<TITLE>23. Par 71-73</TITLE>L-71 But he was a good hunter. You never had to hunt him up; he knowed where he was at. And so we'd go out, and we had a great times together. He was a good, oh, he's a dead shot. And so, we--we hunted of a morning. We'd always put some hot chocolate in a thermos jug back here, and it was about six inches of snow on the ground, good tracking weather. And we went up through the Notch and over on the Presidential range. It got about eleven o'clock in the day, and it was way up in the season. And when them white tailed deer, you talk about Houdini as escape artist, you ought to see one of them. So they--they can really get away. And so, the brush is thick, and they can get under the brush piles and everything, and hide through the daytime and then graze at night. So then they won't come out, unless you just run them out.
So Burt stopped at the little clearing, about, oh, perhaps big as the main floor of this auditorium. He stopped about eleven o'clock and started reaching back in his coat, and I thought, "Well, time we'll just have a sandwich, and we'll separate, and he goes one way and I go another." We'd been walking for about three or four hours right up the mountain. Then he'd go down the other side and I'd come the other and we meet in sometime that night at our--at our regular pitched camp.

L-72 So I seen him reach back, and I thought he was going after his hot chocolate. And when he come out he had this whistle. And I said, "Burt, you wouldn't blow that thing." He said--looked at me with them lizard looking eyes, he said... And he put it in his mouth like this and blowed. It sounded just like a little fawn crying for its mama. And I never... I didn't think it'd work. So just about that time, just across the clearing, a great big mother doe stood up. She was a beautiful thing. And she's close enough I could just see her big brown eyes. And--and I looked at him; he looked up at me and grinned like. I said, "Burt, you wouldn't kill that mother, would you?" And he looked at me like that. And he got down and blowed it again.
Now, usually, that's unusual for a deer to do that. And when he blowed it again, that mother stepped right out into that opening. Now, that's strange; they won't do that, even any time hardly, especially hunting season, after the guns has fired and things. But she walked out into that opening. What was it? She wasn't a hypocrite. She was a mother. There was something in her was genuine; it was a mother. A baby was in trouble. And she wanted to find where her baby was. It didn't make any difference how much danger it was. The danger didn't even bother her mind.

L-73 I can see them big ears now, just standing up like that, that mouth chewing like that, those big brown eyes looking around. He looked up at me like that, and pulled a... We never carried load up in our guns. And so he pulled, put that lever down on a .30-06, hundred and eighty grain bullet, mushroom. He leveled down like that, and I thought, "Oh, my." I thought, "Burt, how can you do it?" I said, "That precious mother after her baby..." And I... He--he just kind of snickered and leveled down: just a dead shot. I knowed, boy, within a second or two he'd blow that precious loyal heart plumb out of her, 'cause he was a real shot. And I thought, "How can he be so wicked?" And that mother giving that display of real motherly love. Her baby was in trouble. She didn't care about it.
And when the bolt went down and the gun raised up, the deer saw the hunter. She looked, and she spooked. Or "spook" means "just jumps," you know, just a minute. And she looked at the hunter. But she'd heard that baby. And she knew that her death was right on her. But did she run? No, sir. She was looking to see where that baby was first. "Oh," I thought, "such loyalty. Such loyal... And that precious loyal heart, Burt, are you going to blow it out of that mother like that?"


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