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D13er
Guest
.....getting kind of quiet around here.
My Dealings With Darner
by Rich LaRocco, www.hunts.net
(continued from page 12)
Niehuis later wrote an outline for an autobiographical book that he proposed to write and sell. Here are excerpts dealing with his meeting with Moss, who was working at the time for Darner's Hunter Information Service in Montrose, Colorado:
"I leave to go to Montrose .... I go directly to the office of Tom Gilmore, Sheriff of Montrose County. I meet Tom, make known my purpose of being in Montrose. ... I am warned again that Kirt Darner and possibly Doyle Moss might be dangerous, and to avoid being trapped in a remote place by either one. ... I learn Doyle Moss has been on my trail making three long distance calls in one day wanting to know where I am staying, what kind of car I am driving, description, etc. ... So ... I go undercover, register under a false name and hide my car. The next morning I case the Darner Hunters Information Service ... but make no contact. Instead I go to the sheriff's office again and learn Bob Cox there is an investigator. Cox is known to me. ... I go the Stockman's Cafe ... and ... phone Doyle Moss to meet me there. I decide to take a chance, meet him in a place of my choosing, not his.
"Doyle Moss comes in. I recognize him because of his behavior and call him by name. ... We talk it over .... Doyle is a young man, 26 years of age. ... Although I already know it, I asked for his Social Security number. ... I ask the questions to get answers and verify what I have already learned. Doyle gives me more of his background and interest in Darner. He wants to show me some mounted heads, one with a bullet hole in the antler. ... Also, Doyle wants to show me where he lives, in a trailer house furnished by Darner. And he announces he has quit Darner.
"I decide to chance it. We go to his trailer and enter it. The front of the trailer is very barren of furniture. Interestingly, the walls are covered with photographs, paintings and sketches of Rocky Mountain Mule Deer. The amount and quality of the art surrounding a single subject is quite unusual. There are no other furnishings in the front room. This facet of his personality leads me to believe his driving interesting [is] hunting and hero worship of Kirt Darner. ... As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he does not have an ash tray in sight. ... I look his trailer over, including the bedroom which only has blankets on the floor. No bed on the floor. Every sign I read verifies his professing to be a Mormon. He serves me some lemonade.
"We step outside and at the truck I show him the pictures of Naylor and his buck. There is no question in his mind that is is the same buck that is on the cover of Darner's new book. Again I am told that Rich LaRocco wrote the book for Kirt Darner. ... Doyle again asks me for one of the photographs of Dean Naylor. I tell him I cannot spare one, but will make him one."
After Niehuis returned home, he sent Moss and me 8x10 copies of four photographs along with a note saying that they showed Dean Naylor and the buck he had just shot in 1948. The pictures were clear enough to show that the buck's antlers were the same antlers photographed with Housholder in 1957. The picture shown above even shows the unique bean-shaped bone deposit on the base of the right antler. Jim Zumbo photographed Darner with the same rack during the winter of 1980-1981, and this picture was used to illustrate Zumbo's article about Darner in the April 1981 issue of Outdoor Life magazine. That photo also is detailed enough to show the same bean-shaped deposit and other unique features. I was the senior editor for Outdoor Life in 1980 and 1981, and the first time I had heard of Darner was when Zumbo had proposed that piece. Later I learned that one of the Naylor pictures also had appeared in a 1951 hunting annual.
I photographed this same trophy with Darner during the winter of 1982-1983, and Darner selected one of those pictures for the cover of How to Find Giant Bucks that was published in 1983. Darner said that buck was one of his most prized trophies because he had seen the deer a year before he claimed to have shot it in 1977. He said he had just shot another great buck in the fall of 1976, and as it thrashed around on the ground in the last throes of life, a giant non-typical stepped out of the cover. He supposedly returned the following October and outsmarted the giant. He had told me this story several times, and the details had been so consistent that I was convinced Darner had shot the deer.
Interestingly, shortly before I had received the Housholder photo, Darner had requested my slides that I had made of him with his various trophies, and that is the last I have seen of them. Fortunately, Zumbo still had his slides when Reneau contacted him in the Boone and Crockett Club's investigation of the matter.
