“I give you, Buck Pasture!”
The quote, “I give you… (pause for dramatic effect) Buck Pasture!” has always been associated with great camping trips there ever since it was first uttered many years ago by the great “Outdoorsman Extraordinaire” Roger E. Stuart (1978 – Present). This year’s voyage to Buck Pasture has outdone all previous outings by leaps and bounds – the type a succulent sheep would make. Please, allow me to explain.
The trip began early Friday August 21st, 2009. Roger and Rodney, my two longtime good ole buddies, along with Alan a friend of Rodney’s from Vegas, and myself all piled into Rogers “pick’em-up-truck.” After a brief stop in Evanston, WY we continued along the Mirror Lake Highway towards our destination. Shortly after the turnoff from the Mirror Lake highway onto a bone rattling dirt road, we decided to prove our manliness by pumping hot lead into some fierce paper targets. In the process of doing so, we managed to scare off two other members of our party. They would be Roger’s dogs Radbow and Moose, a Black Lab and a Great Dane respectively. They decided they had heard enough and split while our backs were turned. After about 15 minutes they finally returned, looking at us as if we were the ones that had gone missing. Little did we know that this little mishap was only the tip of the iceberg for what was about to transpire.
After what seemed like days of rattling around in the truck, we finally arrived at our trailhead. We loaded up and set off for our favorite campsite. The hike isn’t a very treacherous one, however it is in the ballpark of 4.5 miles and it takes about 2 hours or so. As we approached our destination we cam
e across two foreign sheep herders and a flock of sheep that when all together number about 3,000. All of a sudden Moose (the Great Dane) takes off to go play with all these new friends, or at least that’s what we thought. You see, Moose is a very docile dog and never has he shown an ounce of aggression. However his size can be very intimidating if you are unfamiliar with him, especially if you’re a poor little sheep who has never seen such an animal. The dogs were constantly running ahead, back, and forth so it wasn’t a big deal at the time that he took off. So without worry we kept our heading towards the campsite.
We finally arrived at our destination; we took off our packs and unload the camp chairs first to rest for a bit and have some lunch. After a few minutes we began to wonder where Moose was, as Radbow had returned alone moments earlier. Roger wasn’t worried because he always came back, so we continued to eat and rest comfortably in our chairs. Not too long thereafter the sheep herders on horseback came up the trail. “Español?, Español?” one of them asked. As it turns out these sheep herders are Mexicans who don’t speak any English. They work for $650 a MONTH and are stranded in the high Uinta Mountains for 3 months at a time in the summer. I spoke up in Spanish and asked them how they were doing. The reply that I got was absolutely astonishing. “Tú perro mató una borrega.” “Your dog just killed a sheep,” he said. All I could say in reply is “WHAT?!” I relayed the news to the guys and they were just as confused as I was. So the Mexicans hoppe
d off their horses and took us to the scene of the crime. Sure enough there was Moose and a mortally injury sheep. The sheep was bleeding from several wounds, not all of which are believed to have been caused by the dog. After awhile of piecing it all together we believe that it happened like this. The animal must have been injured before Moose got there because he had an inexplicable puncture wood in his side that Moose could not have done. We also doubt that Moose could have singled an uninjured sheep out after seeing trained and experienced sheep dogs in action corralling a lost sheep. We think that when Moose got close to the already injured sheep that the sheep head-butted him. We believe this is what happened because moments later that same sheep head-butted Radbow knocking him into the river when he got too close while we were examining the situation. We figure Moose then must have gone savage on the sheep in retaliation. At any rate, the sheep was not going to live for long. We left it there for the Mexicans to tend to, but as it turns out, they just left it there to die since they had no means of dispatching it. Later I found out that they’re not given any firearms because a previous herder from Peru pulled the gun on his boss during an argument. I wish I was making this stuff up but it’s the honest truth. After delib
erating for a while Roger and I knew what we had to do. Roger, with all the strength he could muster, put down the suffering sheep. Not to make the situation any easier, once it was shot it fell off the riverbank into the river. Roger then had to jump in and drag it back to shore.
During this sheep’s final moments Rodney and Alan were upstream fishing and doing a fine job of catching a magnificent haul of brook trout and cutthroats for that night’s dinner. Once they returned to camp we told them what had happened. They had heard the shot and knew right away what it was for. This is when the Discovery Channel survivalist in us began to take over. We had been discussing Bear Grylls of Man vs. Wild and Les Stroud of Survivorman earlier that day and I think the wannabe survivalist in us began to percolate. After some discussion, Alan had successfully convinced us that there was no reason to let that meat go to waste. So a reluctant Rodney and Alan who was somewhat experienced at this, went down to the lifeless sheep and field dressed it. What they returned with was mind altering.
