Roger Palmer Memories 6-07

My name is Roger Palmer and I have been on hunts and pack trips with Skinner Brothers for nearly 25 years. My first trip was in 1979 or 1980. I went up on pack trips when I didn’t get drawn for an elk license. My wife, Janice has hunted with me several times. Just being in those mountains was wonderful. I hunted with Monte mostly, but with Courtney and Ole on occasion. The camps at Skinner Brothers were always first class with a great staff, plenty of good food and a superb attitude. I have hunted all over North America and have never hunted with anyone that compares to Skinner Brothers. One thing I always liked about Skinner Brothers is if you got an elk early you could stay and ride the entire week if you wished. They also took excellent care of the meat for you.

I have many fantastic memories of the trips and the people I met over the years. I have been to places that people have not set foot on in years and years. A week with Skinner Brothers in the mountains is a true vacation. When you are on horseback in the Rockies you don’t have time to think about any problems or troubles back home. I work in an extremely confined environment and considered the week in the mountains the high point of my year.

One day really sticks out. Monte and I were on a pack trip and had climbed up on a point way above Horseshoe where we could see all the way out on the prairie and behind us was a canyon and there didn’t appear any way to get to it. Monte said, “I’ve been trying to get up here for 50 years”. I thought “I guess not, a few more feet and we’ll need oxygen and the elk will need wings”. Then he said no one would come up there with him. I thought about it for a minute and realized a few years earlier I would have been scared to death to climb up there with horses but after 20+ years I was so entranced by the beauty I didn’t even think about anything else. I took several panoramic pictures and as far as you can see there are no signs of civilization.

Well, you’ve ruined a perfectly good elk hunt

For years when I got an elk, Monte would say “Well, you’ve ruined a perfectly good elk hunt” and I thought he was joking but after going on a couple of pack/fishing trips finally realized he was right. On our last hunt, we spiked out with Quinton, Dan and Lance. Monte and I bugled up several bulls and had a couple within 30 steps and I realized I didn’t want to “ruin” our last hunt. I turned down 5 bulls knowing that if I shot it would be the end and I wanted to enjoy the hunt to the last day.

Down Black Mountain the Hard Way

The first year I hunted I came out with Leon Harris and we were there with a bunch of guys from Big Stone Gap and they had big pieces of foam for their saddles! I thought I’d try some too. Then Monte saw it and said “no ***’s hunting with me are going to have **** like that on their **** saddles!!!!” I knew we were in trouble then. Well we went hunting (I had drawn a moose license, as well as elk). I got my moose at 10 am on the first morning, up beside Blueberry Lake.. While we were dressing out the bull, a cow moose came up and got between us and our rifles. It was snowing and we had leaned our rifles against a pine tree under the boughs. Well, Monte reached for his trusty Colt Python with the grips held on with electrical tape, swung out the cylinder and found six chambers filled only with cobwebs. Needless to say, Leon and I were scared to death. Finally, the moose ambled off, none too happy with us shooting her mate.

I also learned that morning why you always take your rifle out of the scabbard when off the horse. I got to see my horse, Highlight, roll on my new .300 Weatherby. Fortunately, the ground was soft and it didn’t break the stock. I rode Highlight many years, along with George and Johnny. Highlight was a great hunting horse, if she ever stopped walking and turned her head, you could bend down and look between her ears and see elk. I also rode Johnny. He looked like a war horse, part Belgian or something. The only thing about Johnny is he was afraid of moose. One year we were coming down from Horseshoe just above Sagebrush Flat and I was out ahead of about a twenty-horse pack string. I was getting ready to ride ahead to video the pack string coming across Sagebrush. My head was down, trying to get my video camera out of my camera bag on the saddle horn when we rode right over top of a bull moose in his bed. Johnny must have jumped 20 feet sideways when the bull jumped out of that bed. All I saw was a black mass and the feeling of flying through the air. I don’t know how I stayed on him. George was a good horse but had a mean streak and would try to run you into a tree if you weren’t paying attention. He had come from Indiana and wasn’t used to the mountains and would suddenly decide to jump over streams and deadfall without warning.

