A look at time spent on the ranch over the years.

This picture was one of several pictures taken at Potchernicks, a gun and binocular store in San Antonio, one of which was used in a magazine advertisement for Stith scopes, after a hunt in the Kaibab forest in Arizona in 1949. Daddy killed the deer in the middle, not with the gun he is holding for the picture, which was Mr. Graves 270, but with an 1864 model 30-30. Mr. graves is holding his favorite rifle, a 300 H&H model 70 Winchester.
Daddy walked up on this sleeping giant in deep snow and when he saw the deer, asleep under a juniper, he was so close that Daddy knew if he cocked the hammer the deer would hear it. So he pulled the trigger back as he cocked the hammer, then eased the pressure off the trigger and hammer didn't click and the gun stayed cocked. He took aim and, in his excitement he shot the deer in the burr of his horn, splitting the horn down into his scull and killing him instantly.
That was the first of fourteen hunts my Dad took with Mr. Graves. It was the first time Daddy had hunted anywhere out of state. When they went out there all he had for a coat was a Levi jacket so Mr. Graves insisted they stop at an army surplus store in Trinidad, Colorado on the way out there where he bought a coat.
He knew he had shot a great deer, but at the time he thought he would go back the following year and shoot another big one. He never again found another one like the one he shot in 1949.
He told me the cost of this hunt, in 1949, for gasoline, groceries, licenses, and guide fee totaled $150 each. - As Told By "Little" Roy Hindes