Lack of success the previous day--or season--must not affect your willingness to rise early or to appreciate the possibilities of a new morning in a new place.

The final day wind got us again, in a high meadow as a brightening sky purpled the snow on its hem. The cows lifted their noses at 400 yards. We ran through a saddle, across a snowy ridge. I rolled over the top and tightened my sling. A big 5-point thundered across the horizontal wire, too far and too fast for a sure shot.

Johnny and I walked off the mountain that day in lovely weather. Passing 9,000 feet, we plunged into tall timber. The warm, sunny skies silenced any bulls that might have felt frisky. We reached trailhead around noon, met the others coming off on horseback, loaded the stock and drove to a cabin to wash, eat and unwind. Johnny took me to another place that evening. I sat atop a tall, flat-backed mule that climbed out of the canyon, one switchback after another, as if he had nothing on board. We parked on the shoulder of a big basin and watched mountain shadows engulf cows and young bulls on an emerald apron below snowline. As dusk closed shop, we wound on a knife-edge trail toward camp.

“There!”

It was a magnificent bull--easily the best I’d seen--but a mile off. Had we come here first...but now we’d run out of time. The long ivory grew dim in our glasses as night swallowed the mountain. After dark we trailed into the corral. A young mule spooked and thundered into the fence. My mule shot out from under me as if rocket-propelled. My right foot hung in the stirrup, and I bounced along in the dark on my back until the big black beast kicked me free. An ignominious dismount. I conceded as I felt for broken bones that if a heavy ration of bad luck showed up for a week’s stay, one hunter might as well bear it all. No sense afflicting the others with a sub-lethal dose.

The only hunter not to kill an elk that trip, I shrugged off the shame. I had tried hard, hunting more hours and in tougher places than my companions. For the most part, I’d made sound decisions. Coming up short is not always a measure of effort.

Then, neither is success.

* * *

The highway winds into distant hills; its centerline blinks hypnotically as the tach needle nudges 4,000. The road becomes a trail snaking down out of the dark cloud. I’m much younger, rounding a rockslide straddling a copse of conifers. The buck is at once a surprise and a reward. Had I not thought he might be there, I would not have climbed so high. That he waits, while I wrap my sling, sit and trigger the ‘06, is my good fortune.

So is the next episode, around another turn. There’s thick forest here, a jungle hanging from red mud humping toward New Zealand’s sky. It is the first sky in the world to host dawn. I’ve had less luck seeing stags. They’re here, rutting. We hear their guttural roars, but they hide in dense tangles of greenery not unlike that girding the Olympic peaks back home. When Chris points, I shoulder the Ruger. “Shoot!” But I’m already urging the last ounce from the trigger. The stag turns at the blast and is instantly gone. He is, I know, a step too late. We find him dead, the only stag we will see in all our jungle treks that week.