When The Creeks Run Red

Right off the bat let me begin by saying that no “Booners” or “wall-hangers” were killed this year in the Kentucky deer woods, but man oh man did we have a good time. Dad and I went up a few days early prior to Opening Day. I took my stick n string out the first evening and saw a couple of bucks down in the swamp. One was a pretty good 9 point that passed right under my stand. I came close to putting an arrow in his pumphouse but in the end I decided to let him walk. He was a young deer and I didn’t want to punch my buck tag before gun season even started. Dad also watched the same deer when he came out in the field in front of camp. Dad said I did right by letting that little buck live to see another day. “But if that buck walks out in front of You-know-who (ie Joe) he’ll be shot pretty quick.” Said Dad. (He would latter be proven right.)

On Friday night, Dad and I went over to Ray’s shack for dinner. All the Mills River boys where in camp, Ray, Jr, Wyatt, Matt, Serina, the Balenger boys. We dined on fresh cow elk steak that Ray brought back from Utah and fried potatoes and onions. After dinner we traded hunting stories and talked into the late hours. Dad and I headed back to our camp sometime around 11.

Joe got into camp sometime around midnight. As he was unloading his car he realized that he had forgotten all of his hunting clothes at the house. All he had were the clothes on his back. It was going to be a long and uncomfortable trip for him.

The next morning was Opening Day and we hopped out of bed around 5AM, ate a quick breakfast and headed out to our stands. Today was bigger than Christmas! I sat in the swamp and saw several does and nice seven point that I again let walk. I was holding out for a trophy. Just around 9AM I heard a shot in Joe's direction and several minutes latter he texted me: 9 PT ON THE GROUND. Just after that it began to rain. It looked like it was set in for the day.

When I got back to camp, wet and cold, I found Dad and Joe skinning his buck in the old shed near camp. Sure enough it was the same buck I had seen earlier. Dad just grinned and whispered “Told ya!” My bother has an itchy trigger finger when it comes to seeing antlers in the woods.

Over the next several days, I watched more deer than I had ever seen on one hunting trip. This new property that we had leased defiantly had a lot of deer on it and we were getting our money’s worth. Unfortunately, I was trophy hunting when it came to bucks and I passed up several good-sized whitetails. One evening while Dad took Joe to Paducaha to buy some warm clothes, I went back into the swamp and shot a big doe for meat. She was being chased by a small six point buck that just stood there and looked at me after I had shot his would-be girlfriend. Man I love hunting during the rut.

Eventually our time in the woods came to an end and I had to get back to Atlanta. Dad and Jo stayed to hunt an extra day but I’m glad I left when I did, since Joe came down with a severe case of Strep Throat and didn’t even get out of bed the last day.

But as Gen. MacArthur once said, “I shall return.”

I love Thanksgiving. I love the food, being around family, relaxing by a warm fire reading a good book. But I also love deer hunting and since I didn’t bag a big buck the first time around I had to fore go my turkey and dressing at the Crout’s and head back to the Bluegrass State. I wish I had a big climactic ending to my story here, that I killed a monster swamp donkey but that unfortunately isn’t the case.

But I did bring home some meat.

Dad and I traveled light and didn’t bring the camper. Instead we squatted in Ray’s shack for three days. Again we saw a lot of deer but no big bucks. Thanksgiving Day the heavens opened up and the rain poured all day. They even had flash floods in the region. We sat in shack most of the afternoon chatting with Ray would by that time had been in camp a total of 15 days! Just before dark, the rains stopped and we decided to move our stands for in the morning. We headed down into the swamp to retrieve Dad’s climber when we jumped a big buck chasing a doe. Dad handed me his 7 mag and told me to run ahead down the road and see if I could catch the buck crossing. I did as I was told and when I reached the bait pile something jumped up in the thicket. It was a buck. I threw up the rifle, saw a rack of horns in the scope and thinking it was the same buck we had just seen, fired. The deer jumped the road and disappeared in the swamp. I heard a loud splash and a gurgle coming from the creek. Dad caught up with me and told me to go and look for the deer while he hung his stand. I waded through the brush to creek and scanned my surrounding for the buck. The creek was up from all the rain and about 30 yards from me the water turned for brown to crimson red: the buck had fallen in the creek and was completely submerged, all I could see was a single horn sticking up. After a quick inspection, I realized the buck I had just shot wasn’t the same buck Dad and I had jumped. It was just a little raghorn 5 point. But oh well, he needed to be taken out of the gene-pool anyway. He would eat the same as a 10 point. I pulled the buck out of the creek and Dad and I gutted him by lantern light. We left him to hang that night in the shed since the temps were going to fall into the 20’s.

The next morning was probably the most disappointed I’ve ever been in the woods. After a day of heavy rain which changed to snow that night and temperatures plummeting into the 20’s I just KNEW that morning was going to be PRIME TIME for deer. But the deer didn’t move. Nothing. No shots anywhere. Dad and I guessed that after the weather blew out around midnight, the deer moved and bedded back down just before daylight. We decided that we weren’t going home without one more doe in the cooler so we both watched the big field that evening. I was ready to get home by that point and decided I was going the shoot the first doe I saw. Around 4PM and fat doe walked out at 150 yards and stupidly I shot. I grazed her and she high-tailed it up towards Dad’s stand where he made an equally bad shot but at least he put her down. We shot that doe to pieces but we would at least get some tenderloin and hamburger out of her.

