadows” and the lookout tower. Took me a lot of stomping around to get out again.
Chili and beans that night set off serious reflux and I felt weak and sick all night. The next night’s casserole prepared by Bill’s wife Terry at home went down better after I avoided greasy food for breakfast and lunch. I was weakened by skipping two meals after unaccustomed exertion. I hunted slowly into the Meadows, watching the cold front develop.
The wind got stronger, and after the casserole we sat up most of the night as it combed the timber and pushed over dead trees like the one that destroyed camp last year. No one felt comfortable going to sleep with trees crashing like explosions. Ed and Stub walked out rather than stay. Johnny and Lloyd said big old bull elk find the biggest deadfall and hunker down to avoid being crushed by a falling tree; an interesting tidbit of woods lore. When it finally quieted, we slept soundly.
Next morning I eased back into the Meadows. Joe and Johnny showed up, then Bill and Lloyd, nobody having seen anything, and we retreated to camp for a communal lunch. The weather looked ominous so we broke camp, packed horses and headed down. I carried a full backpack this time; downhill is a lot easier for me, but it was hell on Lloyd and Johnny’s old knees.
The snow came down hard as we neared American River. We regrouped in Joe’s trailer. I had half-planned to leave but assumptions were so strong I was here for the duration I just stayed. We packed into Joe’s trailer to sleep. I wound up on the relative luxury of the floor carpet. It snowed and snowed. I drove to Whistlin’ Jack lodge and ate a big dinner, running into Milton Hein and his dad from next door. I called home, bought Tums, and drove back to trailer lights shining cozily through the storm.
Ed and Stub had come in carrying the head and a forequarter that filled Stub’s cow tag. Ed nailed it below that slide we all hunted. The Sherwoods and Joe consumed the better part of a fresh fifth of Kessler’s with beer chasers. The elder Sherwood was mellow behind the liquor, telling yarns, saying there’s just nothing better than elk camp with good friends. He looked like a beardless Santa with his eyes twinkling and nose glowing from the Kessler’s.
The next morning, with six to eight inches of snow down, we trekked along the river before cutting up steep ridges. Lloyd and Johnny went up the trail — slightly easier walking. Ed and Stub went after the rest of the cow. Joe and Bill easily outdistanced me. I fell twice, filling both guns with snow.
The rifle barrel was coated with ice. When my wool coat touched the metal, threads stuck fast and pulled loose when I shifted. That’s cold! I must have removed the bolt and round in the chamber twenty times to blow ice out of the bore. I found where Joe and Bill cut fresh elk sign in the snow and began to trail them.
A little more uphill, I found my own fresh sign — a lone elk, ambling. I got all excited, thinking it had to be a bull. I must have been backtracking, because the trail led to a solitary bed in the snow, so fresh individual hairs from the coat showed in the compressed white; that got the adrenaline flowing. I retraced my steps and followed the trail up the mountain. I found places where he doubled back and stood watching the back trail. Once he stood behind a big blow-down. I fancied him just ahead, not panicked, just ambling along.
Once his tracks came around to within five feet of where I was following him, and shied off at right angles. That was confusing. Had he turned before I got there, and I missed those tracks going by? Or had he come in behind me?
For another hour and a half I sneaked those tracks in the deep snow, slowly, to avoid making a racket. I thought I was getting really warm, heard a crash in the woods, snatched my rifle into position — but it was a hunter coming down. He said he cut the elk’s track a half hour earlier up high and was following him down. He cut off in a sweep, assuming I had bumped the elk coming toward it. If that was so, I had everything backwards. If I was right, the hunter had turned the wrong way and it was gone in the high hills.
I backtracked myself all the way to the elk’s bed. Then I circled carefully to find any other tracks leaving the bed. I could find no disturbance in the snow of any kind. One set of tracks left the bed: the set I followed until I ran into the other guy; but he sounded so cocksure. If he was right, the elk levitated. An unsolved mystery of the black timber.
It took a long time to get out of the steep woods to camp. Bill meanwhile walked up and joined Ed bringing out the rest of the cow. Stub’s legs gave out. Bill packed a quarter and Ed packed two quarters at a time — that’s got to be two hundred pounds, easy. “A little heavy,” is how he described it.
Ed was waiting on the river to make sure I came out of the woods before dark. I slept on the floor again after a meal of fresh elk liver. The next day I walked up the trail in my Red Wing uninsulated boots because the felt lining of my Sorel pacs were soaked. My feet damn near froze. All the mink oil leached out and my feet were soaked. None of us saw a thing, so we packed it in and headed home.
Bill’s horse truck locked up just past Cayuse Pass. It took him all night to get home for his horse trailer and come back for his horses. I’m not the only one who has seasons like that. He was hunting by the time I heard, and filled that cow tag before he quit.
