BONUS MATERIAL
Following is a bonus chapter written by Craig Boddington’s uncle, Arthur Popham, who is mentioned throughout this book. This chapter originally appeared in Outdoor Life, and is part of Popham’s, Stalking Game from Desert to Tundra, published by Amwell Press in 1985. Arthur C. Popham grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. All through high school there he did much target and small game shooting with high power rifles and pistols, and got his first taste of deserts and mountains in his freshman college year at New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell. At 17, he bagged his first deer on a Thanksgiving holiday hunt out of Alamogordo. In his junior college year, Art went to the University of Arizona at Tucson, and nearly every weekend was spent in the deserts and mountains with such game-and-gunwise mentors as Jack O’Connor and George Parker, Jr., whom he idolized. Art became a member of the Boone and Crockett Club in 1960.
Art Popham photographed by his Kansas City, Missouri, boyhood friend, David Douglas Duncan, while they knocked around Arizona together as college students. This was one of Duncan’s first prizewinning pictures—before he became world-famous as a photojournalist for Life magazine and others.
RAM FROM INFERNO
By Arthur C. Popham
High-Flying Fish in the Desert was only one of the Many Incidents of hhis Weird Trip into a Fiery Furnace
I was enjoying a cool vacation from college, surrounded by Minnesota’s 10,000 limpid lakes, when Jack O’Connor’s telegram came from Tucson, Arizona. He was inviting me to join him on a desert sheep hunt arranged with Charlie Ren, then the aging dean of the desert hunters. Before September classes started at the University of Arizona was our only chance for a crack at those rare trophies; then Jack’s duties in teaching journalism and mine in learning law resumed. So I headed eagerly for Tucson to meet him, little realizing how I’d soon be gasping for just one cupful of all that clear, cool water I left behind.
This was too many years ago, before the desert bighorns in Mexico’s arid mountains were so nearly wiped out by waterhole slaughters, and before their hunting was totally prohibited there.
The renaissance, meanwhile, of the Rocky Mountain and desert bighorn sheep is another fine chapter in the saving of our North American game animals. Good management of the wild herds in the Western states has made possible again their limited open seasons, and Mexico has recently permitted the taking of some desert sheep in the Baja California area after long protection.
Harvesting the older animals under these allotted permits has now become a well-organized operation in some areas for private outfitters and guides, pitting aerial spotting, four-wheel drive vehicles and walkie-talkie communication between spotters against the sheep’s telescopic eyesight, protective coloring and fearless agility in its rough habitat.
This has all brought to mind the very different kind of hunt for desert bighorns that we made. It had actually been Jack’s fascinating articles in the early 1930s on southwestern hunting that had drawn me to the University of Arizona as a student, where he was then a young faculty member. I’d lost little time after enrolling in getting acquainted with him; we hunted Kaibab Forest mule deer together on that Thanksgiving vacation, and shot together for desert game through the year. Jack has gone on, of course, to become one of the outstanding authorities on world big game hunting and guns, and I have long enjoyed the extracurricular education I received with him then.
So, in response to his telegram, I met Jack in Tucson that August, and we rolled through the shimmering mirages to Ajo, Arizona. There, Charlie Ren, a lean old desert hawk, met us and assembled our gear and party in a vintage Dodge pickup truck and Ford sedan. We cleared at the border, then headed south toward the ranges paralleling the Gulf of California.
Our group was filled out by Roy Graham, deputy sheriff at Ajo. Charlie’s right-hand man was Jose del Rosario, a young redheaded Mexican, who was to be my guide. I don’t know if Red’s coloring reflected Mayan or Irish influence, but he knew the desert, had marvelous eyesight and was a keen hunter.
After a day’s travel we ran out of ruts to follow and picked our way over the desert around the cactus. Cholla thorns, always lying in wait for tires, produce slow leaks that are aggravatingly persistent. The vehicles took a beating as we pushed our way in the scorching glare, scraping through the greasewood and spiny ocotillo, past stately saguaro and organ cactus, churning through dry washes. Sangre grado trees, with elephant-colored bark, looked heavy and strong, but were easily snapped. Filled with staining red juice, they went down before the bumper like neck-shot deer.
