Just after daylight my son’s 30-06 went off. Good, maybe he got that nice mule deer buck I had been watching the past month. It was opening morning of the seven day mule deer season in Colorado. We were hunting on my 40 acres about 20 miles from Canon City. I got up from my stand under a Ponderosa pine and walked over the hill to Cory’s location. Cory said, “I see some blood but can’t find the buck”. The thin blood trail was heading east, which was strange because that was open country with no cover. We looked another hour but lost the trail. Some shots rang out east of us while we were searching. We came out to the dirt road and a truck stopped and the driver said, “Are you looking for a deer?” Cory said, “Yes did you see one?” He said, “The man in the A-Frame cabin has it.” This turns out to be the man I traded my 40 acres for later on. We went back and got the truck and drove up to the barn where my neighbor is standing. At this point I had never met him. We got out and he said, “Can I help you?” I said, “Yes my son wounded a buck and I guess he came over on your property” The first thing that came out of his mouth was, “Are you from Texas?” I quickly said, “My son lives in Florence” “Well I heard some damn Texan bought the 40 acres next to me“. I didn’t say anything at this point. Then he says, “Yeah I saw a buck and it was a huge 4×4, was that him?” Cory said, “No, this was a small 3×3, just was legal”. I knew the guy was testing us to make sure we had shot the deer he had. Then he said, “I had to finish it off and my old open sight rifle was off and I shot off one of his antlers before I killed it”. “I want the meat; don’t get much fresh meat up here these days”. At this point he opens the barn door and shows us the buck hanging up and field dressed. The right side of the rack is shot off and it has several holes in the body. I say, “Tell you what, I’ll skin and quarter it out and give you half the meat”. Again he says, “Are you from Texas? “ “Yes sir, but my son lives in Florence Colorado and he shot the buck”. So he finally agrees and we take the buck back to my 40 acres and skin it out, quarter it and take him his half. Still not sure if it was worth all the trouble and the meat was tough. I finally get a nice 3×3 buck the last day after sitting and watching a saddle in the mountain for 5 days straight.
A year later I had traded my 40 acres for his with the A-frame cabin. With no running water I had to get water out of the lake across the dirt road. When I brought my horse in, he didn’t know where the water was, so I took him to the lake the first few days. The second morning, I decided not to saddle him but just put on his snaffle bit and ride him bareback to the lake. I pulled him up to the corral fence and stepped up on the first corral pole. When I swung my leg up to mount he jumped side ways at the last minute and I hit the ground hard on my back. It knocked the wind out of me and I was laying there gasping for breath with my eyes closed. I felt something wet on my face and opened my eyes to see “Socks” licking my face, with that look that said, “Sorry boss.”
I found out that a horse by itself will stay with his owner. My 40 acres was not fenced and “Socks” could go anywhere he wanted on 1000s of acres but I was his herd and he was right there every morning when I got up. One whistle and he came running. Later on a friend brought a horse up and we didn’t find them for two days.
I had a gas generator and an electric sump pump. With two barrels in the truck, I would fire up the generator and put the sump pump on a rock in 4 inches of water with the hose going into the barrels. This would last me about 2 weeks. Later on I put a 300 gallon tank up the mountain behind the cabin and used the same gas generator and sump pump to fill it. Then I had gravity feed pressure down to the bath room. The sun would heat the black tank and I had hot water. You can find a way to live without electric and running water if you try and being retired really helps. But of course this all had to be drained in the winter time.
A few weeks later the elk season came in and I had a cow tag. I really wanted to get a cow for winter meat. There were not any elk around my area, so I loaded up my horse and went about 15 miles west to a National Forest. The roads into the area were dirt and I hit a place in the shade where it was ice and snow. I was spinning out and the trailer jack knifed even in 4 wheel drive. With the horse in the back, I couldn’t get up the steep mountain, so I unloaded the horse and tied him to a tree but still was spinning out. Then I put the chains on the front wheels. The chains did not fit well and had a little slack chain left over but they worked ok and I got out of the steep shady ice. I got to the trailhead and unloaded the horse and put my rife in the scabbard. I tracked elk in knee deep snow for 4 hours and at one point in thick timber, I had a cow right beside me. She had heard my horse and thought I was an elk. Before I could get the rife out of the scabbard, she spooked. Not sure what my horse would have done if I shot. Later I ask a friend if I could shoot out of the saddle and he said, “Yeah once”. I was tired and put the horse back in the trailer and started down the steep mountain. At the first curve, I hit the brakes, oh no, no brakes. The loose chains had cut the brake line on the left side and all the brake fluid had run out. It was a 100 foot drop off on the side of the mountain and the horse and trailer were pushing me on. I jammed the transmission into low and the 4×4 into low lock to avoid a roll over the mountain. I heard “Socks’ give a whinny in the back and I said, “Yeah tell me about it”. It took me two hours to go the 15 miles back to the cabin with no brakes.
