A Horse called Jack

Richard & Jack, 1970

The Stump Draw

1987

Bull River

Now ain’t that clear water. I could sit here and watch the Cutthroats & Rainbow trout

I should call this story the Grizzly Draw as every time I went there I saw bears, sometimes several of them. By 1979 Grizzlies had been put on a draw system where if you were lucky and had your name in the pot you might get a tag to hunt a grizzly. Before 1979 you could just purchase a Grizzly tag each year like all your other big game tags, including tags for Black bears which could always be hunted in the fall as well as the spring bear season. All Grizzly hunting was done in the spring, March thru May. I never went into the stump draw in the spring but I would climb up there almost every fall looking for Elk and big Mulies.

Climbing into the Stump Draw was a tough climb. It was a small creek that come down off the mountain right from the top and ran into Tanglefoot Creek which was a fair size creek. The Tanglefoot ran on down the mountain and into the Bull River about five miles below the Stump Draw. We could park the truck within sight of the stump draw but we had to ford the Tanglefoot before we could start the climb. I always took a second pair of boots and socks with me and would cache them in a tree where they would be dry went I got back down from hunting the stump draw. I hated to wade a cold creek and then have to climb a mountain with wet socks and boots. Tony would always ford the Tanglefoot and then make the climb in wet boots. I never figured out if the wet boots didn’t bother him or if he was just too dumb to think about bringing extra boots and socks. Tony was never in the real world a lot of the time as he was a heavy pot smoker although he did enjoy hunting but he eventually gave it up. The Stump Draw was very steep. For every foot of forward travel you probably went up two feet. The mountains on both sides of the creek kinda rolled into the creek and was so thick with Alders and timber that there was absolutely no way to climb up through them so we always climbed up in the creek bed. Over the years fallen timber had rolled down into the creek bed making a maze of logs that we had to climb under, over or around as we slowly made our way up. Sometimes a log was pointing up with the creek and we could walk on it. Some of these logs were three to four feet in diameter and nearly a hundred feet long and made for easier hiking than the creek bed which was cluttered with all kinds of broken limbs, stumps, rotten logs, rocks and boulders the size of pickup trucks. Only problem was staying on the top side of the log as it would be angling up the hill so steep that you could stand on it and reach out and nearly touch it with your hand in front of you without bending over.

There was about a half mile of steep, tough going in the creek bed and then it opened out into a fair size basin and the creek forked there with each creek coming down out of two separate draws. The sides of the basin was still very steep and covered with Alders and patches of timber nearly to the top of the mountain on both sides. After we got to the top of the Stump Draw we would go up the right side high enough to see over the top of this jungle over to the top of the mountain on the left. The Elk would always hang out above the Alders as the going was much easier up there.

This one trip into the Stump Draw Tony Lund and I had planned to climb the mountain on the left side and camp there overnight. Once on top we would be able to overlook the Stump Draw basin and also the next basin over the other side. We both were packing our sleeping bags and enough grub to last us a couple of days plus our rifles, binoculars, spotting scopes and other hunting gear so we each had a pretty heavy load going up the Stump Draw. You could make about thirty or forty feet and then you would have to stop and rest for three or four minutes and then go again. When we got out of the truck this morning it was about an hour before sun up and we could hear Bull Elk bugling way up in the Stump Draw.

We finally reached the fork in the creek and climbed up a couple of hundred yards on the right mountain to where that was a small clearing that we could sit in and see the top and part way down the mountain on the left. As soon as we caught our breath we pulled our binoculars out of the packs and glassed the mountain. Right away we could see several cows up near the top. I bulged a few times but got no reply. After a while two bulls came into view behind the cows. I bugled again but they wasn’t interested in me at all. We could see the bigger bull was a six point and the other about a four or five. We had watched them slowly feed across the side of the mountain for several minutes when Tony said it was too bad they were so far away and out of rifle range. I told Tony that they might be too far for him but I was going to shoot the six pointer. He said he had been here many times with several other hunters and no one had ever killed an Elk where these Elk were and I couldn’t do it either. Well, Tony hadn’t hunted with me much and had no idea if I could shoot or not. He wanted for us to try a sneak on the Elk and get close enough for a decent shot. Nope, I said, I’m gonna try him from here, Heck, it ain’t over 600 yards at the most. It was about a 40 degree uphill shot and I told Tony my rifle which was a Remington in 7 MM Magnum was going to shoot flatter up there than it would on the level. Tony laughed and said, well, blaze away but I know you’ll never come close.

