Whats a Trophy Room? – Part ll

by: Gary Sorenson

I Appreciated the fact that all that responded to Part l shared like feelings as to what constitutes a trophy.  NorCal Cazadora refers to it as “collecting relics of our hunts”, I liked that.  Things that remind us of a place, a beauty, a danger, any memory for good or bad can be, if not a physical trophy, a mental trophy.

 

The little odd ball mule deer antlers on the left side of the gable end of our Sun (trophy) room spent 26 years in the attic above my garage before my father-in-law dug it out along with a couple other of my racks and I started telling him the stories behind them.  I couldn’t believe the vivid memories that each one brought back to me after all those years.  Ed put the big shocker on me when he took them home with him and mounted them on boards so now I don’t have to go to the garage to enjoy them anymore.  Anyway this little buck will never win any prizes for size, in fact I lost a steak dinner with him on a friendly little wager I had going with my brother-in-law, Ray.  He has just three points on his left side and two on his right side and one of those points takes a dive for the lower forty just after it branched.  But where he lived, he was one tough little bugger.

On this particular hunt, Ray and I took our little families along with our wives folks to do a hunt in the Wallowa Mountains.  We camped along the beautiful Lostine River in wall tents which was good as it got chilly in the evenings so we appreciated the wood heat.  On opening morning Ray chose to go up on the west breaks of the Lostine and I went up the East.  I had no idea where to go so just kind of eye balled it and tried to pick out a place that wasn’t to bushy.  I soon found it was a whole lot easier climbing if I stayed near the ridges.  Shortly before noon I cleared tree line and saw it was only about half hour more to top out, so that’s what I did.  I sat down there and had my sandwich and enjoyed the view as down on the other side of the ridge was Frances Lake.  I wish there was words to describe the view from there but its one of those places you just got to be there to believe it.  After lunch I decided to head for the ridge to the south and follow it down.  But when I got to the bottom of the draw between the ridges,  I found there was no way to get across the cut without wings, so I started to circle around and down to my right as I was going to have a look at the ridge to the north instead.  I basically was making a 200 yard circle around the only bush living above treeline.  As I came 30 yards under this little three foot bush, my buck couldn’t stand it anymore and made his break.  I just couldn’t believe it.  He had watched me eat at 70-80 yards, watched me make this complete circle around him, and I never saw him till he made his last run.  I couldn’t quite comprehend what he was doing way up there in the rocks, but I guess you find deer where they are and not where you think they ought to be. 

He was a fairly heavy bodied deer so when I got done boning him out I had more weight then I really wanted but I didn’t want to make another trip either.  I then made a mistake in choices on which way to go down.  I regretted that choice for the next five hours.  Instead of climbing the extra 100 yards back up to the ridge that I came up, I though I could see a way down near the bottom paralleling the cut. With an extra 100 plus pounds on my back I became very top heavy and little did I know how steep and rocky it would get, not to mention the brush.  Several times I resorted to letting my pack down with a rope, then my rifle, then try to find a way to get down myself.  When this happens I had a tendency of thinking of my little family at the bottom and how stupid I was for getting myself in this fix.  I was one happy hombre when I hit the bottom right at dark.  Walking down stream beside the Lostine was not a walk in the park, but it sure felt like it after getting myself off the mountain.   Seeing the gas lanterns swinging in the trees beside the tents was almost as good a sight as what I had enjoyed at lunch time. 

 A tired dad with three happy sons and one tough mountain buck!

Its strange and its awesome the stories I see when I look at those antlers.  You tell some mighty good tales and bring back some mighty good pictures Mr. buck.  A definite trophy!  I’m glad you’re in my trophy room!