To be continued next week
My Dealings With Darner
by Rich LaRocco, www.hunts.net
(continued from page 12)
Niehuis later wrote an outline for an autobiographical book that he proposed to write and sell. Here are excerpts dealing with his meeting with Moss, who was working at the time for Darner's Hunter Information Service in Montrose, Colorado:
"I leave to go to Montrose .... I go directly to the office of Tom Gilmore, Sheriff of Montrose County. I meet Tom, make known my purpose of being in Montrose. ... I am warned again that Kirt Darner and possibly Doyle Moss might be dangerous, and to avoid being trapped in a remote place by either one. ... I learn Doyle Moss has been on my trail making three long distance calls in one day wanting to know where I am staying, what kind of car I am driving, description, etc. ... So ... I go undercover, register under a false name and hide my car. The next morning I case the Darner Hunters Information Service ... but make no contact. Instead I go to the sheriff's office again and learn Bob Cox there is an investigator. Cox is known to me. ... I go the Stockman's Cafe ... and ... phone Doyle Moss to meet me there. I decide to take a chance, meet him in a place of my choosing, not his.
"Doyle Moss comes in. I recognize him because of his behavior and call him by name. ... We talk it over .... Doyle is a young man, 26 years of age. ... Although I already know it, I asked for his Social Security number. ... I ask the questions to get answers and verify what I have already learned. Doyle gives me more of his background and interest in Darner. He wants to show me some mounted heads, one with a bullet hole in the antler. ... Also, Doyle wants to show me where he lives, in a trailer house furnished by Darner. And he announces he has quit Darner.
"I decide to chance it. We go to his trailer and enter it. The front of the trailer is very barren of furniture. Interestingly, the walls are covered with photographs, paintings and sketches of Rocky Mountain Mule Deer. The amount and quality of the art surrounding a single subject is quite unusual. There are no other furnishings in the front room. This facet of his personality leads me to believe his driving interesting [is] hunting and hero worship of Kirt Darner. ... As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he does not have an ash tray in sight. ... I look his trailer over, including the bedroom which only has blankets on the floor. No bed on the floor. Every sign I read verifies his professing to be a Mormon. He serves me some lemonade.
"We step outside and at the truck I show him the pictures of Naylor and his buck. There is no question in his mind that is is the same buck that is on the cover of Darner's new book. Again I am told that Rich LaRocco wrote the book for Kirt Darner. ... Doyle again asks me for one of the photographs of Dean Naylor. I tell him I cannot spare one, but will make him one."
After Niehuis returned home, he sent Moss and me 8x10 copies of four photographs along with a note saying that they showed Dean Naylor and the buck he had just shot in 1948. The pictures were clear enough to show that the buck's antlers were the same antlers photographed with Housholder in 1957. The picture shown above even shows the unique bean-shaped bone deposit on the base of the right antler. Jim Zumbo photographed Darner with the same rack during the winter of 1980-1981, and this picture was used to illustrate Zumbo's article about Darner in the April 1981 issue of Outdoor Life magazine. That photo also is detailed enough to show the same bean-shaped deposit and other unique features. I was the senior editor for Outdoor Life in 1980 and 1981, and the first time I had heard of Darner was when Zumbo had proposed that piece. Later I learned that one of the Naylor pictures also had appeared in a 1951 hunting annual.
I photographed this same trophy with Darner during the winter of 1982-1983, and Darner selected one of those pictures for the cover of How to Find Giant Bucks that was published in 1983. Darner said that buck was one of his most prized trophies because he had seen the deer a year before he claimed to have shot it in 1977. He said he had just shot another great buck in the fall of 1976, and as it thrashed around on the ground in the last throes of life, a giant non-typical stepped out of the cover. He supposedly returned the following October and outsmarted the giant. He had told me this story several times, and the details had been so consistent that I was convinced Darner had shot the deer.
Interestingly, shortly before I had received the Housholder photo, Darner had requested my slides that I had made of him with his various trophies, and that is the last I have seen of them. Fortunately, Zumbo still had his slides when Reneau contacted him in the Boone and Crockett Club's investigation of the matter.
To be continued next week