The place we was sitting was so steep that the only rest I could get was to stand my pack board up and rest the rifle over the top. I had my back to a big boulder and felt pretty steady. The pack board was as steady as any shooting sticks. It was a Trapper Nelson which had a wooden frame with canvas tightly wrapped around it. I lined up on the Bull and held what I knew would give me a hit on a six hundred yard target on that forty-five degree angle. Pow, the rifle went off and a bit later I heard the bullet smack flesh. The Bull never flinched or moved at all. Ha, Tony said, you never even come close. Heck, I didn’t, I hit that elk. Well, why ain’t it falling down? I ventured that it was probably a lung shot and to give him time, that he would come crashing down. We watched the Bull for nearly a minute and still he never moved and I said to Tony that I thought the Elk was leaning on the tree behind him. At any rate I decided to have another go with my rifle so I got lined up the exact same as before and let another one go. This time the Bull came crashing down. He rolled probably 50 yards before coming to a stop. All Tony said was, I’ll be dammed. I replied that it would have been nice if he had rolled all the way down to the bottom, that it would have saved us a lot of work.

Elk Richard shot in Stump Draw with Tony

It took the best part of three hours to reach the Elk. The Alders were unbelievably thick and the trunks lay nearly flat pointing downhill from the snow lying on them all winter. The first part of the Alder you came to was the top with all the leaves and branches. You then had to climb up thru them and over the woven trunks. A lot of the time you would be several feet off the ground climbing up the trunks. There was Devils Claw growing everywhere and you had to watch not to grab it to pull your self up. The Devils Claw was covered with sharp thorns that would fester and be sore for several days but the Elk loved to eat the tender leaves from it. We finally got to the Elk about noon. Both bullets had hit within 5 inches of each other, one just clipping the front of the lungs and the other a little more forward in the shoulder. I gutted it and then we sat down and made coffee and had lunch. We decided to take just the hind quarters and backstraps down to the creek (Stump Draw Creek) and sink them under the water with rocks so they would keep until the next day. We took our packs and rifles on up to the top of the mountain which was maybe another two hundred yards or so and left them there while we packed the hind quarters and back straps down to the creek. We were going to camp up there overnight and did not want to pack it all down and back up again, We had gotten down nearly to the creek and had stopped in a patch of Alders to catch our breath and to rest a minute. We were sitting there having a smoke when we heard bears roaring nearby. As we listened to them we figured it was two boars in a fight as they were really carrying on something fierce. I looked at Tony and he looked at me. We both were very concerned as our rifle’s were up on the top of the mountain with the packs. It was a stupid thing we had done leaving them. It was the first time in Bear country I did not have a rifle in my hands. I made an oath right there that if the Bears spared us that I would never be in Bear country without my rifle again. I have kept that oath right to this day. Finally the Bears quit their argument and shut up. We both was hoping they would not come our way as there was not a tree anywhere big enough to climb, nothing but the Alders. We sat there for awhile and finally hearing nothing further form the Bears we went on down to the creek and sunk the meat in the water, weighing it down with rocks to keep it under. We knew the Bears could not smell it there and would leave it alone. I can tell you that we both made haste back to the top of that mountain to our rifles.

Tony and I made a nice camp there on a level spot right on the very top of the ridge that was between the two basins. This ridge continued on over the side of the mountains all the way down to Tanglefoot Creek and on up from our camp to the top of the main mountain. After supper and just before dark we took our binoculars and had a good look into the second basin. From our vantage point I could see right to the top of the main mountain and I soon spotted a huge black Grizzly up there digging for gophers. He was flipping over rocks and digging furiously at the ground so we knew he was after the little Columbia Ground Squirrels. I expect he was maybe a quarter mile above us. We watched him a bit and then we went back to our camp and got our bedrolls and rifles and tying all our other gear up high in a tree we moved about three hundred yards down the mountain and put our bedrolls there and spent the night there. We both knew if we slept where we had cooked supper that we would have a bear in our lap before morning. Sure enough the next morning when we went back to the spot to have breakfast there were bear tracks all around the area where a bear had been checking it all out.

