 | |||
| Eckley Country |
Jon recalls that the hunting camps were just for the men, for many years. I know that by the 1950s and 1960s, Johnnie's wife Evelyn, Buck's wife Sylvia Sampson Goodman, and Vake's wife Milly were going along. Milly, who called herself "the original feminist," pointed our rightfully that the women worked side by side with the men in their businesses all year long, and were just as ready for a vacation.
The hunting camp shifted from Eckley to eastern OR, in the John Day country, near a place called "Strawberry Mountain," and it's nearby "Murderer's Ridge." It was Vake's theory than on the west side of the state, there was always plenty of forage for the deer. In eastern Oregon, it was good sportsmanship to harvest a few deer, but he would not shoot a doe. He figured that was killing two deer, and besides, sometime the does weren't spooked enough by the hunters to make shooting them any challenge.
It was in eastern OR where the family heard so many gunshots fired on opening day of deer season, coming from all directions, that they remarked that maybe that's how "Murderer's Ridge" got its name. It was there that Vake saw a wolf, its fur shining like silver in the sunlight. He just watched. He heard gunshots later, and hoped that nobody was shooting at the wolf. It was there that Johnnie got his bear, soon to become a rug; and there that a herd of elk when charging past Milly while she hid behind a tree, so close she could hear them snort. And it was there that Sylvia wished out loud that she had the nerve to roll rocks down a big hill they came to, so Milly showed her how it was done, so they rolled rocks and laughed like women who were crazy. Back at the camp, Gene kept up his tradition of cooking, and nobody dared get in the way because he wouldn't stop chopping to let anybody filch a carrot from his cutting board. Does anybody want to lose a finger?
It was in eastern OR that a little more comfort got added to the campsite: a bale of hay strewn under the sleeping bags, then army surplus folding cots, then a fifth-wheeler, then a travel trailer, until the mighty hunters were too old and crippled up with arthritis to hunt any more. That's when Uncle John shot his last deer, allegedly so that it fell down hill right into the bed of his pickup truck. But that's all the stuff of an older post.
So where was this campsite really: Mark Sampson comments: Dark Canyon is the name I recall the most. The only time I went with them we went to the Jordan Valley north of Vale/Ontario but that was when I was in High School and Herb/Sylvia Sauter went also.
DON'T MISS DAVID'S COMMENT ON THIS POST, BELOW
In 1954, I went to Strawberry Ridge with my dad, Gene, and his brothers + Buck Goodman + Dunc and Jack LaChappelle + a couple of the Johannson brothers. Jon Logan was also there; we hunted for about a week and I only had one chance to bag a buck. I was hunting with my dad on a ridge we probably had to climb up somewhere between 1500 - 2000 feet, sometimes pulling ourselves up by grabbing small saplings to get near the top where the ridge flattened out.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, once we got on top, dad sent me on a loop around one end of the ridge thinking that I might spook up a buck or two and send them toward him. After about 1/2 mile I came upon a dense thicket of saplings and brush that I was forced to go through as it stretched forever with a cliff to one side. So, in keeping with my assigned spooking task, I found myself pretty much crawling through this dense thicket that was about 50-100 yards deep. When I was about 1/2 way into it, I suddenly spooked a deer which had been lying in cover. While it was only a few feet away, the brush was so thick I couldn't see it but boy could I hear it. It sounded like a brahma bull taking off!
"Somewhat" startled (Read this "scared 's'-less!), I then continued making my way through the rest of the thicket. When I exited the thicket, I found myself looking at an upward slope. I quietly crept Indian style up to the top of this little slope, carefully peering over the edge when I reached the top. There about 40-50 yards away, standing there in profile with his head cocked right at my location, was the biggest dear I have ever seen. He could have played the role of the adult Bambi without any doubt. He was magnificent with a rack of 8 or 9 points on each side and weighing somewhere between 300 - 400 pounds, nearly twice the size of any deer I had ever seen before.
Realizing this was my chance to become a Sampson deer-hunting legend, I moved carefully and slowly, lining up the sight on my Winchester 30-30 right in middle of the giant buck's huge neck, just in front of the shoulder like my dad had taught me. This would give me the maximum probability of making a perfect kill with one shot. Slowly and carefully, once I had the sight appropriately lined, I carefully and gently squeezed the trigger so as to make certain I didn't make any jerky movement which would move the bore just enough to miss my target - although at 40 yards the buck was so close I could have hit him with a rock! (Space limitations will cause this to completed at another place and time!)