D
Deleted member 52847
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Alrighty...
Figured I'd try my hand at doing a recap write up on my wife and mine's 1st Rifle season hunt.
I wasn't really into writing these up; I liked reading other's recaps, like the infamous @Dsnow9 & @MtnElk recently.
Then I realized it could even be a form of fully realizing and remembering the hunt.
So here goes...oh, and, staying true to my principals, the area we hunted shall remain "nameless, in this case, unit-less"
Saturday:
Due to work constraints, my wife and I could only hunt two full days, which would be Saturday and Sunday, opening weekend. I work in the evenings so ideally we wanted to harvest opening weekend.
Spoiler alert: didn't harvest opening weekend.
We started the morning hunt walking into the area I shot the bull in my profile pic last year. We got halfway up the mile long trail when I looked at our dog (yes, we hunt with our dog, he's in training but doing well) and I realized, "shoot, I forgot his ear protection in the truck" maybe some of you would say ear protection for your dog is a bit much, but it's what we do. I told my wife and she said "well, nothing we can do now".
We get up to the ridge where we wanted to hunt. Lots and lots of tracks, lots of scat, day old, but nothing out in the open feeding. Beautiful morning, heard 6 shots at different areas in the unit. Heard two bugles which was awesome, especially considering they were only about half a mile to a mile away.
This particular ridge that we were hunting has a South East facing bald ridge, then benches out as it slopes North and West. The northwest side is dark timber/aspen, perfect bedding and still lots of feed. I should mention the elevation is around 9500'.
We weren't too inclined to head into the timber after themright away, despite hearing the bugles. We preferd that they be more in the open and not have to pressure them in their bedding area. So we backed out to the truck to regroup.
Saturday afternoon was filled with a nice nap, then driving to a high point in this area where we could glass for the late afternoon/evening.
This glassing knob, at 11000', allows us to see about 4 miles north, three miles west and 4 miles east and south. Lots of downed timber and old logging cuts to glass. From this vantage we can also see the ridge where we hunted in the a.m.
After glassing for a few hours, spotting 3 really nice bucks, the day shadows started to get long. I turned the spotting scope over to the ridge where we hunted the morning, and saw two other hunters walking right through the middle of the ridge at 6 p.m.
"Darn it"
I felt that was blown for the evening. Boy was I wrong.
I looked at the ridge again at 6:30 and saw...1, 2, 3,4567......50 cows feeding out into the opening! I excitedly waved my wife over to me. She got behind the spotter and said, lets go! Unfortunately, we didnt have tome to make any sort of play on the herd. But...we saw at least 5 bulls with the 50 cows and calves, also got to witness 2 bulls sparring which I'd never seen before.
All of this after 2 other hunters walked right where the bulls they were chasing now stood. I couldn't believe it.
We had our morning plan for Sunday ready.
We were gonna get a bull, or two, Sunday morning. At least, that's what we thought.
I'll post Sunday in another post, this is already sort of long winded.
I didn't get any good pictures on the day, but pictures of the rest of the says will come.
Figured I'd try my hand at doing a recap write up on my wife and mine's 1st Rifle season hunt.
I wasn't really into writing these up; I liked reading other's recaps, like the infamous @Dsnow9 & @MtnElk recently.
Then I realized it could even be a form of fully realizing and remembering the hunt.
So here goes...oh, and, staying true to my principals, the area we hunted shall remain "nameless, in this case, unit-less"
Saturday:
Due to work constraints, my wife and I could only hunt two full days, which would be Saturday and Sunday, opening weekend. I work in the evenings so ideally we wanted to harvest opening weekend.
Spoiler alert: didn't harvest opening weekend.
We started the morning hunt walking into the area I shot the bull in my profile pic last year. We got halfway up the mile long trail when I looked at our dog (yes, we hunt with our dog, he's in training but doing well) and I realized, "shoot, I forgot his ear protection in the truck" maybe some of you would say ear protection for your dog is a bit much, but it's what we do. I told my wife and she said "well, nothing we can do now".
We get up to the ridge where we wanted to hunt. Lots and lots of tracks, lots of scat, day old, but nothing out in the open feeding. Beautiful morning, heard 6 shots at different areas in the unit. Heard two bugles which was awesome, especially considering they were only about half a mile to a mile away.
This particular ridge that we were hunting has a South East facing bald ridge, then benches out as it slopes North and West. The northwest side is dark timber/aspen, perfect bedding and still lots of feed. I should mention the elevation is around 9500'.
We weren't too inclined to head into the timber after themright away, despite hearing the bugles. We preferd that they be more in the open and not have to pressure them in their bedding area. So we backed out to the truck to regroup.
Saturday afternoon was filled with a nice nap, then driving to a high point in this area where we could glass for the late afternoon/evening.
This glassing knob, at 11000', allows us to see about 4 miles north, three miles west and 4 miles east and south. Lots of downed timber and old logging cuts to glass. From this vantage we can also see the ridge where we hunted in the a.m.
After glassing for a few hours, spotting 3 really nice bucks, the day shadows started to get long. I turned the spotting scope over to the ridge where we hunted the morning, and saw two other hunters walking right through the middle of the ridge at 6 p.m.
"Darn it"
I felt that was blown for the evening. Boy was I wrong.
I looked at the ridge again at 6:30 and saw...1, 2, 3,4567......50 cows feeding out into the opening! I excitedly waved my wife over to me. She got behind the spotter and said, lets go! Unfortunately, we didnt have tome to make any sort of play on the herd. But...we saw at least 5 bulls with the 50 cows and calves, also got to witness 2 bulls sparring which I'd never seen before.
All of this after 2 other hunters walked right where the bulls they were chasing now stood. I couldn't believe it.
We had our morning plan for Sunday ready.
We were gonna get a bull, or two, Sunday morning. At least, that's what we thought.
I'll post Sunday in another post, this is already sort of long winded.
I didn't get any good pictures on the day, but pictures of the rest of the says will come.
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