A FEW MEMORIES OF MY GOOD FRIEND, A. J. WHITE, WHO AIN'T EVEN WENT UNDER YET by Travis Bennett  

I first met Jim when he and Karen came to a WRML shoot when we were still shooting up by the Airport west of Riverton, I think in 1975.  He introduced himself and Karen to the club members that were there that day and paid his membership in the club.  He also mentioned that he had a black powder shop in the basement of his house in Shoshoni, along with a stuffed buffalo in the dining room,  and should we need any black powder supplies we were welcome to come over any time.  I had been building for a little while, about three or four guns,  and had just finished my first Hawken rifle, built after about a year of struggling with my lack of knowledge and experience.  It turned out fairly well anyway, thanks to Pore Devil moving to Lander a little before I met A.J.  Pore had given me some pretty good advice and A.J. complimented the results of my efforts and Pore's suggestions.  

Anyway, A.J. and I kinda clicked.  He had been in black powder for quite awhile and was more knowledgeable about nearly everything that I was interested in than I was.  I visited his shop within a week of meeting him and Karen and, naturally, was really impressed with the fact that he had such a great inventory of fine plunder, parts, guns, books, knowledge, and, of course verbal abuse, which he loves to dish out, as we all know.   

It wasn't long before we started hunting together and we did so for about 10 or more years I guess, one thing or another.  We got antelope, deer, elk, fool hens, and 5 buffalo (1 of which was kinda white, actually cream colored - A.J. has the hide).  We have many great memories on both sides of the campfire and I wouldn't know where to start or have the time to write them all down.  But here's a couple of my favorites! 

Jim and I hunted Buffalo over on Lannie Covalt's place in the Sand Hills of western Nebraska.  A.J. had known Covalt for several years before I met him and it was like a dream come true for me when I found this out.  Covalt's place was one of the ranches of his family's ranching corporation and he kept about 50 or so head of buffalo on hand, mostly for the black powder hunts of his friends.  There were a lot of stories in the old Buckskin Report about buffalo hunts on Covalt's ranch but I never figured I'd get that close to heaven without dying.  I had always wanted to flintlock a buff and about the fall of 1978, after talking about it for a couple of weeks, A.J. got ahold of Covalt and lined us out for a hunt.  That was the first of five years buffalo hunting with Jim White.  We went for five years straight and some of my finest memories involve the experiences we shared in Covalt's sod house on the Nebraska prarie, and the actual killing of the legendary American bison. 

About the 4th year, maybe the 5th, along about mid January of 1982 or maybe '83, I saw Jim pull up his little .58 caliber (28 gauge) Trade Gun, hold it on a 3 year old bull that was cutting in front of him at a dead run about 60 yards away, and touch off a shot.  It was right out of a mountain man movie for sure!  That little buff's front legs went out from under him, his right horn dug into the dirt like a sod buster's plow having a runaway, dirt went flying about 6 feet in the air as the buff nearly turned a summersault over himself and then flopped back down with a thud, never to do more than twitch a couple of times before dying.  I looked over at A.J. and saw him calmly fishing in his pouch to reload, just like it was an everyday occurance to one-shot a running buff on the Nebraska plains.  He'd buried his round ball right in that buff's spine at the base of the neck, severed the spinal cord, and ended the poor beast's existence for all time.  I put a round ball from my .62 J. Henry rifle into the beast's forehead to insure that he was dead and out of his misery but it was anticlimactic for sure.  That has to be one of my, and A.J.'s too I'm sure, greatest memories of our buffalo hunts in Nebraska.  There are a hundred stories that I remember but this one shines. 

The story of the White Buffalo hunt we'll save for another time, but it's definitely one that should be written for publication by someone much more proficient than me.  It had to with a second cowboy's invasion into Wyoming, not Johnson Country that time, among other things. 

