The Twenty Dollar Biscuit

The fall of '79 was nothing short of phenomenal for a young man full of life and adventure. For one, the Cougars were undefeated in football that year and went onto an 11-0 record in the WAC conference, only to lose it all in a thriller at the holiday bowl to Indiana. Second, the fall temperatures that year were unseasonable warm for Utah fall weather and finally, I had  planned a mule deer hunt in Wyoming that year with a friend of mine. We would be packing in on our horses for a seven day hunt in the Greys River region of western Wyoming. It would be my first time hunting in the state of Wyoming and I had aspirations of beautiful aspen groves with piney marked canyons and breath taking mountain vistas.

I started preparing at least a month before the trip was due. Juggling work, home chores, my better half and the kids, was all I could do.  My thoughts were on a trophy Muley just waiting for me in the hills of Wyoming. It’s funny how time can absolutely crawl before and anticipated event and then fly like the speed of a rocket ship when you finally depart for the trip. During the fun time of your vacation it seems like you wake up the next day and it’s over and the dreaded trip home is upon you. This is exactly how it was back then. Sleepless nights and snail paced days were the norm as soon as the Wyoming deer tag reached my hands. Looking back now it reminds me of having a giant present sitting under the tree at Christmas. You have to look at it every day for a week until the morning of the big paper-ripping event finally takes place.Patience was never my virtue as a young man even working on the farm I would get cattle chores done in record speed, only to have Grandpa pile on some more when he noticed that I was nearly finished and ready to go home. Ah yes, the old breed worked from daylight to darkness everyday but Sunday. Even then you’d do chores on Sunday’s around church and meals. At a young age we had those things ingrained in our minds by the old breed as we worked the land and factories only to lose sight of these things as we tried to make a softer life for our children. Now I get dizzy just looking at some of the intersections in town with people coming and going in the middle of the day. Back then we were all working in the middle of the day. Play and leisure time came at sundown or on the weekends.

Finally the day for the trip arrived and boy was I in for the shock of a lifetime. Trucking our horses up into Wyoming was event-less and quite enjoyable. New territory always fascinated me as a young man. Trying to look over the next mountain and canyon was a lure born in my instincts. I still have the same thoughts that I had back then only nowadays my body says, “You gotta be kidding, do you really think we’re going up that.” Then reality sets in and I excuse myself for the few seconds of insanity. Back then it was nothing to ride our horses twenty to thirty miles in one day and make a small pole camp in the timber with nothing but our bedrolls and manty’s for cover. This trip would be no different since we were young and dumb. Hell back then the only thing we worried about was our ammunition and guns. Combine those with a good knife and you’re a match for anything. At least that’s what we thought on this trip. The warm fall air had hypnotized us and we fell for nature’s lure of balmy Indian summer-like weather. I remember sweating in the afternoon sun the day we made camp at an elevation of 9,800 Feet. It was a deer flies paradise in the Wyoming wilderness that fall. Those pesky critters could land on you and draw blood faster than you could realize that you were several pints low. Of course, we didn't need bug killer on that trip we had our guns and knives.

Our camp was a makeshift affair of lodge poles and canvas mantys. We set it up quickly for there were more important things than the comforts of camp. We had to get scouting the canyons for the big ones. For one beautiful day and one star blessed night we lay in our bedrolls in awe of God’s sky and his magnificent mountains. I can still remember lying there that first night outside my bedroll because of the warm night air. The next day the morning horse ride to our pre-planned outlook spot felt like it was late August instead of late October. There wasn't any frost on the ground and the leaves were still on the trees in full fall colors. What a time to be alive and doing something you truly loved to do.

The first two days were nothing out of the ordinary and I must admit it didn't seem like a usual deer hunt to me with the weather playing us as fools. Along about dark the third night, I noticed a small change in the wind as I knelt cooking some biscuits on the fire. I remember looking at the hobbled horses in the meadow we were camped near and their tails and manes blowing in the afternoon light. I told my friend that I felt like we might get a little bad weather before the night was over. Looking back now that was the biggest understatement of the whole trip. After a good dinner of biscuits made into 'shit on a shingle 'style we fell into our bedrolls and watched the night time sky. There were not as many stars that night and thinking back now the night sky was clouding up fast. I watched as embers from the fire started blowing out on to the ground and I started thinking I better get up and douse the fire before we set the mountain a blaze. After the fire was put out I crawled down into the bedroll to keep the wind off my head. Neither one of us wanted to crawl out and shore up the camp because we were getting up in fewer than five hours. We were bone tired from the past two days hunting early mornings.