The horses would always try to head back to camp in the afternoons. If Monte wasn’t paying attention we would make a gradual circle back towards camp. At least a hundred times I’ve seen Monte grab the reins and pull the horse’s or mule’s head back and say “you @#^-*%#@ $#@, we’re not going back to camp!!” You would fight the horses all afternoon until you finally turned toward camp and then they really got a burst of energy. One year Rick Brothers and I finished our hunt early and had deer licenses so Monte said to take a couple of horses and hunt above Meadow Lake. It was hot and we had to fight the horses to go. They didn’t want to leave their buddies in the corral and certainly didn’t want to go up the mountain with a couple of “greenhorns” and no guide. We finally wore ourselves out above Meadow Lake overlooking Half-Moon Lake. The horses just wouldn’t go so we decided to go back down and fish. Once we turned their heads toward camp, I swear they could have won the Kentucky Derby. We thought about buying them from Monte and using them for “bear bait”!

We learned real quick we weren’t cowboys and soon learned to find a big rock to step on to get on the horse; actually after a couple of days riding we found boulders to step down onto the horses!

Later that day, after Monte had radioed down to Burnt Lake for the camp jack to bring pack horses up to pack my moose down we hunted a couple more hours. We stopped for lunch above Blueberry and then Monte laid down on a sunny rock and said “Wake me up in a couple of hours”. Well, we informed Monte we hadn’t come out 2000 miles to Wyoming to nap. Monte got up and said “OK you ***’s want to hunt, we’ll hunt!” We went down Black Mountain the hard way. I didn’t expect to have any clothes on, just rags, by the time we got to the bottom. We were using the horses’ chests as bulldozers to get through the jungle of deadfall. Needless to say, after that whenever Monte wanted to take a nap, we found him a nice sunny spot and left him alone. I can’t nap in the daytime so I started bringing a fly rod with me so I could fish during ‘nap time’. I had to hide the rod from Monte or he would make sure we stopped for lunch on top of a mountain where we could only see water through binoculars. If I didn’t have my fly rod Monte would stop by a stream where the fish were so thick you could pick them up with your hands!

The first few years I hunted with Skinners we always hunted in October and out of the Burnt Lake camp. Other hunters would go up to Horseshoe and we wondered why Monte didn’t like to go up there. The main reason was that Monte had his sheep wagon just like he wanted it and he had a cook and camp jack all the time. Leon Harris and I finally got to see Horseshoe. All of the elk had moved up high and it was late October so we decided to go up there. We went up by way of Graveyard Ridge while our gear went up the trail up Black Mountain. There were a couple of feet of snow everywhere and lots of ice. The horses were slipping and sliding all over the place. Dr. Johnston was going up also and apparently someone had misplaced his sleeping bag. All that day and evening there was constant radio traffic looking for the bag. I’m not sure elk hunting was even mentioned all day; there was so much talk about the missing sleeping bag. We finally got into Horseshoe two hours after dark. The teepee we stayed in was full of soot and dark and cold. We finally got a fire started and when it really got going the stovepipe came off and the flames were shooting out of the stove like the afterburner on an F-16. We were too tired to try to put the pipe back up so we went to bed in our cold damp clothes without a fire. Monte must have had a similar experience because the next day we went back down to Burnt Lake.

For years it always amazed me what a poor sense of direction I seemed to have. Monte and I would climb out on an ambush point. Once we climbed out on the point it would look familiar, but I couldn’t remember getting there before. After a while it dawned on me we always took a different route. Occasionally, I would go out with another guide and they would always want me to show them Monte’s ambush points. I’d tell them I’d recognize them when I’d see them but couldn’t get there. They always looked at me like I was lying. No matter how turned around we would get, Monte refused to go back the way we came. One time we got “rim-rocked” over by Fayette Lake and I thought the only way we were going to get down was to fly down. We finally found an old trail a mountain goat would have needed a map to follow. I didn’t know if the horses were going to crush me first or the boulders they were knocking loose with their hooves.

Another year we were up by Blacks cabin in a snowstorm, listening to Wyoming play Hawaii on the radio with a big fire going when Monte got a call on the radio that his first grandchild had been born. I remember that like it was yesterday. You have to be a little crazy to think that fun! We used to cook our sandwiches on forked sticks over the fires.

