The words “buck fever” call to mind one of the most frequently recurring of hunting pictures. It never varies, and usually it brings a smile.
The tenderfoot deer hunter, be he freckled-faced kid in overalls or city dude, clad in red cap and high boots, sees his first deer. He raises his rifle — tries to shoot. But the gun swings in crazy arcs. His sights simply will not line up. He can’t breathe, his heart thumps. The deer, knowing by some mysterious means that his would-be slayer is a novice, stands still, looking with amusement at buck fever’s latest victim. Finally, in desperation, the hunter pulls the trigger. The rifle bellows, and the buck scampers off, unhurt.
And then, or so this bit of folklore goes, the hunter is cured of buck fever. The next time he sees a buck, he smacks it over with neatness and dispatch.
To all this my answer is, “Bunk!”
As a chronic sufferer from buck fever, quail fever, and ram fever, I speak from deep and bitter experience. I am no novice as a hunter. I have got bear, lion, antelope, mule deer, white-tails, coyotes, and bobcats, not to mention game birds of many varieties. I live in Arizona, one of the finest game states in the nation, and I make a point of going on hunts each year into northern Mexico.
Surely I should be immune from the disease, yet I am not. Furthermore, I am not alone in my affliction. I know other hunters, with experience even greater than mine, who suffer just as much.
Did I get calmly out of the car, load my rifle, and kill that sheep? I did not.
Curiously, I feel no shame at my weakness, for it is my belief that the keener the hunter, the more he respects and admires the game he seeks. The more likely he is at any time to succumb to an attack of buck fever. When a man no longer feels his pulse leap at the sight of noble game, when he can shoot a beautiful buck as calmly as he would buy a steak at the butcher shop, he no longer gets the pleasure from hunting he should get. He is sated, and out to quit and take up golf or bowling.
Some species of game give me a worse attack of the disease than do others. Invariably they are the ones I am most anxious to bag. If hunting certain animals or birds never works me up into a wild-eyed sweat, I am indifferent to them.
Take ducks or quail, for example. I am a good duck shot. I can tumble a high-flying canvasback sweetly, and I can smack swift, bouncing teal and mallards with efficiency. I became a duck hunter at the age of twelve, and for years, they threw me into mental tailspins. Now, however, they don’t. If I hit one, it’s O.K. If I miss him, I feel the same way about it. As a consequence, I seldom hunt ducks. The old thrill is gone.
On the other hand, I am a set-up for quail, and only an indifferent quail shot. The first bird of the day never fails to throw me into a panic. The sight of a covey of desert quail fills me with a mad, superhuman strength. I can race wildly for hours through cholla and other cacti. I miss easy shots, and make difficult ones. A bag of a half-dozen birds fills my heart with beatific joy. Yes, I like to hunt quail, for they give me the fever. I hope I’m never immune.
On the other hand, doves and whitewings excite me only mildly. I enjoy hunting them, but I’d pass up the biggest dove convention in history to get to one covey of foxy, little desert quail.
A new species will nearly always give keen hunter the buck fever. So will an unusual trophy of a familiar species.
A few years ago I took a seasoned white-tail hunter, who was also a crack shot, into Arizona’s famous Kaibab Forest after mule deer. On the first day, he simply went to pieces at the sight of the great antlers on those magnificent bucks. He missed fairly easy shots at five fine animals, and, if he had been younger, I believe he would have wept. He was a pathetic spectacle, yet to me not an amusing one, since I had suffered too often from the same malady myself.
But the next day he somehow pulled himself together. He killed the first good buck that jumped up, hitting it three times in four shots as it ran through a canyon more than 200 yards away.
A well-known guide of my acquaintance has seen literally hundreds of animals killed. Yet the sight of a fine trophy is still too much for him. One time, when I was hunting with him, we sighted an extra-fine buck across the canyon, and he tore my binocular case to pieces getting the glasses out.
Many factors enter into making the hunter liable to buck fever. Some men are constitutionally high-strung and overkeen, and they are the chronic victims. Special anxiety for a particular trophy also causes many attacks. An absolutely unexpected encounter with game will ruin many a man.
Last November I was hunting a particular buck mule deer in northern Arizona. I wanted an exceptional head, or I wouldn’t play. In three days of hard work, I had seen several ordinary heads and many small ones. Late in the afternoon, I stopped on the top of a high hill, sat down, lit a cigarette, and cursed my luck. It was the last day of my hunt. Rather than shoot any of the measly two and three-pointers I had seen, I would go back emptyhanded. I threw away my cigarette and stood up, ready to go back to camp and call it quits.
When a man no longer feels his pulse leap at the sight of noble game, when he can shoot a beautiful buck as calmly as he would buy a steak at the butcher shop, he no longer gets the pleasure from hunting he should get. He is sated, and out to quit and take up golf or bowling.
