MY FINEST TROPHY 
	
 I spent much of my life hunting, hiking and camping. I hunted deer and turkey in the southern United States and deer, elk, moose, sheep, goats, antelope and bear in the Rocky Mountain states, mostly in Montana. (I still have a home in Bozeman, Montana.) I no longer hunt. I have many "trophies" but I do not value any of these as much as the one that I obtained on a bear hunt in the Gallatin Mountains in southern Montana. This is the story of that trophy.

	The hunter stood on a small bluff deep within the Gallatin Mountains in southern Montana.  He watched as a huge black bear grazed placidly along the edge of a green grassy meadow.  Slowly the hunter placed his left hand against a lodgepole pine, raised his rifle, a scoped Pre-64 Winchester Model 70 in .264 Winchester Magnum caliber, and rested it across his arm.  The crosshairs came to rest solidly behind the right foreleg of the bear.  He moved the safety to the off position, took a deep breath and slowly exhaled as he tightened his finger on the trigger. This huge trophy bear was his!

	Unexpectedly, thoughts floated through his mind.  “Why do I want to shoot this bear?  I already have more meat than I can eat...  I already have more trophies than I can display... I've enjoyed many wonderful days hunting alone in these snow-crested southern Montana mountains. I've drunk from crystal cold mountain streams, and I've ridden my horse along countless mountain trails, through the golden sunlight of midday and through the purple twilight as the days were ending.”

	The hunter could not think of a good reason to shoot.  He relaxed the pressure on the trigger and flipped the safety of his rifle back on. He watched contentedly as the unknowing bear peacefully entered the forest across the meadow and disappeared from his sight.  “Whew,” he thought, “what an experience!”

	He ejected the unfired cartridge from his rifle and took it home. He attached a hand-written note to it with the words, “I did not shoot a bear with this ctg on 7/24/84.”

	The hunter, of course, was me.  The cartridge became my trophy in lieu of the bear, and I value it above any other that I have.

	This experience changed my life.  Although I continued to hunt for may years and took many more animals, hunting was never again the same for me.  Looking back from the perspective of old age, I realize that this was the beginning of the end of my hunting career.

--Albert D. Williams