This is What an Elk Looks Like

As many of you know, Monte rode Jake, his mule, for many years. Jake and Monte were a pair, birds of a feather and all that. We always teased Monte about being deaf and blind because we would see elk that he wouldn’t see. In fairness, the guide is picking the trail and often elk will let the first rider or two pass and then stand up and move sideways. The third rider often will see the elk that the other riders have passed by. One year down at Burnt Lake we took a full page picture of a bull elk and pinned it to Jake’s bridle between his ears so Monte would know what to look for. Two days later I got a really nice 6x6 bull up at the base of Mt. Baldy and I have the framed picture of me with the bull and me pointing to the picture with Monte in my office. The last hunt we went on was in 2004 and we were in the Hidden Lakes country in a snowstorm and not sure where we were. We stopped on a knob to listen and get our bearings. I looked around and a herd of elk stood up about 50 yards to our left. I whispered to Monte “a herd of elk!” Monte looked at me quizzically so I said it again a little louder and pointed, he still didn’t understand so I said “a herd of elk” louder, this time he heard me and said “YOU HEARD AN ELK??” Well, that herd of elk, about 20 of them, scattered every which way. I had to get off of Johnny I was laughing so hard.

Butchers

I was hunting with Monte and Rick Brothers and Monte came off of Jake in the big meadow outside of Horseshoe and cracked a couple of ribs. We saw Monte come off and it looked like he was flying, he did a roll in mid-air to miss a big boulder. Rick shot an elk a couple of days later and we had to field dress and quarter the elk under Monte’s supervision. Everyone who knows Monte can imagine the “constructive criticism” we received. Rick is an urologist who does a lot of surgery and I am a dentist. Monte said our elk looked like it had been butchered with a chain saw by a couple of maniacs not by two doctors.

Another year, Monte, Rick and I spiked out down around the Pipestone Lakes. I didn’t get drawn for a license so I just went along to fish and take pictures. One afternoon, after lunch Monte asked me if I wanted to stay back and fish while he and Rick hunted some really rough country that would be easier with just two. I said OK and spent the afternoon fishing. At sunset, the trout really started rising and I was catching a trout nearly every cast. This went on until it was dark. I figured they would call me when they got in. Anyway the trout cut off at dark and I cleaned the fish I had kept and walked up to camp. The camp was empty and dark and, the horses were gone. I started a fire and began to worry. About two hours after dark Monte, Rick and Eric came back in looking like they had “been rode hard and put up wet”. Apparently the horses had run off and it had taken about four hours to catch them. We were about six hours by horse out of Horseshoe and I don’t think anyone was there. It would have been a long walk down to Burnt Lake!

Middle Fork Lake

We always took a pint or so of peppermint schnapps in our saddlebags to pass around after it got too late in the evening to hunt and we still had an hour or so to ride back in the dark. One time Don Castor, Grayson Mitchell and I had hunted down near Middle Fork Lake out of Horseshoe. This is a long, long way to go in one day but elk were scarce around Horseshoe. Anyway, it got dark and we were down around Pipestone Lake and we started passing the schnapps around. We all started laughing and acting goofy. It wasn’t until we got back to Horseshoe I realized we had 100 proof schnapps instead of the regular 40 proof Grayson and I still laugh about drinking “Rocket Fuel”. One thing I remember about that long ride is I was riding third, Grayson was in front of me on a snow-white horse and the only way I knew where he was, was by the sound and occasional sparks flying off of his horse’s shoes. To further compound things, I was riding an Appaloosa that was night-blind. I thought I’d never see Horseshoe again. One time over near Middle Fork Lake, we were glassing for elk and Ole said to look down at my feet. What I saw amazed me. We were standing in a place Ole said the Shoshone Indians had their summer camp for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. There were “chippings” all over the place where they had worked flint for arrowheads. The amazing thing was Ole said there wasn’t any flint within a hundred miles. I have a print of a painting in one of my treatment rooms by Roy Kerswill that shows an almost exact place in the Wind River Mountains.