We then hit the road and after a long 7 hours we pulled back into Mills River around 1AM. In the end a buck and a couple of does ain’t bad for a year’s hunting, but hopefully next year I’ll cross paths with a nice trophy. But I guess that’s what keeps us going back.

Empty Coolers and Lost Shirt Tails

Not much happening this year during bow season in the western Kentucky deer woods. The weather was too dang hot and the deer just weren't moving. We know there are a lot of deer on this property but they were just not milling around in this humidity. In fact we know there are some big deer here, since Dad and I saw two monsters out in the fields our first night in camp. But unfortunately those big boys decided to be "no- shows" under our stands.

And as much practicing as I thought I did with my bow this past summer, I apparently still suck. I missed a fat doe at 30 yards. Inexcusable!! I guess I need to shoot a lot more from a stand and practice even more. Maybe it was just the jitters?

But at least I wasn't the only one in camp that got his shirttail cut off. Ben missed a little buck as well out of his stand. Which is a shame since I really wanted to be there when he killed his first. I wanted to help paint him up. Oh well hopefully we'll have better luck and colder temps in November when we come back up for rifle season.

Snake Boots

I've taken most of the Spring/Summer off from blogging here on The Scrapline, but "hey" what really are you going to write about on a deer hunting blog when it's 100 degrees outside? But now that Stick N String season is just around the corner, I figured I'd start getting back in the habit of tipity-typing. So here goes.

In a couple of days we leave for Kentucky for bow season. Early forecasts say its going to hot, hot hot up there. Not so good for deer hunting, since the big bucks will lay up in the shade and not move much. Now I don't much about the snake population in western Kentucky but I'm sure they have rattlers and copperheads up there. So I bought myself a pair of snake boots over at Bass Pro this weekend. You can never be too careful, Anyway, I'm looking forward to spending some time with Dad, Joe, and Ben.

Hopefully I've practiced enough this Spring and Summer to be ready to make a good shot on a buck with my bow. We'll see in a few days....

The Book

Happy Birthday Paw

Today would have been my grandfather's 103rd birthday. I don't think a day goes by when his memory doesn't pop into my head at some point or another. He was one of the most influential men of my life. He taught me how to shoot straight, skin a whitetail and bait a trout line. But most importantly, one cool autumn night when I was eight years old, he sat with me on the back steps of the Mills River Baptist Church and prayed the sinner's prayer with me. That night I so many years ago, I accepted Christ into my heart-an act that guaranteed that I would one day see my grandfather once again.

When that day comes, I'm sure he'll meet me up in Heaven with a fresh box of .06 shells, slap me on the back and say "Glad you're finally here, son. You won't believe the size of the bucks up here."

I love you Paw. Happy Birthday.

Public Enemy

Back in 2001 shortly after the terrorist attacks on The World Trade Center and The Pentagon, President George W. Bush gave his infamous Axis Of Evil speech. In the speech he named North Korea, Iran and Iraq as the top three enemies to America. Since then I’ve often wondered whom I would place on my own personal Axis Of Evil list. So one day I decided to put pen to paper and actually make out my “evil-doers” list. Initially I found the task to be pretty difficult, since I could only pick three and there are so many people out there that I just can’t stand, such as Nancy Pelosi, Bill Maher, Michael Moore, Harry Reid, Keith Olbermann, Al Gore, and the Reverend Al Sharpton just to name a few. But after careful consideration and deliberation I would like to present to you Rick Bryson’s Personal Axis Of Evil. Drum-roll please.

