Better late than never I suppose. Finally back East of the Mississippi... Thesis presentations over. I have time to breathe and reflect on the fall. Some of you are FB friends and may have seen some pics before. I thought I'd share a photo diary of the trips we went on this fall with minimal dialogue. I'll try and answer questions but don't have the energy to do a full write up for each trip individually. Given that several hunts were rifle hunts, I decided the Water Cooler is the best place for this. Started Aug 22 this year. I got off work at 430PM in Birmingham, AL. Got in the truck and started driving (picking up my buddy Tyler in Nashville for the trip). We drove straight through over night making camp in Wyoming the next afternoon around 3PM. LONG Haul. Up First was 7 days of bowhunting antelope on public land in NE Wyoming. Saw zero other hunters the entire week, and several thousand antelope (majority being on private land though). The goal for the trip was to get Tyler his first antelope as I had already killed one back in 08. He finally connected on day 5 after 3 blown opportunities. I got to full draw 3 times, missed twice so I had my opportunities as well. Great week of hunting.
I loaded the truck up with enough hunting/camping gear for 3 months. I planned to sleep in the truck myself and brought a small pup tent along for Tyler for this first week. Surprisingly comfortable with the cot. I got to 10 yards from this stud Mule Deer two days before the deer opener. Never fails. This was strictly a spot/stalk public land hunt with minimal decoying mixed in. Special thanks to Dustin (Dubbya who now owns Bighorn Outfitters) for helping me with the logistics of this trip. Dustin has amazing success with his hunters and if you are looking to head west for a Wyoming hunt, I'd start and finish my search with him. Great guy and great to finally meet him in person.
Wyoming Road Block... After we got Tyler's goat to the taxidermist and meat locker (donated to local food bank) the trip was wrapping up. I wasn't too worried about not filling my tag as I planned to now just return during rifle season. More on that later though. I dropped tyler at the airport and drove another 9 hrs NW to stay with my friend Hunter in Missoula, MT. I left my truck with him for the next 3 weeks and I flew out the next day for Anchorage Alaska for my next leg of the trip.
Once in Anchorage, I was back with my good friend Brad as we finished the final prep for our planned 15 day Moose hunt. I also got in a few job interviews in Anchorage that first week while in town. 15 day do it yourself backcountry trips take a TON of planning. Even the food is hard to plan out lol. Our Moose hunt was based out of Dillingham, so we had to air freight all of our gear there a week in advance to be able to fly it out into the field with us. 500+ lbs of a raft, tent, cots, chairs, camping gear, cook wear, waders, boots, packs, etc... It literally takes a fork lift to handle the amount of gear necessary for such a trip. We finally flew out to Dillingham on Sept 5, opening day of moose season. We planned to hunt the highest lake in a drainage but as luck would have it the pilot actually dropped two other hunters on our planned lake the day before our arrival. We scrambled for Plan B and C and landed about 10 miles further down the drainage on a different lake. Our plan was to hunt the lake for a week, then raft out to the Bering Sea during week two to be picked up on the ocean. On our arrival in Dillingham, we loaded up the bush pilot's beaver and were off into the field. We were hoping to find the guy who dropped this shed two years prior.
As the pilot buzzed off into the distance, we were alone for the foreseeable future. Weather was HORRIBLE this trip. I've had extremely good luck weather wise so far on AK trips so I guess I was due. Out of the 10 days we were afield, it rained all 10. Winds never dipped below 20 mph for more than 30 minutes at a time. A typhoon actually came up from Japan and slammed us around day 8 or 9 with 80+ MPH winds. Our tent was rated for 100 MPH winds called a "Bomb Shelter" and the storm got so back it literally buckled the poles and collapsed the tent on us. We had to get up every 30 minutes that night to redrive the stakes into the ground to keep from blowing away. Brad was a resident of AK so he would be bowhunting for Brown bear as I bowhunted for Moose the first week. He had a moose tag as well. My season ended Sept 15 but he could hunt til the 20th so we planned to stay and get his moose as the rut gets better the later it gets. Several close calls with bears but no cigar. We got to 60 yards of a nice boar on day 4 but couldn't seal the deal before it began to get dark. We had to back out as the last place you want to be in the darkness is the same alder patch a 9' bear is hanging out.