The boiling radiators took more and more of our precious water supply. Charlie planned to refill the five-gallon cans at a water seep he knew that lay near the surface. This was used by the Seri Indians occasionally, and Charlie found the spot all right. But there we received our first body-blow. The shallow wells were bone dry!
The situation was saved by a rip-snortin’ thunderstorm that reached us after midnight. In the glare of the lightning we saw the desert hardpan quickly become a lake as the rain lashed down in the crashing thunder. We finished the night in the cars, sandwiched between the top and our hastily dumped-in gear.
Our course next morning lay across a big arroyo. Dusty the night before, it was now brimful with a roaring torrent from the flash flood. So we boiled a big pot of Mexican frijoles and waited for the river to subside. Seri Indians had camped there ahead of us, and the shells of many roasted tortoises lay about. The runoff from the hard ground was so rapid that by late afternoon it was down to a shallow flow, and we were able to get the vehicles across. Meanwhile we had gratefully filled the water cans with the precious muddy fluid that was both our salvation and delay.
Pushing on southward, we reached a broad basin where the rain had formed a shallow lake several hundred yards across. There was a range of mountains within reach to hunt, so we unloaded where we had water and set out to look for sheep sign.
Bouncing over the desert in the steaming, laden cars had been hot, but climbing all day on the barren, scorching rocks with no shade to be found even for a brief respite proved far more punishing. We found that our bodies’ built-in, evaporative cooling systems worked amazingly well, as long as the water intake was ample. With the great exertion of climbing, a man had to consume at least a gallon a day to keep going. Even at that rate, and more, it was all lost by perspiration so that we needed no urinary systems.
And what were we pumping through our pores at such a rate? It was the fluid from our big mud puddle at camp, and was just the color of coffee with lots of cream. I would squeeze a little lime juice in a cupful, which seemed to help settle the mud into the lower half, and sip off the top part. We must have had beautiful insides, with all that mud pack treatment!
While we lay in the cooling nights, Charlie Ren told us much of his desert sheep hunting lore. He pointed out that sound and scent travel upward from the canyons as well as in the rising air along the heated mountainsides, and he emphasized the advantage of getting above the sheep to hunt them. But, tied to our water supply, we couldn’t get our camp closer than about three miles from the base of the mountains. This meant six miles of worthless walking over the desert in the heat every day. With the scant cover, of course any sheep on our side of the mountain would see us coming from afar. They would be long gone over to the other side before we even started the climb of three or fourthousand feet. This meant that our only chance lay first in getting far up on our side of the mountain, higher than any sheep that might be on the other side. Then we could ease around the top and try to spot them from above.
With the warm nights, the simple strategy would have been to lie out overnight on the mountain, to be above any moving sheep at daylight. But we couldn’t carry enough water to be away from the source that long and make it back to camp!
So for three days we camped by our dwindling rain pool, walked to the mountain, clambered over the hot rocks and found only some old sheep droppings. I did see one ewe, after I’d spent half a day working
up from the valley floor. I lay panting in the sparse shade of a cactus, and watched her pick her way easily up the same mountainside, covering the distance in about ten minutes. That’s when you wonder what the heck a mere human animal is doing out on a mountain trying to make like a wild sheep!
By then our big mud puddle had shrunk almost to a dried flat. As it receded, an object in the middle became identifiable as a long-dead horse. No doubt his essence had added considerable strength to that steaming, earthy broth, but we hastily decided to move!
We were less than a day’s travel from the Gulf of California shore. With so little encouragement in these first mountains, our lust for rams had become a little desiccated, along with everything else. The idea of feeling a cooling breeze from the water was more than we could stand, so we headed for the coast. Finally coming over a ridge and rolling over the parched land toward a broad beach, nothing ever looked better than that blue water reaching to the horizon! Yes, it was salty; we couldn’t drink it, but compared to the cracking mud flat we’d left, just the sight of the clear, translucent water lapping at our feet was enough to bring a tear to the eye.