1. George Lucas
2. Mike Krzyzewski
3. The Man

Number One with a bullet, at the top of the list would be George Lucas, aka The Beard. He’s an ironic choice since he was one of the chief architects for shaping my childhood. When I was 10 years old, George Lucas was my hero. He’s the man who gave us Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, the Jedi Knights, the Sith Lords and Indiana Jones. But time has not been kind to Mr. Lucas and since his hey-day as a creative genius he’s become a greedy, lazy, egotistical hack. Just look what he did to the Star Wars Universe with those lousy Prequels. Jar Jar Binks? Are you kidding me? And don’t even get me started on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. My five year-old nephew could have made a better film than that steaming pile of a movie. Lucas has basically become a figure of his own creation: he’s become the evil Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious. He doesn’t care about his legion fans that are responsible for his billion-dollar empire; all he cares about these days is making a quick buck. I could rant all day and fill an entire book about my hatred of what Lucas has become but it’s time to move on the next individual on my list.
The number two slot on my Axis of Evil is occupied by a man who needs no introduction to the citizens of The Tarheel Nation; he’s the one and only Mike Krzyzewski, aka Coach K, aka Satan. Krzyzewski is of course the head basketball coach of the despised and hated Dook Blue Devils. The Scriptures tell us, that as Christians, our hearts should not be filled with hate but when it comes to Dook Basketball my heart overflows with white-hot, seething hatred. How much do I hate Dook Basketball you ask? Well lets just say if the Dookies were playing Al-Qaeda coached by Osama Bin Laden himself, I’d show up for the game in a Taliban beard and cheer for the terrorists over Krzyzewski’s bunch any day of the week.
The third and final component of my personal Axis of Evil is an individual simply known as The Man. Now I’m sure some of you are scratching your head and asking, ‘Just who is The Man?’ But for those who spend anytime in the outdoors hunting or fishing, you know exactly who The Man is. The Man is the DNR, aka The Game Warden, and he’s never ever a welcome sight to an outdoorsman in the field, regardless whether or not you’re involved in something illegal.
Personally, I had only a couple of run-ins with The Man in my hunting career and none of them turned out positive; two pricey tickets and one threat to spend a night in jail. Now I know that game wardens, at least on paper anyway, serve an important purpose in enforcing wildlife laws, but personally I’ve never met one worth two cents. Every warden I’ve had the displeasure of running into in the woods have been rude, cocky, arrogant and suffering from a God-complex. Nothing but a bunch of “wanna-be-cops” in my opinion.
But as unpleasant as my experiences with game warden have been, they can’t compare with other individuals that I know. Here are a couple of stories that have been told to me over the years by various friends and family members and their encounters with The Man.
(Also note that since this is one of the more incriminating sections of this book, names have been changed in order to protect the innocent and to keep the author from being slapped with a lawsuit.)

***
Two old boys from back in Mills River (we’ll call them Harold and Garry) used to routinely sneak over and poach deer off the Biltmore Estate back in the mid-1980’s. The method of their crime was deviously brilliant- they would float the French Broad River in an old duck boat and shoot big bucks standing on the banks. They would then simply drag the dead deer back into the boat and float away under the cover of night.
One particularly bitter and cold winter evening, just before sunset, the two men were silently floating their boat down the half-frozen river when they spotted several deer feeding in one of the fields on the estate’s property. Harold stood up the boat, raised his big Ruger rifle and shot the biggest buck in the bunch. The buck dropped in its tracks, deader than a doornail. They rowed to shore and while Garry waited with the boat, Harold hustled out into the field to retrieve the deer.
But just as Harold was kneeling down to field dress the buck, several pickup truck headlights clicked on all around him in the darkness. Before Harold knew what was happening a convoy of DNR vehicles were barreling down on him with their blue lights flashing. Harold left the deer lying, leapt to his feet and began high-tailing it as fast as he could go back towards the river. The DNR trucks screeched to a halt and an army of DNR wardens swarmed out in pursuit of Harold.
Garry in the meantime, who was quietly waiting with the get-away-boat, but now seeing the entire North Carolina Division of Wildlife heading in his direction with guns drawn, decided to abandon is partner-in-crime and began rowing frantically for the opposite shore. Harold on the other hand was running for his life. He later told me that he was running as fast as his legs could take him and never once looked back. At one point he recalled, one of the game wardens got so close to catching him that he could actually feel the warden’s fingernails scraping against the back of his hunting coat as the warden reached out to grab him. As Harold neared the edge of river and seeing that Garry had left him to fend for himself against the onslaught of game wardens, Harold simply hurdled his self as far out into the icy waters as he could. He landed with a loud splash in the middle of the French Broad and quickly began swimming to the other side. When he got to the opposite shore, he pulled himself out of the frigid waters and turned to see a dozen DNR agents standing on the far bank cursing and swearing at him. The wardens weren’t about to jump into a sub-zero river in the middle of winter after some old redneck poacher. Harold and Garry lived to poach another day.
But unfortunately for Harold his luck didn’t last. A couple of years later, after shooting yet another buck illegally on the estate, a mob of game wardens caught up to him in the parking lot of the Dogwood Grocery and beat him within an inch of his life with their billy sticks. Harold referred to the incident as “getting a wooden shampoo from The Man.” After that, Harold “unofficially” retired from poaching deer off the Vanderbilt Family, though from time to time he was prone to sneak onto other small tracts of private land that didn’t have DNR warden watching the premises.

***

To this day Dwayne Higgins is still regarded as the toughest and meanest game warden in Mills River history. Throughout the 1950’s Dwayne patrolled the back roads and game trails of the valley in search of lawbreakers, spotlighters and poachers. He was feared and respected all through the county as a strict enforcer of justice.
One night a carload of punk teenagers that happened to include Dwayne’s son Zac, were out spotlighting deer out on Dave Whittaker Road. Suddenly Dwayne and a couple of his deputy wardens came blazing onto the scene with their blue-lights flashing, ready to arrest everyone involved. Zac, fearing that he would be caught not only by the game warden but by his father, panicked and leapt from the car he was in and starting running across the open field in order to escape. Now to this day it’s not entirely known whether Dwayne Higgins initially knew that was his son running across the field that night, but regardless, Dwayne pulled out his .38 service revolver and sent several rounds in Zac’s direction. After the third or fourth bullet kicked up a plume of dust just inches from his feet, Zac decided it was in his best interest to stop running and quickly surrendered to his father.
Dwayne personally drove Zac to jail that night.

