Tarheel, my family antelope hunted in Brown's Park for over 40 years. At times we had three generations of family in camp. Those days are long gone so it was a very special for me to return home and hunt the country my mother's family homesteaded and that I dreamed of chasing goats in as a child.
-Cody
This is the story of my first experience hunting in CO. I had gotten back from SEA in the fall of '67, was stationed in Denver and finally met someone who hunted; a couple of neighbors, so we planned a trip to Irish Canyon for mulies. All I had for a rifle was a 98 Mauser with original sights and no scope. My one neighbor had grown up in Hayden and used to hunt there, so off we went. The other neighbor's brother went along and we were in his jeep. We got off work Thursday, loaded up and took off on our adventure. The cam bearings on the jeep were so badly worn that over 45 and the top of the engine starved for oil and the lifters started rattling. After driving through the night at 40mph, stopping in Maybell for breakfast, and heading toward our goal we ran into a blizzard the likes of which few people experience in a lifetime. We ran off the road into the ditch twice because we couldn't see for the snow. Twenty feet of vision was about the extent of it, but we finally got there, found a large flat bottomed rock sticking out of the ground at a 45 in the edge of the buckbrush, and began to cobble up a leanto around the edge of the rock. No tent, mind you, and the cold front hit. It faired off, wind went to about 40mph and the temperature began to plunge. While we're constructing our shelter we began to notice all kinds of mulies headed through the park to our west in groups of up to 25 in number, and soon totaled well over 100, probably more like 150. They were all headed south and we were excited to be in such a game rich place; couldn't wait to morning. Little did we know that those deer were headed to lower elevations where there was less snow, and we had nearly two feet with shoulder high drifts. If by now you're thinking dumb and dumber, it was actually dumb and dumber times two. Only one of the four had ever hunted Colorado, and he was not the sharpest tack in the box. Two months before that I was in the jungle, and the only sleeping bag I owned was an old cotton fart sack. In my vernacular, down was the opposite of up, so needless to say, I didn't get any sleep that night, so cold I was shaking like a dog crapping peach pits.
Next morning dawned and all we saw was one nice buck and a dink with about 8 does which were feeding out in the middle of the park where the wind had scoured the snow down. They were too far out from the cover to get closer than 300 yds, and my neighbor (the dumb one) decided to do an end around and drive them toward us. They all cooperated; all the does that is. Big buck went SW, dink went West, and all the does paraded right by us. All the rest of the deer were down around Rifle/Buford by now if they were smart. Didn't see another deer that weekend.
I know this has been a long narrative, but it was my intro into hunting in the West, and it was so memorable I thought maybe some would get a chuckle out of us bumbling through that adventure. Fortunately I found better friends with whom to hunt after that.
