I asked my spinal surgeon what kind of activity my back could withstand. He said that I could do anything that I could stand- that I would have pain but was in no danger of further injury. In fact, he said that those three fused vertebrae were now the strongest part of my spine. Now I could focus all of my 'rehab' attention on my foot. That got me thinking about climbing. I always tell people that...  Read More

In addition to my crushed foot, I also needed surgery to fuse three crushed vertebrae. So as not to leave me completely immobile and bedridden, they decided to do the spinal fusion after I got the cast off my foot. Every month I had to go in for a back x-ray to make certain that those damaged vertebrae weren't moving. The day finally came, my cast was removed. I was shocked by the length of the th...  Read More

Crushed vertebrae, a crushed foot, and over 3 1/2 months in a wheelchair. My leg was in a cast, my body was in a shell, and I was in a lot of pain. I was content to lie still from the end of August to the middle of December. I love to climb mountains, especially in the snow. According to my journal, the previous winter I had summitted 83 times. That summer I summited Mount Rainier. I mention this ...  Read More

I still needed to butcher my deer and get it in the freezer, but it was in the truck and I was pointed toward home. The moment I started my truck and put it in gear I felt an enormous sense of relief from not only half a day of grueling hard work, but also from the intense mental pressure of needing to get this deer out. Almost like flipping a light switch, everything changed in an instant. I was ...  Read More

I was drenched in sweat and my shoulders were raw from the thin rope harness I made to drag my deer, but I somehow made it up out of the coulee onto level ground. But I faced another problem. Directly between myself and my truck was an old barbed wire sheep fence with wires stretched so tight and low to the ground that I couldn't get the deer under it. It took all of my strength to cut the wire wi...  Read More

The antlers made nice handles, but I couldn't budge the mule deer even one inch up the side of the steep coulee. I decided to backtrack, climb out on my own and head back to get my truck. My hope was that I would be able to drive around the coulee and park close to the upper edge. In my truck I found a 10 foot piece of rope, cut it in half, made two loops and tied one on each of the buck's antlers...  Read More

As I hit the edge of yet another coulee I jumped a nice mule deer buck. It was a large mature buck, but looking back, the antlers were clearly average. He was doing that bounding 'bounce' peculiar to mule deer when he stopped broadside halfway up the coulee wall. In my excitement and inexperience, I shot him right there. If I had waited another minute, he would have climbed up out of that coulee o...  Read More

The high plateau that borders Montana's Missouri Breaks looks flat and lifeless. Sagebrush and tired looking soil called 'gumbo' go on for mile after mile. That's at first glance. In truth, the country is rich with game. Antelope herds thrive on the plains and small draws called 'coulees' offer shade to deer and elk during the heat of the day. I was hunting deer by myself, walking those draws and ...  Read More

And so we passed on the buck of a lifetime and made our way in silence down to the truck. I was not a Christian then, and I said in a moment of honesty, "Doug, if you hadn't been here I would have shot that buck." He grinned and said, "If you hadn't been here, I would've shot that buck." Though we would never have gotten caught, accountability kept us legal. Face it, we are all sinners. Having bro...  Read More

We stood motionless on the steep, snowy mountainside, senses on high alert. We were hunting elk, and a deep, musky scent told us that an animal was very close. The sun was just going down as we saw the tips of very large antlers not 30 yards beneath us. The animal was still hidden by a small knoll, but as he moved our way, we saw long tines and a wide spread. We already had our rifles up when he s...  Read More

I couldn't get my frozen fingers to work. My partner loaded my rifle and zipped up my coat. There was a foot of fresh snow on the ground, and we were at the bottom of a steep ridge. I started climbing immediately. Ten minutes later, part way up the ridge, I was warm and toasty and felt fine for the first time in many hours. We walked all day and saw nothing but an occasional track in the snow. We ...  Read More

My body hurt. I was in significant pain and could not stop shivering. My hunting partner was breathing peacefully beside me in his goose down sleeping bag. I simply suffered minute after minute as the hours slowly dragged into morning. When we ran out of propane for the heater, we closed the side windows of the topper on my pickup to try to retain heat, but we could not keep out the bitter cold. D...  Read More