Brian Atterton
While attending BYU together, Rick and I decided that we need to be like everyone in Utah at that time, and become deer hunters.
Without much preparation, we got up around 3:30am and headed to the hills up the Provo canyon. We found a spot to park and headed up the hillside to higher ground; we came upon a small creek in the dark and while attempting to jump across…… got wet up to our mid thigh. Being 20 degrees out, our pants froze up, but not being the two sharpest tacks in the box, we pressed on as we could not admit defeat. We spent the morning climbing up some extremely steep hill’s and went from freezing to sweating, without any success. We decided that the next week we’d be much smarter and hike up Friday afternoon and set up a small tent and be ready to go early and already be on top of the mountains and chase some deer downhill without being surrounded by other hunters. So we headed out Friday afternoon determined to get our catch.
By the time we got on top of one of the high peaks, it was getting dark, we set up camp and cooked dinner. Being cold we got into our sleeping bags and Rick set his watch for a 5:30 wake up. When the alarm went off we got up, cooked some oatmeal on the little steno cooker we had and tried to warm up. I stuck my head out the tent door and told Rick that it was not even getting light out yet. When I asked him what time it was, no answer back, stuck my head back in the tent to see him looking at his watch……. he says, “well, it’s says 3am, must have set it wrong”. Great, back into the sleeping bags again. We got up around 6am, got our stuff inside the tent packed up and the heard something outside. Rick thought deer, I thought mountain lion. Looked outside to see a couple of hunters going away from us…… wondered how the heck they go up here so fast. After taking down camp we started to walk the ridge, looking down on the other side, we saw a dirt parking area filling up with trucks. We just looked at each other and shook our heads. We certainly had one our dumb and dumber moments. We brought home no venison, just our cold worn out selves, it was my last hunting adventure.
We also shared many good and some not so good moments together on the greens, he was will always be my friend.
Brian Atterton
