Under the Light

Five rifles under a spot light ought to get something if there is anything out there to shoot at. Them Blake boys were all good with a gun and too many deer was eating all the browse that'd put pounds on a cow critter and Norman wanted to cut down on the number of those moochers. He said he had a new positive-drive Chevy pickup with a good spot light that would carry all 5 of us right handy.

That afternoon we met at Blakes Little Wolf Ranch and had supper. After dark we climbed in the pick up and Norman turned the front end towards the narrow dugway that wound its way up the east side of Black Rock Mountain. Tom, who was sitting in the cab, worked the light back and forth across the ravines and ridges of the mountain side. Bright eyes of a bunch of does reflected in the light. Through your rifle scope its's plain to see there ain't any bucks in the bunch, but Norman stops the truck and gets out to lay a few of them down before they can get out of sight. He don't like them over-running his cattle range. We don't bother about trying to retrieve the meat as it's probably lean from nursing fawns and there will be plenty of big fat bucks up on top of the mountain.

Scrub oak, mountain maple, service berry, bitter brush, bunch grass and other good browse make up the vegetation of this rough and rugged land. On top it leveled off and gave way to large groves of ponderosa pine. Some knolls and hills broke up the generally flat lay of the table top, the whole area being generously covered by the eruption of an old volcano not far away. Black rock made the wheel track roads rough and slow to travel, but this is good mule deer country where the bucks grow wide spreads and big of body.

It's not too long before the light picks out some big ones and the sharp shooters bring them down. we gut them out, cut off the head and lower legs and throw them in the back bed with rib cages propped wide to cool the carcass. We're here after meat, not trophy horns.

I'm sitting in the back, leaning against the cab. When the spot light finds one with its beam, the riflemen on that side soon drop it. As the night wore on we got three or four, hardly any room now for the 3 gunners in the back. We'd covered most of the mountain top where a wheel track went that the pickup could negotiate. I'm getting tired and sleepy, thinking we ought to call this escapade to a halt. I doze off as the truck bounces along, then hear some gunfire and Norman say "I've run out of bullets, somebody shoot him!" I open my eyes to see a big buck bounding across a little sage brush covered flat. I rest my .308 on the side of the bed, put the scope dot on him, and squeeze the trigger. He piles up in the brush. Norman drives over to him, where we clean out his guts.

"Haven't we got enough yet?" I asked. "Maybe, if we don't see any more good shots." We head back toward the dugway down off the mountain. I think we got one more just off to the west of a little pond not far from the tip off point. After gutting that one out we build a big fire and skin them all, then chuck them on a big canvas spread out in the bed. It's starting to show light in the east as Norman heads it down the dugway and we'd only gone about a half mile when we see two sets of head lights coming up along the road toward us. That dugway is narrow, but it don't take Norman long to seesaw that outfit around and hurry back to the top, then off the roadway over a little hill out of sight. Me and Ernie brush out the tracks where the truck left the road.

When the outfits pass, it's 2 pickups with racks, looks like wood haulers. They go out of sight over toward the pond. That positive traction comes in handy as it puts the truck back on the road and we scoot down the mountain.

Next day or two I run into Ron Nelson and he says "Ferd Nielson tells me you and the Blake boys been out on Black Rock Mountain poaching deer. Is that so?" With a hurt look on my face I says, "Why, Ron, you know I'm an upstanding law abiding citizen. Why would I ever do such a dastardly thing? You know me better than that." He grins, "Uhuh, I Know."

I'm thinking, those nosey Nielson brothers must have had a pair of binoculars they got on us before we went out of sight. I detest nosy people. They should tend to their own affairs and not other people's doings.