Don’t torch your spot

Only landscape photos I post are my bird hunting spots. Usually a sunset or something. I could care less if someone else shows up and shoots the birds. I'll get some somewhere else. Or not. Then I don't have to clean them. Oh well. The big game photos I post are usually "as they lay" with nothing informative in the background. Sometimes they are posed photos with me. I don't worry about being identified. If someone wants to follow me around and steal my hunting spots they better spend some time at the gym first.
 
I find guessing where photos are taken from to be a fun challenge, lots of the early OYOA elk hunts were in zones that I knew well so it was entertaining watching and rooting for Randy to figure out the honey hole he was just barely missing day after day...

There are very few people who I would find poaching spots from to actually be useful, for some reason @Greenhorn isn't posting many panoramic scenery shots of his elk hunting.
people can rest assured that if I post a picture with identifiable terrain it's not someplace I'm actually hunting, in fact, I would encourage people to check those spots, then they won't be hunting where I am...
 
Ya guys know that with a given time/date of a photo, someone can find out where it was taken based on shadows and sun position. Better start taking photos at night or in a garage.
 
MTGomer said:
If you didn’t know, there are quite a few people, right or wrong, that scour the internet and try to figure out where others hunt. Then they actually go hunt there.

They do this with well known people like Randy, but they do it to anybody that is finding success. There’s just a certain number of people that will always take the easy way, and there’s a good number of people that are still quite ignorant to how effective digital scouting is.

Yesterday I saw a post on a page with over 100k followers of a guy posting the elk that him and his family killed. 5 bulls and a cow. He stated what mountain range he was in and then posted a couple scenery pics. This is an otc area of Montana.

I tried to politely warn him that his spot is going to get overran by people. He was dismissive of that, stating that nobody could figure it out because “there is thousands of acres.”

I found one spot half asleep with google earth on my phone last night and another in about 2 minutes on my computer this AM. I have no desire to hunt there, but you know dang well that there is a large contingent of dorks that can’t kill elk that are just looking for a freebee like this.

Think before posting


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How could you possibly get more hunters in the Ruby? Is that really anybody's spot? It's an inferno of orange in SW MT, all fall.
 
JLS said:
The BRO crew completely torched the Gravellies about 8-9 years ago. Completely torched. I could have walked you to within 100 yards of a bull they killed.
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Thankfully while I could do the same on a bull from one of Randy's episodes, I don't think a ton of people found it. Went back two years later and while there weren't nearly as many elk, there still weren't any other hunters, so I'll call that a win. Maybe as the episode marinates on youtube more people will figure it out, but I hope not. It is a special place.
 
JLS said:
Yep. I’ll take you there…
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Can you point out in the pictures that shows they are the same....I'm not seeing it...is it the angle of the pictures...I think I see 1 similar spot form one to the other, but it's in the middle on the pic and to the far left on the other.
 
oldbutnotdead said:
Can you point out in the pictures that shows they are the same....I'm not seeing it...is it the angle of the pictures...I think I see 1 similar spot form one to the other, but it's in the middle on the pic and to the far left on the other.
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It’s the GE imagery. It doesn’t exactly portray the real image.
 
JLS said:
The BRO crew completely torched the Gravellies about 8-9 years ago. Completely torched. I could have walked you to within 100 yards of a bull they killed.
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8-9 years ago? The Gravellies hasn't been good since 4x4s became widely available. I wish I would have documented all the stories my grandpa had of hunting the Gravellies back in the 50-70s. I hunted up there a few times as a kid with him, but its been a zoo for 30 plus years. I have a 380 class elk rack that he gave me when I was about 14 that came out of the upper Ruby. Know of a bunch of other old timers that killed some slammer bucks and bulls in that country too. It has amazing genetics and potential, but the animals suffer from lead poisoning.
 
Bambistew said:
8-9 years ago? The Gravellies hasn't been good since 4x4s became widely available. I wish I would have documented all the stories my grandpa had of hunting the Gravellies back in the 50-70s. I hunted up there a few times as a kid with him, but its been a zoo for 30 plus years. I have a 380 class elk rack that he gave me when I was about 14 that came out of the upper Ruby. Know of a bunch of other old timers that killed some slammer bucks and bulls in that country too. It has amazing genetics and potential, but the animals suffer from lead poisoning.
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I would agree with you for rifle hunting, however, 12 to 14 years ago the archery hunting in the gravellies was absolutely fantastic. Not so much anymore.
 
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brocksw said:
Just as a disclaimer, I know Randy had good intentions and was trying to help someone out.

I'm still a little sour about it though.
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I just made that up as a joke because Randy gets such a hard time for some people about getting more people interested in hunting out west. I’m making a bunch of those stickers and gonna slap them on every full trailhead parking lot I find. 🤣
 
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