We lost little time in plunging into the wet coolness to soak our dried-out hides. Small fish, flashing in the sun, darted about us. Then as I waded along, chasing them, something brushed between my legs. Glancing down, I was startled to see it was a stingray. Mindful of the reputed paralyzing pain of its tail stinger, I lost equally little time in seeking shallower water!
Lack of meat had become a serious problem to us. We could carry no fresh meat, of course, without refrigeration, and in our heavy exertion in climbing felt the need of it badly. Efforts to bag an incidental deer, as planned, had not worked out.
Now we watched big, plump-breasted curlews feed in shifting flocks along the beach. There was a dinner worth trying for! We roamed up and down the shore with the shotgun, but had no cover of any kind. The only stalking possible was a pretended indifference. The birds must have seen the hungry gleam in our eyes, for those tantalizing tidbits would never let us within range.
We saw fish of every kind rolling and jumping just off shore. Such tempting sea fare! Without boat or tackle, we could only watch them wistfully and drool.
In the midst of this frustration, I had noticed a great osprey with its nest in a tall saguaro cactus a quarter -mile inland. It had a regular route high over the blazing desert to the shore. There the powerful hawk would poise over the water, then plummet in out of sight, to rise with a shining fish in its talons. Carrying its prey headfirst, like a pontoon slung below it, the bird would take the meal to the nest, and soon return for another.
In desperation, I stationed myself below the osprey’s flight path and waited. Sure enough, over it came with a gleaming fish. I peppered the high-flying bird with shot, and the osprey flared, dropping the shiny prey. Running to the spot, I exultantly scooped up a fresh, 15-inch mullet from the burning desert sand. Roasted brown, my finny shotgun trophy made a grand dinner I’ll never forget. That must be a record of some sort for shooting down the highest-flying fish!
Our beach was opposite Tiburon Island, about three miles out in the Gulf of California. It was the stronghold of the Seri Indians. They are recognized as probably the most primitive people on our continent, living under great privation. I’d heard many stories of their indelicate tastes as they scavenged the beaches for food, as well as their feats of running down mule deer on the rocky desert island they called home. They had camped about our location, as evidenced by more of their roasted tortoise shells, but none appeared while we were there. Though we’d brought bright trade goods to establish friendly relations with any we met, we were as happy not to have any of their uninhibited members around!
We had looked forward to a cool, pleasant night on the shore after the sun’s torch died, envisioning a sea-fresh breeze to lull us by the lapping waves. Our sweet dream turned into a nightmare that left us all stupefied by morning!
First, I was bitten by a blisterbug. A red-hot needle hit me in the chest, and the spot spread to a fiery splotch the size of a dinner plate, with an incandescent blister in the middle. Believe me, those insects are potent! Then the breeze died completely. The moist sea air mingled with the desert’s radiant heat, and a stifling blanket of humidity settled upon us. The discomfort was increased by our bodies’ briny coating from the swimming, there being none of our precious “fresh” water for rinsing. And then the sand fleas took over. There was a night straight from purgatory!
By dawn we were all in such murderous humor that we almost feared speaking to each other. With common consent, we dully loaded up the cars and headed inland for a red mountain seen on the shoreward trek. Charlie had found sheep there before, and our spirits rose as we rode. After our experience on the shore, we could appreciate better the dryness of the desert air, and how its evaporative cooling made the heat bearable.
With camp set up at the base of the long, typical up-slope to the foot of the red mountains, we got down to business next morning. An early start was always a necessity. The dawn hours before the sun hit were precious for the long walk up the sloping foothills, or bajada, to the mountain’s steep base.
Those were the memorably delightful times of the trip. The desert cools off rapidly at night; by dawn we were chilly in shirtsleeves before swinging along over the dewy sand. There was often the fresh track of a ghostly mule deer to follow hopefully toward the high ground, but in the washes and gullies running from the slopes not one ever offered a shot. Usually, after starting up the mountain, we could pick them up far below us with the glasses, standing silvery grey in the shade of a bent-armed saguaro.
