I was a little boy, sitting on my grandmother’s living-room floor, when I first looked through the pages of an outdoor magazine. I was drawn to the pictures of those majestic elk, of horses carrying hunters through the snow, Rocky Mountain streams and through the Quakies and Spruce. As I grew older I read every word within any story that even mentioned the Rockies and I studied the different calibers that the writers suggested as their best elk cartridge. As an adult, I spent five years as an outdoor writer for the San Angelo (Texas) Standard Times and wrote for a number of magazines. Today I write non-fiction books, The Gun That Wasn’t There is my first and a second should be published in 2008. The gist is that I’m not eligible for the Weatherby Dream-hunt but I do have my own special dream that I want to share with you.
I dream of taking my son and son-in-law on a horseback elk hunt into a Rocky Mountain wilderness, the Bob Marshall, Weminuche, Selway-Bitterroot, or another. We would get to see beautiful sights that many others just see within the pages of outdoor magazines; we would know the tenderfoot pain of a long ride, the warmth of wall tents caressed by aspens, spruce and pine and we would experience the knowledge of those who know the Wapati much better than I. We would experience God’s Country together. Of course, part of this dream did come true during Christmas 2007. I’ve always dreamed of having a Weatherby rifle in my hands as I pursued elk on that hunt and I received a Weatherby Mark V for Christmas this year.
Russell S. Smith
www.russellssmith.com
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