A Bow Elk Hunter Nightmare

By Clyde G. Schultz

This story could very well have happened while hunting elk in Colorado. When I approached two men dressed in street clothes and oxfords. It was strange to see them in 14 inches of fresh snow but there big smiling faces left me to believe every thing was OK. They told me that they had been stuck for four days and I offered to help them out. They apparently had no money to pay for the damaged chains on my vehicle. Later that night I had a terrible dream that they took me prisoner and held me against my will for 72 hours in a poorly constructed 16x20 cabin on Elliot Ridge. The drug runners had a plantation up there, and a clearing big enough to land a helicopter. The last two chapters of the book are fictional, my dream, in thirty years I've had a lot of strange and ironic events during elk hunting, but not tragic. But it could have been when 3 men took my bull elk at gun point in 1973. They threatened me to step out of my truck. I did not provoke them, I said that "If I come out it won't be empty handed".

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 8, 2007
• ISBN: 9780595889242

Clyde G. Schultz

I inserted some of my own character into Jerry, and it became my pleasure to write the book, like in my dream Feb.17 09. I am 81 years old. I’ve been writing songs and stories since 1996. I have 400 songs 35 stories now. This is my 3rd book to be got published.

Book preview

A Bow Elk Hunter

Nightmare

A Novel

Clyde G. Schultz

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

A Bow Elk Hunter Nightmare

Copyright © 2007 by Clyde G. Schultz

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any

means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written

permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in

critical articles and reviews.

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since publication and may no longer be valid.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and

dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used

fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-0-595-44597-4 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-88924-2 (ebk)

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

Started on my bow stand Oct.17, 06

Main cast of characters: Jesse Parker, age 59 in 1996 story: Elk Bow Hunter’s

Nightmare. I will assume the role of Jesse Parker. Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6

will be true events of my life story up to the ultimate incident of 2001. Chapters

7 to the end will be fictional. The guides for 1969 hunt were Jim and Al Hackbart

of the Otter Creek Ranch, Heaney Colorado. Also part of the hunt was the

horse, Dusty, a friend, Bud, from Colorado Springs, and friends from Heaney,

Colorado, Dan and Sally Westberg. Other characters are: drug lord number one,

Big Al, 6 foot 2, 300 pounds, dark hair, helicopter pilot; drug lord number two, 5

foot 10, 150 pounds, long black hair, wearing an expensively-tailored dark suit,

white shirt, blue necktie; drug lord number three, 5 foot 8, 140 pounds, black

hair, blue jeans, checkered coat. All were of Cuban descent—mean looking—

from the Elided Ridge Colorado area and all expensively dressed

Any similarity to real events or real people is purely coincidental.

CHAPTER 1  

I got addicted to elk hunting in 1969. I was a painting contractor, divorced three years and had a 12-year-old daughter. I was a longtime accomplished hunter for many years prior to 1969, but I dreamed of hunting elk in Colorado. I did some western hunting for deer in Montana in 1964 and in 1963 in Oregon black tails.

In the winter of 1969 I talked to my brother about elk hunting. He hunted Colorado the year before. Although I didn’t know the area he hunted, one day I looked in the Outdoor Life magazine and found the advertisement for the Otter Creek Ranch, north of Dillon, Colorado. The advertisement said five days for $250, elk and deer combined including the elk license of $75 and deer license of $50.

After several phone calls and a lot of answered questions, I booked a five-day hunt for October 10, 1969 and I sent them a check for $150 as a deposit. They furnished everything except my personal things, and said we would do a lot of horseback riding so advised me to get myself ready for that. All through the summer a friend loaned me a horse to ride every day that I kept at my place. I also did a lot of walking to get my body in shape. I wanted to be prepared for the hunt, so I also did some shooting at different ranges, but I had been a successful deer-tracker since I was 16 years old and didn’t need any preparation in that area.

Jim and Al Hackbart were the owners of the ranch and had been guiding professionally for 10 years. I was pleased with our phone calls and the letter they sent stating a 90% kill ratio. I had no way of finding out if it was true or not ahead of time, so I just had to take their word for it, but I was confident in myself and my own abilities as a hunter. I thought I could do well anywhere because I had I proved it many times over before this.

