John Byron Belville’s Tall Tales Told: Hunting with Dan

You will notice there is no rhyme nor reason in placement of these tales.  They are just remembrances that I have experienced in my life that my one love, Jackie Sue Belville, told me I should write down for posterity.  That, of course, would mean you.  So here goes.  A trip into the exciting life of ol’ Johnny B.

Let me take a minute and give an impression of Daniel O’Connor, Guide Extraordinaire.  Dan was a – well – short man, no more than five-foot-eight in stocking feet.  But Dan O’Connor was a solidly muscled five-foot-eight and weighed in at one-eighty.  He was one of the finest men I’ve ever known and he taught me everything I know about woodsman-ship and hunting.  Dan, at the time I met him at age 13, was very successful as a big game guide and took people down to the Middle Fork of the Salmon River Primitive Area.  He knew where the deer and elk were and he was very successful at showing hunters where they were.  I became acquainted with him when my father took mom and me on a guided hunting trip with Dan.

One day, on the second or third day of our trip, Dan said we needed camp meat and he set out with mother to see about getting a nice fat dry doe for feasting at camp.  I went with them.  Dad and a couple of other fellas that were hunting with us took off after elk and would meet us back at camp that evening.

About 3 miles from camp, Dan spotted a nice doe down this mountain about 400 yards away.  “Too far,” he told mother.  “You’ll never hit her with that thirty-thirty.”  Mom convinced O’Connor that she thought she could make the shot, so he said go ahead.  Mom dismounted from her horse, took a wide footed stance, leveled her 30-30, drew down with open sights and fired.  The deer dropped in its tracks.  You could have knocked Dan’s eyeballs off with sticks.  From that time forward, mother was called Dead Eye Grace and Dan bragged about her the whole rest of the trip, to the point the rest of us got tired of it…even mother finally told him to stop.  Four years later, when I worked for Dan, he was still bragging about the lady who could drop a deer at 400 yards with a 30-30.  Few believed him, but I’m here to back up his story.

When I turned seventeen, I worked for Dan.  It was a star-crossed affirmative event for a teenager.  Working for an honest-to-god big game guide for a season, what could be better?  I packed up my bags and headed for Dan’s home in Challis, Idaho where I stayed for 4 days while we rounded up stock for the fall’s hunt.  While there I became enamored of his daughter Eve.  Beauty?  Oh yes, short blond hair and a teenage body to die for.  I was in love immediately.  She, of course, had more sense and said we could be ‘friends’ but that was all.  I spent all four days trying to convince her otherwise, but it was not to be.  Smart girl.  We remained friends for years afterward until she married, then it became too clumsy to be friends with her and her spouse.

Finally, the stock was rounded and Dan told me to keep my ‘grubby meat hooks’ off his daughter which I said consider them off. 

Our first hunt was with some guys from the Great State of California.  Never been elk hunting in their lives.  Four of ’em.  Nitwit hunters to be sure.  Dan told me to make nice, I tried, but occasionally let slip how I really felt about the idiocy of what they called hunting.  Dan and I were supposed to “drive them elk to us and we’ll pop ’em when they come up the mountain.”  Driving elk is like herding cats…can’t be done with a boy and one man on two horses.  But to make a point, Dan agreed to their proposition telling me that it was the only way we could get them to do ‘real’ hunting.

So, Dan bridled up a buckskin jack mule and I rode my ‘lucky’ pinto and we headed down the mountain to where we knew there were elk feeding.  We stuck the ‘hunters’ up on the ridge above us.  We began the ill fated ‘drive’ and all went well until Dan’s mule went down in a clump.  He’d been shot.  Up on the ridge we heard, “I got him, I got him, did you see?”  I could see that Dan was livid, but he yelled back, “Yep, you got him alright.  You boys go back to camp and we’ll be down after we skin him out.”

And that’s exactly what we did.  We quartered that mule and hauled him back to camp, packed him away so he wouldn’t spoil and when the hunt ended we sent that Jack along with that hunter to feast upon.  He must have liked the taste of mule cause he wrote to Dan and said, that was the tastiest piece of elk meat we ever ate.  I’ll never forget the look Dan had in his eye as he dressed out that Jack. I never said a word as we worked cause I knew if I did the Wrath of Khan would descend upon my head.  In the end, Dan won. That hunter paid the highest price ever spent on mule meat.

Most of the experience of hunting with Dan is a blur, but I remember waking up before dawn, the ground misty from the night’s cold and you could hear the tinkle of the the head mule’s bell in the distance but you couldn’t see it.  It was the eeriest time of day.  Unable to see due to the fog, you had to locate the lead mule, halter him, and then lead him into camp, the other horses and and mules would follow the bell and we would saddle the ones we were going to ride that day and leave the other mounts tethered with feed bags until we returned in the late afternoon.  I both loved and hated getting up and bringing those big animals into camp.  Love because I was responsible for them and hate because I had to get up that early in the morning.

Another memory for me an hunting with O’Connor was the food.  That man could cook.  Dutch Oven stuff…my God he could make muffins, even cakes in one of the damned things.  I remember when mom and dad and I were hunting with him, we shot an elk and Dan cooked up what he called “Heart Stew.”  He sliced up fresh elk heart till it was seared on both sides, diced it into cubes and put it in the pot with his special seasoning.  As it cooked he added water, potatoes, carrots, onions and other ‘stuff’ to make up a stew.  OMG it was to die for when it came to eating.  I’ve tried to duplicate that heart recipe, but never could get it right.  When Dan cooked it, the meat was tender not tough and stringy.  I could never get mine to do the same.  It was just Dan’s cooking that made the difference.  Needless to say, I’m sorry he’s gone.  Died many years ago.