OK I ‘m back after 2 weeks of travel, hunting, travel, wedding, travel, chores, and I think I can pull together some highlights from the trip.

The Last Week of September was a beautiful Indian Summer.  Highs in the 70’s and even an occasional 80 degree afternoon.  This was in sharp contrast to the 25 degree mornings. 

 Evening of Sept 24th.  2 days before Rifle season opens ..First hunt

We arrived in our elk hunting Tent Camp on the evening of September 24rd with the assistance of Mr. Brendan Rien.  For the last 2 weeks he had been setting up the camp, cutting firewood and packing in groceries.  Even though it was 2 days before the rifle opener we had a warm dry place to sleep,  and a cook tent.  He fixed us spaghetti, and informed us that the REAL cook would arrive on the 25th.  I’ll talk more about Brendan in a future column.

Before dinner I rode out with Billy Goodvin for a short evening hunt.  We thought it would be a good idea to find a route around a Beaver pond that had inundated the trail.  In the process of scouting out a new route, our horses punched through the sod and became bogged up to their bellies.  Both horse struggled until they were exhausted.   Finally after a rest, both of the mountain horses managed to free themselves and we hastily clawed our way to solid ground. 

We rode into the canyon where I killed my bull the year prior and sat on a viewpoint until dark.  A couple of bow hunters had been camped in there the week before and killed two respectable bulls.  We had no action that night and rode back to camp in the dark, avoiding the bogs. 

to be continued…  Part 2