My dad hated horses, so to get him to go on a decent elk hunt took a lot of talking. The first day of the hunt my buddy Rich and I saddled horses while dad and grandad cooked breakfast. As we packed lunches and got ready to go, dad stood in the tent, by the stove, in his underwear sipping coffee. "Cmon dad, lets go" I said. He said he hadn't ridden all the way in there just to ride somemore and he wasn't getting on another horse until we rode out. "Okay", I shrugged, and the rest of us rode out. After a long day in the saddle we hadn't so much as seen an elk. We were surprised, to say the least, when we rode into camp at dark to find dad cooking dinner, with a cow elk quartered and hanging next to the tent. About 10:30 A.M. he had been sitting on a stump in front of the tent within reach of the coffee pot when a small group of cows stepped out of the timber across the creek, maybe 50 yards away. He slowly picked up his old Enfield .303 and dropped one. The story doesn't end there. At the end of the week, when I packed dad and grandad out, no one else had even seen an elk. I resupplied and met Rich back in camp. We hunted up until the next to last day before we saw anything. He had first shot, so when we rode out of a patch of timber and saw a band of elk, with a small 5 point bull a hundred yards above us, Rich eased off his horse and tried to slide his rifle out of his scabbard. I say tried because it wouldn't come out. He had a fella build him a nice custom scabbard from some soft glove leather, and that soft leather just bunched up behind the bolt, holding it tight. Frantic, he gave the rifle a mighty jerk and it came loose all right, it flew right out of his hand and down the hill it flew. He had the funniest look on his face when he looked up at me. He took one step off the trail on that steep hill side, and down on his butt he went sliding like a toboggan through the dry leaves after his rifle. That was more than the elk could stand and they stampeeded off across the mountain side through a quater mile long aspen grove. I did the only thing I could think of at the time; I put my heels to my horse and went thundering down the trail after them. It was a hell of a chase. The trail was muddy in spots with the remnants of an earlier snow, and both horse and elk were going for broke. As we raced down the mountain the elk started crossing the trail in front of me. They wanted to get into the timber below the trail. At one point I had cows jumping the trail so close in front of me I thought we were going to collide. I pulled my .357 from the holster and drew the hammer back as the bull came closer and closer to the trail. About that time we dashed back into the timber. The mud was flying as the elk and the horse all hit the skids at the same time. Without thinking I had holstered the revolver, baled off my horse and grabbed my rifle, as everything slid to a stop. I was standing on the trail in front of my horse as the group of about a dozen elk milled around maybe 30 yards up the hill from me. I guess they were confused. All at once they turned and started walking past me single file. At the shot the cows all ran off, but the bull just kept walking maybe five steps and fell over behind a log. The shot was short and the elk was a raghorn, but it was the most exciting chase I've had yet!