At that moment the very buck I had been looking for jumped out from under a cedar where he had been lying. He had a long beam and an enormous spread, and looked as big as a horse. My blood pressure jumped about 100 percent, and I began to shake. My first shot went over his back. Luckily my second broke a front leg. He went down, then got up, and started to run. So helpless was I — and such an idiot from buck fever — that, had he been an ordinary buck, he could have got away wounded. But his great antlers were so heavy that he fell down about every third step.
Instead of sitting down calmly and shooting him once more, as any rational being would have done, I began running down the hill after him. I ran like a mountain goat, except that mountain goats don’t fall down and skin their noses. When I got within 100 yards of the buck, I took two shots at him, missing him by yards. The buck ran again, and I followed wildly.
Then I realized I was making a fool of myself, sat down, and let him run. In a few moments. I got hold of myself. Taking careful aim, I eased off the trigger and killed him.
The buck proved to be a seven-pointer, an ancient fellow with a main beam of twenty-eight inches, and a spread of thirty-two. He was a fine trophy, but I almost lost him because of that old devil, buck fever.
Great need can also reduce an ordinarily calm and reflective hunter to a gibbering imbecile. Once I was forced to lie out in the forest at night. I awoke in the morning, hungry as the proverbial bear, and began to look for something I might devour. The more I looked, the hungrier I got. Finally, I saw an innocent and unsuspicious mountain cottontail. It took me several seconds to calm myself enough to shoot him.
On the other hand, I know of many persons who practically never have buck fever when hunting certain species. My wife killed the first buck she ever saw, and I have yet to see her get excited over any deer, no matter how fine a trophy he is. She once killed a big six-pointer while I was still fumbling with my safety. That’s the kind of deer shot she is.
Yet, though she is an enthusiastic quail hunter, she is even more subject to quail fever than I. She loves to eat quail, and, every time she comes across one, she sees it fried a tempting brown, perched on a piece of toast. On her first quail hunt. she burned up almost a box of shells without connecting, yet she is a good dove shot. She is better now, but the sight of a quail still throws her into a minor panic.
Sometimes the predatory instinct will get the better or the fever. There are times, however, when it does not, and I am saving my most disgraceful performance till the last. A few seasons ago I went into Sonora for a sheep hunt. My companions and I rose before dawn, cooked breakfast, and, just as it began to get light, we set out. They were to climb one end of the high range and hunt down, while a Mexican and I were to drive the car around to the other end, climb it, and meet them toward the middle at noon.
Crossing the rood in front of the car was the largest bighorn ram I hod ever seen. Did I calmly load
my rifle, and kill it? I did not!
Illustration by W.N. Wilson / Outdoor Life
I wasn’t expecting game, and, furthermore, I didn’t want to shoot any lowland animals, as both the desert mule deer and antelope had shed their horns at that time. Half asleep, I sat beside the driver, my rifle in its case and unloaded.
Suddenly the Mexican screamed, “Look, a very big ram. Shoot!”
Astonished, I opened my eyes. Crossing the road in front of the car was the largest bighorn ram I had ever seen. His great, dark horns made a complete curl, and they were so heavy his head bobbed as he ran. Of all things! A mountain sheep crossing the road on a lowland desert in front of an automobile.
Did I get calmly out of the car, load my rifle, and kill that sheep? I did not!
The Mexican jammed on the brakes just as I got up. I fell forward, and cracked my head on the windshield. Then I got out of the car, and, with trembling hands, jerked the rifle from the case at the same time I fumbled for cartridges. All the time the sheep was getting farther and farther away, and I was growing wilder
Finally, I had a couple of shells in the Springfield. Wildly, stupidly, foolishly, I fired twice as the ram ran through the brush. Each time I missed, and, furthermore, I knew I didn’t have the sights lined up when I shot.
Needless to say, the ram got away. My hands were shaking as if I had the ague, and my trembling knees would hardly support my weight.
No, I didn’t get a ram on that trip. The only other one I saw was 600 yards away — too far to shoot. During the next two days, my Mexican regarded me with cold and bitter contempt. I was a punk shot, and a fumbling fellow, and he had no use for me.
If I had been expecting that darned sheep, I’m firmly convinced I could have got him. But he had the psychological jump on me. He gave me ram fever, and so escaped.
I look forward to the thirty years of hunting I have left in my carcass, knowing that I’ll always be subject to the malady. Every now and then buck fever will get me down, make a fool of me, cause me to shoot wildly and ineffectually. Yet I am not ashamed. The very uncertainty of the attacks lends spice to the game, and, if I ever go for a year without succumbing, I’ll know I’ve lost my edge. When I have, I’ll dust off my golf clubs, and sell my rifles.
This story, “I Get Buck Fever … And Like It,” appeared in the August 1936 issue of Outdoor Life.
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