This story, “One Day in June,” appeared in the June 1961 issue of Outdoor Life.
It isn’t like my wife to suggest a hunting trip in the spring. Spring is for house cleaning, curtain washing, garden planting, wedding bells for the young people.
But this spring Ethie was proudly displaying a new .300 she had bought and paid for herself, and with which she had just tallied a 46 offhand at 200 yards, shooting at a 10-inch bullseye.
When we got home from the rifle range she dug up a map of Canada. She aimed a slim finger at a spot in Alberta, east of Waterton Lakes. “You don’t need a grizzly license in that country,” she said, “and you can hunt them in spring.”
“I’ll write Andy Russell,” I said. “He’s king in that neck of the woods.”
She smiled as if I’d given her a diamond.
Andy Russell answered my letter quickly. He said that over the years they had killed a dozen grizzlies on grizzly slaughtered $1,000 worth of beef cattle, Andy said, and there were more cattle-killers up there needing to be taught a lesson. That Hawk’s Nest, a hunting lodge, could base our operations, Russell added, and the wild flowers were beautiful in spring.
Ethie read the letter so many times she wore it out.
The June day came finally. We heaved our duffel into the car and started the 1,800-mile drive from our home in Redlands, California, to southwestern Alberta.
Soon after we entered Canada, rain slanted down as if someone had slit the sky. It rained so hard the road turned into a bog.
It rained so hard we couldn’t see Andy’s mailbox and passed it; so hard that Andy himself was imprisoned in the Twin Butte post office, where we met him. Then we slewed behind his station wagon to the boundary of his ranch. Because the road was muddy and steep to Hawk’s Nest, and our car wouldn’t make it, we parked it in a hay field and heaved our stuff into Andy’s.
Halfway up the hill, Andy’s station wagon bogged down. The mud was up to the floor boards, and enough rain was spewing down to float Noah’s Ark.
Andy jumped out, squinted at his shiny vehicle. “It’ll be a week before the road dries up,” he said. “But never mind. I’ll hoof it up the hill and come back to drive you to Hawk’s Nest in style.”
Rain and mist swallowed him. Ethie and I huddled together on the front seat and shivered.
Between spells of chattering teeth I said, “Andy seems like a fine fellow. He spent 10 years working for Bert Riggall, the dean of Canadian hunters, bought Bert’s ranch, married his daughter — quite a success story.”
“He’s tall and wiry and very nice looking,” Ethie said, “but I wish he could stop this deluge. We can’t hunt if it keeps on raining.”
Sooner than I thought possible, Andy showed up with a pair of fat horses hitched to a ranch wagon. Our duffel got another shifting. Then the steaming nags clopped uphill in the driving rain to Hawk’s Nest, perched atop the hill like a Swiss chalet. A ranch man carried our stuff inside and we followed.
My mouth slumped open. The main room, two stories high, had as much floor space as a two-bedroom bungalow. You could almost stand up in the stone fireplace. Big picture windows framed lush green meadows, green forests, and greenish flooding brooks. The country was a symphony of green.
Andy nodded toward the window.
“That flat land was the west boundary claimed by the plains tribes — the Sioux, Crees, Blackfeet. The Nakodas ranged from here up into the mountains. One of their old hunting camps is just north on Cottonwood Creek, where we’ll fish one day if this pesky rain ever lets up.”
“I’m glad to know about them,” Ethie said. “But I’m more interested in how to hunt grizzlies.”
“Got your binoculars?” Andy grinned. “I’ll show you.”
Ethie fished a pair of Ross 10 x 30 glasses out of the duffel and stepped beside Andy. He pointed to a brown spot quite a distance away on a green slope.
“Focus on that,” he said. “What does it look like?”
“It’s a dead horse.”
“That’s right,” Andy said. “He was an outlaw. But he’ll make a good grizzly bait.”
Andy went on talking. “Beyond the west ranch boundary is Waterton National Park, 150 miles of mountain wilderness without a fence in it. Fine reservoir for grizzlies. Can’t see the other bait. A mare. Lead horse of the string for years. Hated to shoot her, but she was crippled up and was in pain all the time.”
Then Andy turned toward the door.
“Have some things to do at the house,” he said. “It’s down the hill
a piece. Follow the path. Dinner’s at six.”
“How about those grizzlies?” Ethie yelped. “When are we going after them?”
