Most memorable moments hunting 2022!

[beagle001]

In 2022, my two best friends and I drew Colorado rifle muley tags; my first time to the state. It was breathtaking and buttwhooping, and our greatest adventure yet. I was also fortunate to share the before and after of the hunt on The Hunt Backcountry podcast- a very neat experience and something I look forward to showing my young boys in the future.


Things slowed down after that for me. With my Grandpa’s health starting to dwindle and one boy starting 4K and running the other to daycare, I had less time than usual to spend in the whitetail woods here at home.

I did take the time to meet up with some folks from The Hunt In Common for a squirrel hunt, and was able to tag along with a new hunter as he shot his first wild animal. Maybe “just a squirrel” to some, he was very excited, and it changed my perspective some, too.


The November rifle deer hunt rolled around, and my wife and I had a goal of shooting a deer for one of her close friends who lost her husband unexpectedly at 35 years old earlier in the year. He was a great guy, who loved to hunt with his self made long bow, and we wanted to make sure his family still had venison in the freezer. We succeeded and for that we were all grateful.
It was also the first time Grandpa didn’t take part in the deer hunt, or hardly at camp at all, either. But he was glad to hear the stories we had, and his face lit up with excitement as we shared those. Unfortunately, we won’t get to see that smile in 2023, as he passed in February. Hopefully the rest of us can pour out a Bud Light for him when the leaves change and season rolls around again.

 

[OntarioHunter]

Lots of memories for 2022. Eleven plains game in Africa, a muley buck in Montana, my first pheasant triple there a few days later. I would say taking my nyala is at the top of the list. I wasn't budgeted for one but the lodge owner got me a deal I couldn't turn down. Didn't really expect to shoot anything. It was a property my PH had never hunted before so it was a crap shoot. Something different. We were on the coastal side of same mountain range we'd been hunting kudu. Very different. Cover is extremely heavy and terrain very steep. PH spotted the bull and four cows at almost 700 yards on the other side of a canyon. The stalk took over an hour before we intercepted them at the river. At one point we nearly stepped over a cliff in the thick brush. Finally, the bull was spotted laying down in a dead tree thicket just over a hundred yards away. My PH could barely see its horns and nose. I was on the sticks for an hour and twenty minutes before a shot presented itself ... briefly! The bull hunched up, ran to the river, stumbled, got up, turned and started to run upstream. "Better shoot him again!" So I did. Through the heart. First shot was behind the shoulder but a bit low. I wish all stalks could be as challenging as that one. And such a beautiful animal!

 

[Schaaf]

Most memorable experience was a Griz sow and 3 cubs come into camp while I was eating biscuits and jelly.

She didn’t want this smoke

 

[Nameless Range]

I can't pick just one. I'm a wordy bastard and I have to cheat. Chronologically here's my 22 season of memorable moments:


On this day I called a bull in from 250 yards to 50. He got wise when it came time to get into the timber where I was hidden. Glorious morning and feeling. I am truly glad he turned around.



On this snowy opening weekend, I shot a cow on top of a mountain, and was able to slide her a good half-mile down to a nasty 4 x 4 trail. My wife and father drove in and helped me cut her up and haul her the last couple hundred yards. Dad's in his mid seventies and was there since the beginning.



Pulled the boy outta school to chase pronghorn. Found none, but verified my belief that every time I pull my kids out of school to go hunting, I think I should do it more.





In a haunt of ours, my hunting partner shot a very nice bull. We took the trips to pack it out, and here on the last one I am drinking a coors and feeling lordly with a bloodstain on my back. Days with friends on the mountains that created us are priceless.






One evening after many pursuits, I shot a whitetail buck with a shotgun. It's quite cold here as the sun sets next to my truck with a buck in the back, and I have rolled a cigarette and am smoking it, feeling satisfied and overcome with gratefulness for a river bottom.





On this day with a second elk tag in my pocket, I jumped a bull early. I had fresh snow and set my mind to trackin him to his end. After many hours, my inner coward won and I forfeited. Bull elk are tougher than me, as is this nameless country I grew up hunting and it still fills me with awe.



I took the last hunt of the year with my daughter to go look for a whitetail doe. We didn't find one. She does not hunt, but has been hunting with me for her entire life. Where does time go and where will it go in the future? The line from the Lucero song "Cass" was in my head on this day: "Think how young our fathers were."





