High Country Is a Cut Above for Excitement : Deer Hunting, Trout Fishing Await in the Eastern Sierra

One can imagine what a horse thinks when a city person struggles into the saddle to start a four-day pack trip.

Hey, fellas, I got me a real dude this time! Horses know.

The horse’s name is Hudson. Dudley Pratt, a Long Beach fireman, draws a horse named Dudley.

Hudson, Dudley, Bugsy, Cosmo, Cinderella, 10AC--get it, Tennessee ? -- these and other steeds and mules were the transportation to the Ansel Adams Wilderness of the Eastern Sierra, where golden trout splash in the creek and almost everybody gets his deer.

It is Dink Getty’s special place. Dink--given name, Duncan Morgan Getty--runs the Frontier Pack Train. His horse is Heisman, an appropriate steed to carry the 6-foot-7, 270-pound Getty, who claims to have been “the smallest kid in my family.”

Last fall’s deer season opened in this zone the next day.

“Six hunters going in, and six nice bucks will be coming out,” he says.

Bob Weiland of San Diego, a sales manager for a landscaping company, says: “We’ve had 100% success the last three years, 90% the year before that. I’ve used four bullets the last four years.”

Weiland, Roy Chitwood of Los Angeles, Terry Hardgrave of Fountain Valley and Red Laatsch of Carlsbad started going with Getty in 1977, soon after he took over the pack operation.

Others are Getty’s pals, Tom Countway, a Bishop doctor, and Bob Berger, a hunter-fisherman from Sylmar. Neither drew tags for this zone this year, but they have come along to help.

Pratt and his friend, Jim Sweeney, a Buena Park fireman, are newcomers. They have never bagged deer, after futile tries in other zones the last three seasons.

There is only one stranger.

Getty whispers to the reporter: “I told them you were a game warden.”

As the group moves up through the granite trail, Getty tells how the rotating presidents of the Eastern High Sierra Packers Assn. take the California governor on a pack trip every year.

“(Bob) Tanner (of Mammoth) got to take Ronald Reagan one year,” he said. “I got Jerry Brown.”

That was in 1978. At a cost of $275,000 to the taxpayers, stairs were cut into the granite in a couple of difficult sections to make the trail easier--hence, the “Jerry Brown Steps.”

But Brown never used them. Got kicked by a mule in Yosemite a week earlier and didn’t go.

That wouldn’t have stopped Getty. His first year on the hunt, he fell off his horse and suffered a broken arm, but went anyway. The second year, he went despite a broken leg. The third year, he didn’t go. Appendicitis.

On the trail, Hudson quickly establishes who is boss, stopping to eat and drink at every opportunity.

“I think he’s got your number,” Getty says.

The horses are wheezing. Getty announces: “My motto is, ‘A bad ride’s better than a good walk.’ ”

Climbing at this elevation, it’s difficult to argue. The trail skirts Alpine lakes until the trees thin out, marking timberline above 10,000 feet. The terrain finally levels off and the riding is easier. Then the camp comes into view.

Kevin Peterson, the chef, already has the cook tent set up and a hot lunch ready, but Getty says cooking isn’t Peterson’s primary talent.

“He may be the best fly-fishing guide in the area,” Getty says.

Meanwhile, the hunters use 30-power scopes on tripods to scan the slopes across the mile-wide valley, all the way to the 12,300-foot ridge of shale. A few mule deer are spotted moving among the brush and small trees, and the hunters start to plan their tactics for the morning.

Berger will work with Pratt and Sweeney, who are unfamiliar with the area. They plan to ride to the head of the valley, leave their horses and pick their way along the ridge until they are above the deer, blocking their escape route over the top.

“When they come to you, shoot the last one, because he’ll be the biggest,” Berger says.

Pratt and Sweeney are skeptical that the deer will break up onto the open shale rather than run for cover in the valley.

“You’ll see,” Berger says.

Bedtime. Getty pulls on his sleeping bag like a pair of pants and flops under the stars. City types sleep in tents. Morning. Peterson stirs up the fire, which flickers through the side of the tent. Coffee is on. A flashlight on a watch shows 6 a.m.

Berger, Pratt and Sweeney ride out at 7. Later, Getty and Laatsch will ride up the valley, then return on foot along the slope. Weiland and Hardgrave will go down the valley, then halfway up to the shale line and move back toward the center. Finally, Chitwood will perch on a large volcanic rock halfway up the slope, and Countway will move to the bottom of the slope, closing the loop.

As Getty explains: “(The deer will) be running into the trap--either into (Weiland and Hardgrave) or into those guys up in the shale. If it’s done right, there’s no reason for everyone not to get his deer. But it’s important that everybody does his job and not free-lance.”

Getty says he hasn’t shot a deer in 15 years.

“I don’t hunt anymore,” he says. “I enjoy orchestrating the hunt.”

Getty once tried two-way radios to direct the hunters, but it seemed more like a military operation than sport.

Getty used to take five SWAT policemen hunting. “In four years, they took 21 shots and got 20 deer,” he says.

As the hunters slowly work into position--climbing is slow above 10,000 feet--the deer are active. Here and there, bucks pair off to lock antlers.

“My goal is to get six by noon,” Getty says. “Things will start happening about 9:10.”