“You sure got your mind on the bear,” Andy said. “I like that. The only way to get one.” He leaned against the door jamb. “We really ought to sight in those rifles of yours before we get down to serious shooting. If the weather’s decent you won’t have any trouble waking up tomorrow morning. Not in this latitude. Sun’ll be shining at half past three. Tomorrow evening, if you like, we can take a ride around to size up the grizzly situation. Well, see you later.” Black 10-gallon hat slanted on his head, he strode out the door and down the hill.
Ethie and I rambled to one of the large bedrooms.
I could feel my eyes grow big. Fancy bath. Twin beds. Lots of space. View of the snowcapped peaks toward the west.
Ethie was on her knees unpacking duffel. “Surely is a luxurious way to hunt,” she said. “No tent to bother with. No musty sleeping bags. No wet ground. Live in a chalet and wait for grizzlies to come to dinner.”
I drew from the scabbards our two rifles of .300 Weatherby caliber. Ethie’s has a Mauser action, Weatherby barrel, and a custom stock by Crowe. Mine is a Model 70 Winchester remodeled by Pachmayr.
“I wouldn’t expect to get that grizzly too easy,” I told Ethie. “Bear shooting’s no child’s play, no matter how you go about it.”
“Oh, I know,” Ethie said. “I was just reveling in home comforts while they last.”
Later we strolled downhill to the red ranch house where Andy lived with his wife and family. We put away a banquet of fluffy mashed potatoes, elk frozen and kept from last year’s hunt, green peas, warm ranch bread, and cream cake for dessert. Bert Riggall’s daughter was as proficient in culinary science as her famous father had been as a guide and outfitter.
The sun was glaring in the window by 3:45 next morning. I jumped out of bed. The air was snappy, the floor cold. I jerked down the shades, then crawled back under the covers again.
After breakfast Andy showed up with a rolled-up target under his arm. He had painted a 10-inch bullseye on a large sheet of paper. “I’ll tack it up across the ravine,” he said.
Shooting over a log covered with a blanket, Ethie fired five shots from 200 yards.
Andy trotted to the target. When he got back his tanned face was wreathed in a grin. “One was a little wide,” he panted. “But a three-inch circle would cover the rest. Not bad for a lady with a cannon.” He kneeled and inspected the scope. “They were all a trifle high. Better come down a bit on that Bear Cub.”
Ethie adjusted the scope and shot again. Andy ran and checked. I tried a few. More checking. Then Andy fired both rifles. He got a close group, holding well with rifles new to him. Our rifles were ready.
Late in the afternoon Ethie and I walked down to the red house with our rifles to meet Andy for our first scouting trip. He had horses saddled for us, and we jogged away from the ranch with Andy in the lead.
“Hardly wait to see if anything’s touched the carcasses,” Ethie whispered.
Andy heard her. “Won’t check both. Today we’ll take the one you can see from Hawk’s Nest. The other tomorrow. That way each gets a rest. Don’t want to fill the air with too much human scent.” Andy waved toward a lush meadow on the right. “Grizzlies, black bear, mule deer, moose, and elk show up in that pasture every summer and fall. Not uncommon to see 50 or 60 elk in a bunch.”
The ride along bird-lined trails, across grassy flats, over yellow-green hills freshly washed by rain was like breaking through the screen into fairyland.
Below the bait, we tied the horses, slipped rifles from scabbards, and fell in afoot behind Andy. He fingered his binoculars, and leaned over so far that only his long legs seemed to be walking up the hill. Every few minutes he stopped, listened, glassed the countryside, and moved on in a crouch.
Ethie stepped ahead, cradling her rifle. If I’d strained my ears, I’m sure I could have heard her heart thumping. Although I didn’t expect to shoot, I could feel a nervous chill run up my own back.
Andy stopped before a small thicket. Then he elbowed in slowly, almost leaf by leaf.
The sun was dipping, the shadows long. Stones looked like bears. I was sure I could hear bones break. My boot hit a log and made a slight noise. Ethie turned, frowned. “You must be quiet,” she said, her lips barely formed the words.
Then Andy broke through to the clearing around the bait. “Come on,” he called. “No signs, not even a track. Cold and rain have kept this horse just as sweet as if the undertaker had worked him over. Need a little more warm sunshine before he’ll send out grizzly messages.”