What is hunting but a pile of memorable moments? For a long time now, I have thought of memories as layers, much like one would view layers on a map in the world of GIS. These layers exist on geographies, and are often spatially coincident. Particularly if, like me, you have spent most of your life on the same chunks of earth. Much like layers of sediment, with time and pressure they become something entirely different, and so my memories are metamorphic and I don't know what they will be tomorrow, I just know they will be different than they were today.

 

[MinnesotaHunter]

Definitely accompanying @Gerald Martin on the stalk for his mountain goat. I don't care if I ever shoot another billy myself, but I won't miss an opportunity to tag along on a hunt.

 

[Deleted member 16014]

Mmm tough one. For one moment probably my son’s bear kill. We did a wet 13 mile day and lots of zigging and zagging on this bear throughout the evening before he got a good shot opportunity. We butchered until midnight, walked all night, had daylight breakfast at the truck, got him home to shower and off to school in time for lunch.

 

[OntarioHunter]

I can't pick just one. I'm a wordy bastard and I have to cheat. Chronologically here's my 22 season of memorable moments:


On this day I called a bull in from 250 yards to 50. He got wise when it came time to get into the timber where I was hidden. Glorious morning and feeling. I am truly glad he turned around.

View attachment 274202

On this snowy opening weekend, I shot a cow on top of a mountain, and was able to slide her a good half-mile down to a nasty 4 x 4 trail. My wife and father drove in and helped me cut her up and haul her the last couple hundred yards. Dad's in his mid seventies and was there since the beginning.

View attachment 274201View attachment 274200

Pulled the boy outta school to chase pronghorn. Found none, but verified my belief that every time I pull my kids out of school to go hunting, I think I should do it more.


View attachment 274199


In a haunt of ours, my hunting partner shot a very nice bull. We took the trips to pack it out, and here on the last one I am drinking a coors and feeling lordly with a bloodstain on my back. Days with friends on the mountains that created us are priceless.




View attachment 274198

One evening after many pursuits, I shot a whitetail buck with a shotgun. It's quite cold here as the sun sets next to my truck with a buck in the back, and I have rolled a cigarette and am smoking it, feeling satisfied and overcome with gratefulness for a river bottom.


View attachment 274197


On this day with a second elk tag in my pocket, I jumped a bull early. I had fresh snow and set my mind to trackin him to his end. After many hours, my inner coward won and I forfeited. Bull elk are tougher than me, as is this nameless country I grew up hunting and it still fills me with awe.
View attachment 274196


I took the last hunt of the year with my daughter to go look for a whitetail doe. We didn't find one. She does not hunt, but has been hunting with me for her entire life. Where does time go and where will it go in the future? The line from the Lucero song "Cass" was in my head on this day: "Think how young our fathers were."

View attachment 274195



What is hunting but a pile of memorable moments? For a long time now, I have thought of memories as layers, much like one would view layers on a map in the world of GIS. These layers exist on geographies, and are often spatially coincident. Particularly if, like me, you have spent most of your life on the same chunks of earth. Much like layers of sediment, with time and pressure they become something entirely different, and so my memories are metamorphic and I don't know what they will be tomorrow, I just know they will be different than they were today.

Enjoyed your story ... except the part about smoking. You've got a couple of lovely kids and wife. Look after them by looking after yourself.

 

[Nameless Range]

Enjoyed your story ... except the part about smoking. You've got a couple of lovely kids and wife. Look after them by looking after yourself.

I really don’t smoke except for maybe four or five cigs a year between victorious moments in hunting and a guys fishing trip I do annually.

Tobacco has never been something I have had a problem with, and I think I’ve had the same pack of rolls-your- owns in my truck glovebox for three years.

But you are right in that none would be better than even a few a year.

 

[TOGIE]

plenty of you are aware of my fall generally filled with internet whining about being tired.

but i think it will stand out for the rest of my life how lucky i was to have a very healthy happy son born in september and to still be able to go out and fill a buck and cow tag that very same hunting season. full freezer of meat and elk german sausage for the family to have at the annual german christmas eve feast.

my wife may remember it less fondly... her fault tho, she gave me permission.

