what kind of weird hunting and fishing stuff did you do in college

[Nameless Range]

A different me used to hunt the hell out of Kelly Island by Missoula. You could shoot 5 whitetail with a bow.

Had a hunting buddy, and it required a river crossing. Had one pair of waders between my hunting partner and I. We were broke college students.

I’d cross, put the waders in a garbage bag. Tie a rope to the bag and at the end of the rope a rock. Throw him the rock across the river with rope attached, and he’d drag the bag across the river and wader-up.

Maybe not weird, but got a lot of weird looks at the fishing acccess. Particularly when we were dragging whitetail does riddled with arrow wounds across the Clark Fork River by the same rope we used to transport those waders. Dragging a dead animal across a river is different than you’d imagine if you have never done it before. Carcass Hydraulics are tricky.

I bet we did this 50 times. Took me 8 years to get a bachelors degree.

 

[Carl 9.3x62]

I did lots of shed hunting. Back then people thought that was weird. Kind of wish they still did.

I'm envious

 

[wa_archer]

Did a bit of duck hunting with @neffa3 when he would remember his shotgun. Mainly after late nights, a couple of which we were at parties and blizzard outside decided good idea one of us would stop drinking so he could drive. Had some awesome hunts. One day noticed ducks cutting bend in river due to high winds. We were out there with white trash bag camo and white deck chairs pass shooting mallards. limits in less than an hour. We definitely had to swim for some ducks or got soaked trying. one day I used a few goose decoys as bouyancy to kick out around a dead duck and corral it back to shore.

Got a couple blacktails, one of which i was soo hung over shot first thing in am and slept in passenger seat while my buddy drove around rest of day looking for another.

Should have done more for sure. I look back and feel like a wasted some of the best years that i could have been hunting. A little too focused chasing girls, sports, parties and studying a little.

 

[Coop]

The line between dumb and fun was pretty blurry in college. Waking up at 2am for an hour and a half drive and then floating 4 miles to set up decoys before sunrise was always a good time. That is until my buddy wrecked his rig with his boat in tow on the way home one day. Went out spotlighting for coyotes pretty often but I'm not sure we ever had any success with that. My roommates enjoyed hosting parties on a weekly basis, which I never cared much for. I killed a rattle snake while elk hunting the day before one of these parties...buried the head and curled the snake up in the corner by the front entrance of our house. Needless to say, I enjoyed that party much more than others.

 

[Pucky Freak]

I would use the dorm kitchen to cook pheasant and venison for friends, roommates, and whomever else wanted to try it. Eventually someone got the gall to steal my whole supply of packaged meat from the community freezer

 

[Gunner46]

I guess it was the time I was sitting atop a spike buck, flopped across the seat of my Yamaha 125, Rem 600 strapped across my back, and zipped past a deputy. Yeah, I got pulled over, but he was cool about it. Tossed the buck in the trunk and followed me back to the trailer park. My roommates & neighbors Freaked when he pulled into the parking space. Good man. I appreciate his help & understanding that that little buck was dinner, on the table, for the 3 of us.

 

[OntarioHunter]