They arrived w
ith some tenderloins and leg of lamb. Before our eyes this poor injured sheep had been reduced to raw meat. At this point, there was a problem. How on earth were we going to roast a full leg of lamb? That first night we decided to cook up the tenderloins in a frying pan on our gas camp-stoves. Not knowing what to expect we all
took a piece of the mutton and gave it a try. To our surprise it was spectacular. We finished our meals and decided we needed to keep the rest of the meat fresh. So Alan wrapped up the meat in garbage bag and put it in the river to keep cool. We went to bed that night full, tired and amazed at that day’s events.
The next morning we ate our breakfasts and planned our days. Rodney, Alan and I all planned to stay close to camp and fish the river. Roger on the other hand decided to go on a day hike to Dead Horse Lake and several high mountain passes that were near there. Our day of fishing was relatively eventless. I caught some nice fish and took them to our Mexican neighbors who were very grateful. Apparently they were given the wrong provisions for the week and they were stuck eating food they were not accustomed to. As I returned back from delivering the fish, the sun rested behind the towering ridge to the west and Roger was still nowhere to be seen. We didn’t worry too much because after all Roger is the “Outdoorsman Extraordinaire.” Our minds began to return to the tender mutton that awaited us cooling in the river below. The prospect of cooking a leg of lamb in the wilderness without proper accouterment and expertise seemed unlikely, but nevertheless we undertook the challenge.
Rodney and
I began to build the makeshift spit that would hold the leg of lamb. It ended up resembling a bare lean-to placed over a fire pit. We still had the problem of fixing the meat to the structure. This is where all those episodes of Survivorman and Man vs. Wild came in handy. We took the wire from around two Jiffy Pop popcorn poppers and strung the meat up over the fire. It worked flawlessly. As we marveled at our creation in stumbled an exhausted Roger and his two companions with another incident involving Moose and oddly enough a real moose.
Earlier that day Roger went on a monster hike that nearly killed him. Ok, ok, so that was an exaggeration but the blisters he acquired from that hike proved the magnitude of the trek. Unwilling to give Roger a break, Moose was not done getting into trouble. While on his hike Roger and his dogs came across a real moose. Our faithful sheep slayer decided to try out his new found bravery on a real moose. As you may not know a moose is only slightly bigger than a sheep in the eye of a Great Dane, as they
believe they are the biggest creatures to walk the earth. Moose soon found out that there can be discrepancies between one’s own perception and reality. He was quickly stomped into the ground by the cow moose and left there confused but virtually unhurt. Roger quickly snapped a photo of the moose as it withdrew into the woods. Roger’s trek ended up taking about 9 hours and somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 miles, half of which were without water due to a slight miscalculation. We were grateful to have him back, after all he had the keys to the truck, and we lauded Moose for his bravery. Then our attention was again drawn back to the feast that was eminent.
After some deliberation we placed the leg upon our newly fabricated spit. The tenderloins we had from the night before did fine on a small camp stove and were delicious, or so we thought.
It was the leg of lamb that turned out to be an unbelievable feast of epic proportions. The flavor of this succulent mutton was comparable only to that of the finest prime rib money can buy. We dined that night in awe of such a perfect meat, all the while looking over our shoulders into the dark abyss praying that our bounty would not attract unwanted beastly visitors of a ferrous nature. It was only earlier that day the Mexicans had told us of the coyotes, wolves, and bears that were verified to be lurking in the area. Even though there were some coyote calls in distance we managed to devour our bounty in peace. The night grew late and with the bone picked dry we retired for the evening.
The following morning met us with a cool shower that lasted most of the hike out. It managed to soak everything in the early morning as we slept, even Rogers hiking boots that were precariously placed under his camp chair. Was it possible that one of those beastly visitors while rummaging around for scraps of the prior nights bounty moved his camp chair, or was it Rodney? I guess we’ll never know. Roger managed to hike out just fine in his semi-dry boots and badly blistered feet. We all made it back to our trusty, if only slightly rusty, “pick’em-up-truck.” We began our trek home when only a mile or so from the trail head, just after a river forging, we stopped. The final nail in the coffin, so to speak, of this unbelievable trip actually turned out to be… a scre
w in the tire. Fortunately this time we were prepared. We changed the tire and drove home in astonishment of what had transpired on this back packing trip to The Great Buck Pasture.
… and now we just sit back and wait for the movie deals to roll in.
