By: Angela Hanberg
It doesn't seem that long ago we were piling Grandpa, Grandma, Mom, Dad and three of us kids in the little CJ7 and high-tailing it to Diamond Mountain for the deer hunt. I remember bouncing around, smacking our heads on the top of the jeep as we four-wheeled out over the sage brush to find a convenient place to glass the hillside for a big buck. It only took a couple days and we were hauling home two or three nice boys strapped onto that little jeep in pretty precarious locations. Covered in blood, dirt and sweat we'd make our way home to cut up roasts to fill the freezer. We always knew which one was Grandpa's - he'd shoot 'em in the eye... We'll always remember the memories, but a lot of us may forget what the hunting was like back then. I'm also not sure that my kids will ever experience a hunt like we used to have.
It wasn't uncommon to pass on good bucks and bulls back then, knowing you'd probably have a chance at a better one. Remembering some of the racks my folks ended up with, I'd gladly give my left big toe for one nowadays. I love this time of year- the family time, the stories, the reminiscing - and thought it would be a great chance to dig into the Basin's history of a few of these Big Boys.
THE YEAR OF THE MONSTERS
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Billie (Hodgkinson) White and her monster buck - 1959
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Carl sat her there to watch the clearing down below while he did a "sashay" around the top of the ridge to look things over. While Billie was at her post, shivering from the cold, she looked down to the clearing to see a monster come walking through. Holding her open sites where she assumed she'd hit the front shoulder, she pulled the trigger and down he went - with a broken spine. (Now, I have to interject here, and say that is my particular signature shot. I've taken two deer that way and it's an awful fantastic alternative to gut shot... which I have unfortunately had the displeasure of dealing with also.)
"I looked down there and thought wow, he's a whopper! And I was just sitting there trying to figure out what to do with him. I knew he couldn't go anywhere, but Carl came back about that time and he thought I'd fallen down and shot myself. He never dreamed I'd see a deer like that. I said 'It's a pretty big one isn't it?' and he said 'BIG?! It's a MONSTER!'" Being the nice companion he was, Carl finished him off so Billie didn't have to. She said she was shaking pretty bad and hiding behind a tree by then anyway. But she DID clean it herself.
Back then, Bob and Beverly Williams owned a sporting goods store and put together a Big Buck Contest. When they first brought him in, he was ahead for the largest deer, widest spread (at 33 1/2") and the most points. They gave a rifle for the biggest deer, a pistol for the widest spread and new binoculars for the most points. The next day Erland Preece (The administrator of the hospital) who were camped not a mile from where Billie got her giant, came in with an identical twin to her buck. When they brought the buck back on opening morning, he had field dressed at 303 lbs. For non-typical, it just missed Boone and Crockett by a few points, but was scored years later. Boyd Workman ended up winning widest spread, Lou Littleton for heaviest body and Billie won the binoculars with the most (scoreable) points. She says she's always gotten grief for this picture of her in the pretty dress with her dead deer. She was the society editor for the Vernal Express at the time and when she went into work that day, Jack Wallis asked her to bring the deer in for a picture for the paper. Myself, I'd let people just keep on thinking I was classy!
That same day, 20-year old Boyd Workman had gone up on top of Grizzly Ridge with his friend Johnny Robbins, Johnny's dad, and various friends. The night before, the whole crew except for Boyd and Johnny decided it would be a fantastic idea to stay up all night and get smashed (or insert DRUNK if you'd rather.) Come daylight, Boyd and Johnny were the only ones in any shape to get up and go find a buck. Their soberness paid off and they returned to camp with a big 7x7 Boyd shot. After a bit of discussion as to who's it would be, Johnny admitted to Boyd that he wasn't a great shot and would let him have this one if he'd prefer.
Boyd brought home the prize from Bob's for widest spread with a whopping 37 1/4" measurement. He also won 7th place at Zenix' competition in Salt Lake for the whole state and didn't realize how big it actually was till then. He says at the time, mounting the horns wasn't really a priority so they just tossed them up on top of his dad's shed. A few years later, Leo Cutshaw ran across them and asked if he could have them. He put them on a plaque and hung them in his radiator shop down town, claiming them as his own and taking credit for years and years. Leo was considered the best fisherman in town so no one probably thought to question his hunting skills. After Leo died, that 7x7 rack disappeared and the current whereabouts is unknown.
Not every hunter tends to be so lucky though. I had not heard this particular story until I started writing this article and was discussing it with my parents. My dear sweet grandma passed away from this world fourteen years ago. Had I heard about this while she was still with us, I probably would have teased her mercilessly. The story goes: my grandparents, Paul and Barbara Caldwell, were up hunting on Diamond Mountain. Grandpa knew where there was a big buck and took her to the exact place he assumed he would probably maybe come through, then went to do the same type of sweep Carl Hodgkinson had done for Billie. Just like Billie, Grandma also saw a huge buck come walking through the clearing. Apparently Grandpa had seen it too, and when he got back to where she was, Grandma asked "Did you see it Paul?! Wasn't he big?!" Grandpa said yeah he saw it, but why didn't she shoot it? She said "I did! I emptied my gun." Well, sure enough, she'd emptied her gun alright, but never did pull the trigger. She was so excited she kept pumping full shells through that old 30-30 and they were all laying in a neat little pile beside her as proof.
TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY
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Karl Karren and his nontypical monster - 1968
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Karl said he was up on the back side of Warren Draw when he saw this buck coming up the ridge. He hit him, but had to hike down and find the blood trail. After following him a ways, the found him and his son helped finish him off. Karl says it doesn't matter who kills him, the guy with the first hit gets to claim him, so he did. When Dad heard the story and saw the buck, he put two and two (in this case, six and seven) together and thought back to his side of the story: While on the backside of Jackson Draw, that same day years ago, he'd seen this once-in-a-lifetime buck and threw a couple shots at him himself. Certain he'd hit him, he searched and searched for a blood trail and never could find one. Apparently he'd never touched a hair. He lost sight of the buck and hadn't seen him again till he was hanging on Karl Karren's wall. They figured after Dad shot, the buck gave him the slip and came up on the other side of the draw where Karl got that chance at him. I can just imagine that sick feeling of missing one like that, but the memory of even seeing him has got to ease that a bit. What a coincidence to compare the two sides of that situation so many years after the fact! This is certainly not a buck anyone would ever forget (or confuse with another one.)
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Karl Karren and his nontypical monster - Current Day
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