Back from Meeker

The hunting was so bad in Meeker I couldn't even hunt down a shrink to deal with my depression so we had to rely on Jack to ease the pain of scouting and hunting a total of five days before we even spotted the first doe.  We did have a nice bull elk trot by us on opening morning which was the only emotional high we had for the first three days of hunting.  I guess the problem started last winter when the deep snows caused a 40% die off of the deer herd.  With deep snow and a lack of food source the other 60% migrated to private ranches and survived by sharing the rancher's feed with the local cattle population.   It appeared that the deer stayed on private ranches and why wouldn't they, the food and water was abundant.  We covered every inch of the two zones we were licensed to hunt and only found a hand full of deer spread out over hundreds of miles of public land.  We did find a few deer in the Crosss Mountain area which was over a 100 mile round trip from our bunkhouse in Meeker.  One day while traveling back to Meeker from Cross Mountain we passed by a private ranch about 3:00 in the afternoon  and we counted over 80 deer feeding in one field.  A truck with two hunters entered the field and drove directly towards the herd and they parted just like the Red Sea and Moses and then gathered back together after the truck left the  field.  

There were a few deer killed in our zones, but all were on private ranches.  After 7 days of hunting we threw in the towel and headed home to go steelhead fishing on the Trinity River.  The buck below was Kyle's first buck and boy what a dandy.  Larry, the super guy that rented us the bunkhouse guided Kyle on his first hunt on a private ranch.  The other photo is a cool 4x3 that was killed by a lady from Wisconsin on the Louisiana Purchase Outfitters ranch.  This buck only cost her $3900.  At that price you can feed the herd a lot of hay through the winter.  The bailing twine tangled in his horns is proof that this buck prefers bales of hay instead of sage brush.  

Sorry I didn't post to the blog from Meeker, but when you have nothing to write about and Mr. Daniels is treating your depression keying up the computer is pretty low on my list of fun things.  Maybe I'll have more to write about when we get back from the Trinity River.