“HERE we go again!” Although Bob’s shouted exclamation was not inappropriate, there was nothing funny about the situation, as we all, literally, held our hats and hoped for the best. But further conversation was extremely difficult above the noises of the wind, slapping waves, and the courageous outboard motor. Almost like a fighter’s haymaker the squall had struck, causing our heavily loaded boat to take water with each malicious wave. To make matters worse, the canoe, which we had in tow on a short line, was continually creeping up on the outboard and making steering a still greater problem.
But Walt was at the helm, and his competent navigation eventually brought our quartette of hunters into a cove where we dried out, condemned the weather, and waited impatiently for the storm to pass. Not until dusk, however, did the churn of breakers die down sufficiently for our ears to pick up the music of the birches. By then it was camping and eating time, and another day was lost.
Yes, there we went again. It was the third time in as many days that we had been forced to the west shore of Adams Lake, British Columbia, by stormy weather. This was hardly in keeping with our original plan to cover the fifty watery miles to the upper-valley hunting areas in a single day. Already we were two days behind a reasonable schedule, and the head of the lake, with its rotting pier and deserted cabins, was still some sixteen miles distant. You may suspect that irritability was raising its ugly head among our foursome, and the picturesque northern lake, with its frosty guardian mountains, no longer seemed a friend.
That night the campfire heard a few arguments, but we at length reached a decision. Should the following day be stormy, it was decided that we would cache canoe, surplus gasoline, and other weighty articles which we might do without, and continue on to the head of the lake. Of necessity we could return for our belongings when the unsettled weather had passed.
The next morning, of course, was cloudless and the lake surface almost glassy. With revived enthusiasm we cruised forth, with all equipment, believing by all that was logical that our boat would touch the rotting old terminal wharf not later than noon. Did we make it? We did not, and, strangely enough, we suddenly lost all interest in completing this somewhat annoying boat ride until the day was done and a pale moon rode high above the Gold Range….
At a distance we at length identified what Bud, our host, said was Lammers Island, the largest on Adams Lake. But even so, the island was little more than half a mile long by half that in width. It had not been our intention to give Lammers Island more than a passing inspection, and our talk concerned the ridges and swamps far above the lake, until — Bud’s seasoned eyes picked up a movement on the smooth surface, the V-shaped wake that betrays a swimming creature.
Instantly he decided it wasn’t a waterfowl, and Bob with the glasses quickly made the identification. A fine set of antlers showed above the surface in the channel between Lammers Island and the mainland. At this point the channel was quite a quarter mile in width, but the buck was approaching the island, and it was strongly evident that he would be deep in the isolated timber before our craft could possibly reach the southern rocky point. Still, Walt gave the motor extra gas and we managed to get a fleeting glimpse of the game as he emerged from the cold water and bounded across a narrow stretch of goose grass to disappear among the island cedars. Shortly our boat grated gently on the gravel and we were on shore, limbering up both legs and rifles.
“That buck’s worth going after,” Bud declared in a low voice; but little did any of us suspect just how individual and resourceful was the mule deer that had just ventured into the limited confines of Lammers Island, to be put on the spot, so to speak, by the coming of four men with rifles. Or was he on the spot? After all, he lived in this country, and there was plenty of cover.
Our initial idea was to comb the island in a skirmish line, but a hurried conference altered that possible strategy. What was to keep the game from swimming back to the mainland while we were fighting the bush? It was decided that two men should take the canoe up the channel until a vantage point was reached somewhere on the upper portion of the island. There one man was to watch the channel in case the buck saw the wisdom of again playing fish. Walt and Bud were given sufficient time to get in position, and then Bob and I started what was little more than dog work.
In a zigzag fashion we moved through the island cover, attempting wherever possible to follow game trails. These trails were immediately interesting in that they revealed, for the most part, a conspicuous set of buck tracks, large and easily identified. It appeared that Lammers Island was more or less dominated by a large deer, although there was some evidence also that black bears frequented his little domain. To me, as I pushed along, it seemed at least probable that the island sovereign might well be the deer we were hunting. I was abruptly awakened from my thoughts by Bob’s whistle, and my steps turned immediately in the direction whence had come the shrill sound. I found my companion standing beside the remains of what had once been a fine buck.
“Looks like he might have died fighting,” Bob remarked, pointing to a broken antler.
“Have you noticed the big tracks along these trails?” I questioned. “There’s a mighty healthy buck hanging around this island.”