We saw 4-5 moose this trip and 6-7 brown bears. Horrible hunting conditions and we were honestly socked in the tent for 16+ hours every day. Pretty tough mentally as the trip wore on. Still had beautiful scenery though.
As the week wore on and the rain kept pouring... We quickly realized floating out would be an extremely dangerous endeavor. The river was nearly out of its banks, very swift current, and log jams everywhere as the water level rose. We elected to stick with the lake for the entire 10 day season I had to hunt. As my season came to a close, we had enough of the weather. Brad still had an unused Dall sheep tag that was also good until the 20th (must be nice to be a resident huh)... We decided to call out for an early flight and scramble together a last minute sheep hunt in better weather. As we broke down camp a red fox came trotting by and I got my first fox kill 30 minutes before the plane arrived, with my bow at that! Amazing trip, but toughest hunting I've ever experienced. With no opps at a moose, we were disappointed but optimistic for what the sheep mountains had in store. We got back to Dillingham, regrouped our gear, moved our flights to Anchorage forward a few days, and flew back to Brads house. 20 minutes later we were repacked for the sheep mountains and left for the 6 hour drive north. We hit the fall colors perfectly on the drive, best scenery of the year for me. We got to Delta Junction and met with the pilot we planned to have us flown in. No dice. The weather followed us apparently and 50 MPH winds made for no flights into the mountains. Now we are 3 days from the close of season and had to do a walk in hunt from the road. Not very hopeful but we already came so let's see what we can find.
The unit his sheep tag was good for was nearly 50 miles by 50 miles... HUGE country. lol We picked a glacier drainage, parked at the road and strapped up the boots. The hunting gods finally shined on us and I spotted a ram not 3 miles from the truck. It was miles up the mountain, and darkness was approaching so we hiked halfway up and setup camp hoping to relocate him the next morning. I awoke to some pretty surreal scenery.
In our scramble to repack, I forgot my rain gear... so my only pair of pants for the trip were drenched the first day... I elected to not even wear them the next day with temps in the 30s the next morning. So I rocked the man leggings the rest of the way up the mountain.
We relocate the ram and his 4 buddies once on top, but we had a problem. A band of 30 ewes/lambs were 200 yards below us between us and the rams. We wait them out and luckily they feed over the backside into the far drainage not taking the rams with them. We follow the sheep trail up the switchback to stay out of the sight of the rams.. Two scree slides and half a mile later we crawled the last 200 yards into range of the ram to begin studying whether he would be legal or not. They must be full curl and if you shoot one 15/16s they can take your gun, camo, packs, everything. High stakes hunting kind of. We watch the ram bedded/sleeping for 30 minutes before we decide he is probably legal. We knew he was, were just scared to the repercussions if he wasn't. As he stood, Brad drilled him at 180 yards with his .243 and he made it about 30 yards before collapsing. I filmed the whole trip and got great footage of the kill shot. As we got to the ram we realized how dumb we were. It was a 9.5 yo 37.5" STUD ram, likely the biggest from this unit the whole year.
Two hours later we had the ram deboned and skinned out. Brad wanted a full body mount, so with camp gear, 80+ lbs of meat, an entire body cape and the skull... we were rocking 120-150 lb packs for the walk out. SUPER dangerous navigating down the hill, close to a 50-60 degree incline at places with nothing but loose gravel. We made it down to the glacier, and dropped camp gear to lighten the load and make it to the truck. We arrived around midnight, slept and went back the next morning for camp gear. When it was all said and done, we were back to the truck 29 hours later with a 38" ram on a walk in hunt. I've never heard of this before lol. Amazing feat, I was super proud for Brad.
That's all for now, I'm off to grab lunch and celebratory beers with the guys for finishing the thesis projects. I'll finish up the thread later today. Still have two archery elk, a rifle antelope, two rifle mule deer kills, and a rifle 361" elk left.
Awesome. It's great to see the story lines behind the pictures I kept seeing on FB all this fall (including why you were wearing the man leggings :D ). You are seriously living the dream and doing it right (doing it while you're young). I can see why you have little to no motivation to whitetail stand hunt anymore Just unreal. You had an awesome season and can't wait for the stories behind the rest.
