The Impossible Shot

I believe it was sometime around November of 1972, while Laverna and I were living in Wyoming, that I went with two friends, John Presley and Ray Nito, into the Yellowstone wilderness to hunt elk, deer, and possibly bear.

John and Ray were not inexperienced weekend hunters. John operated a guide business, and Ray was an Indian who knew the mountains and understood big game. They had spent years hunting in country where the weather could change without warning and one wrong decision could cost a man his life.

I was a young fellow from Indiana. As far as they were concerned, I still had something to prove.

The Shooting Test

About a week before the trip, John and Ray decided to find out whether I could handle a rifle. They placed a paper plate approximately one hundred yards away and handed me a single-shot .30-06 rifle with open sights.

There was no scope and no second cartridge waiting in the chamber. Every time I fired, I would have to open the rifle, remove the empty casing, load another cartridge, close the action, aim, and fire again.

They gave me three shots to hit the plate.

I hit it twice.

That seemed to settle the matter. They were sufficiently impressed and decided I could go with them.

I had already made a couple of horseback trips into the Rocky Mountains with John, so they knew I could ride. That was important because we would be traveling through steep, snow-covered country where a horse was not merely transportation—it could be the difference between getting home safely and never getting home at all.

Camp in the Mountains

We rode into the wilderness and established our camp near a mountain stream, where we would have water for ourselves and the horses. We were at an elevation of more than a mile above sea level. Snow covered the ground and, in places, came nearly to my waist. The temperature remained below freezing, and the cold seemed to settle into everything—our clothes, our saddles, our equipment, and even our bones.

There is a special kind of silence in the mountains after a heavy snowfall. The snow absorbs nearly every sound. All you hear is the breathing of the horses, the creaking of saddle leather, the crunch of snow beneath their hooves, and occasionally the wind moving through the trees.

It was beautiful country, but it was also unforgiving country.

Two Elk and Two Runaway Horses

On our first day out, we had been riding for about forty-five minutes when we came upon a herd of elk standing near a group of trees, perhaps seventy-five to one hundred yards away.

We dismounted, and John and Ray prepared to shoot.

Both men took aim. When their rifles sounded, two elk went down.

There was only one problem: neither John nor Ray had tied his horse.

At the sound of the gunfire, both horses bolted. They headed straight down the trail toward camp as though they had suddenly remembered an important appointment.

Ray told me to stay with John and instructed my horse to catch the other two. I do not know what Ray said to that horse, but the horse apparently understood him. Ray mounted and disappeared down the trail while John and I began the difficult work of field-dressing the elk.

Those animals were enormous. Each one seemed nearly as large as the horses we had ridden into the mountains. By the time Ray returned with the runaway horses, darkness had begun to settle over us.

We finally made our way back to camp, hung the elk, prepared something to eat, and crawled into our bedrolls. We were exhausted, but we had meat hanging in camp and had enjoyed a successful first day.

At least John and Ray had.

I still had not fired a shot.

An Elk That Would Not Run

The next morning, we started out again in search of deer and elk. At some point, John and Ray decided to go after deer and left me to hunt by myself.

Before riding away, they gave me one simple instruction:

“If you get lost, let the horse take you back to camp.”

That was apparently all the guidance they thought I needed.

I rode alone for some time, gradually making my way higher up the mountain. I do not know exactly how far I had gone when a large elk appeared ahead of me near a stream and an open area. It turned and looked directly at me.

This was my opportunity.

I dismounted, and unlike my two experienced companions the day before, I remembered to tie my horse. I knelt, steadied the rifle, and aimed.

The elk was close enough that I believed it would be impossible to miss.

I pulled the trigger.

The elk reared, and I was certain I had hit it. It ran about fifty yards, stopped, turned around, and stared at me.

I could not understand it. At that distance, there was no way I could have missed. Yet there it stood, looking as healthy as it had before I fired.

The elk turned and slowly walked farther up the mountain.

I went to the place where it had been standing, expecting to find blood. Instead, I found a fresh groove chipped into a stone near its feet.

I had shot the ground.

“How could I have missed an elk that size at that distance?” I asked myself.

I followed it higher up the mountain. After a while, the elk stopped and looked back at me again. It almost seemed to be saying, “Here I am. Take your best shot.”

This time I aimed higher. I took my time, squeezed the trigger—and missed again.

The same thing happened. The elk remained standing, almost as if it were studying me. It must have wondered why that foolish young man kept throwing rocks in its direction.

By now, I was frustrated and embarrassed. That elk had stood there twice and practically invited me to shoot it, yet I could not hit it.

Finally, it grew tired of the game and ran away.

When I returned to camp and told John and Ray what had happened, they found the whole affair amusing. After enjoying a good laugh at my expense, they explained something nobody had told the fellow from Indiana.

Shooting in the mountains was different from shooting across level ground back home. The steep angle affected where the bullet struck, and I needed to compensate when aiming uphill.

It was a lesson I would remember.

Running Out of Time

The weather grew worse. The days were cold, snowy, and increasingly discouraging. We would be going home soon, and although John and Ray had already taken elk, I had nothing.

