jeremy.b
Well-known member
Hey all, I'd like to introduce myself, my family and what is shaping up to be a bit of a crazy 2018 season for me.
My name is Jeremy, I was born in Montana, raised in central and northern Idaho and lived the last 19 years in Boise.
In April I moved my wife and 3 boys down to Utah (a door opened up to a new job that we all felt I should pursue).
This is my first attempt at a semi-live ANYTHING so I hope you all will bare with me here! (normally I just lurk on most forums
)
The first reason I'm starting up this semi-live thread is because I love to share my stories and this year is shaping up to have a few to tell.
Another reason is that I love my wife and kids dearly and work very hard to not be away for long periods of time (a week away is a big deal to our family!). That seems like an odd reason to start a semi-live thread doesn't it?
Well, while we all really enjoy reading the stories of folks that spend weeks in the field each fall, I wanted to tell the stories of a family guy who doesn't get out NEARLY as often, but who's stories are (hopefully!) just as memorable.
For fun, here's my 3 boys (ages 5, 3 & 5 months):
The 5 yr old is already doing 4-6 miles and 1000+ ft of elevation with me every few weeks:
After meeting my wife, and especially now having our boys, I put keeping meat in the freeze pretty high on my list of priorities each fall.
So generally I apply for easy-to-draw cow elk tags, and not be too choosy while hunting OTC deer/elk if nothing is drawn.
For fun, I also apply for rifle pronghorn in SW Idaho (never drawn yet!) and pronghorn in nothern Montana (family has a great spot we've hunted for years out there when we do draw). I'm still waiting to get the Montana pronghorn results, and this year my party has a pretty decent chance to draw.
The last couple years I began throwing an application into one of the trophy muley units in SW Idaho, never really expecting to draw.
At the begining of July I was impatiently checking the IDF&G site for drawing results and on the morning of July 6th they were posted:
Lets see what we have here:
The very first thing I did when I saw the results was text my wife. We suddenly had an interesting scheduling challenge to work through!
Since we had moved to Utah, ALL of my trips were going to be extended time away from the family.
We could handle the cow hunt in September. Its in a unit I know well and doesn't require pre-scouting. I can be gone for around a week and have a good chance to fill that tag.
We can even handle the Montana pronghorn hunt if I draw. It would be 5-6 days in October over a long weekend (that and my wife knows how much I enjoy that hunt).
The deer hunt has thrown us a curve-ball though! The hunting time was pretty easy; the whole family will go up for the week of Thanksgiving and I'll hunt as many days as I can get during that time (6-7 days).
The challenge is that I don't know that deer unit at all and my scouting time will be pretty limited. Now, its a great tag, and I could just go hunt when possible and be happy with any fairly good sized muley buck I found.
BUT of course its not quite that simple...
In 2015 I was extremely fortunate (we'll say blessed actually) to take a REALLY nice OTC muley not far from Boise (my first muley actually, I'd hunted whitetails mostly in the past):
(For those that care: 184 gross)
So now I'd REALLY like to get a buck of similar caliber this year, even though I know its not very likely (even in great units 180" bucks don't grow on every tree!).
I can safely commit one weekend this month to scouting. If I get lucky and get a cow early in my Sept hunt I'll head back into the area to scout more.
There's a chance I could scout again in October if we don't draw MT pronghorn, but given my already VERY busy hunting schedule (for me) that's questionable at this point.
And honestly even now I'm still working to set my expectations for that mule deer hunt... But that's part of it right! It should be a great hunt, no matter what though!
Anyway, that's enough for now, I'll be following up with a few posts on any applicable season prep, what our MT pronghorn draw results are (and plan impacts), and add updates as I get out (and back) from the field.
Thanks for tagging along, I hope the ride is a good one!
My name is Jeremy, I was born in Montana, raised in central and northern Idaho and lived the last 19 years in Boise.
In April I moved my wife and 3 boys down to Utah (a door opened up to a new job that we all felt I should pursue).
This is my first attempt at a semi-live ANYTHING so I hope you all will bare with me here! (normally I just lurk on most forums
)The first reason I'm starting up this semi-live thread is because I love to share my stories and this year is shaping up to have a few to tell.
Another reason is that I love my wife and kids dearly and work very hard to not be away for long periods of time (a week away is a big deal to our family!). That seems like an odd reason to start a semi-live thread doesn't it?
Well, while we all really enjoy reading the stories of folks that spend weeks in the field each fall, I wanted to tell the stories of a family guy who doesn't get out NEARLY as often, but who's stories are (hopefully!) just as memorable.
For fun, here's my 3 boys (ages 5, 3 & 5 months):
The 5 yr old is already doing 4-6 miles and 1000+ ft of elevation with me every few weeks
:After meeting my wife, and especially now having our boys, I put keeping meat in the freeze pretty high on my list of priorities each fall.
So generally I apply for easy-to-draw cow elk tags, and not be too choosy while hunting OTC deer/elk if nothing is drawn.
For fun, I also apply for rifle pronghorn in SW Idaho (never drawn yet!) and pronghorn in nothern Montana (family has a great spot we've hunted for years out there when we do draw). I'm still waiting to get the Montana pronghorn results, and this year my party has a pretty decent chance to draw.
The last couple years I began throwing an application into one of the trophy muley units in SW Idaho, never really expecting to draw.
At the begining of July I was impatiently checking the IDF&G site for drawing results and on the morning of July 6th they were posted:
Lets see what we have here:
- Muzzleloader cow elk tag in Sept: Selected, sweet!
- Rifle pronghorn: Not Selected... No surprise there!
- Nov Rifle Muledeer: Selected. Uh WHAT!!????!!! (My co-workers thought something had blown up when I reacted to that one!)
The very first thing I did when I saw the results was text my wife. We suddenly had an interesting scheduling challenge to work through!
Since we had moved to Utah, ALL of my trips were going to be extended time away from the family.
We could handle the cow hunt in September. Its in a unit I know well and doesn't require pre-scouting. I can be gone for around a week and have a good chance to fill that tag.
We can even handle the Montana pronghorn hunt if I draw. It would be 5-6 days in October over a long weekend (that and my wife knows how much I enjoy that hunt).
The deer hunt has thrown us a curve-ball though! The hunting time was pretty easy; the whole family will go up for the week of Thanksgiving and I'll hunt as many days as I can get during that time (6-7 days).
The challenge is that I don't know that deer unit at all and my scouting time will be pretty limited. Now, its a great tag, and I could just go hunt when possible and be happy with any fairly good sized muley buck I found.
BUT of course its not quite that simple...
In 2015 I was extremely fortunate (we'll say blessed actually) to take a REALLY nice OTC muley not far from Boise (my first muley actually, I'd hunted whitetails mostly in the past):
(For those that care: 184 gross)
So now I'd REALLY like to get a buck of similar caliber this year, even though I know its not very likely (even in great units 180" bucks don't grow on every tree!).
I can safely commit one weekend this month to scouting. If I get lucky and get a cow early in my Sept hunt I'll head back into the area to scout more.
There's a chance I could scout again in October if we don't draw MT pronghorn, but given my already VERY busy hunting schedule (for me) that's questionable at this point.
And honestly even now I'm still working to set my expectations for that mule deer hunt... But that's part of it right! It should be a great hunt, no matter what though!
Anyway, that's enough for now, I'll be following up with a few posts on any applicable season prep, what our MT pronghorn draw results are (and plan impacts), and add updates as I get out (and back) from the field.
Thanks for tagging along, I hope the ride is a good one!