Ethie rested her .300 on her boot. Her mouth was drawn tight. “No bear.”
“Buck up,” I said. “If you got one the first time out it wouldn’t be fun. Or like any hunt we ever went on.”
She nodded. “I was expecting too much, I guess. But wouldn’t you think they’d see that big chunk of meat?”
“Give ’em time,” Andy said. “The riper it is the more they go for it.”
Next morning rain pounded on Hawk’s Nest roof like thunder. We put on slickers for the short walk down hill to breakfast. When we got back we flopped into two big chairs by the fire place.
“Doesn’t look much like hunting,” Ethie moaned.
Suddenly I saw Andy’s black hat looming in the glass of the front door. Ethie let him in.
“Morning folks.” He set a cardboard box on the center table. “Know how to make flies? Brought some feathers and stuff. Thought we’d turn out a few, if you’re interested. Pass the time till the rain stops. We can get the trout’s opinion of them in Cottonwood Creek.”
“Ethie’d like to, I think. But I have a lot of metal to scrape off this hunk of iron.” I was working on a spare rifle barrel.
“Good enough.” Andy grinned. He sat down and tied a sample fly he called a Russell Special. Ethie tried one. Soon they had a regular assembly line working.
Lunch time came, then late afternoon. I had the barrel almost finished. It was still drizzling, but not hard.
Andy cleaned up the mess on the table and asked, “What do you say we ride out and take a look at that old mare? May be sloppy, but we can make it.”
Ethie laced up her hunting boots and grabbed her rifle almost before I could nod my head.
Wearing slickers, we rode down the soggy trail. Nobody spoke. We were busy keeping dry and watching our riding. Finally Andy raised his arm. Ethie and I slid off, tied the nags, unsheathed our rifles.
“Bait is over that hump yonder,” Andy whispered. “Fair to middlin’ pond there, too. Good place for a grizzly to wet his whistle. Easy stalk, but be quiet.”
It was a short climb to the top of the ridge. But every two steps I took in the soggy ground I slid back one. At last we were just below the crest. Andy stopped. Ethie moved up beside him. Did I hear bones cracking? Andy took off the strip of inner tube stretched over the scope on his .257 Roberts. Ethie thumbed the safety of her .300. We inched ahead. Now I was sure I heard a bear, either black or grizzly. The crunching was muffled but definite. We were on top of the low ridge now.
Suddenly I saw Andy and Ethie stride ahead. Ethie raised her rifle, held it, her finger on the trigger. Then she lowered it and ran after Andy. Suddenly they stopped.
When I came up, Andy whispered, “Grizzly disappeared into those bushes. Slipped in so fast you couldn’t get a rifle on him. Gone now. Won’t see him again.”
“If we’d only got here a little sooner,” Ethie said.
“Hard to know just when these devils are going to grab a feed,” Andy explained. “Can’t sit here all day. They wouldn’t come at all.”
The horse was about half eaten. Bear tracks circled the ground about the bait and led back and forth to the pond.
“Bait’s getting a mite high,” Andy grunted. “We’ll have to keep a sharp watch on it. Otherwise it will disappear before we can knock over the robber.” It started to rain then, in buckets.
We hoofed it back to the horses and rode to the ranch house in a storm that made the sky dark as midnight.
Next day the weather decided to be good. Breakfast eaten, we rode west toward the mountains. When he saw a wild flower at the side of the trail, Andy would jump off his horse, pluck the little jewel, and stick it carefully into one of his saddlebags. When you got wild-flower minded you realized how many kinds there were: Purple Vetch, Mariposa lily, Death Camas, Indian and Palid Paint Brush, Wood Violet, Alpine Aster, and Shooting Star. We picked 24 varieties, and there were many more we missed. This was a scenic ride, not a trip to the bear baits.
Back at Hawk’s Nest, Andy unpacked the flowers. I tripoded my camera and took wild-flower portraits until the temperamental sun darted behind the clouds. That evening we rode to the carcass on the hill. But there were no bear tracks.
Next day we pounced on Cottonwood Creek with Russell Specials Andy and Ethie had made. The trout went for them, but the trout also went for the worms we’d dug beside the ranch house.
That evening we saddled up for another trip to the bear bait near the pond. The chance of using my rifle seemed slim, so I left it at Hawk’s Nest. I didn’t see Andy’s .257 either. Ethie had her .300. I brought my camera to take pictures of the pond with the backdrop of mountains.
