Variety, they say, is the spice of life. And for hunters, no other state offers as much “spice” as Colorado. From upland birds and waterfowl to majestic big game animals like elk and bighorn sheep, Colorado’s wild game species are as diverse as the Rocky Mountain landscape.

Colorado’s varied and distinctive hunting opportunities are now featured in “Hunt Colorado,” a new online video from the Colorado Division of Wildlife.

Filmed in high-definition video and recorded in digital audio, “Hunt Colorado” takes viewers on an entertaining and concise tour of Colorado’s game species. Featured in the seven-minute video are: turkey, quail, grouse, pheasants, ducks, geese, squirrels, rabbits, moose, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, elk and deer.

“‘Hunt Colorado’ provides a great overview of some of Colorado’s well-known and not so well-known hunts,” said Debbie Lininger, DOW marketing director. “Colorado is famous for its exceptional elk hunting, but I don’t think people realize just how many other amazing opportunities exist right here in our own backyard.”

To play “Hunt Colorado” and other DOW online videos, viewers need a high-speed Internet connection and the latest version of Adobe Flash installed on their computer.

Videos may be accessed directly on the Division’s Web site at: http://wildlife.state.co.us/NewsMedia/Videos/

Hunt Colorado from Colorado Division of Wildlife on Vimeo.

Late Monday, August 31, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy of the U.S. District Court in Missoula had issued no decision on a preliminary injunction that would have returned the wolf to federal endangered species protection.

Following a three-hour hearing, Molloy took the issue under advisement. He said he would rule soon.

“By taking the issue under advisement, Judge Malloy today gives Idaho an opportunity to further demonstrate that we are and will continue to successfully manage the species,” Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter said Monday. “We have a sound, data-driven management plan in place, and we keep our promises. As the Idaho Department of Fish and Game implements that plan, which includes a hunting season, I am confident the judge will recognize that our sportsmen, ranchers, farmers – and indeed, all Idahoans – are responsible stewards of Idaho’s wildlife, including wolves.”

If the judge issues a ruling that affects Idaho wolf hunts, Idaho Fish and Game will notify hunters. Hunters are asked to check the Fish and Game Web site at: http://fishandgame.idaho.gov, or call the toll-free wolf hunt information number 1-877-872-3190 before their hunt.

The injunction was sought by parties to a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to remove gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains from the endangered species list earlier this year.

If legal action closes the season before October 9, Idaho Fish and Game would issue refunds to hunters who bought tags and can show they didn’t hunt. The wolf tag refund policy and request form are available from Fish and Game and the agency’s Web site at: http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/cms/hunt/wolf/.

The Long Story….

 It was a challenge getting ready for this hunt. Physically, mentally, and organizationally. I was preparing to go to a new area that I had never set foot in.  I applied at the invitation Jerome, who has hunted elk with my family and I in Wyoming.  Applying with me was my hunting partner Cal Farnsworth, one of my archery mentors, and good luck token. 

Once we found out we were successful in the Draw, it was a scramble to coordinate schedules.  Jerome volunteered to do the cooking, and shopping, as well as contribute a wall tent, folding woodstove, riding stock, and pack animals.  His  25 years of hunting expertise contributed greatly to seeing the number of deer we did on the trip.

We met Jerome at his home on Friday.  We packed coolers and panniers for the 3 pack horse loads, and organized our tack for the morning.  We ended the night with a meal at a local Basque restaurant complete with lamb, sweetbreads, garlic and Picon. 

In the morning we were at the door of the local supermarket at opening  to purchase dry ice and cubed ice for our insulated panniers.  Then we drove to our hunting area, finally arriving at the trailhead in the afternoon.  We had horses saddled and packed and hit the trail at 5:00 pm.  By 8:00 pm we had the tent pitched and a fire started in the stove for a hot dinner as the moon rose over the aspens.

The next six days consisted of many miles covered on foot and horseback from 8500 to over 10,000 feet in elevation. 

I had numerous stalks that were foiled by brush, wind or other deer busting us. 

On Sunday I got to 33 yards on a 3 point buck who saw me and bounded off before I could get a shot. 

Monday, I stalked 3 bucks with Cal who we watched bed below us.  Swirly winds must have alerted them because we arrived at empty beds 2 hours later.  That afternoon, we spotted a buck below us  who, by the time we got into position, got up to feed, and was spooked off by another buck.  We were caught in the open as the new buck fed across the hillside, oblivious to us. 