The night passed without any major events happening although neither of us got a lot of sleep. Its pretty hard to sleep when you got one eye open and both ears. The next morning was spent glassing the other basin for Elk and Mulies. We saw several Mule Deer but nothing worth the effort it would take to go shoot it and bring it back. About noon we broke our camp and started down to our cache of Elk meat. As we came up close to the Elk carcass we saw the same black Grizzly we had seen the evening before eating on it. A couple of shots fired into the air sent it running off into the brush. We very carefully picked our way thru the brush on the opposite side the bear had gone and made it on down to the creek. Tony and I both packed a hindquarter and a backstrap onto our Trapper Nelsons and started down the Stump draw. It was a slow go with all our gear and the Elk meat. We came to this big log that was angling down the creek on about a 45 degree angle and as Tony was in front he climbed up on the butt of it and started down. I was about halfway down the log when I heard a big thump, looking up I did not see Tony anywhere. I went on down the log near the end and there was Tony lying down in the creek on his back. He had slipped and fallen off and had fell about 10 feet, landing on his back and on the pack with the Elk quarter strapped to it. Guess he was lucky he landed that way as he was lying in about 3 inches of water and rocks. He was lying there smoking a cigarette when I found him. We like to never got him, the pack and the Elk meat back up on the log. Eventually we did and made out way on down to the Tanglefoot, forded it and went home. We were about eighty miles back in the bush there on the Tanglefoot and it was all gravel except for about twenty miles of paved highway.

Calling Grizzlies with Gary Mummery

A year or so later I took Gary Mummery into the Stump draw Elk hunting. It was his first trip there. Gary was a real decent fellow and also very talented. He could make about anything and do a first rate job of it. At one time back in the buck skinning days he was making muzzle loading rifles from scratch with the exception of the barrels which he bought in the raw down in Kalispell Montana. These rifle were so good that he was selling them for around $3000.00 way back in the 70s. In recent years he got into making ocean going kayaks. He would go into the bush and find dead standing Cedar trees the right size and saw these into ¼” by 1” boards and mill a groove on one edge and a round on the other edge. These kayaks were about 20” long and were real beauties. Last time I saw Gary he was building an authentic birch bark canoe about 20” feet long. He told me that he looked for over a year for just the right Birch tree for the bark. I have yet to see the finished product but I know it will be as good as any of his Indian ancestors could have done. Gary was about half Cree Indian. Gary’s only weak point that I know of was women. He was always fooling around with them and it got him into trouble several times. Nearby is a pic of Gary and his Kayaks

Gary Mummery’s ocean going Kayaks

As you can see, the Kayaks are works of art. Gary was a skilled craftsman and could make about anything. Gary was also a good hunter and had many good trophies hanging on his walls. Bighorn sheep, Stone sheep, Bear, Elk, & Deer to name a few. Gary spent his life in the bush as his day job was cat skinning. For those of you who have no idea what a cat skinner does it is operating a bulldozer building logging roads and skid trails in the mountains.

Getting back to our hunt that day in the Stump Draw we made good time getting to the top that morning and climbed up to our right to the same spot Tony and I had shot the Elk from. We sat there awhile glassing the slopes and saw no elk at all but we did see a Grizzly up to our right about 700 yards above us feeding on the Huckleberries. Gary wanted to go on up and get closer for a picture and I replied that I thought we were close enough right where we were. Against my better judgment we climbed on up to maybe within a hundred yards of the bear. When we got close we saw that it was a sow with two cubs about a year old. Before Gary could get his camera out the sow winded us and took off up the slope with her cubs and went over the top of the mountain. She was huffing and puffin every step of the way as she did not like us near her at all. I was glad to see her disappear over the top of the mountain. She could just as easily charged at us and it ain’t no fun to be the target of a mean ole Grizzly sow protecting her cubs.