And I can never forget one of our elk hunts up on Mexican Creek west of Lander.  It was in mid November one winter in the late '80s, the late cow season up by Shoshone Lake, and A.J. and I had looked forward to our hunt that year as much as we always did.  We'd set up camp on the west slope of Coney Pass, just at the edge of the timber on a flat spot on the hill, to where we could see any elk that might venture in to or out of the timber below, which was just east of Shoshone Lake.  We'd set up my 12' X 16' wall tent with the door facing east, it's back to the wind, and had our camp arranged exactly like we had planned and the way we'd been doing it for several years.  Our bedrolls were rolled out on the canvas floor of the tent along with all the necessary grub boxes, shooting boxes, coolers, plunder boxes, etc., etc., enough stuff to last the winter if need be.  We didn't go up there to suffer, that's for sure.  By mid-afternoon we were settled in, had a fire going in the fire pit, the same one that we'd used for several years, and were fixing supper and brewing coffee while we contemplated the pleasures to come in the week ahead.  While eating supper we looked over towards the west, where the vast Wind River range spread for miles before us to where it enters the Wind River Indian Reservation.  It was, and is, quite a view, and worth the trouble of getting there even if we weren't hunting.  But then we noticed that in the distance, over the far western mountains,  from south to north, and rolling directly towards us, was an ominous, dark and dangerous looking storm front, obviously carrying some snow and cold weather to us before long.  Almost immediately the once comfortable temperatures started to drop and the wind picked up. It was obvious, even to us two fools, that we were in for some weather, and probably not good weather at that.  We quickly gathered up what gear wasn't already in the tent and put it either in my truck or in the tent, gathered up some fair sized rocks and put them around the edge of the tent on some tree branches to keep the sides of the tent tight to the ground, tightened the guy lines again and went inside to finish our pot of coffee and wait for the storm.  It wasn't long in coming, storms come fast in the high country, and withing a half hour we were in the middle of a full blown Wyoming blizzard.  The wind picked up to about 25 or 30 miles an hour and the snow was blowing sideways so hard you could barely see the pick-up parked 30 feet away.  By dark, an hour or so later, the wind had let up some but the snow was falling harder and we knew we'd have tracking weather by morning, by God!  A.J. and I finished our coffee and told stories for an hour or so and, due to the cold penetrating the tent, we decided to turn in for the night. 

I was buried deep within the numerous blankets and canvas of my cowboy bedroll with my buffalo robe over the whole shebang, and with a hot rock from the fire pit wrapped in canvas down by my feet, but it still took some time to warm enough for sleep to come.  A.J. and I visited awhile in the dark and eventually drifted off to sleep with visions of easy shots at dry cows and dreams of perfect hunts and such deep in our thoughts.   During the night I woke several times.  The wind had died down but I could hear the heavy, wet snowflakes falling on the roof of the tent even as the lighter wind kept rippling it enough to keep it from building up.    

Daylight came the next morning but later than expected,  because of the snow that had built up on the roof of the tent, and it was also getting higher and higher up the sidewalls,  thus  blocking off much of the light that penetrated the still falling snow.   But it was morning, we were in elk camp, and it was time to get up and By God go hunting!  Good idea!  But, untying the top of the tent flap and looking out at the world beyond dampened our desire to exit our abode any time soon.  The storm was still on top of us in all it's glory and it was showing no signs of letting up at all, at least not any time soon.  No problem at all for a pair of hunters as magnificiently prepared as A.J. and I were.  We got the little propane heater started, along with the Coleman cook stove, and, thanks to the great insulating ability of being nearly buried in a snow drift, we were soon warm and comfortable in our home away from home and eating like kings to boot.  To make a long story a little shorter, it snowed all day!  We visited, dozed, ate, drank gallons of coffee, read, sharpened knives, cleaned guns, looked outside a hundred or more times, sharpened spoons, made numerous calls of nature to the surrounding trees, and otherwise passed the long, boring day.  By nightfall it was still snowing.  It was already two foot deep and getting deeper.  But what the heck, this was only the second day of a nine day hunting trip and we had all sorts of time ahead of us to enjoy hunting, etc., didn't we? 

