A Watson Mountain Chronicle

The case of the disappearing tent

A Watson Mountain Chronicle

Hunts real and imagined

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

             As kids, we envisioned deer hunts in wild and mystical places.

            In fact, we hunted many more deer in our dreams than we hunted for real and that was saying something. The hunts of our minds would commence in earnest after sharing all the tales of the various hunts in the days following that most heralded school holiday of the year, Hunters’ Holiday.

            Hunters’ Holiday was the Monday following the opening weekend of deer season. Those were in the days when Silver City was the real deal and resembled the customs and mindset that made it such a once appealing place. Dads (or granddads) and sons were reunited in the fall ritual of the hunt.

            Families returned to historical camps or favored hunting grounds.

            The hunts

            During the decade of the ‘90s, I would come home from California and spend a week nearly every year with my childhood friend, Dusty Hunt, to work cows or embark on an annual pack trip into places we wanted to hunt but never got the chance. Those hunts took us to Lilly Park and the Jerkies, to Miller Springs and Brushy Mountain, to Woodland Park, to Granny Mountain, to McKenna Park and White Creek, and to Turkey Creek and Watson Mountain. Those were days when we threw squaw hitches and didn’t always have a firm plan where we would camp that night.

            On one of those hunts, we made the ride into Miller Springs but didn’t clip a tag. With two days left to hunt, we broke camp with the intention spending the last day hunting Watson Mountain. We reached the mouth of Turkey Creek in late afternoon. The horses were loaded and we drove over the mountain and back up the west side of the river to the mouth of Mogollon Creek. It was there we pitched the tent in the sandy river bottom and settled in for the night. After a lead horse was belled and supper was fixed, we talked watching a big, but quiet cottonwood fire.

            The night was clear and cold.

About midnight, a big wind blew in that rocked the tent and blew panniers and gear around. We lay in our sleeping bags listening to the growing intensity of the wind. We worried about losing the tent. Shortly thereafter and in the midst of a tremendous gust the tent simply broke loose from its stakes and lifted into the night sky straight up and disappeared!

            Whoosh … it was gone!

            Nearly simultaneously, the bell horse was running in his hobbles along with the pack string and horses. They had no doubt seen that flying object and it scared the dickens out of them. With not much we could do, we pulled the ground tarp up over us and went back to sleep.

            Before daylight, the tent was found west from the camp site about 50 yards where it had landed in the midst of the horses. They had stampeded in every direction before starting up the river together. It took us a while to gather them, but we had the tent and most of the camp packed in the pickup and on our way up the mountain as the sun peaked into the canyon.

            Watson Mountain

            Watson Mountain was always there in full view and north from my grandparents on Bell Canyon. It was like the rest of the Mogollon front reassuring and spectacular to the eyes of folks who love that country. Forming the western half of a pair of grand sentinels where the Gila River exits the mountains, the river is only a thread of blue when viewed from its summit.

            We hit the trail just out of the river and started the long ride up the south face. We would be alone all day.

            We saw the first deer just before we rode up through the first set of sheer rock palisades about midway up the mountain. The view from atop those bluffs revealed drops of hundreds of feet and spectacular views of the Gila Valley. The magnificence of all that landscape only grew as the day played out and higher elevations were reached.

            Entering the drainage that feeds into Canteen Canyon below and to the west we stopped repeatedly to glass the now sunny east facing slopes across from us. Cherry Spring was in that drainage and I had never been to it. We looked for vigorous growth around it with the intention of riding to it, but the hunt took us out of the drainage before we got there.

            Seeing only a few deer, we split up, and, while one of us rode around to the head of a drainage, the other would wait and ride uphill through it until we made eye contact. The plan was to alternate that process in each drainage. It was one of the first of those drives that rocks were heard rolling. I wasn’t sure if it was a deer I was hearing or Dusty until he emerged well down the slope below where the sound was emanating. Something was below me and well ahead of him.

            Watching the canyon bottom through the field glasses, I saw what might have been the glint of sun off a horn.

            Watching for another glimpse of reflection, the buck’s head was made out as he stood watching Dusty approach from below. He was in brush but finally turned and moved upslope toward me. My horse was tied in some oak brush over a rise from me and out of line of sight of both the deer and me. The position was good.

            Dusty climbed steadily up through the rocky chute fighting brush and increasingly steep slope. The deer maintained a deliberate pace up the incline maintaining a similar distance from the advancing rider. Dusty would climb and pause. The deer would climb and pause to listen when he was out of direct sight. That went on for probably 20 minutes as he advanced closer and closer to my rocky point overlooking the basin.

            At the point I wanted to take a shot, he disappeared into more dense brush. He was now paralleling me in heavy growth and hugging the deepest point of the canyon bottom. He knew I was there. A hint of a rock rolling now and then marked his progress, but he was now working me rather than me observing him.       

            He was displaying that typical sixth sense of a mature mule deer buck.

            He was now very close to escape routes in different directions on a flat bench yet above us. I sprinted uphill to another rocky point to stay within a possible line of sight of him. I saw him briefly, but he was moving. He had heard me.

            Running yet to another point, I quickly made ready on a rest to take what was now becoming the likelihood of only a quick shot if there was one presented at all.

            With the first shot, I overshot him.

There was one more opening before he would likely be out of sight and range. I took a big deep breath and tried to steady the crosshairs.

There he was.

 At the discharge of the Ruger, he was down struggling in the brush. I chambered another cartridge, and watched the place he disappeared. I smelled the sweet smell of discharged smokeless powder. I could hear him breaking brush but I couldn’t see him. I then saw what might be movement through the oak brush as if he was pushing through it. All movement and sound then ceased. I reached for the empty brass and put it in my vest pocket.

I laid there against the rifle watching and listening. I couldn’t chance going to him and losing track of where he was in that thick brush. I had to wait until Dusty arrived and direct him into that thicket.

Fifteen minutes later we were conversing across the canyon. I directed him to where the deer had to be and it took us an equal amount of time to actually find him. Dusty, lying on his belly looking up through the foliage, finally saw him where he had fallen.

We drug him out into an open place and field dressed him. This hunt was over, but not the day. We slung the deer over a pack saddle astraddle the little brown mule, and started off the mountain.

The ride off the mountain was spectacular.

Taking our time, we were both enthralled with the Gila Valley stretching to the south. We talked occasionally, but mostly we just rode enjoying being horseback on that mountain and on that day.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “As I type this, I am reminded of the parallel of that hunt and the magical anticipation in our youth. It was a special time in life … as memories now tend to be.”