<TITLE>26. Par 88-90</TITLE>L-88 So that day it was way late, and we have the whitetail deer up there. And you talk about Houdini at being an escape artist, he's an amateur from one of them. Boy, he'd be gone like that. You had to be fast, and quick, and a dead shot to hit him. And then, after--after they've been shot at a few times...
So it was kind of late in the season, and we'd hunted all morning, not even a track--about six or eight inches of snow. We always pack a thermos jug full of hot chocolate, where if we got caught out in a storm at night, or something, we'd keep going all right. So... we had a sandwich in our coat.
And it was about eleven o'clock, and I thought, "Well, we haven't even seen a track, nor nothing." Moonlight nights, and they'll eat at nighttime, you know, feed, and go in the day, lay under brush piles, back in the heavy timbers.
And so we was getting up nearly timberline and I thought maybe... Burt was leading the way. And we'd get up on top of the mountain, then he'd separate and go one way, and me the other. And we'd come around, and maybe we'd get in that night or the next morning, one. And if we killed a deer we'd know where to go get him, and so forth, take a horse and go after him. So then I thought...

L-89 He'd come to a little opening about three or four times the size of this building here, and he kind of hunkered down on a snow drift, kind of hunkered. (That word ain't used here, is it?) I'm a southerner. In other words, he squatted? squatted down like this. And he--he got down there, and he went to get back to get in his coat. I thought he was going to get his sandwich, and so I went in after mine. I thought, "Well, we'll separate here. I'll go one way and he the other, and hunt back this afternoon."
And he reached back and he pulled out this little whistle. I said, "Now, Burt..." He looked up at me with them lizard eyes looking at me, and kinda sneer, that little sneering laugh on his face. He pulled out that little whistle like that, and he blew it. And when he did, a great big doe stood up just across the way, across that little opening.
I thought, "Oh, oh. Oh, she made a bad move then." Now, that's strange. They won't do that usually. You Indian brethren know that, when they're hunted.
And then, he looked at me and them lizard eyes, and he laughed, and he blew it again. And that mother doe walked right straight out into that opening. Now, that's altogether strange for them there to do that.

L-90 Now, a doe is a mother deer, you know. I could see her great... I get close enough to see her big eyes, them big ears sticking up so graceful. She walked right out there. Now, what was the matter? She wasn't putting on a show. She was a mother. She was borned a mother. The instinct of mother was in her, and her baby was crying. She wasn't cared about fearing anything; she was coming to find her baby.
And we never pair--carry a shell in the barrel. So he put a shell up, a .30-06 hundred and eighty grain mushream bullet--mushroom, and he pulled it up there. And he was a dead shot. And when the--his Model 70 Winchester... And when he pulled the lever down like that, the click of the gun, the deer spooked, looked, and she spotted the hunter. But she never run.
Now, you know that's strange. But she was a mother. Her baby was in trouble, and she was borned a mother, and she was hunting for her baby. And she looked at that hunter, and she--big nose up, looking like that, trying to find her baby. See, she'd heard it cry. She wasn't putting on an act. It was genuine. She was a mother.


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