My mother had been living with me ever since my dad passed away and she had a brother in Denver. She wanted to see him so we thought it would be a perfect opportunity for her to go along and visit while I hunted, so plans were made for our combined trip.

In early July I bought a new Chevrolet pickup—not a four-wheel-drive—and a new 14-foot Shasta camper. For the next month my daughter and mother were busy filling it with things we might need for the trip. They were as excited as children at Christmastime. I was excited also as I checked out the roads, sights, places we wanted to go, and things we wanted to see. My older sister wanted to go along, too, and I agreed, so we immediately tried out the seat of my new truck with the four of us in the cab. It was not an automatic shift, and thank God we were all small people. I weighed 145 pounds, my mother, bless her heart, was the biggest of the four of us. With my daughter next to me where the shifting lever was, we all fit just fine.

So the day finally came around, and on September 28 we got started. If you’ve ever been through the Black Hills at Mount Rushmore, you will know the fun that we had. There’s no end to these things of interest. My mother was a rock collector and she taught my daughter this fad along with my sister. They filled the camper up with rocks. I finally got to the point where I said they could have six rocks apiece, not more than 3 pounds per rock and that’s it. Of course, I could have just kicked one out every now and then, ha.

Four days later, we got a very early snowstorm and it made the roads treacherous, as we traveled southward from Deadwood, South Dakota to Denver. We picked up a lot of ice on the truck and the camper, and a lot of extra weight. When we got to Denver, there was 18 inches of new snow. My uncle had sent us a letter with his address: Trailer 7 on South Alameda Boulevard. Can you believe we actually found him, after stopping in several trailer courts? That afternoon I washed the camper and the truck. Washing all the ice off cost five dollars worth of quarters. We stayed the night in Denver. I was supposed to check in at the ranch October 3. The hunt would start Saturday, October 5 for a five-day hunt. I was beyond ready for the hunt.

So at 6 a.m. October 3, and I kissed my girls goodbye and started up the mountain on old Highway 6 which is now I.70. In those days there was no Eisenhower Tunnel; you had to go over Loveland Pass. With the heavy snowfall I had to chain up but I had been prepared for that emergency. I had left the camper in Denver so I didn’t have that to pull, but the traffic was bumper-to-bumper and it took quite a while to get over Loveland Pass. It was about 11:45 a.m. when I got to Dillon Colorado. I stopped at the old saloon for a beer and a sandwich. I had my pistols strapped on my side. Just imagine walking into a bar that way, but that’s the way it was them days. I demonstrated my fast draw to the bartender and the day’s customers. I bragged that I could beat their old gunfighter at the draw because my 41 Magnum pistol was double action and I didn’t have to cock the trigger before drawing it out of the holster. I bought a round of drinks for the house and made some fast friendships. We all had a great time. None of them wanted want me to leave, but I was anxious to get going because the ranch was still 18 miles further north on Highway 9. I told them to call me Pee Wee Painters, which was my lifelong business. I said next time I came in there I wanted them to remember me. In fact, the next year I went back and took eight men along on a hunt with me. When I walked in they yelled in surprise, Hey! Pee Wee is back! But that’s another story.

I got to the ranch about 2 p.m. Jim showed me the bunkhouse and took me to the corral to see my horse, Dusty. He said Dusty was very gentle just like I asked for. After that we walked back to the ranch house, where his wife was frying elk steaks over an open fire.

For supper we had elk steak, which must’ve been two pounds apiece, with potatoes in gravy, and vegetables on the side. It was a wonderful meal. His wife was a great cook. After supper we had a few beers, just sat around and talked. We were all told to bring our own beer or brandy—or whatever liquor we wanted to drink—everything else was provided by the ranch. Two of the other hunters were from Michigan. One doctor was from Chicago, Illinois. I forget where the others were from. There were nine of us in all, even though some of them didn’t get there until Friday. I was now very relaxed and told them of my tracking abilities, but they said it was impossible to do that on elk. When I asked why, they said it was because of the strenuous terrain. I was doubtful that it was impossible and I longed to prove them wrong. They said it was better to get elk the easy way, so I agreed that was all right to some extent. But thinking to myself I knew that they didn’t know me or my determination to be successful on this hunt or what I was about to prove to them later.