***
My cousin Mike Barnett’s grandfather was name Allen Barnett. Allen along with his brother Willie worked at the CC Camp back in the 1940’s. Like a lot of folks in the mountains of western North Carolina during those years, both Allen and Willie were living through some pretty hard financial times. Jobs and money were in short supply and a person had to feed your family the best way they could, even if that meant poaching a few whitetails out of season.
While they worked at the CC Camp, that was located on Vanderbilt property, Allen and Willie would often shoot deer with a small, busted-up .22 that they kept concealed in their britches leg. If a deer were to walk along while they were out working, they would simply pull the rifle out of their pants, shoot the deer, and slip the murder weapon back without anyone aware of what happened. The two brothers would then creep back under the cover of darkness and retrieve the dead deer. Now unlike most of our modern day poachers and outlaws, Allen and Willie didn’t shoot deer out of season just for the sport of it; it was to feed a hungry family. In a lot of cases the venison they would bring home was the only substance that got them through a long, cold North Carolina winter.
Unfortunately the nobility of their crimes meant nothing to the local game wardens and once they caught wind of Allen and Willie’s deeds, they set up a sting operation to catch them in the act. After following Willie back home one evening with a successfully poached whitetail, the wardens staked-out his cabin and waited for Willie’s wife to start cooking the incriminating venison. As soon as smoke and the smell of frying back-strap began wafting out of the kitchen window, the warden moved in for the arrest. Just before they knocked on the door however, Willie saw them coming and instructed his wife to toss the cooking meat, frying pan and all, out of the back window. Unfortunately a warden was waiting just outside the window and caught her in the act.
Willie was dragged into the Hendersonville courthouse to stand trial for his crimes. The judge sentenced him to a year in jail. His brother Allen was in attendance that day and when he heard his brother’s sentence, Allen marched to the head of the courtroom and stood bravely next to Willie.
“Your Honor,” Allen said to the judge. “My bother Willie has a wife and family to take care of. I would like to serve the sentence in his place.”
The judge glared down at the two brothers and said, “Well, if you’re his no-good-for-nothing brother, then you can BOTH serve jail time as far as I’m concerned.” The judge then sentenced both Allen and Willie to prison for a year and a day for their crimes against the Vanderbilt deer population.



***
Riding out to Colorado one year back in the mid-1980’s with Dad, Ray and the rest of the usual elk bunch was a fellow by the name of Richard Bronson, a retired Alabama game warden. He was good friend of our horse trainer, Elwin Heatherly, who was also a participant on this particular hunt.
Anyway, one night while driving through the desolate wastelands of Nebraska, the hunters got to swapping stories in the tuck in order to keep each other awake. Harold Nash, (the same Harold from the infamous Wooden Shampoo Incident) got to telling a story about the meanest game warden he’d ever met.
“That sorry S.O.B was so low-down that he’d turn-in his own son,” said Harold, obviously referring to Dwayne Higgins.
There was an awkward silence in the truck; apparently everyone but Harold was aware that Richard was a former game warden. After a few uncomfortable seconds of non-conversation, Richard turned to Harold and said proudly, “Well hell, that’s not so bad. I once turned in my own wife for fishing out of season.”



***
There are other tales of course, such as the time Ken Calhoun was ticketed and almost drug off the Moffat County jail for shooting gray jays in elk camp, or the time Uncle Walt punched a particularly mouthy warden in the face for calling him a liar. (Nobody and I mean NOBODY called my Uncle Walt a liar.) But for now I think it’s best that I wrap up this section of the book that pertains to game wardens-talking about the DNR just simply gets my blood pressure boiling.
Hey, we took out Saddam, I wonder if I can convince Congress to approve a military Shock And Awe assault on the local DNR regime?

A Weekend To Remember

Due to fatherhood responsibilities at home and the fact the Danielle and I where feeling the affects of the economic recession, I decided not to participate in the 2009 Kentucky Deer Season. And that decision, unfortunately, is probably going to haunt me for some time, since some really big whitetails were harvested off of our property that year. The following story was written by my younger brother Joe Bryson, which chronicles his and Dad’s adventures that season in the Deer Woods.)

A Weekend To Remember By Joe Bryson

(November 14-15, 2009)

Dad and I left about 4:00 A.M. On Friday morning to come check out our new lease in Western Kentucky, and hopefully get in a few days of hunting. We have a brand new 350-acre lease in Livingston, County Kentucky. After a long seven-hour drive we met up with the landowner's caretaker, a friendly chain-smoking fellow named Keith about 11:00. We followed him down the road about two miles where he showed us the property along with a few maps of the area. We were taking a risk when we signed the deal to lease the land, because we had not really looked the place over at all. We knew however, that there were big deer in the area. The property is adjacent to the track of land that our cousin Ray currently is leasing from another local farmer. Ray has told us numerous stories about monster bucks that live in this part of the county.

