quote:

Originally posted by Bill Gammill:
To close out the saga of my hunt with Doug and Skinner Creek I need to tell the rest of the story about our last day's hunt. After 9 full hard days of hunting, being successful on Moose and a good encounter with a Mountain goat, we had to make a decision as to what to hunt that last day. Slim/Doug told me a story about a really big Mulie he couldn't quite get on way back toward the back end of his territory, close to a box canyon. It was a pretty good horse ride away but I was about to get used to those necessary evils(horses) by then and I wanted a chance to at least see a deer of the proportions Slim was talking about, so we agreed the last day would be Mulie day. I've killed lots of deer and a couple of good mulies over the years and had told Doug in the beginning that it would take a "Boy Dog" for me to pull the trigger on a deer and in fact we had already passed on some nice ones. So we went to bed that night with visions Mui Grande dancing in my head. Got up next morning bright and early as normal and I was pulling on my socks while the coffee was brewing and Slim says-- "well, I had a dream about our deer hunt last night". really, says I, tell me about it. "Well, we were in a kind of wooded area and there was a huge mule deer in front of us that I could see clearly and I kept saying CHUTEM, CHUTEM! You kept saying I can't, I can't, I can't see him! So the buck just trotted out of sight. Some dream I thought, and strange that was the only time Doug mentioned even having a dream in 9 days. Well we loaded up and headed out on our 2-3 hour ride to get back to the box canyon where Doug had seen the big buck the year before. As we were getting close to the area there was a long gradual almost bare slope going up the side of a mountain with only sporadic patches of Oak brush scattered about. I kept noticing something about 150yds to my right front next to one of the patched of brush. My mind was trying to tell me it was the ass end of a deer, I finally said Slim, I think that's a deer, he said yeah I see what you are looking at. I threw up my binocs and immediately said it's a buck! and a damn good one! That was the largest set of antlers I had ever seen. We immediately started unassing the horses, Doug had my rifle in his scabbard so I handed him the reins to my horse and he handed me the rifle. I headed for a big rock about 20yds to my front and Slim took the horses to some small evergreens to tie them up. Right here I'll refer you to the previous post about "gumming up the works". As Doug got to me after tying up the horses his exact words were CHUTEM! CHUTEM!--- my Exact words were "I can't, I can't, My gun won't work! Almost exactly word for word from the dream doug had had the night before. SPOOKY!! I tell you, SPOOKY as hell.