“The Only Blood I see is on Your Face”

One year I brought my good friend, John Kniska, with me. It was one of the first times we hunted early, September 20th – well, actually a few days later because a big hurricane on the east coast delayed our flights. We had planned on going to Horseshoe but it snowed two feet and had collapsed the teepees and cook tent. We hunted above Blueberry Lake the first day. I brought a bugle as more of a joke than anything else. Anyway, we had lunch on top of an ambush point and when we got ready to leave (after Monte’s nap) he said “try that thing”. The bugle I have sounds more like an elephant than an elk. The first time I blew it, an elk answered and I called him to within about 250 yards in an opening below us. After calling for about ten minutes with the bull, a nice 6x6 standing in the open, Monte finally said “are you going to shoot him or talk to him all day?” I looked around and my rifle was about 50 yards away where we had been eating lunch. I ran over and got my rifle. I was so nervous I was shaking all over. I finally got settled down and I got a nice bull. Later that day we were heading back down to Burnt Lake along Boulder Ridge. At sunset we saw a big bull on the skyline. We jumped off our horses and John was going to shoot free-hand but Monte told him to take a rest. After John shot at the bull from a boulder we were looking for the bull or some sign. John kept saying “Monte, do you see any blood? Monte, do you see any blood?” Finally Monte said “The only blood I see is on your face”. John had a stream of blood coming down his face and dripping off of his chin from a scope cut on his forehead. Needless to say I guess he missed the elk.

1988 Fires, Trip with Don and Ole

In 1988, the year of the big fires in Yellowstone, I hunted with Ole and Don Castor for part of the week because Monte was County Commissioner and was “politicking” and had to meet with the governor. There were fires burning everywhere in the Wind River Mountains and we saw several helicopters getting water from the lakes and dumping it on the fires. In his interview, Don wrote about the horses running off and him catching them at Lake George. My schnapps broke on that adventure and I still have a faint smell of schnapps in my saddlebags and shell holders after all these years. Fortunately, I had taken my rifle out of the scabbard. I got my elk early in the week, so Don and I rode around bugling elk. One day we had an elk bugling at us; I was using my “elephant call” and beating pine trees with sticks. The bull got so mad his voice broke in the middle of a bugle and he started squealing like a pig. Don and I started laughing so hard we fell on the ground, we heard the bull walking away for 15 minutes squealing and busting trees with his antlers.

Eating Like Dogs

The weather was so hot and dry one year that we didn’t think we needed tents. Monte, Don and I were hunting the first week of the season. Well, the weather turned bad (rain, sleet, snow, thunder and lightning) and we had to make a tent out of a tarp. You know how sometimes there is a temperature inversion? The inside of our shelter filled up with smoke so there was only about a foot of clean air right on the ground. We had to lie on the ground and eat our supper “like dogs”!

Legerski’s Grease Stew

One year, we got into Burnt Lake late from town and we didn’t have a cook so Greg Legerski ended up cooking beef stew. He fried the beef first but didn’t drain off the grease so when it cooled there was at least an inch thick layer of grease on top of the stew. We have laughed for nearly 20 years about “Legerski’s Grease Stew”

Monte’s Sleigh Ride

My wife, Janice has made several trips with me. One time we were hunting in the snow, about 1984 or so at the top of Black Mountain. Janice’s horse’s girth strap had come loose and Monte got off of Jake to tighten it. Well, Jake had other ideas and took off down the trail, Monte was running down the trail after him and I caught up with him and gave him my horse, Highlight. Janice and I took out after them so we could see the wreck, fight or whatever. Monte caught up with Jake near Maggot Springs and got both reins in his hands to hit him when Jake reared back pulling Monte off his feet and dragging him about 50 feet through the deep snow on his face. I think if Janice hadn’t been there he would have shot Jake then and there.

Pack Trip with Craig Crandall

Another year, I didn’t get drawn for a license, so Janice, Monte, and I along with Craig Crandall (who owned MacGregor’s Restaurant) packed over the divide to take pictures and bugle elk. It took two days to get over there and as soon as we got everything set up a big storm moved in, complete with snow, sleet, thunder and lightning and we had to pack up and leave. Going back over the divide felt like we were in Mongolia, it was snowing and sleeting so hard the horses wouldn’t look where they were going because it was stinging their eyes so bad. Craig was in charge of the menu so we really ate well that trip. He had marinated steaks, vacuum packed from the restaurant.

I usually was lucky and got an elk early in the hunt. I used to take my guitar up to Horseshoe and Don and I would “entertain” the camp with our off-key singing. One night we kept Millie up to about 2am drinking and singing. Millie had to go down the mountain the next morning and she said every step the horse took was like someone hitting her on the head with a hammer.

