Montana 2020

[hobbes]

On the road again.

 

[hobbes]

We got a couple hours of bird hunting in this evening, but no roosters. Finn pointed two hens. I hunted a couple new spots that looked good, but no birds. That's two places we won't hunt in the morning. We'll be hitting some places tomorrow that I've hunted before, so should kill some birds. We did see a couple big Bunches of sharpies but not where we could hunt.





Look who feels entitled to lay on the bed

 

[hobbes]

We bird hunted pretty much all day today. We only killed three roosters. In addition to those, I lost a rooster that still had his legs when he went down and Finn could not locate it. We each missed a rooster too.

The sun never made it out today due to a constant heavy fog that maintained a heavy frost all day. Apparently that's terrible scenting conditions because Finn wasn't his usual self on smelling birds.

Finn was a lifesaver though. He ran down one of my birds that was jumping and running from him in a big wide arc through a knee deep grass. I could tell Finn was wearing out but he was finally able to catch him. My buddy's one bird was a runner too that had buried up in some grass that we struggled to find until Finn finally located him on a second pass through and drug him out from under the grass still alive.

Finn is beat and pretty sore. He always covers a lot more ground than us and he's running face first through all that ice covered brush. Not to mention he's dragging frosty weeds and brush over his bare nuts all day? That's gotta hurt. He may not appreciate it, but it's time to have those babies removed.

I did try to put the sneak on a big coyote just before dark by slipping over a hill, but he was apparently coming my way and I spotted ears and half his head at 75 yards sky lined looking at me. I tried to run to the top for a shot but he put it in high gear when he saw me again.


My buddy:

 

[hobbes]

One rooster this morning. Eating lunch then on our way home. Tough hunt, but I'll do it again.

 

[hobbes]

This was the first bit of sunshine that we'd seen in a couple days and it was on our way home.
Same birds as before but my big head.

 

[Mzzy]

I'll add to this as the rest of the season progresses. I've went ahead and included most things from spring 2020 up until now.

Montana 2020

Besides all the other craziness of 2020, hunting season has been about normal for me this year. I started the 2020 season off on turkeys in Montana in April. I finished that off in the SD Blackhills in May.

I bought a used 2012 Tundra to use in place of my 2006 Tacoma that my youngest son is now driving. I feel sorry for the Tacoma.

Elk rubs always pop out at me while hunting turkeys.

Deadheads are always interesting but this one was a little too old and chewed on for me to carry it out:

My favorite photo from turkey season of my Blackhills bird:

Congrats!!

 

[hobbes]

I glassed some country for cow elk this evening but saw only deer. There is a lot of country that I can't see. I'm sure there are at least a few elk around.

I'm taking Friday off and planning to hunt Friday and Saturday. However, I'm torn between looking for roosters with one of the dogs or looking for a cow. I'd really like a freezer of elk but pheasant runs out January 1st. My cow tag goes to January 15th and the dogs are practically begging to hunt.

I may look for elk on Friday and do a crazy drive for a day of pheasant hunting on Saturday. Of course that would be changed if elk hunting went well on Friday.

 

[hobbes]

I didn't find any elk on Friday and my planned pheasant run was cancelled.

I have been helping my son set a scope up on an AR. I'm not very familiar with ARs and prefer a bolt action myself. We shot some yesterday but the scope needs a rail riser and was uncomfortable even with the high rings.

Remember I said I'm not too familiar with an AR. I wasn't thinking and learned the hard way where not to stand. In case you ever wondered.....a shell casing spit out of an AR between your coat collar and neck will burn and peel skin when you grab it and yank it out of your collar.


I did find a 1" rail riser today. I'd hoped for a 1/2" so may have to drop back to lower rings. I'm going to mount it soon and see. I also got lucky and found one last box of small rifle primers.

 

[hobbes]

The scope on the AR ended up at a height that we both liked, so I dialed it back in today at lunch. This is 5 shots at 100 yards from a not so good rest on my tailgate. I bumped it up an inch and a half afterwards. I had to tape up a quick target because I didn't bring enough with me. It's hard to not rip through the ammo with an AR.

I also worked on the European mounts this evening by scraping off most of the leftover bits of flesh and applying the peroxide creme with a brush then wrapping in plastic wrap. I'll remove wrap and wash off tomorrow.






I cooked mule deer steaks this evening in the cast iron.




