Merry Christmas

Just a short note to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

A Whirl of a Weekend

Well, Tadd and Mini are basking in the sun in Mexico and we are trying to recoup from a whirlwind weekend. The weather stinks today here in Red Bluff with cold and cloudy skies and 20 mph winds. Thanks everyone that made it to the wedding and I hope you all had as much fun as Michele and I.

I don't have any still photos of the Wedding, so if everyone can take a minute and email me your favorite shots I will put together a little slide show along with my video. I need some shots to fill in the video when I was shaking during the ceremony. Just ask Mindy, she saw my hands shaking and took my camera away from me for a minute or two. I'm not going to print any of the photos so you can reduce the size to less than 300 kbs and 800x600 it will be fine.

It's too cold outside for any hobby stuff today so I guess I will just recoup from the weekend and make plans for a more productive day tomorrow.

Pops

The Turkey is all gone.

We finished the last of the turkey on Saturday night, so it's back to pizza and beer. Doesn't sound like the diet I need to start after a big eating weekend. We did get a little exercise by cutting a load of firewood on Saturday. The cabin has dried out and ready for remodel, but it will have to wait until spring.

Wouldn 't you know that with all the hunting I did this fall that as soon as I get back to the cabin a big buck would show up and snub his nose at me. We were getting to leave this afternoon and the toad below showed up in his swollen neck and all. This guy is only a three point but has a huge body. Can't wait to see him next year.

Also included is a photo of my neighbor, Matt, with a four pound Eagle Lake trout he caught this morning. They got their limits in about two hours and all six fish were nice ones. The three largest were almost carbon copies.

Tadd and Mini are getting ready for the big event so I probably will not get a chance to post again until next week. Enjoy the photos.

Pops

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Did you know that the average person consumes 5000 calories on Thanksgiving day? I think Sam and I will be going Quail hunting next week.

I just got back from the cabin tonight after fixing a leak in the upstairs shower. We really wanted to remodel the cabin this spring. Doesn't every one like changing the sheet rock and flooring every two years? The valve in the shower had a defect in the casting and has probably been leaking for months. I've had nothing but troubles with Price Pfister valves and will probably switch over to Moen this time. I've replaced the cartridge three times in the downstairs shower and this defect in the master shower is the last straw.

On a good note, since the water has leaked all the way into the kitchen, we will rip out all of that ugly laminate flooring and install 18" tiles in the mud room, kitchen and great room. I never did like the laminate flooring and Sam will like the traction he can get on the tile. I don't think we will install the flooring until spring so we will have plenty of time to find a bargain on earthy big tiles. My first priority is drying out the whole house,replacing the valve and closing up the walls. I think I will only need to replace about three sheets of rock and then try to match the texture. Hell, I really didn't want to start the landscape this year anyway.

On Friday we are going to meet Ryder, Mindy, Sean, Tadd and Mini and go to the mountains to cut Christmas trees. This will be Ryder's first tree cutting experience and I will be taking the camera, of course. I'll post some photos this weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Some Photos of our Trip

I finally found time to download my camera and organized the photos. The Meeker Hotel was a destination in itself. There was a lot of history on the walls and I wish I had more time to just cruise the place and absorb all of the articles about Teddy Roosevelt and many other visitors through the years.

This is the lobby at the Meeker Hotel (how would you like to run into one of these in the wild)

Look at the mass on this bull

This was the typical terrain we hunted

Can't you see a big buck hanging out here.

You might have a tough time getting off this ridge.

Of course there was country that didn't quite match up to these photos, but I am still in awe over the beauty of the general area. Can't wait until next year.