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Let me tell you what Dad used to do

One year I was at Horseshoe and went fishing down the stream at the tail of the lake. I could see trout everywhere but couldn’t get a strike. When I got back to camp, complaining about no fish, Courtney said, “I’ll tell you what dad used to do”. He said to use a plain gold hook and eventually you’d catch a fish. Then he said to pluck an eyeball out and put it on the gold hook. Courtney told me this in front of about ten other people and I was sure my leg was being pulled big time. Anyway, the next day I tried it and it worked, the trout hit the eyeballs like they were sharks! I still don’t know if Courtney just made it up or not. You have to take a lot of what’s told you in hunting camps with a grain of salt. One time, on the way down to Burnt, we stopped at Coyote Lake and saw the Montana Graylings breaking the surface. My fishing gear was all packed up so we started throwing M&M’s. You should have seen the fish hitting the blue ones! It was really warm and Janice decided she wanted a sip of schnapps. The schnapps was “horse temperature” from being in my saddle bags so she tied a string to the neck of the bottle and let it sink into the lake about 10 feet deep where the water was really cold. In a few minutes we had cold peppermint schnapps!

Playing for the Horses

One year, 1994, I think, Monte and I got our wires crossed about where we were going to meet. I thought he said Burnt Lake and he meant the Ranch. I had left Jackson before light and arrived in camp about 8am. There wasn’t a soul around except for about 20 horses loose in the camp. I got tired of waiting and got my guitar out and sat on that big rock in front of the cook tent. The horses all gathered around me like a football huddle and were listening to me play. I was playing slow songs, ballads etc. When I played a fast song they became agitated and started stomping their feet. Finally one great big horse bit the headstock of my guitar. I stopped playing that song and started back with a ballad and they calmed right down. Every time I stopped playing they would start nudging me and whining. I was really getting nervous, you know how big those horses are and they had me surrounded!! Finally Monte and Bob showed up and rescued me. I was out of songs and didn’t know how they would take to replays.

Every year I would take hundreds of pictures and keep a journal with what horse I rode, who was in camp, the weather and what we ate and what animals we saw. I would take at least one picture of the lunches we had, what an assortment: Sandwiches, cookies, jolly ranchers, apples, oranges, jerky, candy bars, and juice. You could eat a horse up in the mountains and still lose a few pounds over the week.

We always used to plan our hunts so we could be in Jackson on either Friday or Saturday night to go to the Cowboy Bar. At the end of our hunt one year, one of our group, Mike Gregory, was so excited about going to the Cowboy Bar he started slugging down Jack Daniels in our motel room and passed out and never got there. We still tease him about “Premature Intoxication”

Wrangler Café

I would fly in to Jackson on Friday and spend the night. Usually we would go up to Grand Teton NP and bugle elk (we didn’t know it was illegal) and get fired up for our hunt. I would get up before light and drive back up to get pictures at Mt. Moran as the sun rose and then drive down to Pinedale to have breakfast with Monte at the Wrangler. The Wrangler Café was on the south end of Pinedale on the right. One morning after a particularly late night in Jackson I drove down and when I got to Pinedale, on the north end of town on the left was the Wrangler complete with the boulders in the parking lot. I knew I’d had a lot to drink but I thought I still knew north from south. I felt like I was in the “Twilight Zone”. I drove on through town to see what was on the other end of town! The Wrangler had been moved to the north end of town complete with boulders in the parking lot!

California Horses or “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished”

One year Monte and I were hunting on Elk Mountain and found three horses that had run away from their hunters. They had fancy saddles and saddlebags with all kinds of gear, binoculars, etc. The saddles had slipped beneath their stomachs and two of them had bits in their mouths that prevented them from eating. Their mouths were stuffed with grass they couldn’t swallow. We got the saddles on and the bits out of their mouths and took them down to Horseshoe. It cost us nearly a full day of hunting. The hunters (from California) had apparently gone all the way back down to town, thinking the horses would find their way. Those horses would have starved to death or become “bear bait” in short order. Monte charged them a nominal fee for feed and all the trouble and they said they didn’t owe anything because the horses would have come down by themselves.

Skiing

Monte, Donna, Janice and I have become good friends over the years and in addition to the many hunts and pack trips we have been on, we try to get together every winter and ski in Steamboat Springs, Co. with Rick Brothers. Monte is a great skier and we always tell our friends back home we have our own private ski instructor when we ski.