I was probably around five-years of age when I saw the magazine cover of two wranglers guiding their horses and a pack-string across a small stream during heavy snowfall. Large antlers were tied across the top of a pannier pack-frame. A rifle butt visible sticking out of a saddle scabbard in front of a man following up the rear. I don’t even think I could read yet, laying there on my grandmother’s floor in the 1950s, but that photograph on the front of an outdoor magazine started a burning desire that still exist today.
My first trip into the Rockies actually occurred in 1981, a muzzleloader hunt into New Mexico’s Lincoln National Forest. I put my first mule deer down though in reloading I forgot to put powder down the Hawken’s barrel and already had a bullet stuffed in there…. This was about the same time I started writing in the outdoor field.
My first contact with the Colorado Rockies began with a phone call to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Department. One of their wildlife biologists provided information about the elk numbers and feeding grounds in the Weminuche Wilderness. It was just the first of many contacts with CPWD employees that I’ve had in the last forty years.
A friend and I almost killed a little mare when we climbed thousands of feet in elevation in the wilderness, too fast without realizing that flatland hunters and horses had a lot to learn… It was when an Oklahoma elk hunter educated us about weather. He found us sitting outside our dome tent at the far bottom of a creek draw. This man leading a pack of small mules said, “If it starts to snow, you boys gather your sleeping bags and your guns and come visit our camp about a half mile up the trail.”
The last 28-years have been archery elk hunts that have been mostly priceless. I’ve made friendships that I will cherish until I’m gone, spent time with friends who are already gone and wrote stories about it all until our newspaper sold and the outdoor-commentary was gone…
I’ve also slipped onto Blue Mesa Reservoir and Taylor Lake with Pueblo-based folks who have become more than just friends. They introduced me to ice fishing and it is a blast…. But this story is actually about the professional folks who have helped me along the way.
It is the Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologist who I talked to before I ventured into Poison Park…. It is another biologist I talked to about the area south of Antonito; the same trip where I called in my first bull elk with my son-in-law ready to draw just twenty yards away. Except that I stood to take a photo and the sound and vibration of that heavy-beamed creature running away will forever be in my memory banks.
This is about the CPWD Game Wardens I met way up the Pine River, near the La Garita Wilderness, while fighting a fish on Blue Mesa and a phone call to another after finding an illegal elk kill on the Grand Mesa…
I was sitting under a military parka that was tied from my ATV to a sign by a county road the last time I talked to one of these law enforcement professionals. I was reading a book while the sound of hail pelted the heavy plastic. Then I heard the engine noise and saw a tire roll up close by. I tilted up the edge and saw a Warden smiling back at me. “You okay,” he asked?” I explained I was just waiting on my son who was a little late getting there.
I was reminded of many such memories when I found an old postcard that I mailed to my parents more than 35-years ago. “We’re at Durango. Everything is white up here. We leave in AM for the top of timberline. We’ll be 30 miles above Bayfield, CO. I’ve dreamed about this all my life and now it happens.”
This year, I am using all my elk points, one more trip, and possibly my last, into the Colorado Rockies. But before this happens, I want to thank all the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Department retired and presently employed professionals who have helped keep our outdoor heritage intact…
Russell S. Smith
San Angelo, Texas