Hunting this part of the country is nothing new to us as we have been leasing land in Western Kentucky for several years now. Its a shame we have to go this far to hunt, but all the local idiots back in Mills River have no concept of quality deer management. As the old saying back home goes “If its brown, its down.” Dad and had brought several bags of shell corn to put out in few spots we thought looked pretty good. We have discovered it doesn't take deer long in Kentucky to find an easy meal in the woods. After emptying our sacks we drove over to where we were going to camp for the night. We were going to share camp with Ray tonight, as his property is just a stone's throw away from ours. Dad and I would share camp that night with Ray, Matt, Serena (Matt's daughter), Chris and Randy Ballenger, Jr. and Wyatt. Everyone slept in their campers that night except for dad and I. We slept on a mattress in the back of dad's covered pickup. This is nothing knew, as Rick and I had done this many times over the years. After a restless night of listening to coyotes and dreaming of big bucks, we were up again at 5:00 AM, ready to hit the woods.

We had a feeling it was going to a good day when a huge buck crossed the road on our short drive to our stands. Dad decided he was going to sit on a little wooded point that stuck out on the corner of the lower pasture. It was looking out over the pasture and a creek bed that was covered in tracks. Dad had put out some corn about 50 yards behind him on the ridge. I was just a short distance around the bend on the creek flat up on a hard wood ridge. About 8:30 I saw a doe come down the ridge in front of me. She crossed the creek and milled around for about five minutes before feeding off up the ridge where she came from. About 9:45 a small five point came in from my left and ate some corn for a few minutes before heading up the hill where the doe came from. Saw only a few does and a fawn the rest of the morning. At 11:00 I began climbing down to go meet dad, who I as pretty sure had shot about 30 minutes earlier. As I was getting down I saw dad coming down the hill. He told me that he had shot a nice 8pt, and we needed to get him loaded up before it got too warm. On the way to the buck he told me how at about 7:30 a nice white-horned 8-point had walked right under his stand and looked at him. Deciding to hold off for something bigger, he had let him walk. As the young buck ran up the ridge he said he saw another nice buck feeding in the corn pile. Not knowing what else he would see, he decided to put some meat in the freezer and dropped the buck in his tracks. This put a little smile on my face as this was the first deer he had taken with the new 7mm Rick and I had bought for him on his birthday.

We got his buck loaded in the truck and drove back to camp where we strung him up on an old wood shed. We decided dad would stay there and quarter the buck while I went back out to hopefully catch a rutting buck cruising for does in the middle of the day. Dad dropped me off at the top field where I was going to explore some new woods down on the east side of the property. I walked the edge of the field for about ¼ of mile when I spotted and old metal ladder stand in a small clearing just across the creek. I remember Keith saying we could hunt that stand if we found it. I decided to climb up and sit out the rest of the afternoon. What an awesome spot! Brier thickets and a small draw around the bend of the creek surrounded the clearing. It looked like a real honey hole to see an old buck cruising for does.

About 1:15, I decided to eat my lunch while listening to the sounds of the Kentucky deer woods. About 1:30 as I was chowing down on a Little Debbie (Zebra cakes are my personal favorite), I looked to my right and saw a huge yellow tine moving through the thicket. I tried to get a look at him with my binoculars, but he vanished as quickly as he appeared. After mumbling a few choice words under my breath, I sat there for the next two hours seeing and hearing absolutely noting. The great thing about the deer woods is that one's luck can turn at the blink of an eye. At 3:45 I noticed movement across the creek. I got my Wind River binos up and saw a huge rack moving through the brush. I deduced quickly this was a “shooter.” As my heart started pounding through my jacket I steadily prepared for a shot. The gun I was carrying today is my Marlin Guide Gun chambered in 45-70. I bought his gun two years ago in Chatsworth, GA, but had yet to kill anything with it. Rick and dad jokingly have told me that it was a great gun...........if I was hunting Grizzlies in the Yukon!

The buck was heading directly at me when he dropped down into a gully. My heart sank as he seemingly disappeared. I scanned the brush frantically with my Nikon scope and finally saw him about 30 yards to my left in a brier thicket. Knowing the power of this gun (405 grains), I knew shooting into the brush would not be a problem. When my cross hairs found his shoulder, I fired! The old boy only took a few steps and I heard him crash. I literally jumped out of my stand and made my through the honeysuckle and biers where I found him laying across a log. He was a big long tined 8-point! One of my biggest bucks ever. After a few pictures, I did the dirty work of gutting him and proceeded to make the one-mile walk to get dad to help drag him out. We drove the truck down to within about 75 yards of the creek where we loaded the big 200 lb+ buck up and headed back to camp. What a good day. Dad and I had both killed nice deer and had shared some great time together.

DAD'S MONSTER

Sunday, Nov. 15, 2009

Having an exhausting day, we decided to drive a few miles down the road to the interstate and stay in the hotel. After a long day of dragging and skinning deer, we wanted to treat ourselves to a hot shower and meal. We agreed that we would hunt in the morning until about 11:00 with the agreement to shoot nothing but a “monster.” Having plenty of meat for the freezer there was really no reason to hunt except for the fact that we had drove seven hours for a one-day hunt AND we knew what possibly could walk through the woods in this part of Kentucky at any moment.

