A Game of Hide & Seek : The hunters were after bighorn sheep. Saboteurs were after the hunters. Only the hunters got what they wanted.

Some groups were climbing into the mountains in the onyx dark before dawn. Booted and camouflaged, they wore cowhide work gloves to protect hands that might whack slag and cholla cactus. Some men slung rifles.

They were the hunters.

Hours earlier, stealthier groups had hiked into the red Kofa Mountains southeast of here. Younger men and a few women in chinos from The Gap and surplus fatigues from Desert Storm. Their weapons were determination and air horns.

They were the hunt saboteurs.

And for the opening days of Arizona’s bighorn sheep hunt on the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, the saboteurs used binoculars to try to keep sight of the hunters, while the sportsmen avoided becoming the quarry and federal and state game wardens monitored the plays on both sides.

The hunters won.

They climbed higher, hiked farther and traveled faster than the softer saboteurs. They craftily ducked confrontations and kept themselves between the bighorn sheep and protesters’ air horns. There were no arrests. The hunt was never slowed, let alone interrupted. Sheep were shot and died. The sport lived.

Sunday, just three days into the 17-day season, some saboteurs were already talking about breaking camp. They said there would be neither money nor enough fresh personnel to patrol even a minute corner of the 660,000-acre refuge.

Monday, the rains came. It was clear all demonstrators would be gone before the season closes next week.

Ironically, that’s when patient guides and most of 16 choosy hunters selected in a state drawing will be closing on the oldest, biggest and most prized rams. The early days, the hunters say, are simply a physical and mental warm-up; a period for eyeballing available sheep and refusing shots at younger, more virile animals in favor of older, less reproductive rams with showier horns.

Now, even seniors among Hunt Saboteurs, the California-based nub of activists in its fifth year of protesting hunting, say their noisy demonstrations are fizzling.

Spokesman Tom Furllum, 24, of Portland, Ore., acknowledges that the loosely knit group of never more than 50 stalwarts, is outgunned, outmanned and clearly outspent by hunters, their organizations and government wildlife agencies.

“We haven’t completely admitted defeat,” says Furllum, an unemployed UC Berkeley dropout. “But if something doesn’t work, there’s no point in beating your head against a wall.”

He senses burnout among saboteurs--for three reasons: “We’re not saving the individual animals . . . the harassment (from hunters and wildlife agencies) is really draining . . . and we have experienced a bit of media blackout.”

“And we’d need 1,000 people to stop this (bighorn sheep) hunt. We just haven’t got them.”

Twenty volunteers were roused for opening day at the Arizona bighorn hunt. They arrived at the dusty base camp in new off-road vehicles and 15-year-old cars and pickups with dragging mufflers. From California, New Mexico, Oregon and New Jersey. With deep hugs for veterans of earlier campaigns and people in T-shirts warning Extinction is Forever.

One man wears a puka-shell necklace. A vegetarian is chided for his leather belt and boots.

Pamphlets “About Sheep, Sheep Hunting and Sheep Hunt Sabbing” are distributed. They address the odds of arrests in the field (“rare and avoidable”), tricks of concealment (“long hair bunched up and faces covered when in sight of hunters and/or authorities”) and the risks of being stopped in a vehicle (“if you have a warrant, if your car has no insurance, busted taillights, etc., they can and will haul you off”).

Veterans fill the muster sheet: Rufus Cohen, 24, of Santa Cruz, a former environmental studies major and a sometime cleaner and restorer of Oriental rugs. Tom Petersen, 42, a big, bearded, soft-spoken carpenter from Placerville. Todd Shuman, 31, who junked his Silicon Valley research career to play jazz piano and sax.

Others say a sense of security forces them to hide behind first names. Dave, 22, sees activism as his only way of surviving an insane world; Jeff, 28, lives in a tepee without a phone.

Hunt Saboteurs, typically young, liberal and unemployed, migrate with the issues. Social justice is their unpaid career field. They have skipped from protesting apartheid and U.S. aid to El Salvador to marching against Desert Storm and demonstrating for gay rights and Greenpeace.

In an earlier era, hell no, the men wouldn’t go to Vietnam. The women still show the kinds of young faces that once stared from Kent State photographs.

Their thoughts are from a gentler generation, an academia and a sociopolitical environment where guns are considered to beget violence and the wanton destruction of living things. That, goes the philosophy, reduces hunting to the level of a bizarre psychosis.

They see themselves as enlightened dropouts from an Establishment rooted in hypocrisy and oppression--and hunting a unnecessary evil of such a power structure.

And so the plans to battle opening day continue with a briefing by Jonathan Paul, 25, the part-time photographer and Connecticut Yankee who helped organize Hunt Saboteurs.

Hours before first light, pairs of saboteurs will be driven to hunters’ camps or known drop-off points, with emphasis on the sheep-rich Burro Canyon area. Get in deep, get in early, and let hunters think they have the areas to themselves. This time, says Paul, the saboteurs will have the airborne eyes of ultra-light aircraft donated and flown by two Los Angeles pilots.