Bob nodded. “That’s the one we’re after. I had the glasses on him when he reached the shore. He looked big even from a distance.”
“Let’s get going,” I suggested. Without further pause we continued our inspection of the dense island bush, believing that our movement surely would drive the buck toward the northern section, where either Walt or Bud might get a shot. But there was no rifle fire, and finally we heard Bud’s voice. A few minutes later our quartette was conferring upon a fallen tree. No one had seen or heard a movement, other than that of a few ruffed grouse, and Walt insisted that the buck had not swum back to the mainland.
“He might have kept close to the shore,” Bud suggested. “In some places the willows hang right over the water.”
The canoe was left where Walt and Bud had beached it, and now we began a slow and systematic drive. My line took me close to the lakeward shore of the island, while Bud followed the opposite shore and Walt and Bob fought the brush. Occasionally I searched the shore trail and at length found fresh tracks outside a willow thicket. It appeared that Bud might have been right in his latter suggestion, but who would have suspected that the deer would hide on the side of the island which was almost three miles from the opposite mainland shore? And now, could he possibly find seclusion within the island’s limited confines, with our entire squad closing in?
Walt was nearest me, carrying a .30/30 carbine. And there was no mistaking its wild talk, when two shots echoed through the woods. A few seconds later Bud’s Krag added its baritone to the .30/30 song, and I knew that the buck, hit or not, was headed for the channel. Without further attempt at stealth I hurried in the direction of the shooting. Very shortly I came upon Walt’s boot prints, the deer’s tracks, and then a blood trail. Walt heard me coming and waited, his face flushed and rifle held in nervous readiness. Where he stood, there was a considerable area of crimson grass and earth. Apparently the game had paused, turned completely about, and then continued in the direction he had been traveling, namely toward the channel.
“Was it the big buck?” I asked quietly. Walt nodded, grinning. “A monster!”
“He won’t go far, losing all this blood,” I observed, and Walt hastened to agree. My surmise that Bud’s Krag had supplemented the .30/30 in the shooting was correct. Furthermore, as we presently learned, Bud was certain he had hit the game, believing at the time that Walt had missed cleanly. And Bud, too, talked with great enthusiasm about the deer’s headgear. By this time our group was together again.
Walt, after the manner of many old-time deer hunters, said: “Give him a few minutes to lie down and stiffen.” It was more or less Walt’s game, so we waited.
“It’ll be easy to pack him to the boat,” Bob put in.
After a few minutes of smoking and gabbing we set out on the buck’s trail. After Bud had hit him, the game had followed a trail along the shore next to the channel, occasionally wading, either to throw us off his track or as if contemplating a swim to the mainland. Traveling north he finally had come to the beached canoe, circled, and made for the shallows.
“There’s something!” Walt exclaimed, suddenly, pointing across the channel. Against the reflected forest line the naked eye could barely distinguish a swimming creature.
Again it was Bob who had binoculars handy. “There goes your buck, Walt,” he said. “He’s wading the shallows!”
“This is one time,” I observed, “that it wasn’t good hunting to wait for him to bed down.”
Walt grunted.
“He’s an amphibian, not a deer.”
But we weren’t just talking. Walt and Bud were shoving off in the canoe, after marking carefully the spot where the deer had emerged from the lake. Bob and I were forced to fight the island brush again in order to reach the larger boat at the southern end. The men in the canoe already had arrived on the mainland before we were underway with the outboard. Our crossing, however, was quick, and we landed perhaps a half mile below the point where the canoe was beached.
Bob and I found ourselves on an extremely difficult shore, but we pushed in until we came upon a game trail that ran parallel to the water’s edge. Here we noted fresh cloven tracks that headed in a southerly direction.
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“Looks like Walt’s buck,” said Bob. But there was no sign of blood, and we were undecided whether to follow them or not. While we were debating the question we heard a noise up the trail. In a minute Walt and Bud came down the path, and the problem was settled.
“He’s not bleeding much since his swim,” said Walt. “But there’s an occasional drop. See, here’s a little blood on this buckbrush.”
“He’s not far away,” offered Bob.
“Where have I heard that before?” Walt snorted.
“Back on the island,” I defended, “I would have bet folding money that the deer would never have attempted to swim this channel water.”
“What are we waiting for?” demanded Walt, who was obviously worried as well as impatient. In fact, there was some thought all around that the deer might not be wounded as badly as we had first believed, but no one went so far as to say that we might never find him.