Back to Rainy Calif. from sunny Colorado

We are all back home now, rested and ready to deal with reality. Rob and Tom’s reality is cutting and wrapping venison, mine is dealing with a mixture of memories of a great time with two fantastic friends and depression. There was never a dull moment around these two guys. If I wasn’t splitting a gut laughing at there antics, it was tossing and turning in our shared hotel room listening to father and son duel, snoring Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony in different octaves. Rob won, hands down, the night we had pizza for dinner. Tom argued the next morning that if it were his night on the roll-a-way cot he would have slept in the hallway. The trip overall was a success with a 66.66% success ratio. We spent most of our time roaming the roads checking out new areas and looking for a higher concentrations of deer. I did have my opportunities for a buck and in my case I proved that big bucks not only get big by being smart but being lucky and taking advantage of mistakes made by the pursuer. At the end of the last day the score was little buck-1, midsize buck-1, big buck-1 and steve-0. The little buck story was a story in itself and believe me I don’t have time to describe in detail the events leading to the decision to let him grow up a little. I named him pencil horn and your can take it from there. The medium buck story was more dramatic but still doesn’t compare with the Big Story.

The Big Story: Thursday morning started like many of the days before, except Rob decided to sleep in, leisurely eat breakfast and tour the town of Meeker on foot while Tom and I chased Mr. Big. The plan was to drop off Tom in the low lands so he could harvest a doe for freezer meat, which he purchased a left over doe tag, I would drive up to a spot that showed a lot of potential and was very close to the area that Rob had killed his buck.

I hiked to the top of the ridge where I could glass not only the canyon where I had parked, but also a plateau and bowl in the next canyon. When the sun was rising I realized that soon it would be difficult to watch the plateau since I was looking almost directly east. I noticed a doe grazing up the canyon headed for the bowl at about 600 yards and realizing that every deer I had seen in the morning was grazing up hill made me make the decision to sneak up the ridge and work into the bowl and glass the ridges for Mr. Big. I found a small ridge that lead to the base of the bowl that had lots of juniper for cover and quietly made my way to a point I could glass the upper bowl. The bowl had a hump in the middle that made a perfect vantage point using the hump to mask my advancement to deer in the lower sections of the bowl. I would take a couple of steps and glass the juniper and pinyon pines for a bedded buck.

I was nearing the head of the hump when all of a sudden I was staring eye to eye with Mr. Big. He was bedded under a pinyon tree on a grassy shelf about 130 yards up the hill. I was sure he could only see my head peaking over the hump so I slowly moved down to one knee, dropped my binoculars, shouldered my rifle, spread my new shooting sticks and placed my crosshairs right on his shoulder. His chocolate horns had ivory tips and were wider than his ears by several inches. My mind was racing, concentrating on his shoulder and just before I squeezed the trigger I noticed my horizontal crosshair was resting about an inch above the hump that was concealing my location. Knowing that my rifle was sighted in about an inch low at twenty five yards interrupted the thought process and created the break that Mr. Big needed. Slowly I adjusted my shooting sticks to elevate the bullets trajectory enough to miss the hump, but somewhere along the way I either clanked the sticks together or hit a rock with the tips of the stick. This slight sound was like a click before the bomb exploded and before I could say “Oh Shit” he was on his feet headed south. My first shot was a little to the right I think, because he turned east and headed for the rim of the bowl. With shooting stick flying one direction and the buck bounding across the slope the opposite direction the second shot didn’t find the mark either. I settled in for the next shot and found Mr. Big headed directly up a very steep wall, and after the recoil all was silent. No noise, no movement, just the beating of my heart and my first thought was that I had hit pay dirt. Knowing I had only one shot left, I began to worry that now the buck, if still alive, would appear near the top of the bowl and now in my state of mind I began to doubt my ability of a one shot kill. I waited about two minutes, which felt like hours, and then slowly pulled three shells from my shell holder, laid them on the ground and then quickly reloaded. After about an hour (five minutes maybe) I slowly made my way to the location I last saw the buck. The bench where he was bedded was on the northern exposure of the mountain and rarely saw the sun, so finding tracks was very difficult. I stomped my foot in the ground and could hardly see a print. I did about three circles of the area looking for tracks or blood and then hiked back down to where it all started the get better bearings. I started this time under the tree where it all started and finally found a set of tracks, followed them straight up the hill and over the top right behind one of the only trees that blocked my vision. That buck knew exactly how to get out without being seen and once over the top, turned directly into the wind for a clean escape. Smart or lucky, he won this round and the memory of this chase will be imprinted in my mind forever.

