The dream always ends the same.
Someone else shoots the buck.
He wasn’t one of those deer I had to think twice about. With tall heavy antlers spreading wider than his ears, the muley was bigger than any I’d seen in years. Maybe as big as I’d ever seen and I’ve looked at a lot of deer.
But he was out of range when I spotted him and he’d already seen me so I just sat down and watched him through the binoculars.
Although it was early in the season, he appeared to be rutting. There were half a dozen does with him and he acted more interested in them than in me. Eventually the deer moved to the top of an open ridge and one by one disappeared over the other side, the big buck at the end of the line, silhouetted for a few seconds against a pewter sky.
Instead of heading directly after them, I hiked farther up the drainage before crossing the ridge and dropped into a deep coulee on the other side to stay out of sight.
I hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps when four sharptail grouse flushed noisily and rode the current of a rising wind, cackling as they flew.
For three hours I followed the deer, or at least tried to. There were a lot of muleys feeding and moving through the snow-covered breaks that day and every time I spotted movement I stopped and glassed, but didn’t see the big buck again until I crossed two more ridges.
Below me, at the bottom of a steep slope, were a couple of bedded does. I raised the rifle and looked at them through the scope. Then I saw the antlers.
A few yards beyond the does, the big buck was bedded, only his massive rack and the top of his head visible. But he was looking directly at me and before I could punch the safety, he got to his feet and trotted off.
I slipped back over the ridge and ran parallel to the direction I guessed the deer were headed. When the ridge between us broke off at a sandstone cliff, I saw the deer moving casually down the drainage on the other side and I sat in the snow until they were out of sight.
After working around the cliff to the bottom of the drainage, I belly-crawled to the top of a low rise and saw the big buck standing like a sentinel on a bare knob, 250 yards away.
Cold, wet and uncomfortable, I leveled the rifle, found the muley in the crosshairs and squeezed off a shot. The deer took a step and I fired again, this time hearing the impact of the bullet.
By the time I got to my feet the deer had vanished and upon reaching where the buck had been standing I found only the faintest sign of blood.
But it was blood nonetheless and I started following the tracks.
Two hours later, head down, trying to find the trail on a bare, south-facing slope, I heard a snort and looked up to see the big buck racing through a cut in a steep ridge.
From behind, antlered game animals always appear bigger than they actually are and this deer looked enormous.
It was also the last look I had at him. I got to the cut as quickly as I could, but it was too late. He was nowhere in sight. Light was fading and I was miles from the truck. It was time to give up the chase.
I haven’t been back. The weather warmed the next day and melting snow made the country inaccessible.
It was only the third time in nearly 40 years of big game hunting I can remember losing a wounded animal and it haunts me, especially in my dreams.
That’s where I keep seeing the big buck.
The one I didn’t get.
The one someone else shoots.
Every time I close my eyes.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net