We turned in early again, not too long after dark probably, about talked out and with everything cleaned and sharped that we could find.  The snow still fell.  Several times during the night I reached up and shook the seam of the tent sidewall to knock the deepening snow off the roof, which was beginning to sag under the weight of the white stuff, and still it snowed.  But, buried deep in my bedroll with the warm rock at my feet, I finally fell into a deep sleep sometime during the early morning hours.  

I awoke, jarred from my dreams by the deafening sound of absolute silence.  It was eerie.  Nothing at all could be heard except the gentle snoring of my partner across the way, buried under his own pile of blankets, sleeping bags, and such.  And cold!   Damn, it was as cold as I ever woke to and then some.  I could feel the ice that had built up around my mouth and nose where my face was out of the covers.  I was lying on my back looking straight up and could see my breath, rising toward the top of the tent when I exhaled,  It was very, very cold! 

"A.J.", I said, "you awake"?  Of course I knew he wasn't but I wanted to share the moment.   

"A.J."!  I repeated, a little louder.   

The snoring quit, a grumbled "Huh"? emerged from the pile of bedding.  

"I think it quit snowing A.J., but it damned sure got cold when it did, didn't it"?  

"Yeah, I noticed"! he returned, with just a touch of irritation, or maybe sarcasm,  in his voice. 

"Are we going to go hunting this morning"? I asked, "Or are we going to stay in bed all day"? 

No answer.  Well old A.J. never was much of a morning person, I always did know that. 

"Well, I'm going hunting"! I said, raising my voice for maximum effect, and with that I flung off the top three or four blankets and the buffalo robe that was covering me.  The only thing that spoiled my grand exit from my bed, and brought tears to my eyes at the same time, was the fact that my beard had frozen to the buffalo robe and, when I threw back the covers, my beard was, until it pulled free, attached to the robe.  And the cry of pain that escaped my mouth as I set up and tried to catch up with my fast moving buffalo robe brought only loud, muffled laughter from the heaving mass of bedding on the other side of the tent.  

The rest of the hunt was memorable too, but this had to be the part of it that makes me chuckle every time it pops back into my head. Truly an unforgettable moment, one of many, of my escapades with Mr. Alfred James White.  

Travis 

Smoke from The Past

                        By the time this comes out, Memorial Day will have passed and the State Shoot will be taking place.  Hope to see you all at Glenrock this year if you couldn’t make the shoot in Riverton. 

            This time around, we shall look at the 1998 and 1999 state shoots. Both of these shoots were hosted by the Bighorn Basin Muzzleloaders.  As you all know, they have always be a great host for the State shoot.  I think it was in 1998 that my wife took pictures of the big gnarled old cottonwood tree that was located in the primitive camp. She entered the photo at State Convention and placed 2^nd in the scenery group. We traveled back to Tensleep in 1999 and the tree was gone.  The old gal finally gave in to the wind and collapsed.

            The shoot in 1998 was fairly slow for record setting. Dean Grogan tied the long standing record for the percussion (50yd large bull) with a 48x. Bunny Harlow set this record in1992.  The only other records set were at the Ladies 100yd large bull.  Cindy Drew shot a 35 and Ron Abbott had a high pistol aggregate of 167xx.  In 1999, Janice Gormley was the lady on fire.  Jan set all new records in the ladies rifle with the exception of the 25 yd 6 bull. Judy Lawrence held her off to win this match.  Jan also set a new record in the 25 yd pistol (92xx).  Sure miss seeing Scott and Jan at the shoots. Terry (Rabbit) Hubenka bettered JR Molinas’ record in the small bore (25 yd 6 bull) by shooting a 47xx.  The complete results from 98 and 99 should follow this letter. Next time I’ll review the 2000 shoot.                                                                              

                                                                                                            ‘Til then, Thanks again,

                                                                                                        Dave (He Who Lehto)                                                                                                                                                                   

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