I have learned many lessons this year. The first is to get in better physical shape for hunting above the 6000 foot level and then I need to practice using shooting sticks. Hunting a new area for the first time has it challenges but next year with area knowledge, better physical shape and better shooting techniques maybe I can even the score.

Below is a short video recapping the Mr. Big event. Enjoy

Two Down One to Go

Saturday started early with dreams of big bucks and plenty of meat after seeing the big five point on Friday. We started with a drive down the canyon where we saw the big one, but didn't even jump a doe. In fact, we didn't even see a deer on opening morning. Later in the day we found a few deer down in the lower county, so to make the story short, we ended the day reconsidering dreams of holding out for a big one and discussing the options of killing a spork. (spike/fork) With day temps in the mid fifties and no snow in sight we decided to shoot the first legal buck we came across. Little did we know on Saturday, Sunday was going to be a different story.

Sunday Morning: We decided to checkout the newly found area and just cruise around looking for a few good spots to make a drive. We turned off the main road and twenty minutes later a group of does crossed the road with a buck in chase. He was a decent buck so we quickly decided he belonged to Rob. Tom jumped out, Rob jumped out and I stayed in the truck watching it all unfold like a real cluster ____. Tommy shouted shoot, I shouted shoot, Tommy shouted shoot again and Rob was quietly trying to see the buck through a very dirty scope. You had to be there to really appreciate the circus act going on. The buck started to trot across the clearing following the does and Tom didn't wait any longer. The first shot was a miss but his second was deadly. The buck only traveled twenty five yards and piled up across the deep ravine. We all thought it was just a forked horn but to our surprise he turned out to be a nice 4X2. After a nice drag across the head of the ravine we hung him in the closest juniper and boned him out. Next stop was town for ice and beer for a celebration.

After lunch and a short nap we headed back out to the same area for buck number two. It didn't take long and Rob's forked horn crossed the road chasing a bunch of does. Needless to say the old forked horn slayer did the duty on this poor little love sick teenager. I'm too tired and laughing to hard right now listening to Rob and Tom reliving the kill here in the hotel room. As I am typing this story Rob is trying to come up with a good excuse for his well placed shot.

Well, I'm laughing too hard and too tired to expand on the day so I will close here with dreams of big bucks again and high expectations for tomorrow. I am having problems with my power cord and if it takes a dump tomorrow this may be my last post until we get back. Enjoy the photos and hopefully we will have more stories tomorrow.

Made it to Meeker

We finally made it to Meeker. We even had time to go out and scout a couple of areas before dark. Axial Basin was a bust, no deer and a gazillion camps. We went to another area and found a few does and one really good buck, which I think was a five point. We made a plan for tomorrow and got back to the hotel for a great dinner. It's getting late and I need to get a few things ready for tomorrow and make a few calls so I'll keep it short. Below is a picture of one of the canyons we will be hunting tomorrow.

Less than 10 hrs. and I'm gone.

That's right. In less than 10 hours I will be off on a new adventure. I've been waiting for this day since I was fourteen years old. For years Rob and I have talked about a Mule Deer hunt in Colorado and we finally put it all together. I have spent the last few weeks packing, repacking, making lists, recycling aluminum cans, sighting in my rifle for the long shot and buying more ammo. I think I was ready a week ago and each day has been pure agony. I have a hard time falling to sleep with all those big bucks stopping at the top of the ridge, silhouetted in the setting sun for that last look, before vanishing into the high desert. I've spent countless hours on Google Earth flying through the draws and coolies looking for that perfect spot in Axial Basin to bag that trophy of a lifetime. The technology we have now is amazing. Google Earth in combination with my GPS has allowed me to mark the canyons and ridges that really look good and then I have created routes to allow us to find those spots in the dark without spending time scouting. I’ve saved copies on my laptop so I can compare Google Earth images to the real thing. I can't help thinking that a vision of a real trophy is just a pipe dream and I should just come down to earth and be happy with a decent forked horn.

