Bowhunters are a funny lot. Ask the average bowhunter to recall his favorite trophy and it's just as likely to be one that tested him mightily rather than the biggest of a particular species. I guess this is easily explained by the very fact that as hunters we've elected to choose the difficult path. A trophy too easily won is not as cherished as one earned in the face of adversity.

Jim Dougherty, Trails End
"My hardest won? That's easy. In the late 1970s I went bowhunting with Chuck Adams in British Columbia. The hunt was a disaster from start to finish. Mainly, the outfitter was an unmitigated incompetent. The weather wasn't his fault, but that was a large part of it.

"We were to make a 200-mile pack-train circuit through rough mountains. It was a mixed-bag hunt for moose, caribou and goat. It started off bad and got progressively worse. The weather was nasty--rainy, snowy, foggy. To make matters worse, the horses were no good, the camps we were supposed to stay in weren't set up, and the Indian guides had never been into that country before.

"Due to the foul weather there was hardly a single moment during the 10 days when we could glass at all. I remember one late night in particular, arriving at a camp in the middle of a blizzard. The camp was not set up; which we had come to expect. The horses were in bad shape and could hardly go. It got so bad that the so-called wrangler eventually turned some of them loose to fend for themselves.

"Then, one day late in the hunt, we were riding along and the sun came out. I looked up and saw a goat, pointing it out to Chuck. The guide insisted there weren't any goats in the country, even though he had never been there before. Obviously he didn't want to climb up the mountain.

Dougherty plucked success from chaos when he arrowed this mountain goat.

"Chuck and I climbed up but couldn't find the goat when we arrived. We began glassing, finding more goats across a big canyon. Chuck volunteered to hike across and deal with them, and took off. I was sitting, looking around, when the goat we had seen originally walked out below. I snuck down to 40 yards and shot him. I was more deliberate and careful with that shot, than any other shot I can remember taking in my life. I was also more pleased with myself than ever before.

"The goat took two steps and fell over. 'Wow!' I was thinking. Then he started kicking and rolling down the mountain like a boulder. I was sure he would be trashed. When I got to him, he had only chipped a horn tip, but he had gone from this gorgeous pure white animal to a dirty mess.

"I was dealing with the goat when I heard a whistle. I looked up and saw Chuck walking toward me. He had also gotten his goat. We were pretty proud of ourselves. Then the weather socked in again and it was all over. It was just one of those neat breaks you get sometimes in the midst of adversity."

Bill Winke, Center Shots
"It was 1991, and I'd just started in the outdoor writing business. I was between jobs, basically unemployed--a hunting bum. I only owned cheap gear; cotton clothing mostly, and rubber boots probably rated for 40-plus degrees. I didn't have the money to buy good stuff.

"On Halloween I was out scouting and placing a stand when a huge storm hit, conditions turning from moderate temperatures and light rain, to brutally cold and snowing within an hour. This was as nasty as Midwest weather gets. The storm dumped at least two feet of snow. The wind chill factor was 20- to 30-below zero.

"In the Midwest you have to hunt the first week of November if you're serious about shooting a big whitetail. I remember mornings, getting up early to hunt, hearing the tin roof of the little apartment my wife and I lived in vibrating in the wind. It blew 20 to 30 mph every day. It was pretty hard climbing out of a warm bed to face those conditions. Every morning I'd have to shovel my Jeep out of a snowdrift just so I could get out of the parking lot. When I got onto the graveled back roads, where I hunted, I'd have to get out at least twice each morning to shovel a Jeep-sized hole through the drifts.

"As bad as that was, on stand it was worse. The wind blew so hard it was a whiteout much of the time. If sitting along a field edge I could only see across it about every 10 minutes. I could only see 75 yards max most of the time. That week I experienced the most pain I've ever dealt with while hunting. There was no way to sit all day without risking death. I was seeing nice bucks almost daily, so I didn't dare take a day off.