Members pick their own teams.

One woman speaks her serious reason for selecting a friend.

“Our moons are in the same house,” she says.

Even the saboteurs chuckle.

Four years ago, Hunt Saboteurs formed as a clone of a successful British organization and were on top of their emotionally volatile game.

They also were surfing a global passion for animal rights.

European fur stores and warehouses were being torched by activists. Mink farms and vivisection clinics were vandalized and animals freed. Groups and slogans were many: The Fund for Animals. Earth First! Save the Whales and Dolphin-Free Tuna.

In California, the group now calling itself “Hunt Sabbers” staged on-site protests against the tule elk hunt in Northern California, bighorn sheep hunts in the eastern Mojave Desert and bear hunts in Shasta County.

Twenty-three saboteurs whose din disrupted a California elk hunt were arrested and fined a total of $16,000 on trespassing charges. Two saboteurs said they were beaten by sheep hunters and locked in a horse trailer for 11 hours.

Hunt Sabbers, including Furllum, claim they have been shot at: “I counted two (shots) whining over my head.” Intentional sniping or misdirected fire? “Whether he was shooting at me is debatable.”

This year--despite the saboteurs’ presence at California bear and elk hunts--there have been no shots, no confrontations and no arrests. Also, very little publicity.

Press disinterest, say fish and game officials, stems from the saboteurs’ failure to rise above a reputation as simple nuisances.

Few hunters and officials doubt the convictions of the movement. Even hunting guides--such as Dean Priest of Phoenix and Jim McCasland of Prescott, Ariz.--deny neither the saboteurs’ rights to their opinions nor their freedom to protest.

“We even have common ground on some issues,” notes John Hevert, a biologist and warden for the Arizona Game and Fish Department who tramped the Kofa last week and monitored both sides of the hunt. “But they are misguided and certainly misinformed about wildlife management.”

Opening day for Rufus Cohen and Tom Petersen is a long, hot walk in the sun. They get to their patrol area late, after waiting to supervise other teams’ deployment. By the time they find the hunters’ Chevy 4x4 and GMC High Sierra parked in Burro Canyon, the shooters are believed to be well on their way.

(As it turned out, the concealed hunters had hunkered down to watch Cohen and Petersen. When the saboteurs committed their efforts to one area of the huge canyon, the hunters simply went the other way.)

It is a climbing walk of almost two hours through paloverde scrub to the crest of a tor overlooking a hundred square miles of sheep country. Cohen and Petersen scan with binoculars. No sheep. No hunters.

They break for fruit and water and Cohen talks of campaigns past. Of tree-sitting to protect 1,500-year-old redwoods in the Sierras. Of moving the bighorn sheep campaign to Arizona because California authorities are playing hardball.

“I don’t think we’ll ever undo the entire hunting Establishment,” he says. “But we can address the borderline cases, the disappearing species . . . in time it may give people a new insight to the costs of hunting.”

One of those insights, he says, might concern wildlife management by government-sponsored refuges such as Kofa.

“They (wildlife agencies) are doing it to preserve the species, yes,” Cohen continues. “But the nature of the preservation is geared toward the trophy hunter.

“The aim (of refuges) should not be to create a harvestable surplus. That’s viewing wildlife as a crop, an agricultural practice rather than an environmental one.”

Suddenly, a truck appears on a dirt road far below. It is an Arizona Game and Fish vehicle. Two men get out. Their binoculars peer into Hunt Sabbers binoculars.

Cohen breaks off pursuit of the hunters. He moves with Petersen down the ridge’s blind side, scrambling away from the wardens and into a dry wash.

They avoid contact and official questions. They say it is the best way. The less wardens know about hunt saboteurs the better.

But a few hours later, when returning to the Hunt Sabbers base camp, Cohen encounters the ranger again. It is Hevert.

Hevert says he wasn’t tracking Hunt Sabbers. He says he saw men on a hill, presumed they were hunters and wanted to know if they had seen any signs of mountain lions reported in the area.

Cohen doesn’t buy it.

But then, overactive suspicions and misinterpretations of official acts and standard enforcement techniques are common among Hunt Sabbers. During the Arizona hunt it bordered on paranoia.

* One group of Hunt Sabbers returned to base camp and reported Game and Fish trucks on a trail leading into Burro Canyon. Clearly, said the excited returnees, the rangers had been posted to prevent the recovery of tired saboteurs in the field.

A second run showed the “roadblock” to be nothing more sinister than a knot of hunters and wardens schmoozing around a campfire.

* The Arizona Game and Fish Department dispatched an airplane to circle the base camp. Hunt Sabbers said it might be equipped with a “bionic ear” to eavesdrop on conversations.