The ride seemed short to the aspen where we tied the horses. I took my camera and light meter from the saddle bag and slipped the straps over my head. Andy slung Ethie’s .300 on his shoulder. We zigzagged up the hogsback. Just below the ridge, Andy stopped and put a finger to his lips. “Something over there,” he whispered. He gave Ethie her rifle, and we began to crawl ahead. I thought of my .300 at Hawk’s Nest, and remembered I’d come on this hunt to back Ethie. I gave myself a mental boot. But it was too late now. Perhaps it was only a coyote at the bait.
I listened. My ears weren’t as keenly tuned to forest notes as Andy’s. He lived in the woods. But the sound of an animal eating was surely floating on the light breeze. And it wasn’t a little animal. I could see over the top of the ridge now, see the pond, see the bordering fringe of scrubby bushes. Then I saw what was left of the old mare.
What had made the noise? Had a grizzly got away? Suddenly I glimpsed a flash of light brown, the same color as the old mare. I saw Ethie half hidden by low brush, her .300 raised, saw Andy on his knees pointing. “Fine grizzly,” Andy whispered. “He went into the bushes to drink. He may slip around into the timber and we’ll lose him. May come back this way. Don’t know. But he won’t fool around if he does come out. Have to shoot pretty fast.”
Now I wished more than ever I had my rifle. Ethie likes to take her time. She picks a spot on a certain patch of hide that suits her, centers her dot with caliper precision. Only then will she squeeze the trigger. I doubted if the grizzly would be generous enough with his time.
I stared so hard at the bushes on the edge of the pond that my sight blurred. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. I should have brought my own rifle, I told myself for the steenth [sic] time. Then all I’d have had to fret about would be shooting the grizzly. Now I had to fret about both Ethie and the grizzly.
Suddenly I saw a movement in bushes, a waving of slender branches. Then no movement Then it began again. I pressed my lips. I stared. Out of the bushes came the long snout of a grizzly, the head, the hulking shoulders.
I looked at Ethie. Her rifle barrel was steady. Her scope was cupped to her eye.
“Wait,” Andy whispered.
The grizzly nuzzled the breeze, what little there was, blowing from him to us. Now he was clear of the bushes, headed straight for us. Ethie followed his every move, her eyes unblinking.
Step by step the bear was closing in. Was Ethie’s finger paralyzed? Couldn’t she squeeze the trigger? My stomach churned. My fingers gripped my camera almost hard enough to crush it.
I kept my eye on Andy. The corners of his mouth were pulled down, his eyes fixed on the advancing grizzly. Neither of us dared whisper or make the slightest motion. It was difficult for me to breathe.
The grizzly was at low rise now, legs shuffling, brown body bulky with sinew, eyes roving. It seemed as if nothing in the world could stop him.
I glanced at Ethie. I saw tension in her trigger finger. Then the barrel of her rifle shot up, the explosion like a hand grenade in a cave.
The grizzly reared on his hind feet. He flailed the air as if hoping to fly. For seconds he seemed to hang between ground and sky. Then he dropped.
He hit the grass with all legs working. He ran at right angles to us faster than I ever imagined a bear could run and vanished behind a clump of birch. “Never saw a grizzly do that before,” Andy exclaimed. Then he grinned at Ethie. “I said to wait. But not till you saw the whites of his eyes.” Ethie could only gasp.
Now the grizzly was gone and I had no rifle. But I would have had only a slim chance of hitting him in the air. And nobody could have got a rifle on him while he was running.
Camera in hand, I lit out, Ethie and Andy close behind. I could hear Ethie chamber a cartridge as she chased down the hill.
Then I saw the grizzly, still covering ground. I speeded up. I’d catch that grizzly, whale him over the head with the camera. I wasn’t going to let him get away.
Then I heard Andy yell, “Look out! That grizzly’s dangerous. You’re in the way. Ethie can’t shoot.”
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But almost before I’d digested the words, the struggle ended. The grizzly rolled into a huge ball, went limp, and flopped in a heap of hair and muscle. When I barged up there wasn’t a wiggle in him. That first bullet had clipped off part of the heart.
“Good work, girl,” I said to Ethie. “You surely know how to economize on ammunition.”
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