The last thing I remember was a weight on my head sometime in the night. I didn't know if I was dreaming or if I really had something weighting down on my head. Finally, I pulled back the bedroll head tarp and pushed the weight from my face. As I did this I immediately sat up. Something was wrong with this scenario. A bitter cold drought whipped around my neck and head. All I could see was pure white light. I thought I was dreaming so I lay back down. When I did this my head landed in a nice pile of fresh snow that had deposited on my pillow when I had rose. Holy crap! This is the mother of all mountain storms or so I thought. Both of us were up by now moaning and groaning. We sat there in complete silence as the snow had made the camp dead quiet. I pulled my flashlight out and pointed it at the horses that we had high lined the night before. They were staring at me with a look like 'are you two really that stupid that you didn't see this coming?' I must admit looking back now that the signs were everywhere. We should have seen it coming, but hell we were young and fearless and besides we had our guns and knives.

     Climbing out into a cold snowy camp in the middle of the night was like the beginning of the first quarter of the game on game day. After we secured our camp with tarps and covers we looked to the horses. The snow was about ten inches deep and still coming down. It had covered all the meadow grass and nothing but winter wonderland prevailed. Lucky for us, we had brought up two bags of hay pellets. These would be the only food those horses would see for the next three days. We didn't bring them up because of a storm we thought we might encounter, we brought them because we were worried about the drought preventing the grass growth and there not being enough grass for the horses. Storm preparedness was the last thing on our minds. Once again, we had our guns and knives that’s all we needed. Well you can’t eat steel and lead and at 9,800 feet plowing through snow you use up a lot of energy.

We finally got a fire started with flares and made some hot chocolate. Boy, did that taste good to us. It had quit snowing by the time morning came and as young and dumb as we were hunting after a fresh snowfall was the foremost thing on our minds. Off we went into the snowy mountain vista. Thinking back now it was a blessing from God that we didn't run into any of his creatures that morning. If we would have shot a deer we would still be up there eating it to this very day. Unbeknownst to us, this was the first in a series of three storms to hit the area within 48 hours.

After an unsuccessful day of hunting we had decided to give it one more day and then head home about midday the following day. I have to say that night was the coldest night I have ever spent on this planet. We sat by the fire the entire night with all our clothes on in our bedrolls wrapped in all four of our mantys. Of course a nice warm tent with a small stove would have just been the order of the day but hell, we had our guns and knives. Never were there two younger and dumber fools on the mountain than us that fall of '79.

Morning broke so cold the next day that I can still close my eyes and feel that numbing cold feeling that I had way down in bones. Even the fire had a hard time staying lit because of the intense frost in the air. Looking over our supply of gourmet canned food nothing looked good for a quick breakfast so we opted for a healthy body warming fist full of jerky. Jerky along with some frozen tang in our canteens made for an award winning two course meal. The kind of meal you wouldn't even find in a Boy Scout camp full of twelve year olds. They would of at least had better sense than this and would have come with the scout motto of being prepared in mind, but we still had our guns and knives.

Hitting the trail that morning in the winter mountain wilderness made me realize that if I was going to live to see 30, I might want to smarten up some. I didn't even want to get off my horse when we saw several fresh tracks in the snow. The cold and our lack of brains was deafening to the ears that fall day. We rode along the mountain ridge that morning and neither one of us wanted to say what was fully on our minds. I didn't want to be the first to fold under the weight of the moment. I had determined in my mind to ride this thing out, but I truly would have broke camp faster than a hooker grabs her money off the dresser drawer if I could have saved face with my friend. Discussing things on the way home he had felt the same way but pride and a small fever called, lack of reasoning, had prevailed over both of us. Little did we know that we were in for a rude awakening that cold Wyoming day.

