Oct 19, 2011

Deer hunting on Maple Mountain by myself

As a young boy I always watched as my older brothers would leave with my dad for the ranch in Indian Canyon. It would be an October evening and they were headed off for the deer hunt. They would go to the ranch cabin and stay overnight then leave early the next morning on horseback and climb the hills above the cabin where the hunt would begin. I was not yet 8 years old but never the less very anxious for my turn to join with the others. Well it happened after I turned 8 and dad said I could go that night. I remember not sleeping real well because we were on the cabin floor and I was just too excited to sleep anyway. It was a long time before 5 A.M. rolled around and everyone started getting up, fixing and eating breakfast and getting the horses ready for the ride.

We left before it got light and started across the old canyon road and up the canyon across form the cabin. I was on the back of the horse with my dad and it was pretty hard staying on that big old horse as it climbed up the hill and followed the others who in the lead. It seemed like it was forever before the sun came up and everyone started to head just a little different direction to the heads of the canyons where the deer would be walking back form the fields into the hills. It was actually a pretty boring day and dad and I didn’t see any deer. We could hear shooting but that was not anywhere around us. Finally it was time for lunch and dad got off of the horse again as he had many times that morning and found an old tree to sit under while we ate our lunch. It just happened to be a Pinion tree and so I was content just getting the pine nuts out of the cones and eating them. I don’t remember Dad and I getting a deer that day even though others did. I am not really sure that it mattered to dad that we didn’t either since he seemed to just enjoy the day in the mountains, well foot hills around the ranch where he had spent so much of his life. Well this was the first of a lot of deer hunts to come in the future. I would continue to go deer hunting for the rest of my growing years until I left for my mission. I even got one my senior year the first time I was legal to carry and use a rifle. 

That is another story however and this story takes place after I was married and moved out to Mapleton, Utah. I grew up having hunted all those years and must have thought it my duty to do so each year as the hunt would come around. So the first year that I was married and living in Mapleton I was alone for the first time in my life and didn’t know where to hunt.  So I went somewhere close to home up Maple Canyon to hunt on the north side of Sierra Bonita mountain or what everyone refers to as Maple Mountain.

I got home from work early, put on my mighty orange clothes, told Marie goodbye and headed off to do my duty and get meat for my family. I drove to Whiting Park in Maple Canyon. Got my rifle and locked the car and started up the nearest ridge on the East end of the park. It was a pretty tough climb and pretty darn steep. I didn’t see any deer but just kept to the ridge and kept climbing. I was probably tow hundred yards up the mountain when I went around the edge of the hill and saw a number of doe running up the mountain to the west of my position. Then here he came, one of the oldest darn bucks I had ever seen. He was almost a grey color and had a huge rack on his head, probably much bigger than the one I had shot when I was a Senior in high school. I was panting pretty hard from the climb but had no time to stop and rest as he was heading up the hill at a pretty good speed. I pulled my rifle to my shoulder and sent a round in his direction and no where near him apparently since he just kept jumping only now with even more speed. I pumped another round into the chamber and sent a second round his direction with the same results. To this day I wish I had been using a camera because at least I would have had proof of his age and color. Well I now knew there were deer on that mountain and a big one in the mix but he was now out of sight and I would have to go after him even further up that steep ole mountain. I probably spent another hour before I knew that I would need to get down or be hiking in the dark. I started down but was now a long way from the ridge and ended up just heading straight down and eventually into one of the canyons. I didn’t realize how much brush would be jammed into that small canyon and how many times I would have to hike up and around a jam to thick to even crawl through. When I finally reached the park and my car I was lucky to still have my rifle with me since there were several times I would have been much happier leaving it in the bottom of the ravine. It was a rifle my father had always carried though so I carried it back knowing it meant far more to me than I could explain. I came off that hill with no big trophy buck but was glad I did since I would never have been able to pull one of them down that hill.  I never went hunting alone again and in fact there were probably only a few hunts that I ever went on again. I’ll relate them to you later or earlier depending on where they line up in my book.