I'm going to try to make a drive in the morning to glass for a cow elk at daylight. If I don't see anything, I'm going to try to convince myself to actually hike/hunt a loop that let's me look at country that I can't glass. I've burned through the antelope steaks and I'm more than halfway through the mule deer steaks. I've got plenty of deer burger left, but a cow elk would be great in the freezer. I wish I wasn't so lazy at this time of year.

My oldest son, Isaac, and I are heading out Saturday through Tuesday to hunt pheasants and coyotes. He's more interested in yotes and I'm more interested in roosters. We'll probably try pheasants early and coyotes mid day to evening. I've not done a lot of coyote calling, so we'll see how it goes.

 

[hobbes]

I had a fairly short window to hunt this morning. I needed to find elk close to my glassing point. I found some elk but not within range of the time that I had allotted. They were more than 3.5 miles straight line from my glassing point and would have been a 3 mile hike with 1800 ft of climb. That's very doable just not in the window that I had. I'll go after them next week after our pheasant/coyote hunt. I'll be up there at daylight and not glassing from 3.5 miles.

I suspect these were three stragglers on the skyline and there were more in the timber. They fed left to right and down into the timber.


The euros may need a little more peroxide creme, but they'll probably whiten more given a few days. They look whiter in the photo than what they are. Mine on the left and Isaac's on the right:

 

[hobbes]

We left out early this morning. I had lots of help staying awake:


The help hadn't improved much by mid-morning


We were able to hit a couple spots today. Isaac had shots at three roosters but ended up with only one. We did one coyote set up just before dark. We had a couple howling but they were a long way.






We are going to start tomorrow with a couple coyote set ups followed by trying to shoot some roosters then back to the coyotes. I'm not terribly experienced with calling coyotes so we'll see how it goes.

 

[hobbes]

We woke to a dusting of snow this morning and started the day off trying to call in a coyote.


We were successful no more (probably less) than 10 minutes into our third stand. A small (25 lb) female coyote appeared out of nowhere at 100 yards and stopped at around 90 yards. She stared for a 5 seconds or so while I tried to tell Isaac where it was. The coyote turned and started slowly bounding away about a second after he spotted it, but Isaac put her down about three bounds into her retreat at 96 yards. This is Isaac's first coyote and first one he's shot at with the new AR.

She stopped in the snow just in front of the cedar bush on the left side of the photo.


I took the photo above and the photo of Isaac just a few minutes before the coyote showed up.






We hung her up in a cottonwood and I skinned her.





We tried for some pheasants not too far away in a spot that I had a lot of confidence in but there has been cattle in there and they'd destroyed the cover. We saw two roosters and a pile of sharptails but no shot opportunities.

Afterwards we got in three more set ups for coyotes without any response. We had a total of seven set ups for coyotes with one being successful. We'll hunt the same way tomorrow in some new areas.

 

[hobbes]

Slow day today. The first stand had two coyotes sit and stare from probably a mile. We made one attempt at some roosters that didn't pan out and that only served to let the sun get higher before we went after coyotes again.
Our second coyote stand had us too exposed in the sun but there weren't any shadows at that time so we got the most background we could find. A coyote came barreling over a hill within 5 minutes and put the brakes on at around 310 yards. He had us pinpointed immediately and only looked at us for a few seconds before getting out of there.



We saw one more coyote around mid day but that was while driving. The sun and wind wasn't cooperating to find any shadows we always seemed to have a questionable wind or to get a good wind set up we were always in the sun.

We had a tailgate lunch around 1.


Our last stand.


I would like to stay another full day but we need to be home tomorrow evening. We'll hunt half a day tomorrow then drive home.

 

[Shayman]

This is an incredible thread

 

[hobbes]

We made it home safe this evening around 7:30 PM.

We made 4 or 5 stands for coyotes today and scored on the second stand after I looked left and a coyote had magically appeared. It was standing straight on and staring at 150 yards. I was able to point it out and Isaac was able to pivot the rifle and bipod to make a clean "bang flop" kill same as the one on Sunday. It was another female and while we didn't weigh this one, I'd guess a hair more than Sunday's. She was also a better looking coyote.

She's laying there in the yellow grass.













After a couple more set ups we were about to head for home when got lucky and found a badger that was wandering on a hillside. I've never really been too interested in a badger but Isaac had just mentioned the day before that he'd like a badger pelt and the ranchers typically want them killed, so we managed to get within 100 yards and Isaac had his badger. I don't think it's a very big one. It definitely looked bigger before he shot it. Holy heck do they stink!

