Where to begin? I'll start with two days before the Colorado 1st rifle season, Wednesday October 11th, 2017. We picked up my daughter, Leia, from school at approximately 3pm. This was to be her first elk hunt. She recently completed her hunter safety course, and was eager to tag along. Leia has been with me since I took her along turkey hunting when she was just 6. For the past 2 years she has participated in the mentored hunts available here in Wisconsin. While she has not yet connected with a big game animal, squirrels be warned, Leia has filled our crock pot several times with those tasty morsels. She trained for this hunt and was fully prepared to carry 30lbs. as far as humanly possible.
After a few stops, we were on the road and headed to Clark, CO for our elk hunt.
More gas station shenanigans...
McDonalds in Steamboat Springs...
Let me say that while there were some hunters where we ultimately hunted, I don't feel like I am giving away any trade secrets. I am a novice elk hunter at best, and with the amount of public land in GMU 14, I feel like the location was a large part of our adventure. Not to mention, you can derive where I was by the signs in my photos. If anyone has any objections to this, we did not see a single elk during this hunt. There was no secret hunting location. I'm sure there were elk there somewhere as we saw what I would call fresh sign, however we never caught up with them. Back to the story...
We drove straight through from Milwaukee, WI, with the obligatory stops for gas. We arrived at our destination at approximately noon on Thursday.