With Walt out in front we single-filed along the narrow trail. Why the hit game hadn’t taken to the tangles I couldn’t guess, unless, of course, he happened to have some other strategy in mind. Just opposite the southern tip of Lammers Island, within 100 paces of where we had beached the boat, a nameless creek empties into Adams Lake. Up this rock-bottomed stream the deer’s trail turned, and now he was starting to bleed more freely. A short distance parallel to the creek, and the trail crossed the watercourse, continuing upward on the opposite side. A dozen paces farther along both tracks and blood trail disappeared completely.
“The old shell game,” muttered Walt. “Well, wading a little creek like this isn’t going to get him anywhere.”
So we continued to follow the musical little stream, two men on either side. Surely we couldn’t miss his tracks where the buck left the water. Then we came to a spot where the watercourse was little more than a tumbling spring, with windfalls and sharp ascents that would stymie any animal, not to mention a wounded deer. Again there was a conference.
“We talk too much,” protested Walt. “That buck’s making us look like a bunch of wooden soldiers!”
“If he didn’t come upstream,” said Bud, “then he must have gone downstream.”
There was no alternative but to search for sign below the point where the deer’s trail seemed to enter the creek. Backtracking, we soon arrived at the last blood sign. There followed a careful search of the immediate vicinity, but no sign that the game had left the creek. Then we searched both banks downstream until we came to the sandy delta where it emptied into Adams Lake. Directly opposite was the southern tip of Lammers Island, where Bud had first sighted the deer.
Never was an area more closely examined for tracks than the soft ground both ways from the delta. We searched every thicket and even parted the grasses with our hands in a futile effort to find a fresh hoof print. The buck’s trail simply came to the stream and vanished.
“Now, that deer didn’t walk from the stream,” reasoned Bob. “And it’s a cinch he didn’t fly away, so —” I noticed he was looking toward Lammers Island.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Walt howled. “We’re after a deer, not a fish.”
Bob only shrugged. “You’ll have to admit he showed himself to be a good swimmer.”
“We’ve got nothing to lose,” I put in. “The boat’s near here, so let’s have a look.”
There was nothing else to do. But as we climbed in the craft and shoved off, I could tell from Walt’s expression that he already was accepting bitterly the apparent loss of the game.
“No,” he said, as if to himself, “he can’t go far. Oh, no!”
There was little other talk during the few minutes it required to cross the channel. Without enthusiasm we quickly fanned out and, starting at the southern end, systematically searched thickets and other retreats where a hit animal might attempt to hide. The big tracks of the buck were too plentiful, so it was hardly expedient to follow hoof prints.
My erratic searching took me along a rise of land, the most prominent elevation on the island. Beneath a twisted cedar I came upon a crimson area, which I immediately associated with the buck’s trail after he had been shot. But wait a minute! That had been farther up the island, at least 300 yards from where I now stood. And the twisted cedar — I would have remembered that. Cautiously now I began to look around. In two directions I could hear movements, but these, of course, would be my companions.
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Hardly daring to believe that I was on the warm trail of the island monarch, I followed the red sign, peering hopefully through each forest screen. He can’t be far, thought I — and then remembered how I had been forced to eat those words a short while before. Along the hill the trail continued, falteringly, avoiding all windfalls. Then, ahead, I sighted a great set of antlers low to the ground. Automatically I raised my rifle, only to lower it instantly as I recognized the unnatural position of the headgear.
And there I chanced to find him, the island king. Except for the fallen head, he lay as if he might have bedded down to watch over his little empire. On each antler I counted five giant points. His weight must have been well over 300 pounds. He had been hit twice: the low gut shot I attributed to Walt’s .30/30, while Bud’s bullet probably accounted for the muscle wound in the right shoulder and neck.
Then I remembered that there were others who had a greater interest in the deer than I. So I whistled, but my whistle never has been very good — so I ended up with an old-fashioned basso yell. Although Walt was the oldest member of our party he was the first to arrive. When Bud and Bob finally nosed through the shrubbery, Walt’s head and shoulders were framed by the antlers, waiting for my camera to talk.
“Well,” said Bob, “it’s the best trophy I’ve seen in a while. But say,” he went on to Walt, “do you have to look quite so pleased about it?”
“Oh, it’s a nice enough buck all right,” replied Walt. “What I’m so pleased about is I’m sitting down!”
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