"On November 9, nine days into the torture, I had my chance. I reached my afternoon stand at the edge of standing corn by 11:30. It wasn't until about 4:30 that I heard a crash in the corn and a doe bounded out, followed by the buck. I first thought, 'that looks like a mule deer' because he was so wide. I was so gung-ho then that I always kept my bow in my hand and release snapped to the string. That day it actually paid off.

"The doe peeled to my right and the buck turned left for just a second before realizing he'd messed up. He paused for only a few seconds in the middle of my shooting lane at 15 yards--just enough time for me to draw and aim quickly. He wheeled away to follow the doe just as I released. I hit him in the hindquarters but cut a femoral artery. It was a lucky hit, and he went down quickly.

Bill Winke's frozen feet almost never forgave him, but this whitetail buck made up for the pain.

"When I saw him fall, I remember feeling more relieved than excited. I could finally quit suffering. It was literally two to three months before I regained feeling in several of my toes. I'd worried about my 90-pound draw weight at that time, but when the buck showed up so fast, I just hauled it back. I don't remember drawing or aiming. After enduring the wicked conditions for so long the final result came down to just a few seconds. Sometimes it's like that.

"The physical pain of enduring those brutal conditions makes that hunt memorable. The buck was an eight-point scoring in the 140s. I've taken better whitetail since, but never one that took so much out of me physically. They say a whitetail buck loses 20 percent of his body weight during the rut. I think I lost 20 percent of my body weight during that rut too! I literally shivered it off."

Patrick Meitin, Adventures
Africa's ever-abundant warthog are active during daylight, and highly dependent on water. This dependence brings them within slam-dunk range of bowhunters guarding such sites from hides (blinds). Warthog are easy.

Not for me they weren't!

My warthog jinx started with my first safari in 1999. It's embarrassing to admit the number of point-blank opportunities I blew during that week in South Africa. I arrowed a monster eland, a world-record-class gray duiker, even a rare (for bowhunting) alpha-male baboon at ranges from 30 to 37 yards, but I couldn't kill a warthog to save my life. I missed them over and over again at ranges fewer than 25 yards, and worse, I hit two well that achieved burrows before expiring. We couldn't recover those. I missed or lost eight, all told.

I returned to Africa in 2002, fairly obsessed with the ugly critters. I found my haven on Thodo Garbade's Onduno "farm" in Namibia. I've only witnessed one place in all of Africa with so many warthog. By the end of a three-day visit I'd brought my all-time tally of bungled warthog to an even dozen; including one that I absolutely drilled, but made a rocky burrow not far away. Again, digging proved futile. My jinx remained firmly intact.

Then the hunt ended.

Thodo didn't give up. My hunting partners and I had exactly two hours that last morning before we had to catch a bus for another destination. My friend Gray Farnsworth and I installed ourselves in a hasty hide near water. We waited an hour before a young male arrived. Broadside at 25 yards, I knew he was mine--until he caught me drawing the bow. Instead of fleeing he ran straight to us, finally crashing through the corner of the flimsy hide, sending us into a mild state of hysterics. After 15 minutes we were still giggling uncontrollably.

Until, that is, he returned.

Patrick Meitin's warthog jinx spanned a dozen opportunities and two trips to Africa before he finally connected with this diminutive but prized trophy.

We could hear him coming in grunting lopes. Apparently he wanted another look. I drew and turned hard left, sitting flat on my rear. Gray leaned into the dirt to create a shooting lane. At something like three feet he skidded behind a scrubby bush, head on. I let him have it. He turned on his own head, squealing horrendously and rolling toward us while Gray screamed and abandoned the hide. He regained his feet and vanished.

Thirty minutes latter we'd not located him. Our time was up. I was cussing my luck and warthog in general, suspecting another burrow escape. Just as we announced defeat, Thodo's shaggy Irish terrier, Tina Turner, located the boar 80 yards away. He was not large, as warthog go, but he'd broken my jinx. There was time to snap exactly three pictures before speeding away.

It was that close.

I've taken nicer warthog since, but the frustration in collecting that first is something that I'll never forget.