 

[hobbes]

Today was the last day of bird season here in Montana and I was invited to hunt with a friend (and my pastor) that has access to some private land. The late season and low pheasant numbers made hunting tough. I was the lucky one of the two of us today and had two roosters hold and flush in range. I killed them both. In addition to the roosters, I was fortunate enough to get into some sharpies that were scattered in a grass field and held. I killed three of them.





I took this photo before killing the second rooster at the end of the day.



While 2020 is over, I'll add any additional hunting that I do during this 20/21 winter to this thread. My cow tag runs two more weeks and I'll likely hunt coyotes a little more.

 

[hobbes]

I live within a half mile or so of a creek bottom. I'm in the county surrounded by quite a few ago fields and pasture but the valley is gradually filling up with homes. The rate seems to be increasing exponentially. There are quite a few whitetails here but they are found on at least 99% private land with no access and this is a weapons restriction area. I would gladly hunt them with a bow but have nowhere to do so. My oldest son did have the opportunity to bowhunt on a place several years ago that will let a few kids hunt. That story can be found here:

First Bow Kill

On Tuesday my son Isaac and I hunted the weapons restriction area close to town that opened for whitetail deer on the 15th of August. This little buck was down within 30 yards after an 18 yard shot for Isaac’s first bow kill. Getting that first bow kill on a whitetail just before elk season...

www.rokslide.com

I often see a herd of does behind my house in the winter around 400 yards away. They are mostly surrounded by houses except the creek and some hay fields lay to the west. (Same rancher that let Isaac shoot his first deer with a bow). I glass them occasionally to look for bucks but normally they are just little guys.

I glassed them at lunch today and spotted this good buck. He's got nice long tines and nice brow tines. His left G2 is forked similar to a MD and his right main beam is broke off just in front of his G3. He's a good mature buck that I'd love to be able to bowhunt.

Here are some redneck photos through my spotting scope. The first one here is the clearest.

 

[hobbes]

I don't think I mentioned (maybe on purpose) that I fell on ice twice during our coyote hunt. The snow that I was hunting in during the deer season was mostly gone, but in random places it had melted and froze enough times to be ice. We had a dusting of fresh snow that morning that was just enough to hide the ice. We'd be walking along and step on unexpected ice and do a couple quick dance moves trying to stay upright. I went down pretty hard 10 minutes before Isaac shot the first coyote landing on my left elbow pretty hard. The bolt action 223 that I was carrying didn't hit the ground.....that time. When we got back to the truck we realized that we'd left his bipod laying where we'd taken photos of the coyote. I headed back and unfortunately carried the gun with me reasoning that there was liable to be a coyote standing where we'd been calling. I was trucking along when both feet went out from under me. I went down on my left side harder this time than the first time and I couldn't hang onto can the gun. It smacked the ground hard basically landing scope first. I went down fast but it seemed like the gun came off my shoulder and slapped the ground in slow motion. I watched it happening but couldn't stop it. I was again glad that I hadn't bolted a round in but was thinking 'dang I'll have to check zero on that's. Then I looked through it and saw that the scope had rotated around 20 degrees. I carried a shotgun after that and nothing besides the call on more open sets.

Today I adjusted the scope and found that the scope rings weren't as tight as they probably should have been. I reset it then used blue loktite on everything. Afterwards Isaac and I went out to dial it in while it snowed. I used some cheap fmj ammo to get it dialed in then dialed it in further with some hand loads that my dad had loaded for it a few years ago when he gave it to me.

Here is a pretty good three shot group at 100 yards shooting from a chair and resting on a sand bag and folded gun case on my tailgate. I'm not complaining. I adjusted an inch left afterwards and called it good. Hopefully I'll get to put it to work on a coyote soon.

 

[hobbes]

My plan was to look for a cow elk on Friday and try to call a coyote in Saturday with Isaac. Friday fell through though because there were too many things that came up on Thursday for my wife to take care of on her own on Friday, at least without me feeling bad. After hunting September through December, I start to look/feel like a selfish jackass for leaving when there are things that need doing. I also need to build some points up for April and May when I run full steam ahead after turkeys.

I did get out with Isaac this morning and did four coyote calling sets. We didn't see a single coyote. This is cool country, but I think that I like Eastern MT better for coyote hunting.

 

[hobbes]

Spotted the same whitetail buck behind my house today. They stayed bedded most of the day due to the high wind. I could see his head and antlers only. I'm going to have to get my hands on a phonescope and upgrade my spotter. The wind was so hard that I had to look through one of my back windows from in the house. I could see him good just looking through the spotter but trying to focus and zoom my phone wasn't working too good