Garry Mummery 1989 with a nearly complete Kayak

Gary was packing his Ruger # 1 which was a singleshot in 300 Win. Mag. I didn’t figure a singleshot would be much in a close encounter with a mad Grizzly and told him so. I had my Remington bolt rifle in 7 mm Remington mag. And it held three in the magazine and one in the tube. Over the years it had never let me down and was exceptionally accurate on out to 6 or 700 yards. I once had to shoot a charging Black Bear at about 20 feet and it scared the crap out of me. It was a Brown Bear in color but was a Black Bear which nature made in several colors. Below is a pic of this mean ole she-bear in a position that she can’t harm anyone.

After the sow and cubs disappeared over the top Gary and I made our way over the the ridge to our left. This ridge ran right to the top and we figured we could get on top of the mountain and walk the ridge glassing into all the basins. We got to the ridge and started up it and unbeknownst to us the sow was bringing her cubs down the ridge and we met up again, only this time we was in thick bush and timber and the distance was about 50 yards. Well, this sow was about as mad as I ever saw one, bouncing up and down on her front feet and clacking her teeth together. She was making short charges at us but would turn and go back to the cubs. I can tell you that this got our adrenalin going real quick. Both of us had our rifles up and ready and started backing slowly down the ridge. Finally the sow allowed us to escape without us having to shoot her. I told Gary he was bad luck around Bears, that I had never had this much trouble out of a Grizzly. He said, yeah, that was a close call alright.

We went on down the ridge to where it opened up some and we could see into the next basin. This is the same basin Tony and I had saw the big black Grizzly digging for the gophers. We got a nice vantage point that we could see from the top of the next ridge right down into the basin floor which was mostly clear and nice grass growing there like a big cow pasture. We sat there in the warm sun and had our lunch.

Black Bear (brown phase) that charged and got shot for her troubles. You can see the hide was useless as her head was covered with mange.

As we sat there enjoying our lunch and the sunshine commenting on how lucky we were to be rid of the mad sow we saw another Grizzly over on the other side of the basin in a Huckleberry patch filling his belly. I figured it was a boar as there were no cubs in sight. After a while I ask Gary if he had ever called a bear in with a caller. He said no, he had never heard of doing that. I had never tried it before either so I decided to give it a try. I got out my elk bugling reed and made a few sounds like a dying rabbit. After a minute or two the boar looked up our way. We was about 500 yards above the bear and was not too concerned of any danger from it. I kept calling on the reed and finally the bear decided a dying rabbit would be a better meal than the huckleberries that he was tired of eating. He started down off the other side and crossed the basin coming our way. He disappeared under the brow of the hill in front of us but we knew he was coming our way. Gary said, you fool, you going to get us eat up yet by a bear. We got up and made haste down the mountain to the stump Draw and went home. There was too many bears in that country to be any elk there anyway.

Gary and I often hunted together and had many good trips into the mountains for elk and Deer. On one trip up the Bull River I called in and shot two nice Bulls. One was a big seven point and the other a five point. Curtis, my oldest son was with us and helped pack the meat out.

Richard, Curtis & Gary 1988 with the big Elk

Trapper Nelson packboard

Rob Nedjedly, Tony Lund and Richard in the Stump Draw basin 1987. The bear Gary and I called up the year after we took this picture was first sighted in the huckleberry patch behind us.

Richard in the Stump Draw 1995. This was the trip that Sherry went with me and she has never forgot that trip to this day. This was the last time I ever climbed into the Stump Draw. Don’t know if I could do it now in 2008.

The two Elk shot the same day in 1988

Hip bones from the 7-point bull Elk

This Elk had been shot a few years earlier in the rear hip area. I never noticed it as it was dark when I was quartering the elk but one rear quarter was much smaller that the other and the leg was shorter by several inches. When I boned out the meat I found the remains of a bullet and that one hip bone had been shattered and was several inches shorter than the good one. You can see the growth of calcium and bone where the break was. The wound was completely healed when I killed the bull. The antlers on the off side from the wound had grown deformed which all members of the Deer family when injured severely, the antlers opposite the wound will always grow deformed.