We parked the truck at the top field the next morning about 6:00. I was going to hunt the pasture stand with Dad's 7mm and he was going back to the creek stand where I took my buck yesterday afternoon. I told dad to take the Marlin because of how thick it was where he was going. The morning was very slow. I saw nothing, except some cows passing by about 7:30. It was unusually warm this morning. The deer just were not moving. About 7:45 I heard one shot followed by another in the direction of where dad was sitting. About a half hour later I saw dad's old red shirt coming down the hill. I remember praying to myself that I hope dad had killed a good buck. It has been a long time since he had killed a real trophy. As he got closer I could see he was smiling. “Did you get 'em”, I hollered. Dad put both hands over his head to indicate he had indeed shot a “monster.” I was bursting with excitement inside for dad. He does so much for Rick and me, and I was literally overjoyed to hear the good news. He walked to the base of my tree and simply said, “He's a nice one.” As we took the long walk over the ridge, across the field, and down to the creek I listened to dad tell the story. These stories never get old. Even now at 32 years of age, I love to hear dad tell his stories. As we crossed the creek I saw, lying not 30 yards from where my buck fell, the biggest deer I have ever seen. It honestly looked like a horse with antlers! It was dad's buck of a lifetime. What a great memory-two big deer from the same tree, using the same gun.

(Dad's huge 8 pt. buck would later score 146 inches Boone and Crockett)

The Luck Of The Scotch/Irish

Last year, for the first time in my elk-hunting career I was afraid of getting skunked. In fact not only was I nervous about not bagging a bull but I was scared that I wasn’t even going to see an elk on that particular hunting trip. Things were definitely not looking good for the 2009 season.

Dad and Don Westmoreland had traveled out to Colorado a week before the rest of us in order to set up camp, acquire our packhorses and to scout for elk sign. Problem was, elk sign wasn’t just scarce it was down right non-existent. Dad had called me just before I was to board a plane from Atlanta to Denver to deliver the gloomy scouting report. He said the apparent combination of a horrific winterkill two years prior and the fact that the local ranchers had run over 8,000 head of sheep through our hunting territory had caused the elk population to virtually disappear into thin air. Plus early snows had hit the mountains, which were causing any animals (if there were any) to lay low and move as little as possible. By time myself and the rest of our hunting party arrived in camp, Dad and Don informed us that they had neither seen nor heard a single elk in the week they had been there. Not the most uplifting news to get two days before the opening day of Elk Season.

To add to the problem, there was a massive crowd of hunters in the mountains as well. The gravel roads in and around Bear Ears were as congested with traffic as I-85 in Atlanta during 5 o’clock rush hour. Apparently word had gotten out about Northern Colorado’s massive elk population and everybody and their little brother had come out to try and thin the herd a little. And because of this huge influx of hunters, for the first time in my life I was somewhat nervous about going into the woods. Elk hunters were going to be stacked elbow to elbow out there on Opening Morning I’m sure more than one of them would be hitting the Wild Turkey or an assortment of Anheuser Busch products pretty hard the night before. Itchy trigger fingers, bleary eyes and raging hangovers are not good combinations in my opinion. I made a note to wear a little extra blaze orange on Opening Day.

But even though the cards looked stacked against us this season, the members our camp were determined to give it our best shot (no pun intended.) We had all traveled too far, spent too much money and planned far too long, to give up and sit around camp playing Uno. So when Opening Morning finally rolled around, we crawled out of our bunks at 4AM sharp and suited-up in search of the elusive wapiti.

Dad and I dropped off the Chicken Road and down into the western rim of the Bear Ears drainage well before dawn. When we climbed out of the truck it was spitting snow and colder than a witch’s tit. I immediately began questioning just why in the heck I subject myself to such misery every other year just to chase around a bunch of four-legged animals. But once we hit the 1144 Trail I was sweating comfortably through my thermals and the biting cold was quickly forgotten.

We headed east towards the twin peaks of Bears Ears and as expected, every spot that we intended to hunt was already occupied with a hunter. In one particular park, a spot called Clyde’s Rock, which was named after our cousin Clyde who killed an elk there some years ago, Dad and I counted at least fifteen hunters who had taken up sniper positions. The entire park was completely surrounded with blaze orange vests. “God help those idiots,” I thought, “if a herd of elk actually did pass through the middle of that park- there would be more dead hunters than elk.” Dad just shook his head in disgust after seeing one of our “honey holes” taken over by a bunch of squatters, so we continued on up the trail in search of a vacant piece of land.

After about fifteen minutes of brisk walking we entered into a dark strand of timber. The thick canopy of pines prevented any morning light from entering and there was a faint dusting snow on the frozen ground. Dad suddenly stopped and pointed at his feet. A fresh set of elk tracks had cut across the trail and entered into the timber to our right. I couldn’t believe it, there actually were elk in here. Dad and I slipped silently into the trees and followed the tracks down hill. We hadn’t stepped more than twenty yards off the trail when we heard a bugle of a bull elk. We both instinctively dropped to one knee and listened. We looked and each other in disbelief- did we really hear what we thought we heard? Seconds later we another bugle.

“Where’s your cow call?” whispered Dad.

