* * * * *

We topped the next pass at noon, saddle sore and ready for something, anything. We paused to glass a face of rugged creek cuts and hanging meadows. Normally we would've glassed as if that bowl held the true meaning of life but this day we gave it a quick going-over and were happy to push on, our agenda borne more of a necessity to cover ground than actually locate deer. We were venturing into the unknown with no more than a map to guide us, traveling beyond the edge of country known to us. The need to see what lie beyond seemed overwhelming, though simultaneously haunting. To turn back now meant seeing camp at a reasonable hour, but we continued, prompted to delve into the unknown.

The sun was dropping westward by the time the adjoining bowl revealed itself. There had already been talk of turning back; glassing those bowls already glanced over, before it was too late to make something productive of the day. We impatiently tied off our horses and scrambled for vantage points. I'd just settled in when I spotted the first buck. He was a mile away but I could make out antlers and sprinted for my pack. Back on that cliff edge I ripped open my pack to locate my tripod and spotting scope; Adrian already trained on the buck and uttering involuntary whispers.

There were three bucks on that ledge, one of them the kind of non-typical that draws serious hunters to Colorado's ragged high country; the others certainly nothing to get snooty about.

"That one's got to go well over 200," Adrian said, finally uttering something comprehensible, though this also in a whisper, as if those deer a mile away might overhear the words. "The others gotta go somewhere in the mid-180s."

I didn't answer. My mind was busy unraveling a sensible approach, reading the terrain like a scrambled manuscript. It all began to look highly plausible and I found myself involuntarily tracing an approach, feeling the wind in each twist and curve of the terrain. I looked at the sun and knew what this meant. Adrian was hunched over his spotting scope as if hypnotized.

I'd made it across the open bowl floor without being detected and was now climbing sheer rock; the first kink in my plan. By lashing my bow onto my pack I was able to use both hands and carefully pick my way up that vertical face, ignoring the obvious consequences of missing a hand- or toe-hold, a piece of rock coming away or simply slipping. When I reached the ledge I shrugged out of my pack and looked down the impressive cliff I'd just scaled then lay on my back to catch my breath and gather my thoughts, wondering if Adrian was in position. Drawing the short blade of grass had given him the easier climb, but the lower-odds prospect of intercepting bucks fleeing my failed stalk.

When I peered around the last major boulder one of the 180-inch bucks was bedded 70 yards ahead, just his head and magnificent antlers showing above stunted evergreen. I flattened out and belly-crawled, pushing my bow ahead an arm's-length at a time, fighting to control my breath. When I pushed up onto my hands and knees that buck was standing, staring. I sunk into the grass and shale as slowly as possible. I waited, rising back up at odd intervals, like pushups in slow motion, and the scene was invariably the same. I played this game for the next full hour, by my watch, the sun falling westward as quickly as it had appeared to dawdle this morning.