That night, the temperature reportedly fell to around thirty degrees below zero. By morning, everything was frozen and stiff. The snow was deeper, the horses were struggling, and even the simplest task required more effort.

I placed three cartridges in my pocket before leaving camp.

Unfortunately, I forgot my hunting knife. I left it in the tent instead of putting it in my saddlebag.

Once again, John and Ray rode away in another direction, leaving me to hunt for elk by myself.

I rode for some time, although I had no idea how long. The snow eventually became so deep that my horse could barely push through it. I dismounted and began breaking a trail, forcing my way through the snow so the horse could follow behind me.

Cold, tired, and discouraged, I finally stopped and looked around.

I had no idea where I was.

I did not know where camp was or which direction I should take. My only hope was to follow my own tracks back before darkness came or the cold overcame me. The thought crossed my mind that I could freeze to death in those mountains, and no one would know exactly where to look for me.

Then I looked up.

About fifty yards above me, on the side of a hill, stood a herd of elk.

One large elk was directly in my line of sight.

Suddenly, I was shaking—and it was not because of the cold.

This was my chance. It might be my last chance before we left the mountains.

I took out the single-shot .30-06, loaded it, raised the rifle, and aimed. Remembering what John and Ray had taught me, I aimed higher than I had before.

I fired.

Nothing happened.

Not one elk moved.

That confused me. I had expected the herd to scatter at the sound of the rifle. Instead, they stood there as if they had not heard a thing.

By now, I was shaking so badly that I could scarcely hold the rifle still. I ejected the empty casing, loaded my second cartridge, aimed even higher, and fired again.

Nothing.

The elk still did not move.

I had one cartridge left.

I loaded it into the rifle, closed the action, and raised the gun. At this point, between the cold, the excitement, the frustration, and my uncontrollable shaking, I had little hope of making a proper shot.

So I did something no hunting instructor would ever recommend.

I closed my eyes.

I turned my head.

And I pulled the trigger.

The elk fell.

The rest of the herd finally took off across the mountain.

Waiting with the Elk

It took me nearly fifteen minutes to struggle through the deep snow and reach the fallen elk. When I arrived, I looked everywhere for blood.

There was none.

That frightened me. I began to wonder whether the animal was only stunned. If it suddenly got to its feet, I could not outrun it in that deep snow. I had no knife, no hatchet, and no remaining ammunition.

All I had was an empty single-shot rifle.

I gripped the barrel and held the rifle like a club, ready to defend myself if the elk moved.

It never did.

John and Ray had heard my three shots and started riding in my direction, but it took them about an hour and a half to reach me. During that entire time, I stood near the elk, holding my empty rifle like a club and wondering whether the animal might suddenly come back to life.

When John arrived, he walked around the elk and asked, “Where is the blood?”

Trying to sound as confident as possible, I replied, “It was a clean shot.”

John examined the animal more carefully. Then he looked up in amazement.

“Unbelievable! You shot it through one eye and out the other!”

The third bullet had entered one eye, traveled through the head, and exited through the other eye. The elk had dropped instantly.

John and Ray naturally assumed I had killed the elk with my first shot and fired the other two rounds to help them locate me.

I never corrected them.

I simply stood there and let them think whatever they wanted.

The elk was so large that it required two pack horses to carry it back to camp.

The Legend Grows

On our way out of the wilderness, we stopped at a ranger station. John and Ray could hardly wait to tell the ranger about the young fellow from Indiana who had made an almost impossible shot.

They described the distance, the steep hillside, the deep snow, and how the bullet had entered one eye and exited through the other.

The ranger examined the elk and agreed that he had never seen a shot quite like it.

I never said a word.

There are times when silence is more useful than explanation.

By the time we left the ranger station, the story had grown into the tale of a remarkable young marksman who had calmly placed a bullet through an elk’s eye under the most difficult mountain conditions.

I knew what had actually happened.

I had missed twice, shaken so badly that I could not hold the rifle steady, closed my eyes, turned my head, and pulled the trigger.

But nobody asked for all those details.

Dad Learns the Truth

I brought the elk back to Indiana with me. When my father saw the damage around its eye, he asked what had happened.

I told him the entire story—not the legendary version, but the truth.

I told him about missing the first elk twice, learning to compensate for the mountain angle, getting lost in the snow, forgetting my knife, firing three shots, and finally closing my eyes and turning my head before pulling the trigger.

Dad laughed.

After he finished laughing, he asked, “Did you tell John and Ray what really happened?”

“No,” I answered. “They think I am one of the best shots they have ever witnessed.”

And as far as I know, they may still believe it.

That hunting trip taught me several valuable lessons: always tie your horse before firing, never forget your knife, mountain shooting is different from shooting on flat Indiana ground—and sometimes it is better to let a good story remain a good story.

I would never advise anyone to take a shot the way I took that final one. It was neither proper nor safe, and I certainly could not repeat it. But on that bitterly cold day in the Wyoming mountains, with only one cartridge left, the most unlikely shot of my life became the shot for which I was remembered.

They called it an impossible shot.

I called it the luckiest shot I ever made.