The reds and the greens and the purples and the pinks—the colors of the sunrise in Red Rock Country are enough to give anyone the chills.  It’s that sort of surreal feeling of being 50 miles away from the nearest gas station.  That’s what will keep my dad and I going back year after year.  We weren’t there for just the sunrises though.  We had an empty freezer, and we intended to fill it. 

We had glassed for an hour before the sun peeked over the curtain of the Bighorn Mountains.  When the rays struck us, the mood went from solemn and cold to warm and hopeful.  Below us was a very large meadow, plastered in welcoming reddish sunlight and filled with unforgiving, yet beautiful, Indian paintbrush.  The medicinal aroma of sagebrush filled our nose as we shivered in the barren high-country.  My dad was fed up with the wind and cold and made the decision to move.  I could tell he was getting frustrated about not seeing any deer.  Camp was a miserable hour’s ride by ATV on a rough, seemingly goat path of a trail.  We had come too far to turn back so we marched on through the snow and gale to an area out of the wind.  At last, we saw a large group antelope and deer, all mingling in an open field surrounded by deep canyons and draws. 

We glassed the deer silently crouched behind some brush about 250 yards away.  Absolutely no bucks.  Needless to say, we were both pretty disappointed as these were the first deer we had seen in over 4 days of hunting.  The animals silently and swiftly dropped down into a ravine.  We decided to give chase to see if any bucks were waiting for them.  Absolutely nothing.  I sat and watched them feed on a hillside for a while as my dad went looking for more animals.  After watching the does mingle about for around 40 minutes I decided to see what my old man was up to.  I popped on up out of the draw and went looking for him.  For whatever reason, I decided to take one last look at the does.  I whirled around to see three deer staring at me with their questioning, curious eyes.  I put my binoculars up to my eyes to see if there was a buck with them.  I thought there might be so I got my Browning A-bolt .270 set up on its tripod.  I watched the deer I thought may be a buck until he moved so I could be sure he wore a crown of antlers.

He did, even though they were very small.  I had just started to put the scope on him when I heard my dad’s rifle blast the silence away.  I decided that it was now or never; the deer were starting to get nervous.  I slowly squeezed the trigger. The shot rang out and the deer collapsed. 

Subconsciously I loaded another round into the chamber and put the gun on safe.  I ran over to where I heard my dad shoot and he said he had shot one. 

I exclaimed, “I dropped mine!  He’s dead in the field right over there!”

He wasn’t sure if we had shot the same deer or not. He asked if the deer I had shot had any blood on it and I said no.  He then, in disbelief, asked if we both just killed deer and I said, yeah.  Six days of getting up at 4 a.m. and walking all day had finally paid off.  I guess that’s why I was so joyous about the deer.  I had worked hard for it.  We then knew that with two deer, the easy part had just ended.  We still had a whole day’s work ahead of us.