As we rimmed out of a large canyon, we found ourselves engulfed in a dense cloud covering fog. The kind you can see fora whole 30 feet in front of you. We were in fog as thick as pea’s soup and bone chilling cold. At this point we decided to make tracks and it was a mutual feeling. We were lucky that we had the horse tracks in the snow to guide us back to our camp that day. While on the way back to camp, fate took a turn for us and a few other predisposed souls. We were about a three hour ride from our camp when we came across foot tracks in the snow. Now, whom could possibly be stupid enough to be out in this weather was the first thought in my mind. Then I realized we were in the same brainless club as the makers of the tracks. As we studied the tracks it looked like three sets of boots heading in the same direction, all in single file. They were wandering back and forth like they were lost or looking for something. We decide to follow the tracks along the ridge for a ways to investigate the circumstances. It was not very smart to be out there on a horse that day in the elements slipping and sliding all over the mountain, but to be on foot was crazy.

The tracks led us to a big stand of timber just off the edge of a large canyon. As we rode through the snow that day it sounded like a large herd of buffalo with the horses crunching through the top crust on the frozen snow. Several times I thought I heard someone yell out, but the horses were making so much noise you couldn't hear very well at all. Now and again the wind would sweep the clouds from off the mountain top and we could see for about a half a mile or so. One time when the wind came up we could see a man standing near the timber waving his arms and dancing around like a prairie chicken. We rode over to him and as we approached two other men came out of the timber and came up to us. They all looked wild eyed and half nutty. They proceeded to tell us they were lost and didn't know where they were. As it turns out they were with an outfitter that had packed them into this area for the hunt. When the storm hit the outfitter decided to go down to town and get some more supplies. He had given instructions for the men to lounge around camp and he would be back in a day. The hunters got bored waiting and decided to strike out on their own for a day’s hunt and that's when they become lost in the fog. For ten minutes or more we listened to their story about how the only thing they had eaten for one whole day was hard tack candy and snow. They couldn't get a fire started because they had run out of matches. What a sorry looking bunch these guys were and in the middle of nowhere.

The rest of the story goes like this. We got a big fire going with our flares for these pilgrims from the East, and they warmed up enough to live another day. We didn't have any food on us because we had eaten our gourmet meal earlier and we only planned on a short morning hunt. We told the men to stay put and we would get back to our camp and bring up some of our remaining food. They agreed and as we climbed into the saddle I realized I had five biscuits left over from several days ago. As I pulled them out of my saddle bags they were mashed flat from three days in saddle and the storm. Opening the sandwich bag that contained them, I could see they were in sorry shape, but not as sorry as the men I was looking at. They had the faces of the wolf and if they could have slobbered in that cold Wyoming air it would have froze before it hit the snow. I went to discard the crumbled remains with a quick toss to the fire when a squeal went out from one of the poor men. I had no idea they would even consider such a poor specimen of what was once considered a biscuit. I paused and the spokesman for the group quickly pulled out his wallet and said, "I've only got a hundred dollar bill left Mr. but it’s yours for the biscuits." I laughed and said, "Holy hell, I wouldn't take your money for this mess. If you want them here they are." Evidently, we were told that they had burned all of their money up earlier trying to start a fire. They had saved the hundred for the last of the tinder and then we came along. We bid them goodbye and told them we would be back sometime later that night or first thing in the morning. Names were exchanged and it turned out they were all surgeons and doctors from Philadelphia. We rode of back to our camp and along the way we run into the outfitter coming up the mountain with his pack string. He laughed and we laughed. We informed him of the location of the men and he could follow our horse tracks to the lost pilgrims from Philly.

We made it out of the mountains the next day frozen to our saddles. I remember the sleeves on my slicker were frozen so hard I couldn't bend my arms inside them. We watched the news over the next few weeks to see if anything came out about the hunters. Nothing did so we assumed they got out alright. Looking back now it was amazing any of us got out alright. Telling this story over the years again and again to my better half I would get that, how-could-you-be-so-dumb look from her so finally it sunk in and I quit telling it. This is the last time I promise.

To make the story a real good one, about a year later I was on a horse ride out to the canyon west of my home. I hadn't used my saddle bags since the snow hunt from the previous year. While digging through the bags to clean them out and resupply, I found a neatly rolled clean hundred dollar bill tucked down inside the left side bag. I guess one of the men put it in there when I went to write my yellow colored name in the snow that day. Let’s see here, that’s five lousy three day old beat up biscuits for a hundred dollars which equals twenty bucks a piece. Now I’d say I got bragging rights on any famous chef alive wouldn't you?

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