Next day I ask Dusty how I was going to get to town for repair with no brakes. He said, “No problem, just put a metal screw into the cut brake line and fill with new brake fluid, which he had on hand. I only had brakes on one side but I could live with it, so into Canon City I went at 30 mph. Only problem was nobody in Canon City had any parts, so on to Colorado Springs I went and finally got back to the cabin at dark that night.
I still had 3 days to get a cow elk but this time I didn’t take the horse and trailer. Snow was knee deep and hard to wade through. I hit fresh elk tracks, looked like about 10 head. They were all in single file, breaking a trail, so I got in the trail and tracked along slowly. After about 2 hours, they went into black timber and downed 
jack pines, so thick I had to crawl under and over to get anywhere. I took my time and stayed very slow and quiet. Stopping to catch my breath, I spotted a cow elk bedded down about 75 yards ahead. I thought this is a “slam dunk” and took a rest on a tree. I put the crosshairs on her neck and gently pulled the trigger. When the gun went off she jumped up and took off. “Crap” what happened. I quickly went to where she had been bedded but found no blood anywhere. Then I went back to where I had taken the shot and tried to line it up. About half way to the elk, I found where my bullet had hit a limb about ¾ inches in diameter. My nine power scope didn’t show this in the sight picture. So I didn’t have elk for winter. The first winter I decided to go back to Fort Worth and stay with friends.
Spring came and I was back at the cabin for the spring turkey season. Opening day found me back down stream in the oak brush area. At daylight I was deep in the oaks on the side of the mountain. “Gobble, Gobble, Gobble came up out of the valley. I love to hear that sound at daylight. I hit my box call with a “Yelp, Yelp” as sexy as I could make it. Big boy loved it and came back with a double gobble. I was in head high oaks and decided to advance ahead so I could see. I slipped ahead about 100 yards, but stopped when I saw something white ahead of me. Turned out the white was the top of a gobblers head. I froze and pushed off the safety on my shotgun. All I could see was the gobbler’s head, so I eased it up and fired. Lots of flopping later, I had a 20 pound Merriam Colorado turkey. My favorite way to cook wild turkey is my “O.J. Turkey” recipe. Skin the turkey whole, sprinkle with brisket rub and black pepper. Stuff onions and dried apricots inside. Put in a large baking pan with a quart of orange juice. Cover with foil and bake 4 hours at 300 degrees or until you can pull the leg bone out.
During the summer I decided to add a 10×12 bedroom onto the east side of the cabin. Cory was helping me on the weekends as that was his trade and he had all the carpenter tools. We framed it in the standard 2×4 construction but put rough cut pine 2×6’s on the outside to match the cabin. Heavy insulation was added and every crack was filled with caulk.
At the end of August it started getting cold after dark with frost in the mornings. By mid Sept the leaves on the Aspen trees were a bright yellow orange. Bull elk were bugling everywhere, only problem was I didn’t get drawn for a bull tag. I finally got a cow elk in Oct which was in a herd raiding a hay field and put the meat in Dusty and Hazel’s freezer as they had electric just two miles over the mountain. I decided to stay and tough out the winter in the cabin. Working everyday cutting wood, I had a huge pile outside the back door. By mid November the temp was getting down to zero during the night. The propane heater was going full blast and the wood stove was eating wood at an alarming rate. The only wood in this country is Aspen and Pine which are soft and won’t hold overnight in the stove. I had on insulated underwear all the time and slept in my down filled sleeping bag with two quilts during the night. Heating the A-frame cabin was difficult to say the least as it had a 15 foot ceiling and no insulation of any kind. The new bedroom was thru a door made in the bathroom and not much heat ever got back there. I should have put a wood stove in the bedroom but it was too late now to cut a hole in the roof for the stove pipe.
On day around the end of November the temp was showing 15 degrees with a bright sun and about 6 inches of snow on the ground. I decided to take a hike and packed some water and lunch. About a mile from the cabin I hit mountain lion tracks. With my trusty .357 magnum at my side, I started following along. The tracks led me into a thick pine grove and the lion tracks were on top of each other and it was dragging its belly in the snow. I could tell it was stalking something. Then the tracks starting going in 20 foot leaps and ended with blood everywhere in the snow. I found the mule deer doe half eaten and covered up with snow and grass. I had this feeling I was being watched from the tall rocky peaks above me but couldn’t see anything. When I returned two days later, only one leg bone was left and the coyotes and magpies had cleaned up the scraps.
By the end of November and the first of December the temp was hitting 10 below zero at night and with both stoves going, the temp inside the cabin was in the 40s. One morning when I got up the water bucket was frozen and I had to thaw it out before making coffee. It suddenly hit me, what the heck am I doing this for? My friends in Fort Worth were having 60 degree days and dancing and drinking beer at the Stock yards. The next morning I packed up my dog and horse and took off back to Texas. The following year I sold the mountain cabin and bought 200 acres near Brookesmith Texas but I will never forget being a mountain man.
Note: The man killed by a black bear on August 10 1993 on Waugh Mountain, in Fremont Co Colorado, was Colin McClelland 24 years old.
From IBM to Mountain Man Part I
-Russell Porter