Opening morning 1977 I started up my mountain just about ten minutes too soon and bumped the herd of elk in the dark. I expected them to be higher that early in the season. Continued on up to the top hoping to catch them before they crossed over into the inaccessible Twilight Zone Basin. About half way up I stopped for a breather, looked up, and a fine whitetail buck was looking at me. Shot just as he jumped. No blood but I thought I could smell something. At the top a big dry doe muley stood and looked at me so I dropped her. Made a pack out of her and headed for the car. Those damn forelegs nearly cut holes in my collar bones. I bent over as far as possible to get the weight off. Be darned if on the way down I didn't step on that dead buck. Gut shot. I dressed him and switched the tag so I could drag him out by his horns. Next day Dad came up with me and used his tag for the doe. I pulled her the rest of the way by her ears. His back was out so he couldn't help. I was all in that night and too beat to drive back to Missoula for class on Monday. After dinner the manager at the golf course called and asked if I was still there. "Tell him to get up here and shoot a couple of these elk from the park that are tearing up the greens every night." Next morning Dad and I were there at daybreak and I shot a huge cow (no bull in the bunch). Drove the truck right to her. Tuesday I was back in class. Wednesday the head of the history dept told me to drop by his office. "You missed class on Monday. Why?" I had to get an elk out. Why should he care? "You are one of the best students in the dept. But you need to make up your mind if you're going to be a scholar or a hunter." Hmmm. My response: "I've been told you were once a national level tennis player. Is that correct?" Looong silence. "I see where this is going. Get outta here." A couple years after my BA Dr Lindsey came home from his morning tennis match, sat down to read the paper, and never got up. Heart attack. In his fifties as I recall. Glad I stuck with hunting instead of tennis.

 

[Bambistew]

Not sure it was really crazy. But I'd only take 12 credits in the fall and no classes on Monday or Friday if I could help it. Learned my lesson the first year. My roommates all hunted and fished as well. All of us would go on grand adventures all year long. We killed 3-4 elk and deer a year plus a few antelope, a bear or two and everything that flew. We had 2 freezers and ate like kings. We'd stockpile trash bags of meat to grind in the freezer (to mix with the ducks/geese) One roommate had a commercial grinder with a 3hp motor and a throat you could lose an arm in.

We had some amazing trips and hunts for months every fall. Hunted east to west. North to south. Cranes, swans, Canada's, snows, ducks etc. Had piles of good grouse spots, a few places to shoot pheasants etc. And then there was the fishing. Same thing. Loved killing giant bows on the Missouri and reservoirs, But fished everywhere within 100 miles of Butte.

We easily logged as many days in the field as the classroom.

I'd say the craziest or most memorable trip was shooting 2 antelope bucks we spotted from the rim above the Powder river. Sneakily down and shooting them, then hiking them back indian backpack style about 2 miles to the rim. No GPS in those days and just crappy BLM maps. When we finally clawed out way up the gumbo cliffs, we realized we were a mile off and hiked the wrong ridge to the top. Drinking straight chocolate milk water out of the river because we were so hungover from the blue Curacao shots the "cute" bartender in Terry was serving us.

We shot a couple turkeys, 22-250 style, a limit of sharpies, sage hens and pheasants as well. All in long weekend. We killed an unknown number of silver bullets as well.

I had to take Calc 2 three times.

 

[hank4elk]

Kirk & I carried my bro and his bachelor party co-horts onto a party boat for a rockfishing trip, the day after his bachelor party...LOL

10 ft seas and the bite was on. We had to hang onto the rails on our knees, but we filled everyones sack. Every once in a while one would come up for fresh air and puke all over themselves.
Kirk & I had a blast, too. LOL
Beer in a hand or a bologna sammie, you wanna sammie? and they would hurl...LOL

I forgot all about that day. Guess that's another reason he treats me like crap.
And why I had a stand in ,just in case as his best man. LOL
Kirk ran off with his best buddies gal that day in his caddie and I walked out with the brides maid and never showed at the after party, at my house. LOL

 

[OntarioHunter]

Kirk & I carried my bro and his bachelor party co-horts onto a party boat for a rockfishing trip, the day after his bachelor party...LOL

10 ft seas and the bite was on. We had to hang onto the rails on our knees, but we filled everyones sack. Every once in a while one would come up for fresh air and puke all over themselves.
Kirk & I had a blast, too. LOL
Beer in a hand or a bologna sammie, you wanna sammie? and they would hurl...LOL

I forgot all about that day. Guess that's another reason he treats me like crap.
And why I had a stand in ,just in case as his best man. LOL
Kirk ran off with his best buddies gal that day in his caddie and I walked out with the brides maid and never showed at the after party, at my house. LOL

I'm surprised you guys didn't have photos up in the post office. Scary bunch.