A Game and Fish spokesman laughs off the theory: “We’re just not that sophisticated. A piece of equipment like that probably would blow our budget for a year.”

* Game and Fish did position a truck near the Hunt Sabbers base camp to monitor foot and vehicle traffic. Saboteurs said they were being photographed for identification and future harassment. They covered their faces with hoods and bandannas until the camp looked more like an Irish Republican Army gathering.

Says one watching warden: “I raise the video camera, pretend to take pictures and they cover up. It’s a game we play.”

On the second day, on another patch of wilderness, Tom Boggess is playing a different game.

Boggess, 50, a Phoenix veterinarian carved like a hickory fireplug, is guiding a hunting party of five into high country north of Kofa Queen Canyon. The party hikes high and hard and sweats early. Then Boggess stops.

“There they are,” he says. “Two on that ridge.”

Two miles to the right are Hunt Sabbers Jonathan Paul and Tracy Bartlett, an Earth First! member from Del Mar. They have been in place long before dawn, picking up the hunters at first light and paralleling their path for an hour.

“This way,” says Boggess.

The group slants away from its original path. Why the detour? Why climb rougher ground when a mid-ridge saddle offers a much easier crossing?

“If we go high, the Hunt Sabbers will follow us,” explains Boggess. “Then we’ll move left and pull them along the top of that ridge toward us.

“Sheep like high ground. With all of us up there, they’ll probably head downhill. Right toward Signal Peak where I know there is another hunter.”

So Hunt Sabbers are being used as unsuspecting beaters, actually driving the game?

“A little bit of treachery keeps the mind working and adds a new element to hunting,” Boggess says, grinning like a coyote on a cottontail. He turns his camouflaged jacket inside out and the lining shows bright orange. “And if we lose them, how about we hang up an orange flag and let ‘em know we’re here.”

The party does lose Paul and Bartlett. Easily. But then, only the fittest can follow the pace of Boggess, who runs daily, routinely hikes 25 desert miles in a day, and climbs mountains to stay tough.

He hunts for the solitude, for the challenge of a two-day stalk in country where a mere man does not have the maneuvering advantage. He says he only shoots what he can eat; he has acquired a taste for wild meat and a distrust of store-bought steaks from animals fed chemicals.

“When the anti-hunters see a dead deer they think it’s Bambi,” Boggess says. “Out here, we see steaks and good meat and big racks of ribs. That’s the big difference between growing up in the city and growing up around here.”

Boggess does not hold a Grand Slam passion for wall trophies. This former president of the Arizona Desert Bighorn Sheep Society is appalled by gun-happy amateurs who walk the lowlands and shoot the first and usually the youngest. He calls them slob hunters.

“So any saboteur who keeps game away from slob hunters is performing a great service to the real hunters,” he says.

The Boggess party is typical. It forms around the hunter, lanky Jay Chancellor, a cattle and cotton farm manager from Brooksville, Miss. Chancellor paid an out-of-state fee of $753 after drawing one of only 16 permits to hunt sheep on the Kofa this season.

“I’m the assassin,” Chancellor says with a grin.

Boggess’ son, Thomas, 24, is along for the hike. Also, assistant guide Dean Priest and Game and Fish Warden Hevert, playing hooky from paperwork in his Yuma office on this perfect mountain day.

For five hours the squad slithers and clambers toward a 3,000-foot peak. They chew nuts from jojoba bushes. Deadpanning, Priest says the only way to tell sheep and mule deer droppings apart is that sheep pellets are bitter.

Boggess reads for rams. He spots their faint trail, square hoof prints, the flattened dust where they slept, and paloverde chewed for breakfast. Now he knows the time and direction of travel, even the sheep’s approximate age.

Atop the peak, five spotter scopes are set on tripods and scanning begins. The watchers can count the needles on distant saguaros. They easily pick up the ram snoozing on the sunny side of a ridge--about five miles away.

It is noon. In three hours the ram will follow habit and break his nap. Boggess thinks the group can cover the five miles by then.

They do. The party settles in the blind lee of a high ridge 800 yards from the sleeping ram. Boggess, crouching, creeping for maximum silence, starts the final stalk.

It takes almost 45 minutes. The guide gets within 50 yards of the ram before it stirs. It stands. It walks into sunlight on the skyline and the shot on the 8-year-old ram is perfect.

The only sound is the trigger click of a camera’s motor drive.

Hunter Chancellor has declined the shot.

He says he has waited years for what game laws dictate will be a single, lifetime opportunity. So he’ll wait a few more days for an older animal whose service to the herd is done.

The Hunt Sabbers have been left miles back.

Boggess thinks about them some more.

He also thinks about the sore feet and bruised knees and cactus-spiked hands and other scars of his party, which has clawed across 10 miles of alien desert in nine hours.

“This is tough country,” he decides. “If the anti-hunters want to do what we did today and get close enough to a sheep to bang their tin plates, good luck to them.”