The long, pleated arms of some of the pitaya cactus bore a coral colored, plum-sized fruit. These were scarce, and always grew on the west side of the trunks, so even after the sun was well up, the fruits would be shaded. It was sheer delight to find one fresh and cool in the growing heat, break open its waxy, watermelon-red interior flecked with tiny black seeds, and savor the lush ambrosia.
In proper season I love the desert dearly, with all its unsuspected life, activity and color. Many years after this trip of ours I had the privilege of working much with the late Grancel Fitz, dedicated North American big game hunter and co-author of the scoring system, judging for the Boone and Crockett Club Records Committee the continent’s top trophies. I was most intrigued to learn that he, too, had made a desert sheep hunt with the outfitter Charlie Ren, but, more sensibly, in November of that same year. As Grancel noted in the fine story he wrote of his trip, it was the last year of legal hunting for the species in Mexico, till the recent limited reopening some 30 years later. The perils and hardships of our trip came mostly from the poor timing, for which we had no choice before classes began.
These mountains were mostly composed of crumbling volcanic rock, dangerous to rely on when climbing. Great chunks would come off in our hands where we sought a purchase. One day Jack and I stood on a rocky mountainside bench, curiously noting a three-foot wide, white strip of limestone, a monolith embedded in the once-liquid lava that dropped steeply some 30 feet to a lower level. Centuries of drainage had worn a polished trough down its length, and the red rock around it had crumbled away, leaving a perfect, elevated, 45 degree angled chute. Not realizing how slick it was, I was nonchalantly standing at its head. Suddenly my feet shot forward, and down the chute I started, scope-sighted rifle slung on one shoulder, canteen flying on the other. Somehow I managed to keep my feet—no doubt from the Minnesota aquaplaning recently left—and landed intact at the bottom. When we incredibly saw that no casualty had come from such a potential disaster, in our relief Jack and I laughed till we were weak. He gasped that all I’d needed was a stem christie at the bottom with the rifle as a pole to make it a perfect ski run!
One evening, I thought that I had come in with a real prize; a canteen full of crystal-clear water! Parched on the mountainside late that day, I had run onto a deep, dark, vertical crevice with green moss, of all things, protrudin
g from the bottom. Peering curiously into its cool, dim depth I saw a pool of clear water in the bottom. It was the first of anything, but liquefied mud, I’d seen to drink for days, and I joyfully slipped my canteen through the six-inch wide crack to plunge it in to fill. Withdrawing it, I drank copiously, then refilled the canteen in the dark pool to take to camp.
I could hardly wait to share my treat till I walked in, and hurried to pour a white enamel cup full as we all drooled. That was the first of the liquid I had seen in clear light, and upon beholding it illuminated in the white cup, I groaned. Barely visible, thousands of nearly microscopic organisms danced in the water. As Charlie shook his head, I thought of all that I had drunk from the canteen, and weakly poured out my very dubious prize. (Maybe that had something to do with the serious illness, surgery and weeks of hospitalization spent after I got back to Tucson, and missed a year of law school.) Although there had been some encouraging fresh sheep sign in these red mountains, we were finally down to our last day, and still I’d seen no ram. The heat, bad water and climbing had exhausted us till we had little spirit left, but I knew that I’d hate myself forever if I didn’t make that last try.
So, after some packing up, Red and I set out late in the morning for a final day on the mountain. He set a rugged pace, for we had to get over the summit in time to watch the far side. I had to plead for mercy from time to time. One of our worst enemies was the great swarm of tiny gnats that continually engulfed us. We moved, ate, drank, and breathed in an atmosphere composed one-half of gnats. They bothered me most when I was climbing, soaked with perspiration and my hands too occupied to brush them off. Then they got into my ears so badly that I had finally, in desperation, made ear muffs of cloth, with drawstrings around the outside. Despite their incongruity in the desert heat, they helped.
Nearly crazed with the droning swarm all over me, I crept up the burning rocks after Rosario, that red-haired will-o’-the-wisp, deliriously panting dreadful imprecations upon all the insect life of Mexico. Reaching the top, we found a breeze that cleared the swarm, and I regained some breath and composure.
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