Pink camo, #dadbodhunter, and a whole lotta stupid!

D’s Friday

At sunrise I pulled out of camp with my full camp needs minus food and my tent which we’re going to the new camp. Weight wise that’s all the llamas could carry so I had all of my stuff for the pack out with the two llamas. 6.5 miles to the truck. Considering coming back in depending on the time to the trailhead and rest for the llamas.
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About two miles into the hike I ran into a herd of elk with a 5x5 bigger than mine and got to take a few photos.
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At about the three mile mark I noticed Otto lay down. Beau’s llamas are amazing and extremely well trained. This was not normal. I had separated their leads at every water crossing to give them plenty of water and breaks. If they are tied together the llamas in the back just get dragged across the water.
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We made it a bit further and had a good place for a long break. I pulled Otto’s bags off him to check and make sure everything was ok. I tightened up the bags and put the bags back on his saddle. We were a little over 3 miles from the truck at this time. He was doing well for about a mile and I thought we were home free but then the last two or so miles took on a turn for the worse.

Otto laid down a couple more times. Each time I would pull the bags off with half the meat from my bull, check them, adjust as necessary and reload them. This happened three times in a half mile and I was getting smoked.

I decided that I could use a break and I would give the llamas an hour or two break and sent an inreach message to the guys that I wouldn’t be coming back in that night.

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It was painful to sit that long but I knew it was good for the llamas. My toe (the one I smashed last fall) was throbbing. Every time I stepped it sent shooting pain through my foot. I’ll save the close up pics but that nail is still not grown back all the way so as it would hit the front of the boot on downhills it would dig into the nerves. It was already changing color at that point.

After an hour and a half I loaded both llamas back up, with roughly 2 miles to go. We started out well and covered about a half a mile before Otto tapped out.
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I was about 1.5 miles from camp and had enough at that point. I checked the meat bags off the side of the path and Otto stood right up with some help. He cooperated and we hiked the meat on rebel to the truck. Gave them pellets and water and took the saddles off for a while.

At this point I was messaging back and fourth and we figured out that somehow we ended up with Otto on a hunting trip but he is only 2 and can’t handle anything over 80lbs. We were aware we needed to keep his packs close to 80 but it wasn’t originally made clear that it was a hard and fast number.

Beau had just gotten back into town and was amazingly helpful working through everything and figuring out what was going on via text. We ended up setting a time to drive out and go swap llamas with Beau for the heavy duty meat haulers we should have had. Minor mistake and Beau went above and beyond to make it right.

After the long break Rebel and Otto (unsaddled) went back up to retrieve the two meat bags. That trip went well and we turned around and got ready to go meet Beau.

Then I realized that I did not have J’s key and over inreach found out he didn’t have a spare, and the llama trailer was hooked to his truck. Luckily my truck is fully loaded with gear and I’ve had to do similar things before but needless to say I got the trailer switched to my truck.
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I took the trailer to meet Beau and we swapped out these two llamas for 3 new heavy hitters. With two bull tags left to go and rougher country than we expected this came in handy.
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Got the llamas all ready for bed and then slept in the bed of my truck for the night.
 
Come on we live in the age of binge watching shows, there is no patience in this generation. Ready for the next installment of the trip to be told!
 
W&J Friday:

They left camp at sunrise as well and worked over the ridge above camp. They slow rolled through some great elk country about 2 miles. They didn’t see anything on their way down but saw some smoke and heard chainsaws.

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There was a fire that popped up opening day but we thought it was put out. They had flown in a fire crew and continued to dump water throughout the day.
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They set up camp and got ready to go check out another area on the opposite side of the valley.

They hiked about a mile from the new camp and set up on a hillside and started calling. A bull came out shortly and came into the sweet sweet song of the little primos bugle tube. This one responded a bit and came right into around 80 yards again before catching their wind. He made the fatal mistake of stalling to look back and J commenced the fire fight. There were more than 2 shots fired and less than ten but the bull did expire and was a very unique one at that. The ol 3*6!IMG_8575_Original.jpeg
 
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They saw this guy as well.

They finished up cutting the bull and took the first load back to camp and picked up Frankie to bring a second load. They were able to get everything on that second trip and had another late night getting all finished up near midnight.
 
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