November Hunting Spree

[TheCougar]

I’m catching up here, but this November we are going on a whirlwind hunting adventure in NM and ID.

The plan is as follows:
Day 0: get back from work at 11pm and go to sleep
Day 1: drive from VA to Kansas City and stay with @skierjt
Day 2: drive from KC to NM
Day 3-6: my son @BunnyThumper has a good NM mule deer tag along with @HuntandFly
Day 7: We travel to ABQ, then he flies back to VA and I fly to Boise for my mule deer hunt with @skierjt
Day 8: I pick up a rental truck and Jeff’s cougar mount, then drive to his ranch.
Day 9: swap trucks, drive a trailer to central Oregon to drop off a side by side, pick up a side by side, drive to the hunting area to drop the trailer off. Then go back to Boise to pick up El Jeffe.
Day 10-15: My mule deer hunt
Day 16: Fly from Boise to NM to meet my nephew and my brother for my nephew’s mule deer hunt (the best hunt of the month).
17-19: Youth hunt
20-21: Drive back to VA
22: Arrive back home

 

[TheCougar]

Day 1 - the boy doing school work on the 15 hour drive to KC.

 

[TheCougar]

Day 2: Southern Colorado, driving through the Sangre De Cristos. Getting close - only a few more hours!

 

[TheCougar]

Day 3: well, this happened quickly. We drove almost 2 hours from camp to the hunting spot, in literal traffic up the mountain. I’ve never seen anything like it. When we parked at the trailhead, we were the only truck. While we were getting ready to walk in, two guys rolled up in a truck and parked next to us. They had e-bikes and we talked with them. They were really nice. We told them we were going to the end of the trail and they were too. I wasn’t going to go somewhere else, and the canyon was big enough for both hunting parties. Then we hiked in about 2.5 miles in the dark. After the first mile, the e-bike guys passed us and we talked to them again, briefly. We got to the end of the road on the glassing knob - we came in through the woods rather than on the road. I saw the orange hat of the e-bike guys, and we went to the edge of the rim and gave them about 200 yards of space. To my knowledge at the time, they were the only other ones on the ridge.

We set up on a glassing knob and 15 minutes later I had glassed up a really nice buck. He was at the edge of my son’s range, but was within his capabilities. We spent about 10 minutes trying to get set up for prone, but it wasn’t happening. We moved about 30 yards to the right and I found a spot for him to get prone. In the middle of the set up, I noticed a guy glassing in the oak brush about 50 yards away. I assumed it was one of the e-bike guys who had heard us making a ruckus and had come down to try and glass up what had my son so excited. I ignored them, thinking that I gave them space and they moved in on us after we found a buck. It turns out they were different hunters that hadn’t parked at the trailhead and I didn’t know were on the ridge. In hindsight, I feel like a jerk - but we didn’t know at the time, and I thought I had done due diligence to avoid them initially.

We got prone and my son made phenomenal shot - as good or better than I could have done. He hit the deer in the heart, and dropped him within about 50 yards. We made a follow up shot to make sure he was down. My son got it done on opening morning, despite incredible hunting pressure!!!

 

[Lurch12]

That’s quite the itinerary!
Seems like it starting off very well! Excited to follow along on your journey!

Let’s see some pics of the the boy and his kill

 

[TheCougar]

Our best guess is around a 150 buck, which is great for this hunt… let alone getting it done on opening morning!

 

[TheCougar]

We did a solid pack out. My son did great on the initial off trail uphill. Once we got on the road and did the 2.5 miles out, he was hurting. A lot!





My son eating his well earned snickers bar and talking trash bout how his deer is bigger than what I’m going to shoot.

 

[TheCougar]

We spent the next 4 days helping our friends try to fill their tags. After our initial success, our expectations were high. 4 days later and not a single buck bigger than a small 3x3, we started to realized how truly fortunate we were to get a great buck on opening morning. Matt finally got a stud buck, bigger than my son’s on the last morning, but we were already on the road to the airport when it happened.

 

[TheCougar]

At this point it should be noted that I had a side bet with my son, who currently holds the title of “Big Buck Hunter” by virtue of a great whitetail buck he shot on his own. He eeked out a 3/4 inch victory over my largest archery buck and has held the title for 2 years.






We decided that since we both had good buck tags, we would “up the ante”. The hunter who gets the largest buck gets a $25 coffee gift card and the loser has to purchase and wear a “Worlds Okayest Hunter” shirt and when asked, explain the shirt and that the other person is the “Big Buck Hunter” of the family and the uncontested champion.

After my son killed his buck, which is a great buck and a new family record, he decided to double the bet to a $50 gift card. He was so confident that he proceeded to talk trash for the next 4 days and try to get in my head. I was indeed worried. His buck is awesome and beating it would be very, very tough. He was really proud of his shot and his buck. Clearly, I had to work hard to beat him and humble the little champion.

 

[TheCougar]

Day 7: we drove back to ABQ, flew to Denver together, then he went back to Virginia and I went to Boise.





I picked up my buddy’s Cougar mount and the taxidermist showed me pictures of the deer from his daughter and nephew in the same unit I was hunting. He said the hunt was a grind, but I could get a 150 buck with a lot of work. It is a good tag, but the management is questionable and there is a lot of pressure and access issues. After picking up the cougar mount, I drove to eastern OR to his ranch and went to bed.

