2023 Hunting Adventures Recap

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I had two Brittany litters at home that were growing up by June when I got back to the states. The bigger ones are a few from my Blixen/Rocky cross. The younger are some from my Lyla/Rocky cross. I repeated these crosses recently and am expecting soon.

 

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July - I had a desert bighorn ewe tag and spent a few days driving south and scouting. The tag was a wilderness area and the sheep would be on the tops on the opener.

It was lonely and sort of intimidating, but beautiful.

 

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Went for a family vacation to the Gulf of Mexico. I typically spend the mornings on the pier, but a hurricane had blown it away.

I rented a kayak. Morning one my brother-in-law and I went out about 800 yards and I got a nice king mackerel on a live pinfish. We really thought we had our hands full at the time...

Little did I know what was to come.

 

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While we were eating the king that night, I got a call from C. He had been sheep scouting with his dad.

Conclusion: sheep were around and in decent numbers, but we'd have to climb up to get them.

 

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I went out on the kayak again, and we got a sweet shark, among some other small fish.

 

[popeyoung12]

Well, burned 14 years of pts. For a ca. Mulie bowhunt. Spent 8 days, all day chasing 170 plus mulies in lion country, lava rock. Had 1 shot@74 yards with a crosswind. After 34 years drew a desert sheep tag@13,000 feet. Killed my ram, 1/6 to tag out. Great duck/quail hunting.as usual. Rolled into my whitetail farm, killed 3 doe in 90 minutes with a bow. Killed a badly wounded buck 2 days after my mom passed. Great season with lots of memories. She tagged her bow and gun buck for 40 years battling ms. Prayers to Mom.

 

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The third morning, my nephew who was going to be a senior in high school wanted to go on the kayak. Andrew is always up for an adventure and is the nephew who usually goes to the pier every single morning at 4:30am before the pier blew away.

 

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On the third morning on the kayak, my nephew and I had an adventure we will not soon forget. After some action on other fish, we found ourselves about 400 yards out, just past the second sandbar trying to relocate some Jack Crevalle that were hitting schools of bait fish. I spotted some migrating tarpon rolling through. We got ahead of the school and Andrew cast a live menhaden in front of them. A tarpon grabbed it and Andrew got a couple quick hook sets in before the fish went right under our boat and took his first jump about ten feet from our little rental kayak. Our butts were like four inches off of the water. The tarpon cleared three feet of air under his tail and was well over six feet long. It was intense.

He fought and jumped and fought some more. Then he went out to sea, and we couldn't do anything about it but try to stay afloat. I knew this was crazy, but sometimes you just have to live a little. We ended up so far out that our family couldn't see us from three stories up in our beach rental with the naked eye. They needed the 10x binos I'd brought for spotting fish.

Tarpon are big fish, and I knew he was solid, but it wasn't until about an hour and fifteen minutes into the fight, when he jumped really close to the boat and was broadside did I realize we had a truly giant tarpon on.

I kept the fish in front of the boat the best I could because when he was perpendicular to our kayak, it would tip bad.

It took two hours on the boat fighting it to eventually get the kayak to the beach (a mile and half down the beach from where we'd started) but the tarpon was still 100 yards out and not wanting anything to do with the shore. After three hours total of fighting, Andrew landed him.

I would have liked to have lifted him out of the water more for the photos, but we didn't want to hurt the fish. He was released and swam off nicely.

Andrew said he was glad he woke up at 5:30am, and that fishing from a kayak was way better than the pier.

20lb mono
60lb flourocarbon shock leader

 

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August- I worked some of my Brittany puppies with bird introduction.

 

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September - This month started off great. With a bighorn sheep tag to be a part of, I wasn't going elk hunting until it was filled.

I drove out to C's dad's sheep unit and glassed the evening while they were out. They had passed a couple of rams, but right before dark I spotted a glimpse of one up high.

We brought stuff to stay a couple nights and started hiking at 3am.

We located the ram and my buddy's dad, two years shy of 70, made a nice shot on the him.

This was his first Rocky. He got a Stone DIY as a resident of Canada and also a really nice Desert from drawing the NV Silver State tag about a decade back.

 

[OverlordBear]

Thank you for this thread it is so good to read pure hunting joy and the crazy variety of adventures that are possible to be had on this amazing planet.

 

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Thank you for this thread it is so good to read pure hunting joy and the crazy variety of adventures that are possible to be had on this amazing planet.

Thanks for the kind words.

 

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Also coached my girls' 10U soccer team in September. We were the Pronghorn, as voted on by the girls. I brought a mascot to each game so parents knew which side to sit on.

 

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I archery elk hunted a couple days. These two were great hunting buddies.

 

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I was unsuccessful.

The rack in the truck was a pick-up my buddy found one weekend while we were hunting together. We did look badass on the drive home though...

 

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Photos from archery elk hunts when I don't kill an elk. If I'm not actively in elk, or chasing a bulge, I shoot every grouse I see. No shame. #keephammering

 

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I also lost an awesome dog in Sept. She was an excellent Brittany. Undersized, but one of the best pointers I've trained. This is from an IG post I did:

"Kenya Karamojo Bell JH" - I got to spend the last 14 years of my life with this little dog.

She was with me through cancer, was around before my first child was born, and was the reason I ended up becoming a professional bird dog trainer.

I miss the simple days of her first hunting season with me in the fall of 2010...just me and my dog and a gun and a mountain.

She was a extraordinary hunter, and I've seen a lot of hunting dogs hunt, but she was my dear friend, and that mattered most.

I could pen a book about our adventures together, as she was my faithful companion for hundreds of days afield, but what is most significant to me is that she gave me everything she had, every piece of her, every day. I was her person and she was my dog.

 

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October - I have been wanting to hunt desert sheep since I was a kid. I was able to have the opportunity to hunt ewe.

The forecast was horrendous. Wet down low, snow up top and extreme cold where we would be hunting and camping.

I met my buddy, C at a restaurant a couple hours from each of our homes.

"You nervous?" I asked when I saw him.

"Yeah, we're hiking into a blizzard at 12,000 feet," he said.

It did not seem very "desert-like" to us.

We had both been in for ewe tags for quite some time. We often spoke of them and viewed them as nice, low pressure, mild weathered hunts.

That was not to be our experience...