Years of hunting amount to a veritable mountain of mounts

Roger Gordon had the kind of childhood you don’t often hear about anymore. In the years since then, his life has followed a similar pattern. After all, how often do you meet someone who’s found a grizzly bear in their camp or eaten squirrel on a hunting trip or had a deer they shot on display in a Cabela’s?

Gordon grew up west of Holyoke between the Frenchman and Wild Horse creeks. The weeds, grass and cottonwood trees in the creek bottoms made a perfect habitat for area wildlife. A soil conservation pond at his family’s farm meant plentiful waterfowl as well.

Starting at about 9 or 10 years old, he spent much of his time trekking through the area hunting rabbits and the like. He recalls a .22 rifle being the first firearm he was allowed to take out hunting on his own. Gordon’s propensity for hunting, even at an early age, should come as no surprise given his family. When it came to hunting and shooting sports, the influence came from his dad, Marion (Swede) Gordon, and grandfathers on both sides.

Thanksgivings brought extended family from multiple states to town for pheasant hunting. Gordon’s grandfather Bob Ensminger was an especially active hunter and enjoyed shooting clay pigeons at the gun club. On the other side of the family, his grandfather Erastus Gordon is the one who gave him a .410 shotgun.

After finishing high school, Gordon wanted to try his hand at deer hunting and bought his first centerfire rifle at Deane Anderson’s Gambles store in Holyoke.

Early on, his focus was on deer and antelope on the eastern Colorado plains, but before long he’d expanded both the area he hunted and the types of animal he was after — not to mention his gun collection.

Gordon began traveling to the mountains of Colorado, where elk, deer and bears could be found. At about 30 years old, he further widened his circle to include other states. Trips involved hunting antelope and elk in Wyoming, pheasants in South Dakota and Kansas, deer in Nebraska and Kansas, and buffalo in Wyoming.

A fellow hunter who enjoyed archery persuaded Gordon to give it a shot, too. Once he learned to “sling arrows,” even more doors were opened. He bow hunted deer and antelope in Colorado, elk in Wyoming, and deer in Missouri and Kansas. In pursuit of feral pigs and javelina, one trip took him to south Texas, just 30 miles from the Mexico border.

In the other direction, Gordon has also made three trips to Alaska and one to Canada, primarily in search of caribou. Hunting in that particular region meant one unforgettable experience after another. Arriving via floatplane at a small lake, Gordon saw ducks and swans swimming and caribou just wandering by. They’d probably never even seen a human, he mused.

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