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after a rain. Bill told me that morning he was not going to shoot a small deer. Suddenly he whispered, "Joyce, there's our shooter!" I never saw the deer, which was felled with one shot. When we reached the buck, we both exclaimed, "Wow! He's huge!" We took him to the taxidermist, had him mounted and officially scored. He was the largest typical Blacktail buck (5 x 5) from Oregon that year, scoring 138-5/8 points, thus also qualifying for Boone and Crockett. Bill's picture with said buck is in the Oregon 3rd Book of Records. And, yes, the meat was delicious!

That same season his father, who lived in New York State, shot the biggest deer he had ever shot. Father and son celebrated each other's success. Dad died 10-days later. We have the rack.

Our last season in Oregon we had a marvelous experience. On our way to our honey hole in the dark, a very large black bear was in the road with cub in tow. She stopped in front of us so we stopped; she turned to face us and bared her teeth. She growled ferociously. Then her cub scampered up a tree about 15 feet from my window, which was down; I got a good look at the cub, bawling for momma. Momma disappeared in the woods. She was circling back to get the cub and it was a good time to leave.

Another time we were in that same area coyote hunting. We were decked out in camouflage from head to toe with full-face masks and wearing cover lure. We walked down a logging road and heard quite a commotion. We stood stock-still while Bill had his shotgun ready just in case. Three rag-horn bull elk came trotting up the road toward us and stopped about 30 feet away. They could not figure what we were. We had about a 5-minute face-off before they loped down the side of the mountain, never to be seen again.

We live in Kansas now and hunt Whitetail but will always fondly remember hunting the Oregon Cascades.

Learn more about this author, Joyce Beckman.
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