I remember reading that part of the book. Both Dave and Norm were pretty young when O'Connor had his little encounter with them--in fact they were exactly the same age, since they were born on the same day in 1941. Norm was a very good hunter, and had been outfitting for a while, but not much of a gun guy, and had some bad experiences on elk with poor .270 bullets, which set O'Connor off. Petzal was indeed a little shy on elk experience then, and years later did kill a good bull with a .270, using good bullets.
What was interesting to me was O'Connor's rather snotty put-down of Strung as a "part-time school teacher." The "school teaching" Strung did for a while was very similar to what O'Connor did for a while at the same age: an assistant professor of English at a state university.