 

[RyGuy]

I always kept my gear in the trunk of my car, thankfully nobody ever broke in or stole the thing. One time my front driver side wheel got stolen overnight, but the good stuff was still safe in the trunk.

I spent a night drinking with friends, called it a night “early” and laid my head down for 30 minutes before getting up and going deer hunting with my parents. Had whiskey burps all day.

I made a false wall to hide my guns in one of my apartment closets, because I couldn’t afford a gun safe.

Fresh out of college, I was still broke as hell and I found a fresh roadkill cow elk. Didn’t have time to butcher the whole thing, and she was pretty torn up from the impact, but the tenderloins were still good! Had two delicious dinners the next days.

 

[wyoelkfan15]

We used to have what we called Meat Offs at the house. Typically it was late fall during a football game day where folks would bring whatever meat they had shot that fall and we'd BBQ the heck out of it.

The one occasion that comes to mind as "weird" was one football Saturday we were grilling up an antelope I'd just taken. My buddy decided to spear the head on a ski pole and hang it on the fence on the walk up to the house. The party got big enough the cops had to come break it up, two hours before kickoff, some kind deputies walk up to the house past this speared antelope head and say "Hey wyoelkfan15, you need to break this party up, we've got some noise....and other complaints from the neighbors (officer takes a look at the speared head)". Yeah alright, we can do that, time to head to the stadium anyway. I seem to remember the Cowboys won that day and the backstrap was awesome off the grill!

 

[bigsky2]

Not me personally, but my dad shot a bear his freshman year in Missoula and skinned it out in his dorm room. Word got around campus pretty quickly and the game warden showed up at his door the next day. He checked the bear and my dad's license and went on his way.

 

[hank4elk]

I'm surprised you guys didn't have photos up in the post office. Scary bunch.

Pay back is tough love for a much larger older bro.
Amazing huh? I can pass a life scan clean. LOL

 

[Straight Arrow]

He checked the bear and my dad's license and went on his way.

Luckily no warden checked my roommate's license, as he shot a moose up on the popular Lava Lake Trail. He said it had "charged" him and he had no other option. He wanted to know if I was interested in returning to the scene that night to surreptitiously retrieve the moose. As my hunting license was too valuable to me, I declined ... but we did enjoy some great moose meat that year!
He was the same guy who when double dating up Hyalite Canyon, decided to show his passengers just how nimbly his Chevrolet Chevette could handle the corners and slid right off the road landing in Hyalite Creek. "No worries" he said as he tried to drive out to no avail. The story was a good laugh when we saw the photos of the tow truck extracting his prized road racer and the dampened couples!

 

[Benfromalbuquerque]

Pay back is tough love for a much larger older bro.
Amazing huh? I can pass a life scan clean. LOL

There is a difference between passing clean and passing because we weren’t convicted. But you know, that’s still clean because burden of proof was not met.

 

[hank4elk]

There is a difference between passing clean and passing because we weren’t convicted. But you know, that’s still clean because burden of proof was not met.

Never arrested even. I sat in some patrol cars, but walked.
2 speeding tickets in my life.

I have never claimed a clean conscience.

 

[2rocky]

I'd hunt for abalone in the rocks at the naked beach. And inside the breakwater of the bay at low tide.

Too bad all you found was bearded clams.....and horsenecks

 

[hank4elk]

Too bad all you found was bearded clams.....and horsenecks

They were on the beach.

I had ab pink shells a foot long from the Central Coast. Blacks,8". I never had to dive for abs even.
We'd canoe out to the sandspit @ Moron Bay and start a bonfire and gather cockles and bury them in seaweed on the fire.

 

[corndog1]

I shot a couple elk in college up in the Bridger's during the early nineties which seems really weird these days. Also, risked life and limb driving up to Hyalite to ice fish in a buddies van packed to the gill with dudes probably wearing big Johnson t shirts. The road during that time of year consisted of two three foot deep ruts in the ice