 

[TheCougar]

Day Ocho: this was going to be a long one. I started by driving to central Oregon towing a trailer, to drop off and pick up a side by side. Then I drove all the way back to ID to set up camp. By setting up camp, all I did was unhitch the trailer and pull out the side by side, then beat feet for Boise to pick up Jeff at the airport.

I started driving at 9am and finished driving around 9pm, only stopping to swap trailers and unload.

Jeff’s bag got lost by Alaska, again, so we couldn’t get back to camp that night. We got the bag around midnight, after it was loaded on the next flight, and got a hotel in town going to bed around 1am.

Of note, a King Ranch F350 sticks out a little too far in a Walmart parking space

 

[TheCougar]

Day 9: We woke up at 5am and drove out to a spot I had escouted, been confirmed by the wildlife biologist, and has more country than you could glass in a day. I didn’t know where the deer were, so this spot had access and visibility into multiple types of terrain and cover. It was my #1 spot and only one hunting camp around, with no one in it. The lack of hunting pressure was good, and a little disconcerting. No one I had talked to had hunted where I was going, or even mentioned it.

It was WINDY, so we set up in the leeward side of a ridge and glassed, initially only seeing 5 does. We planned to bounce down the ridge and look at more country. Jeff said he was going to walk down the ridge and hand glass in the wind (sans tripod) with his image stabilized binos. Scoffing him, sitting with my tripod mounted 15s behind a wind break, I told him “have fun with that”.

You can guess what happened next. The 5 does that we had spotted earlier had picked up a forkie and a bigger buck during the 30 minutes we had lost them in the next canyon. Jeff runs back to get me, I grab my kit and run down the ridge. We put on one unsuccessful stalk, unable to see with the oak brush, and back out for a different angle. The second stalk had us get into about 130 yards when I saw the does and a forkie. I could see the deep forks of a nice buck just above the oak brush, with no shot. I was kneeling trying to get my tripod set up enough to get stable in the wind. Jeff was hissing behind me “SHOOT HIM” (he was standing, so he could see the vitals, but I couldn’t from a kneeling position). I waited for a chance, and saw the does start to quickly walk away up on the hillside because we had been spotted. I waited, knowing the buck would follow. He trotted out and I shot him at 130, hitting him in the pump house. I quickly took two more follow up shots as he was staggering up hill, missing the second but hitting in the vitals again on the third. He went down less than 30 yards from the initial shot.



I was a little worried about what I had shot - I knew he was an average width 4x4, had really good deep forks and fairly heavy, but otherwise wasn’t sure whether it was a good or great buck.



It turns out to be a GREAT buck!!! Far and away the biggest deer that I have killed. We had gotten it done on our first morning of hunting, less than a mile from the truck and killed an exceptional buck.

 

[TheCougar]

More importantly, I easily won the “Big Buck Hunter” title from my son, and I could hear, from 2000 miles away, the gnashing of teeth and wailing of a defeated, overly confident son!!! Bwahahahaha!

 

[TheCougar]

Day 10-12: what to do now? I had planned on a 6 day hunt. Time for some fun…

Coyote Hunting and Chukar hunting: Jeff got two coyotes and he also shot two birds, but his dad’s hunting dog took the bird and ran off with it and dropped it, never to be found again. The dog had a really really bad showing.



Helping his stepmom with her cow tag, and we found some sheds. She could have shot a 6x6 bull, but she only had a cow tag.

 

[TheCougar]

Lots and lots of flying in multiple Helios and a Grumman Goose. I got checked out on tail wheels and had an unbelievably good time raging around low altitude, learning to land tailwheel, and hitting dry lakebeds. I remembered how much I love flying. You don’t get that kind of fun flying with airlines…





Jeff is moving to Alaska, and he got a hot tent - a Stone Glacier Sky Dome, which is pretty awesome. He also got a stove to test out. Does anyone know what the hell this thing is? It looks like a bunghole and we call it the “gloryhole”, which we used for peeing, clearly.





On taxi out that morning in a dual turbine Goose, his dad blew the tent over with the stove still hot and ruined the floor and the wall of a brand new tent. We are hoping Stone Glacier will fix it for cheap, given the creative way we ruined a new $3k tent.





@Kurt

 

[TheCougar]

We flew to Portland and got some moderate icing, not fun, then flew an approach to minimums and just barely got it in the deck. We took a break and took a tour of his family business as well. Picked up another Helio and went all the way back scud running under the icing and weather. Then we did more flying in the desert!

 

[TheCougar]

Day 13: I decided to go home for a couple of days since I don’t have to be in NM until the 17th for my nephew’s youth hunt. A great chance to see my wife and kids backed finishing the last stretch! At this point we are all caught up! I’m flying back home today, risking lost luggage get some family time before heading back out on the 17th.

 

[TheCougar]

My favorite quote of the trip so far, while scud running: “You need to climb up a bit. There’s a barbed wire fence up ahead”.

 

[robby denning]

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Our best guess is around a 150 buck, which is great for this hunt… let alone getting it done on opening morning!

really nice buck!

 

[TheCougar]

Best dad ever, using the internets and memes to establish dominance.