El Buscaderos-Cowboy Action Shooting-Feature

In Late Summer of 1886 Theodore Roosevelt wrote to a hunter, John Willis, in Montana, “I want to shoot a white antelope goat. I have heard it’s the hardest animal in the Rockies to find and the most difficult to kill. I have also heard that you are a great hunter. If I come to Montana, will you act as my guide, and do you think I can kill a white goat?”

After puzzling over Theodore’s handwriting for several hours Willis scribbled across the letter, “ If you can’t shoot any better can you can write, NO” and sent it back. Theodore immediately wired him back, “Consider yourself engaged,” and left with Merrifield by train to meet him at a little frontier town.

One look at Theodore’s corduroy knickers convinced Willis that he would have a real tenderfoot on his hands. If that was not enough, the glasses were to him the final and positive proof. “The only thing about him that appealed to me at all was his eyes. They were keen and bright and dancing with animation. From them I knew he was honest and had a mind that worked fast and smoothly and was set on a hair trigger.”

“When do we start?” Theodore asked impulsively.

“We are not going to start at all. You can go when you please.”

Theodore offered Willis twenty-five dollars for every shot he got at a goat. Willis refused. He offered to buy the food.

“All the grub I’ll take won’t cost more than a couple of dollars,” said Willis.

“By George, that’s bully,” replied Theodore.

“You can’t stand the sort of trip I am going to take,” Willis countered.

“I’ll train myself to walk as far as you can.”

Seeing no way to get rid of this persistent man, Willis told them he was going to leave for a hunt in a few days and they could go along as his guests.

For three or four days I hunted steadily and without success, and it was as hard work as any that I had ever undertaken. Merrifield and I were utterly unable to cope with the Missourian when it came to mountaineering. By now Theodore’s shoes were in shreds and Merrifield’s boots had made his feet so sore that he could not leave camp. “Being accustomed to it,” Willis wrote, “I walked so fast that Roosevelt was forced into a jog trot most of the time to keep up with me. But he never complained nor did he ever ask me to slacken my speed. Moisture would develop on his glasses, from perspiration, and he would pause at intervals to wipe them off, but he kept right on coming. His muscles were strong and after they became hardened, which took about a week, he could keep up with me on almost any trail, no matter how hard the going.”

The goat trails led away in every direction from the licks, but usually went uphill. We came across the recent trails of only two of the animals we were after. I had been, as usual, walking and clambering over the mountains all day long, and in mid-afternoon reached a great slide, with a tree half way across it. Under this I sat down to rest, my back to the trunk, and had been the but a few minutes when Willis suddenly whispered to me that a goat was coming down the slide at its edge, near the woods. I was in a most uncomfortable position for a shot. Twisting my head around, I could see the goat waddling downhill, looking just like a handsome tame billy. I cautiously tried to shift my position and at once dislodged some pebbles at the sound of which the goat sprang promptly up on the bank, his whole mien changing into one of alert, alarmed curiosity. He was less than a hundred yards off, so I risked a shot, all cramped and twisted though I was. My bullet went low, breaking his left fore leg, and he disappeared over the bank like a flash. We raced and scrambled after him, and Willis, an excellent tracker, took up the bloody trail. It went along the hillside for nearly a mile then turned straight up the mountain, Willis leading with his long free gait, while I toiled after him at a dogged trot. The trail went up the sharpest and steepest places, skirting the cliffs and precipices. At one spot I nearly came to grief for good and all, for in running along a shelving ledge, covered with loose slates, one of these slipped as I stepped on it, throwing me clear over the bank.

The first drop was at least sixty feet. When Willis saw Theodore disappear over the edge he gave him up for dead. However the force of the fall was broken by the top of a tall pine through which Theodore went. He bounded into the outstretched limbs of a tree under it, then into another one, and finally landed on a bunch of moss that was a thick as a feather bed. All around this series of trees were jagged rocks that would have shredded the falling man. As it was he still had his rifle in his hand.

“Not a bit hurt,” he shouted up to Willis. “Wait until I find my glasses and I’ll be with you.”

He found his glasses—unbroken—and raced up the side of the mountain to rejoin Willis in the chase for the goat.

The trail came into a regular game path and grew fresher, the goat having stopped to roll and wallow in the dust now and then. Suddenly, on the top of the mountain, we came upon him close to us. He had just risen from rolling and stood behind a huge fallen log, his back barely showing above it as he turned his head to look at us. I was completely winded and had lost my strength as well as my breath, while great drops of sweat stood in my eyes. I steadied myself as well as I could and aimed to break the backbone, the only shot open to me and not a difficult one at such a short distance. However, my bullet went just too high, cutting the skin above the long spinal bones over the shoulders, and the speed with which that three-legged goat went down the precipitous side of the mountain would have done credit to an antelope on the level.

Weary and disgusted, we again took up the trail. I t led straight downhill, and we followed it at a smart pace. Down and down it went, into the valley and straight to the edge of the stream, but half a mile from the camp. The goat crossed the water on a fallen tree trunk, and we took the same path. Once across, it went right up the mountain. We followed it as far as we could, although pretty nearly done out, until it was too dark to see the blood stains any longer. We returned to camp, dispirited and so tired that we could hardly drag ourselves along, for we had been going at top speed for five hours, up and down the roughest and steepest ground.

Next morning at daybreak we again climbed the mountain and took up the trail. Soon it led into others and we lost it, but we kept up the hunt nevertheless for hour after hour, making continually wider and wider circles. About midday our perseverance was rewarded, for coming silently out on a great bare cliff shoulder, I spied the goat lying on a ledge below me some seventy yards off. This time I shot true, and he rose only to fall back dead. A minute afterward we were standing over him, handling the glossy black horns and admiring the snow-white coat.

Near where they were camped there was a beautiful waterfall Theodore wanted to photograph. It was not possible to get the exact shots that he wanted from the banks of the river. He persuaded Willis and Merrifield, in spite of their arguments, to lower him over the precipice with a two hundred foot rope. Willis warned him that they might not be able to drag him back up. His prediction proved accurate.

“Cut the rope and let me fall into the stream,” Theodore called up to them.

Willis worked his way down to the foot of the falls and discovered that the drop would be a least sixty feet into water filled with whirlpools and jagged rocks. Finally, he remembered there was an additional twenty-five foot piece of rope back at the camp. He returned with this to find Theodore who had been swinging with the rope under his arms for two hours, still enjoying himself hugely. This second rope reduced the drop to about thirty-five feet. Willis quickly constructed a small raft, pushed out into the water, had Theodore drop his camera, which he caught without getting it wet, and then Merrifield cut the rope. The fall, luckily in good water, stunned Theodore but after Willis had pulled him aboard the raft, he quickly recovered.

“By Jove,” he cried,” that was great fun, and that was a great catch you made of the camera.” By now Theodore and Willis had developed a warm friendship which lasted for life.