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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