We had all day Friday to look around and get acquainted with each other, and especially with my horse, Dusty. Jim fixed up a scabbard for my rifle on the saddle. I had a 30.06 Remington automatic model 742 with a small tip-off scope. All too soon the day was over and another wonderful meal was served by the cook. As soon as the sun went down I looked up the hill and there was a string of at least 50 deer following the ridge just 75 yards from the corral. The biggest buck in the lead looked like an elk—he was that big—a big mule deer, single file, following the leader. I was amazed by such a sight: to see so many deer at one time and all in rifle range. I could have shot that big buck. Just the thought of it gave me an itchy trigger finger.

Early on Friday morning they had spotted a herd of elk on the south slope of Blue Mountain, so the plan was to ride up there Saturday morning. Little did they know that at 4 p.m. Friday the Rangers would drop cherry bombs to scatter the herd, but Jim said plans were made and it was too late to change them, so it’s early to bed, early to rise. At 3:30 a.m. we were woken, and while the horses were being loaded on the trucks, we ate an early breakfast. Lunch bags were packed and we were off for first hunt.

As we rode up the long mountain in the dark, I never saw the ground; the horses were surefooted and used to that sort of thing. We had to trust them. At least 6 miles uphill, at daybreak, we stopped and dismounted, sore from the long ride. Each guide would take three of us for the day. My guide said to me, elk are the name of the game—don’t worry about deer, but then I am an old hard head and nobody tells me when I can shoot a nice buck. The first thing I wanted was to get away from that long-legged cowboy. If you set your own pace, you don’t get yourself out of wind. After all, I was 41 years old. I was pretty good on my feet but not used to the thin mountain air. So I asked the guide if I could hunt on my own for the day and he agreed. He said, Just head for Highway 9 when the day is through and we’ll pick you up there.

It was all downhill, except for about six miles as the crow flies, but that’s a good hike for anyone. I wasn’t separated from the guide more then five minutes I heard some gunshots to the northeast of me, and all at once I heard a lot of noise. There were deer running all over the place all around me, some nice big bucks in the bunch. One set of antlers looked like about 10 points at 30 yards. One shot put the buck down. He was a beautiful 10-point buck—that’s five Western count. I got my buck and the guide came over and seemed to be pretty mad at me but he said he’d go and get the horse to pack out my deer. Okay. I said. I was very pleased that I had taken such a nice buck in the first five minutes of the day. What better can you get?

I gutted out my buck. The guide came back with the horse, loaded up the buck and that’s the last I saw of it. You don’t forget your own deer. At least I don’t, but apparently this doctor from Illinois went home in three days and took my 10-point buck and left his 9-point buck. I was a little disappointed about that.

The Colorado Department had extra licenses for $10 if you wanted to stay till the next Saturday and Jim said if you want to stay a couple extra days there would be no charge. That was really nice of them to do that for me. I still hunted the rest of that first day. I saw a few deer, a couple elk, but they were half a mile away. I had an either sex license but I really wanted a bull elk. However, I usually take what comes. I’m not a horn hunter.

I had a long walk to the highway late that afternoon. It was a half hour after dark when I got to the highway. I waited a half hour, and after they finally picked me up, it was almost 9 p.m. before we got to the ranch. Another good supper; then to bed. It was 11 p.m. before we got in bed and morning came awful fast. It snowed 5 inches overnight and, after an early breakfast, our lunch bags were packed and we were riding up the mountain again. This time it was for Black Lake Mountain.

When we got up there, it was just half-hour after daylight. Jim told me there was a nice buck nearby. We cut his track several times on the way up and he was probably sleeping somewhere close by, so Jim told me to stay there looking down at the waterhole 250 yards south of me. Jim went up the canyon. He thought that the big buck would be laying down up there and he would spook it toward me. So while I watched real close from a standing position, Jim had made a lot of noise but the buck was not up there. He was below me, just 75 yards downhill. He heard the noise and stood up long enough for me to get a shot. I tried to think what Jim had said about shooting downhill on a steep grade and I missed my first shot. The buck turned to run. I held down low and fired. The buck slid down the hill just like he was on the sleigh up against