The .54 Hawken I built and used is described in Gun Building, "Building Sights for a Hawken Deer Rifle". Friend Bill Lewis drove me to Diamond Mountain on September 26, where we had scouted before. I knew where we wanted to be and arrived there in the dark, seeing 8 bucks as we drove up the trail to our spot. I sat under a lone juniper, looking down a sagebrush slope to the west. Saw a couple of pickups drive past a bedded buck about a quarter mile away. My expected big buck did not show up, so about 9:30 I decided to find the flushing distance for that bedded buck. I did not expect to get a shot at him, so walked down a trail and then downwind to where I thought he was. He jumped up about 50 yards away with two does, not offering a shot, and ran over a ridge to the north.
Bill then drove us to the east end where we had seen 6 bucks while scouting about a week earlier. I was too tired to jump out and cap my lock fast enough and Bill strolled forward to look into that basin and scared up 8 bucks, which merrily ran a few hundred yards and jumped the fence into private land.
We walked over the crest of the hill to look into the hollow to the east and a doe jumped and ran. Bill studied the sagebrush and found a bedded buck down the hill about a hundred and fifty yards. We could see the antlers and nothing else. He determined I should stalk that buck, which I thought would not get me a shot, but I humored him. The buck is in the center of this photo. I got within probably 25 yards from him when a doe jumped up and he, too. I could have "caught him on the rise" when he came up on his front legs, but I was not fast enough. They ran off about 150 yards and stopped broadside, which I had not expected. Had I been seated, I could have made that shot, but no such luck.
We drove back west to my Nine Buck Hollow, named by me from my previous ML hunt in 2014. We saw probably 15 to 20 deer along the hillside, at least half of them nice bucks. There was no road here, so we drove down a dirt track to opposite them. They fed scattered out and unconcerned about us. Bill ranged a lone buck at 125 yards, which is an easy shot for me. I got out, capped the lock and tried to sit on the ground to shoot. I couldn't get on the ground and then I couldn't get back up. Bill had talked me out of taking my shooting sticks, saying he had three along. They were ski poles and did not extend tall enough. So no buck killed out of that herd!
He then drove back headed to where he had spooked those 8 bucks, just over the ridge to the east, hoping maybe they had come back onto the public land. But along the trail on my side, there lay two nice four point bucks under big sagebrush. Probably ones that we had just spooked out of Nine Buck Hollow. As tired as I was, they looked good to me, the one on the right was the better. We did not slow down but kept on past about a quarter mile, turned around and came back. Bill paused just long enough for me to bail out and kept driving, and I capped my lock and stood to shoot. The bucks looked uncertain and stood up, but the big one ran behind the tall sagebrush where I could see the top third of his back and head and neck. I shot off-hand and he dropped in his tracks. Bill came back and lasered the range at 61 yards. We gutted the buck and tied a rope to his antlers to drag him to the trailer. We couldn't even budge him! Bill went back for his 100 feet of climbing rope, intending to tie it to the 40 foot piece on the buck, then run his winch cable out to winch him to the trail. He did not want to drive off the trail, which apparently is illegal. Just then two pickups pulled up and five big young guys got out to see what we had. Bill said we could use some help, and two of those guys grabbed that buck's horns and trotted him back to the trailer and threw him in!
We got him home in about a half hour, skinned him with Carl Jackson's help, split him in half with a meat saw and hung him in Carl's cooler to age. Carl wanted the liver and Bill the heart, and I gave Bill all the meat for his wonderful help on this hunt. That Kit Carson inspired Hawken is as fine a hunting rifle as I could want. I will not hunt anymore, but the memories of this hunt are as good as they get. We probably saw at least 30 bucks that morning.