At 8:35, there is a shot--then another.

“Geez, who’s shooting?” Getty says. “We’d better get going.”

He and Laatsch ride out. Peterson is left in camp to watch the drama unfold.

Squinting through a scope, Peterson says: “I’ve hunted a lot of deer since I was a little kid, and I’ve never seen it like this. Twelve bucks!”

A little later, the source of the shots is still unknown, but the hunters are all in position. Sweeney scrambles down the shale, about 600 yards from one group of deer.

“They aren’t spooked, but they know something’s up,” Peterson says. “If they go that way, Dink can push them right back.”

The deer stop to graze in a grassy clearing, then one buck breaks downhill and a few others follow, splitting the group.

At 9:40, Peterson says: “I’d say in about five or 10 minutes, all hell’s going to break loose.”

Getty can be seen walking down the valley from the left. Now the deer are in flight. At 9:50, the deer are running toward Weiland and Hardgrave. There are shots.

Hardgrave says later: “Roy was below me, Bob (Berger) and Dudley were above me. I was probably 350 yards away--too far to take a shot, and if I missed, they would scatter and ruin it for the rest of the guys. Then they started moving up toward the shale at a diagonal, but they didn’t get any closer to me. I moved up closer and Bob (Weiland) fired a couple of shots, and I fired one.”

Weiland says later: “By then, there were 21 deer. I was 500 yards away. I fired to turn them. I was afraid they’d go behind me and out over the top.”

At the shots, the deer circle and split, some running up the shale the other way, others along the grass line. At 10:03, eight white tails disappear over the top, making their escape.

Two minutes later, there are more shots. These are the first kills, by Pratt and then Sweeney.

Pratt says later: “(Berger) told me to go down (the shale) and find a place that looks good and just stay. I saw the herd coming up. I got out my binoculars and started counting back and saw the big guy. I could have taken a 100-yard shot broadside, but he was hidden behind the others, like bodyguards. They wouldn’t move, so I shot over their heads, and they moved again. They stopped, and his neck was poking out.”

From 200 yards, Pratt shot and missed, then shot and got a clean kill. A minute later, Laatsch hailed Sweeney from below that some deer were higher up.

Said Sweeney: “I saw one buck . . . waited . . . saw a couple of does. Then finally, I saw the buck. He was the last one and the biggest.”

Sweeney shot from between 300 and 350 yards--also a clean kill. Then it was the others’ turn.

Hardgrave says later: “Bob and I decided to hold our ground. Sure enough, five came back around a ridge and a couple walked toward me. I picked one out, and after I shot, Bob shot.”

Altogether, four kills. It’s all over in 15 minutes.

Chitwood is first to return to camp, scooping a cold beer out of the stream on his way in. He says he took the early shots.

“I was working my way up to the rock and jumped them,” he says. “Came across a little hill and there they were.”

But they ran, and he missed. Although his shooting risked upsetting the game plan, Getty says: “If you had seen how big that one was, it was worth it.”

Later, Pratt’s buck checks in at 255 pounds.

“That’s the biggest deer I’ve seen taken out of here,” Berger says.

“It’ll be the biggest in the zone this year,” Getty says.

Sweeney’s is next largest at 225.

“Two rookies, two fine deer,” Getty says.

Chitwood goes down the valley with Getty to get his that evening. They are back in an hour.

“Executive hunt,” Getty says.

The next morning, the whole group organizes to complete the sweep for Laatsch. The deer return, but he misses three long shots. The next day is the same.

Getty points out that on the first day, Laatsch passed up a 300-yard shot on the same buck shot by Pratt, rather than break the game plan.

“It was a team hunt and he’s a team player,” Sweeney says.

Attention turns to the stream and the golden trout that wait there.

No great, looping casts are required, merely considerable stealth and a delicate touch as Peterson places the Size-16 yellow-bodied Humpy dry fly he has tied at the precise spots in the pools.

“The technique I use is a little unorthodox,” he says, dropping the fly onto the flow, just below a falls. “Let it drift right through the pool, then drag it back up . . . slowly, very slowly. Then let it drift down again.”

Finally, a little golden is hooked. Without lifting the fish from the water, Peterson cradles it in one hand and slips out the barbless hook with the other, then points the fish into the current to make sure it is recovered enough to swim away.

Goldens are special, but not because they are the state fish and certainly not for their size. The best catch this day will be about 12 inches. The limit is five, and the use of bait is permissible. But, as Robert Elman wrote in “The Fisherman’s Field Guide”: “Somehow it seems shameful to use anything other than flies to beguile the delicate, aristocratic trout of the high country.”

Many more goldens are caught and released in a fine day of sport. Getty muses that it’s too bad one can’t catch and release deer.

After lunch, the mules are loaded for the trip back out, bearing the deer. Hudson and his friends are brought back from the meadow up the valley where they have been grazing the last few days.

Hudson takes his time going down, often pausing to study tricky places and picking his way carefully, hoof by hoof. He keeps falling behind. His rider, knees and hips aching, is asked to urge him on.

After about two hours, Hudson loses a rear shoe. It is suggested that the rider dismount and walk him over the rough spots.

The rider is pleased to make the sacrifice. He isn’t sure, but he thinks Hudson winked.