One might question all the money and energy I have spent in preparation for the chance to kill poor little Bambi. It isn't the kill that get my juices flowing. It's the whole package, and believe me, the obsession of this whole package is what exemplifies the experience. I am taking more electronic gadgets on this hunt than one would think necessary, but that is part of the fun. You should buy stock in the bunny with all the batteries I have weighing my pack down. Tom and I will be looking at the saved images on my laptop and planning the hunts while lead foot Rob navigates I-80 across the salt flats.

Rob and I are leaving Chico about noon tomorrow and we will spend the first night at Tommy’s house in Pollock Pines. Poor Tom has to work Wednesday, so we will get started very early Thursday morning. The next stop is Nikki and Jeff’s cabin in Midway, Ut. We plan to leave Midway early for the five hour trip to Meeker, but we may take the long route to scout Axial Basin for a few hours.

With luck, the Meeker Hotel will have WIFI so I can keep everyone updated on the hunt. I will post a few photos but the video will have to wait until I get back home.

I’ve posted a few images of the area we will be hunting. Axial Basin is located between two mountain ranges and if we get some weather the deer should be migrating into the basin. The weather forecast shows a change of snow on Monday and again on Wednesday. Daytime highs will be in the mid 50’s and lows in the 20’s.

I’ll try to keep everyone posted.

Time for bed. Pops

The red lines with the dots are tracks I have entered with my GPS and the straight red lines mark the edge of the BLM lands.

A Flying Quail Snake Day

It started pretty slow this morning because I was planning on taking Terry H quail hunting and come to find out he didn't buy his hunting license. So I called Terry A to see what he was up to and he was just finishing a build on a new airplane. Needless to say I spent the next hour or two gluing together a couple of planes and by 1:oo PM we were out in the BLM burning up the batteries. It was kind of windy and hard to really practice the fun stuff so I decided to get a little bold and try to do something we have been talking about for about a year now. There is a sign on the edge of our flying field that has two 4x4 posts about four feet apart which makes a cool little target to fly through. It would be like training your dog to jump through a burning hoop except your dog is a RC plane flying about 15 mph through a hoop of non forgiving solid wood. The fun part is training your thumbs to fly the plane right at you and to complicate things, when the plane is flying at you, left is right and right is left. I always thought I was good at thinking backwards, well any way, the target is about 48 inches wide and about the same height but the grass is about a foot tall or so. There is no missing on this one, so I setup and did about 5 or 6 practice runs, pulling out at the last moment. My plane has been crashed and glued back together so many times and it wasn't really flying straight any more so now was the time to be a hero or die. Well, you guessed it, I did make it through the hoop but I was about three inches too high. The sign ripped the canopy right off and the plane nose dived into the grass. I made it, but not in one piece. I didn't see any structural damage so I just launched it again, with pieces of foam dangling from the fuselage. It could still fly, but barely. (This wasn't my new Blue Extra 300 SHP that I'm so proud of, but an old foamy ready for retirement)

We sat and laughed for a while, then I remembered I put my shotgun behind the seat and I still had enough time to chase a quail or two. I figured this was allot better than walking around the block and watching Sam pee on every bush and mail box. I was wearing shorts and tennis shoes, but that didn't matter because most of the grass was laying down and where I was going there are many trails. I had walked about two miles down the river then up a ravine and was headed back to the truck when Sam's head perked up a little and he headed down the hill to check out a large silver thorn bush. He was making his routine circle of the bush when all of a sudden he jumps up in the air like a goblin just booed him. Immediately I heard the buzzing of a pissed off rattle snake. Sam has never seen a rattle snake so I was a little concerned about what his next move would be. I was screaming at Sam, the rattlesnake was screaming at him too but being a well trained dog he came back to me, looking over his shoulder thinking " what the hell is that". When Sam was clear someone from above unloaded a couple of volleys of number eights and the story ended. (seven rattles and a button) My first thought was "this is a sure sign of global warming, rattle snakes should be hibernating now". My second thought was "shorts and tennis shoes". Time to go home and make dinner for my wife was the next thought. The quail eluded me, the sign ripped off my canopy and a rattle snake sent me home to make dinner for my over worked wife. As luck would have it, when I mentioned that spaghetti sounded good for dinner, Michele said that lasagna was already in the oven. Such is the live of a retired old fart.

