Update to the hunt: me and my dad went up just this past opening weekend to get a feel for how it would be, and it was actually pretty eventful.
We got there late thursday night and camped at the trail head, then backpacked in friday morning. We weren't exactly going far, but we still saw moose, deer, and some nice bull elk on the way up. No bucks though, and the weather wasn't exactly great and we lost a lot of glassing opportunity, so made camp in the afternoon. That evening with clearer skies me and my dad split ridges and went to glass- elk were going crazy below me and my dad (different elk). Saw plenty of deer far away, but no buck that I could notice. The next morning we wake up, and my dad goes not 300 yards from camp, while I kind of went down a ridge finger to maybe catch some deer out feeding. After seeing just the same does we saw last night, we head back to camp and we meet our new friend. A pretty small bear had gotten into our food ( we hung it the night before but just left it on a tree when we left camp in the morning, clearly a mistake).
This thing tries to come up to us, so we kind of try to scare it and it climbed up a tree, so my dad sprayed it. It didn't like that and finally went off. So after that we decide to head to a different area my dads relative of a friend something something who lives up there told us about. We meet some elk hunters at the trail head, resident and non resident, they're super nice, tell us they've seen some bucks up there, and we head our separate ways up the mountain. Me and my dad accidently get off the beaten trail and our bush wacking and after a while we decide we need to turn around, and we find a trail that takes us back to where we took the wrong turn. From there we're headed up when we meet 2 more guys packing out a great? good 4 point they just shot up there. They said there was still some bucks up there. Unfortunately due to our detour we don't have time to hunt the evening so we just camp and wake up nice and early sunday. We leave camp and head up the mountain even more and it's rather uneventful. My dad said he saw a big black bear and an elk, while I saw, granted the biggest 2 point I'll probably ever see, at the very almost tippy top of the mountain. It was still a 2 point, and I had school monday, so we decide to just pack up and head down. Also at least 3 deer were killed where we just were, which could explain why the basin seemed so empty.
There's also a small chance the 2 point might've been bigger then I thought since a screw for one of the tripod legs fell out and using a spotter on top of a backpack to look up 1200 vertical feet isn't easy. But regardless the hunt was super fun. I, of course, have been asking my dad to go back up, we made plans for that last week in September, but my dad took an absolute beating up there and is also pretty bad at making up his mind. For anyone wondering, he ended up turning his Utah bull elk tag back in. And me and him went in and bought a 300 win mag.
It's been super fun hunting in Wyoming, especially with a tag I might not ever get again. And it seems this year has been better then the last few in terms of buck quality. Hopefully I can get back up there and kill a BOAL (before any of you nasty WKR steal it)
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