Dad rummaged through the back pocket of my pack and promptly removed my Primos Hoochie Momma. He hit it a couple of times and we waited on baited breath for a response from the bull. Seconds later we answered us with a loud, bellowing bugle. Dad hit the call again and we immediately received another answer from the bull but this time the bugle was much closer.

“He’s heading right for us,” Dad whispered. “You move off down the hill to the right and find a clearing and wait. I’ll head to the left and see if I can push him to you.”

With that Dad and I split up and I stealthily worked my way down the draw to found some open ground. We couldn’t have been separated more than two minutes when I heard Dad’s 7MM Remington open up. “Game Time,” I thought and I hustled towards the clearing and flipped off the safety of my 30.06. At first I thought the loud thundering sound in my ears was my rapid heartbeat but quickly I realized that it was in fact the pounding of elk hooves. In the split second that followed Dad’s shot, the timber came alive with retreating elk. Cows, spikes and rag-horn bulls raced everywhere cutting frantically in and round the trees churning up clouds of dust and snow. I was caught in the middle of a stampede. I shouldered my rifle and scanned the timber for legal bulls. I knew that we had hit the Mother Lode and if I didn’t take a bull now I’d never get another chance on this hunt.

While elk raced to and fro, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a large elk running up the draw in my direction. He got within fifty yards of me, then suddenly pulled up and stopped dead in his tracks. He paused just long enough for my brain to register that he was a legal bull and a “shooter.” He was staring directly at me and didn’t present me with a preferred broadside shot. So I placed the cross hairs of my Nikon scope in the center of his chest and fired. At the crack of my rifle, the bull leaped straight into the air, kicked like a saddle bronc, turned and disappeared into the pines. I knew immediately that I had hit him, but the question was ‘had I hit any vital organs?’

I jacked another round into the chamber and headed down the slope in search of blood. I hadn’t taken more than three steps when I spotted another massive bull charging through he timber to my left. The bull had a monster rack on him and I instinctively threw up my rifle, ready to take another shot.

Now of course at this point while reading this, you are probably thinking to yourself, “Why Rick, you may have already killed a bull. Isn’t it unethical and more importantly, highly illegal to shoot and possibly kill a second elk?” Well, the answer to that question is obviously “yes”, but one needs to realize that I am a Bryson and the unquenchable urge to shoot big critters with big horns is an unhealthy genetic condition that runs in my family. It’s an addiction known simply as elkaholoism and it’s a disease that my father, brother and more notably my Cousin Ray have suffered with most of our adult lives. I asked my self at that moment while staring down the barrel at this second bull, “What would my Great Grandfather Papa Bryson do? What would Cousin Ray do if he was in this situation?”

The answer was simple- shoot the bigger elk and deal with the consequences later.

With my mind made up to shoot this second bull I curled my finger around the trigger, ready to put him down. But by the time I found him in my scope, the bull had stopped behind a cluster of pine samplings. All I could see were the ivory tips of his tall thick antlers and the white of his rear flank. I needed him to take a few more steps in either direction in order to give me a clear shot of his vitals. I knew, however, that with every second I waited, he could break into a run and never be seen again. Now some hunters may have taken a shot at his hindquarters in order to break the bull down and hopefully finish him off with a second shot, but I simply could not bring myself to do that. I have too much love and respect for these animals to take that kind of gamble. I may have been prepared to break the law, but I couldn’t take a chance of crippling such a magnificent creature.

Seconds turned into what felt like hours as I held my rifle steady on the bull, patiently waiting for him to take a few more crucial steps in one direction. Then suddenly, just as I had feared, the old bull suddenly burst out of the brush in flash before I could squeeze off a round and disappeared into the timber with several cows in tow.

“Oh well,” I thought, as I lowered my rifle and switched on the safety. “That old boy probably just saved me a hefty fine with the DNR and a night in the Moffat County jail.”

I continued down the slope in the direction of my first bull. I scanned the snow for any sign of blood when I nearly tripped over it’s collapsed body. The bull hadn’t run more that fifty yards before he dropped dead. The shot I placed on him turned out to be deadly accurate: it had passed through the bottom of his throat and through the lungs and heart. A clean kill if I ever saw one, especially on a big bull, since I have witnessed in the past, bulls that could soak up round after round and keep on going.

After inspecting his rack, which turned out to be a beautiful symmetrical 5 x 5, I tied some orange ribbon around his antlers so I could locate him again and started back up the hill in search of Dad. I soon found him coming down the hill in my direction with a puzzled look on his face.

“Dern it, I shot at a cow back in that timber,” he said. “But dog-gone if I can’t find any sign of her.”

“Why on earth did you shoot at a cow,” I asked. “Did you not see the rest of the herd?”

“What herd, all I saw was one cow.”

“Good grief, when you shot there were elk running everywhere through here. I shot a nice 5 x 5, he’s laying about 5o yards down there,” I said pointing down the draw.

But before Dad could reply, we heard a noise that resembled a mob of horses running off to our left. We turned to see the remaining portion of the elk herd retreating through an open park.

“They-Good-Gosh-Almighty,” exclaimed Dad. “Where did all those elk come from?”

Just then a nice bull poked his head up about one hundred and fifty yards from our position and stared at us.

“Shoot that bull Son!” exclaimed Dad. “Take a rest off my shoulder.”