To keep up the exercise plan, I am meeting Rob tomorrow at his Pheasant Club and we will certainly have pheasant for dinner. I'm taking my video camera so maybe I can post a short movie with Sam in action. Stay tuned for more adventures.

Jody's Birthday Present

Ok, I admit it. I'm in the worse physical shape I have ever been in my life and after talking to Jody on his birthday I promised to start walking. Jody and Michele's concern is my poor physical condition and my trip to Colorado. I agree, I'm a little on the heavy side and walking up and down hills at 7000 ft may be of some concern and I guess it is never too late to start. So, promises are easy to make but sometimes hard to follow through, especially when no one is around to hold me accountable. I got off the phone with Jody and grabbed my GPS and headed around the block. Being Mr. Techno now, I decided to log my exercise and to prove it I will be posting my progress. My first walk was 1.5 mi with an average speed of 3.6 mph. Sam even had his tongue hanging out when we got back. My GPS has some cool features, such as viewing my track on Google Earth (cool), and reports that show the profile of the track (elevation change) attached is a jpeg of my track in GE and a page in mapsource showing my progress. I guess I started before all the satellites were locked on and the first leg of the walk was missing, which means I actually walked more than 1.5 miles. You probably think I am bored to go to all this trouble but it is still dark outside, the wind is blowing and a light rain is falling. What better time to blog. I will keep everyone updated, which will probably make me stay with the program.
BYW, Cabelas is opening a new store in Reno on Nov. 14th and I got a special invitation, with discounts, to the opening day event. I guess I have spent too much money with them this year.

If you click on the images they will pop up in a new screen so you can get a little more detail. I'm sure you are interested enough to want to see every turn in the road. LOL

13 more days

Well, it is only 13 more days and Rob, Tommy and I are headed for Colorado for the final chance of the year to fill the freezer with venison. I feel like I am in a time warp right now waiting for the big day to come. I still have a few things to get ready but basically I am chomping at the bit to get going. We are really ruffing it on this trip, since the weather can be really brutial this time of year. We are staying at the Meeker Hotel which was built in 1896. Teddy Roosevelt stayed at the Hotel from time to time and I guess the main lobby has lots of history on the walls. The area we will be hunting is about a 30 minute drive north of Meeker. We hope that this will be the start of a family tradition and something to look forward to each year. I hope I can generate enough interest so more members of the family can join us next year. When this adventure is over I can then concentrate on helping with Tadd and Minnie's wedding, which is just around the corner.

Spring Smallmouth at Lake Almanor

Just thought I would post a video of Rob and I bed fishing for smallmouths at Lake Almanor. This is my first video published on youtube and you can tell by how rough it is. Enjoy

Hello Everyone, welcome to my world

I decided this morning to start a blog on my Hunting and Fishing adventures. As probably everyone knows, I'm getting ready for my first out of state hunting trip and my dear wife is claiming I am total abscessed with this new adventure. I totally agree. I'm taking a laptop with me to Colorado and hopefully I can post some photos, if Meeker has a hot spot somewhere. For now I am just posting a few photos of the bucks I saw before bow season and a video or two. It’s been a painful season so far and I hope Colorado will bring a successful close the my Deer Hunting season. I’ll probably post a few photos in the next week to work out the wrinkles of my first blog.