Sometimes Our Images are Borrowed but This Scene has Its Own Portrait in my Heart 

It was a scene straight from a Leanin' Tree Christmas card. The five-by-five bull elk was moving uphill on a well-traveled path through lodgepole pine while snowflakes as large as dollars and wetter than kisses pasted his sides. He was so close it seemed I could reach out and tickle his ribs with my gun barrel.

I had a cow tag so the bull was not mine to take, plus I was guiding a trophy hunter from Florida for whitetail, not elk. 

The bull moved on never knowing I was there but years later I still see him and the gentle, wet snowflakes that caressed his hide.

Most hunters travel with cameras in their packs but too often we leave them there until an animal is down.  For many of us the best scenes-including, at times, the game we allow to get away and friends who pass away too early-go unrecorded by film but remain engraved upon our minds.

One of my favorite mental images is my father pulling his horse to a sliding stop, stepping from the saddle and yanking his old .30-30 from its paper-thin scabbard as two large mulie bucks erupted from a badlands coulee. There is no deer rack on a wall because of this experience. My father fired and made a rare miss but the fluidity of his motions and the magnificence of the deer still linger in my imagination as if it happened yesterday. The memory serves as a symbol to me of who he was.

Another of my favorite scenes involves my son Jess, then about 14, hunting with his grandfather Frank. I was coming home on horseback when I spooked a large mule deer toward my son and father-in-law. Just when I thought the deer would run directly to them the sound of animated voices could be heard. The buck slipped unseen up a narrow draw and Jess and Frank strolled over a hill.

The two were discussing cars, not hunting, and they not only didn't see the deer, they didn't see me on horseback on the ridge above them. Still, it was a fine sunny Sunday afternoon and grandfather and grandson were bridging generations. It would have been a shame had they seen the deer and shot it, thus ruining a precious conversation. 

Some of our best impressions do not involve wild game at all and are so impressive they defy accurate description. As I walked home one winter day after a time of calling coyotes, the clouded sky turned several shades of slate gray. I dropped onto the frozen bed of a creek and slid silently on new ice as columns of silver sage, coated with hoarfrost, stood in formation on the banks above me. Everything within this world was off-white, silver, or a tone of gray, and the stillness could almost be tasted on my tongue. It was so quiet you could have heard a gnat blink.

I shot nothing that day and I was with no one but the scene has its own portrait in my heart.

Our favorite images, though, probably involve a hunting partner.

Sometimes our images are borrowed.

My good friend Jack is a discriminating hunter and a remarkable long-distance shooter. He is perhaps the only person I'd feel comfortable about taking a shot more than 500 yards.

One season Jack saw a large buck at 600 yards and dropped it with a single shot from his .25-06. When he went to retrieve his deer Jack couldn't find it anywhere before darkness forced him home. The following morning Jack parked in the same spot and glassed a large coyote standing where the deer had stood. One shot and the coyote dropped.

The dead coyote was engorged from a night of feeding. In a deep washout, Jack spied the skeleton of his deer. The coyote had consumed everything but the bones and antlers. Though not a witness, the scene is with me as if it were my own.

Another time Jack brought a young man named Doug to the ranch and the three of us went hunting in one of my old, rattle-trap Ford ranch trucks. Doug was about 30 then but had already hunted Africa twice.

As we cruised slowly through the gumbo badlands we saw one nice buck after another. "Let's see how close we can get to that one," Jack would say, and we'd sneak to within a couple hundred yards. Jack would then raise his .25-06 and whisper "bang," then he'd smile, shrug and lead the way back to the truck.

"Why didn't you shoot that one?" Doug asked several times. Jack just chuckled. "Not big enough," he'd answer.

Easing along a jeep trail we chanced on an unusual buck lying on a hillcrest beside the road. It was only a four-by-four but its rack was unusually high and the tines bent in and nearly touched at the top. The deer was 100 yards away and casually watching us from the corner of its eye.

"That's a nice buck," Jack said.

"Yes, it is," I said.

Doug was nearly frothing at the mouth in the seat between us.

"Do you want him?" Jack asked me.

I paused to think. Perhaps the buck would live one more year and be that much larger and atypical.

"Shoot him," Doug hissed. "Shoot him!"

"No, I think I'll pass," I said.

"Yeah, me too," Jack said. By the tone of his voice I knew he believed there would be many more deer in his future.

Just recently, while in his mid-50s, Jack was diagnosed with a rare brain disease. He has undergone two delicate and complicated operations and has been forced to resign from his job as the chief maintenance officer of a Veterans Administration facility.

Once dubbed "the billy goat" by hunting buddies for his tireless climbing of hills and mountains, Jack is now unsteady walking from his kitchen to his living room. 

While we pray and hope for Jack's full recovery, I am thankful for that one experience with the high-horned buck every time I drive that Jeep trail. I see Jack riding shotgun in my old Ford truck, a mischievous glint in his eyes, Doug squirming in excitement between us and the deer watching us slyly without turning its head. This image could be no more real to me if the buck's mounted head hung on Jack's basement wall.

Hunters often are too goal-obsessed. 

We see the landscape as little more than a colored topo map. We squint at sunsets without realizing the beauty of the sky. Animals are numbers for a record book as we talk of a 400 elk, a 200 deer or a bear that will square seven feet with a 20-inch skull.

But I am convinced that most hunters really have pursuits far greater than the taking of trophy game. Deep down in our hearts, whether we want to admit it or not, our passion is to share wild places with family members and friends.

I trust that Jack and I will hunt together again. But should we not, there is an impression etched indelibly in my soul that no amount of time can erase. It is Jack's mischievous grin shining as pure and bright as dollar-sized snowflakes floating from the sky.