"The Tin Cup Buck"

The Good Ole' Days

The year was either 1963 or 1964, Tommy Nasworthy of Menard, Texas and I were hunting elk and deer near Lake City, Colorado. We were hunting Tin Cup between Wager Gulch and Cataract Gulch. It was a clear day with about 20 inches of snow on the ground and Tommy and I were riding our horses through the buckbrush up fairly high on a hillside. This buck deer jumped up about 200 yards from us and started running parallel to where we were.
Tommy was riding a little ways from where I was, and he hollered, "Sam, look at that elk!" I looked up to see the deer moving away from us at a pretty good clip and immediately jumped off of my horse and pulled my gun from the saddle scabbard. I was able to get my rifle on the deer and got off a quick shot. Momentarily after I shot, Tommy shot. The deer just kept running up over the hill above us and was getting pretty far out there. I was sighted in for 450 yards with my 300 H & H 180-grain bullets and 4x Weaver scope, so as the buck was topping the hill I put the post between the deer's legs and squeezed the trigger. The deer disappeared over the hill.

Tommy came riding up still saying that the deer was an elk. I told Tommy that it was a big buck and he would be lying on the other side of the hill. He told me that I had missed and the deer was an elk. It took us a little while to get to the top of hill to check and see where the deer had gone. When we got to the top of the hill, the buck was lying in the snow 30-40 yards from the crest. My first shot had hit in the fat above his backbone and the shot going over the hill killed him. Tommy looked him over and said, "I guess it was a buck!"

The buck has an outside spread of 34 inches and he's 24 inches tall with 5 points on each side. He also has 5-3/4 inch bases. I put the horns on a board and a taxidermist saw them and wanted to redo them for me. In the process of taking them off the board, he broke the scull plate. The buck would still gross about 200 and net near 197, if he could be scored. I never had him officially scored but if he were, he would have probably been one of two or three bucks to ever come out of Hinsdale County that would have made the Boone & Crockett record book.

Written by Hunter Henderson as told by Sam Henderson Sr.