Before I could argue, I placed my rifle on Dad’s left shoulder, quickly found the bull in my sights and fired. As soon as I felt the recoil of my rifle I knew I had missed the elk. I was still jittery and shaky from the adrenaline rush of killing the first bull and I had rushed my shot. We both watched as the bull turned and vanished with the rest of the herd through the timber on the far side of the park.

“You think you hit him?” asked Dad.

“I don’t think so,” I said as I bolted another round into my rifle.

“We’ll let’s go see if we can find some blood.”

We spilt up and walking in opposite directions, Dad and I made a wide circle through the snow-covered park. But we found no blood trail. I walked to the far side of the draw and looked down into the valley below. I didn’t see any sign of the retreating herd. Satisfied that I had missed the second bull completely, I slung my Remington across my back and headed back toward Dad who standing in the middle of the park staring at me with a disappointed expression on his face. I knew that Dad was going to give me a ribbing for flat out missing the bull, so I quickly began running through a series of believable excuses in my mind.

But suddenly I noticed several large shapes emerging from the timber behind Dad. I started running in his direction as fast as I could, pointing as I ran.

“ELK! ELK! ELK!” I screamed under my breath.

Dad turned and once he saw the elk coming out of the timber he too started running in their direction. We ran as fast as I legs could carry us over the frozen terrain, making a beeline for a small strand of aspens that protruded from the center of the open park. Once we reached the trees Dad immediately threw up his rifle and took aim at the lead elk- a big cow.

“I’m going to shoot that lead cow,” Dad whispered excitedly.

At this point I had my binoculars up and as I scanned the tree line I could see more elk slipping through the pines about to emerge into the park. “No, wait, “ I snapped back. “There are more elk coming.”

“I’m going to shoot this lead cow,” Dad repeated.

“No Dad! Just wait a dog-gone minute! There are more elk coming. Be patient.”

Good grief, you would have thought the old man had never been elk hunting before. He was as excited as three year-old on his birthday. If he shot the first thing that walked out, some skinny old cow, I would have never let him hear the end of it.

More and more elk were now streaming out of the timer-cows, spikes, forked-horns, 3 x 3’s. They looked like an army of ants marching to a Fourth of July picnic. With a herd of this size, I knew there had to be a big bull in there somewhere. I continued to scan down the line of elk with my binoculars towards the rear of the herd and that’s when I glimpsed a heavy set of antlers moving through the aspens in our direction. A monster bull quickly materialized out of the trees. He was the last elk in the procession. There was no doubt in my mind he was the herd bull. He also looked very familiar. I was certain he was the big bull I had seen early in the morning.

“Dad… big bull coming! Big bull coming,” I whispered.

I glanced over at Dad. He had his rifle trained on the slow procession of elk while anxiously shifting his weight from one foot to another. He looked like he was about to pee his pants. The anxiety of watching elk after elk after elk, slowly amble past him was about to push him over the edge. It was like holding a freshly opened bottle of triple malt scotch under the nose of a raging alcoholic. I knew he was about to shoot at any minute.

“Don’t you shoot. Just wait,” I reminded him. “The last bull in the line is the one you want. Be patient. Trust me.”

One by one, the herd slowly, meandered past Dad’s position until finally the herd bull stepped out and presented him with a clear, broadside shot.

“That’s him! That’s the one!” I whispered. “Take him!”

Dad’s black Remington 7mm, a 60^th birthday present from Joe and I, boomed through the valley. Seventy-five yards away, the big bull collapsed to the frozen ground. Dad jacked another round into his rifle but we both knew it wasn’t needed. The old bull had dropped dead in his tracks. Dad and I raced over to his body, Dad in the lead while I fumbled through my hunting vest pocket for my video camera.

“Good night, son, would you look at the size of that bull!” Dad exclaimed as he crouched down beside the animal.

The bull was a massive 6x6, with heavy main beams and tall thick tines that were tipped in creamy ivory. The bull easily dwarfed my 5x5. He was without a doubt the CEO of this particular herd of elk.

“The Bryson Boys definitely had some good luck this morning,” said Dad as he slapped me on the back.

He was right, I thought, while I clicked off a few ceremonial snapshots of Dad proudly posing with his trophy. The odds were stacked against us that morning, but somehow, someway, we not only managed to find elk where there wasn’t supposed to be any, but we managed to kill two nice bulls in the process. And more importantly we were able to experience the thrill of the hunt together as father and son, which will be one of those memories that I’ll hang on to as long as I live.

Yep, I must say that on that cold morning in early October in the northwest corner Colorado, Dad and I were blessed with The Luck of the Irish (or in our family’s case, The Luck of the Scotch/Irish.) It was undoubtedly one of the best hunting experiences of my life, but it was short-lived. Like all elk hunts, once the kill has been made the real work begins and this trip was no exception. I’ll go on record here and confess that the next 48 hours of field dressing, quartering and packing both bulls out on horse back in the middle of a blinding snowstorm while ascending over 1,ooo feet in elevation, was one of the most grueling, back-breaking, and physically exhausting experiences of my entire life.

But that’s a story for another time.