 

[WildWill]

Lots of memories for 2022. Eleven plains game in Africa, a muley buck in Montana, my first pheasant triple there a few days later. I would say taking my nyala is at the top of the list. I wasn't budgeted for one but the lodge owner got me a deal I couldn't turn down. Didn't really expect to shoot anything. It was a property my PH had never hunted before so it was a crap shoot. Something different. We were on the coastal side of same mountain range we'd been hunting kudu. Very different. Cover is extremely heavy and terrain very steep. PH spotted the bull and four cows at almost 700 yards on the other side of a canyon. The stalk took over an hour before we intercepted them at the river. At one point we nearly stepped over a cliff in the thick brush. Finally, the bull was spotted laying down in a dead tree thicket just over a hundred yards away. My PH could barely see its horns and nose. I was on the sticks for an hour and twenty minutes before a shot presented itself ... briefly! The bull hunched up, ran to the river, stumbled, got up, turned and started to run upstream. "Better shoot him again!" So I did. Through the heart. First shot was behind the shoulder but a bit low. I wish all stalks could be as challenging as that one. And such a beautiful animal!
View attachment 274192
View attachment 274191

Is that a Nyala?

 

[Deleted member 16014]

What is hunting but a pile of memorable moments? For a long time now, I have thought of memories as layers, much like one would view layers on a map in the world of GIS. These layers exist on geographies, and are often spatially coincident. Particularly if, like me, you have spent most of your life on the same chunks of earth. Much like layers of sediment, with time and pressure they become something entirely different, and so my memories are metamorphic and I don't know what they will be tomorrow, I just know they will be different than they were today.

Growing up we hunted, more or less, the same set of ridges and draws from age 12 through college. You got to know them really well, which was very special.

Since then I've rarely hunted the same drainage or mountain more than a year or two in a row. I get some kind of experience-high from testing to see if the knowledge and skills work for a brand new stretch of mountains. The highs are high, but the intimacy with a landscape is very lacking.

Part of me wants to develop in my kids a relationship to place like I had as a boy. If one or all of us move, the hunting dries up, it gets overrun with people, etc. I worry that it might fall apart. Sure there are some hell holes I know will have some elk as long as there are elk, but those aren't usually the most inspiring landscapes; at least not to me. I think this is known as an identy crisis haha.

 

[OntarioHunter]

Is that a Nyala?

Yes. This is the muley buck.

And this is the triple.

 

[WildWill]

A

Yes. This is the muley buck.
View attachment 274247
And this is the triple.
View attachment 274248

Awesome! Bought my first South African hunting trip at a RMEF banquet this April that includes a nyala. Care if I send you a pm with some questions?

 

[noharleyyet]

A week chasing elk with Ken Jr near Hotchkiss, CO...

https://flic.kr/p/2nX7yBT

 

[steveshuntn1]

Taking a fall from a ladder stand the weekend before the archery opening and breaking my back. Having a major surgery to repair a lot of damage. Then being able to hunt from the ground only six weeks later and killing a small buck on my first sit! Thanks to help from my family I was able to get back out there for some much needed outdoor therapy.
I learned a few lessons about getting older and being more careful because I’m not 30 anymore. Also, that killing a trophy buck is not the real reason why I enjoy being in the woods, and I have made the “trophy buck” more important than it should be the last ten years or so. I’m more appreciative of my time in the outdoors now because I almost lost the ability to hunt and fish the way I have for decades. I won’t be forgetting the 2022 season.

 

[woods89]

Killed a good Tom and a mature buck last year here in southern MO. Both hunts were on pretty remote pieces of public land. Both hunts were exactly the kind of experience that keeps me going out.

What more can you ask for?

 

[Bluffgruff]

I will be detailing a number of 2022's most memorable moments in a future book, podcast, video series, and adventure game show titled The Affirmations of Pain, but reading through everyone else's posts, I really peaked in early January. I took my 6 year old elk hunting, she had a great time, never cried, and wants to go again. Bam! Most successful cow hunt ever!

 

[jpc01101]

First year bow hunting, got this velvet KY Whitetail on my own property (first deer I have killed on our property since we bought it) was quartering to, went exactly 40 yards and tipped over. Also got my first archery Antelope a month or so later! Was also lucky enough to have an antelope doe tag and got a doe antelope spot and stalk as well!

 

[Ben Long]

2022 for me was the year I drew a moose tag -- which went unpunched. But I had a great time trying. I cut fresh lion tracks which lead me to drag marks which lead me to this kill. Fresh enough to cut steaks off of, had I been so inclined.

 

[TheGrayRider]

Permanently kicked out of the “<1 Club” in 2022. So blessed, grateful, and thankful for all the organizations and their members that support wildlife, fishing, hunting, and the outdoors.



Arizona desert bighorn sheep. Kofa National Wildlife Refuge. Unit 45C. 12/13/2022. Happy hunting, TheGrayRider.