A doe bedded above caught our movement and sounded the alarm.  Our quarry stepped off over the ridge not really knowing why.  We named these two bucks “Butch and Sundance” since they managed to slip away. We laughed to ourselves that they were probably asking each other: “Who ARE those guys?”

Tuesday, we went on a long ride to see some new country.  By 9:00 am we had seen 9 bucks.  After letting the horses graze in a patch of aspens for a couple hours we rode up a canyon, spotting bucks in the mahogany above us.  Groups of 3, 4 and 5 bucks peered at us from each finger.  It was amazing despite the fact that the bucks had our wind and elevation. 

We arrived near the 10,000 ft mark, tied the horses below the ridge  and continued glassing for deer.  A group of bucks fed out on the bare ridge 500 yards away.  A bowhunter on foot crested a saddle 500 yards below the deer, unaware that they were there.  When the bucks saw him they spooked towards us, and we ran for a saddle that looked to be a likely escape route. 

The bucks didn’t run through the saddle but stuck to the mahogany and pinons.  He ended up bedding on my right 50 yards away, and when I tried to get in a position to shoot, he spooked then stopped and gave me a final look at 110 yards.  He was an honest 30 -inch wide buck of my dreams that walked out of my life on that hot afternoon.

If that wasn’t enough, I spotted a group of 10 bucks as we rode back to camp feeding on a sage covered hillside, 220 yards away.  I was making a stalk when to my left, a group of 8 bucks spotted either me or the horses behind the hill, and ran through the group of 10 bucks.  Following them was another 5 bucks.  The Herd of 23 bucks all bounded over the saddle in front of me, raising a cloud of dust that stretched for half a mile.  I was dumbfounded.

The day’s total of deer spotted was a Whopping 51 BUCKS.  A remarkable day indeed.

 Wednesday and Thursday we went back to country we had spotted and stalked deer in before.  Once again we pursued “Butch and Sundance” but they managed to elude us each time.  On one memorable stalk I had one of the bucks explode from an open saddle 38 yards away as I was looking at the mahogany patch we had spotted him in days prior. 

Thursday night I sat near camp with binos and spotting scope and watched 4 good bucks feed out at last light.  I marked the tree they fed out into the open from, and made plans for the morning.

Friday morning I woke at 4:00 am and started the 3/4 mile hike up the hill in the dark, gaining 1000 feet in elevation.   I shivered until the sun’s rays reached my hideout just 20 yards back from the crest of the hill the bucks were on.  I spied two of the bucks 100 yards on the other side of the hill feeding in my direction, but in the open.  Then according to Cal and Jerome who watched from afar, the bucks fed back into a rugged steep tree covered draw.   I retreated back down to camp hungry and tired.  After a quick nap, and tending to the horses I filled up on water and snacks and hiked back up the hill, determined to catch the bucks when and if they decided to feed out into the open again. 

The arduous climb was one to remember.  It was 85 degrees in the shade and the sun radiated off the rocks, causing me to consume all my water on the way up to the dry, rocky lookout.  It was going to be a dry, thirsty evening.  By the time I reached the vantage point I had six hours of light left. 

Those six hours were spent searching with binoculars through the cover the deer had fed into.  I followed the faint hint of a trail up into a basin ringed by rimrock on one side and a grassy ridge on the other.  The shadows were getting long when I spotted a buck bedded in the sage, with another behind him.  the wind was wrong, the terrain was open, and time was slipping away.  All I could do was snap pictures as they caught my scent and slipped over the hill.

The day ended without a punched tag, but it will be a hunt I will always treasure.  My first hunt in Nevada with great friends, great country, and more of an appreciation for the value of pre-season conditioning and a good mountain horse.  If the tag allotment will allow it, Cal and I plan to return for Round 2 in a couple of years.  We have some scores to settle.  Butch and Sundance will be saying ” Who are those guys?”  I know it.

Please excuse John from his regular writing schedule due to a number of complications. These include, a 16 mile trail race, the Sonoma County Fair, a market animal show and sale, and most recently a case of shingles that had sidelined John for a week.

We hope John will be back to his regular writing schedule, before he leaves for his Nevada Deer hunt August 8th.

On Your Own Adventures  is the project of Randy Newberg, a lifelong hunter who saw an opportunity to showcase DIY hunts on public land.  Randy describes it as:

On Your Own Adventures is the only hunting TV show dedicated exclusively to non-guided hunting – your style of hunting. Any hunt you see on our show is a hunt you can do. It takes extra effort and cost to produce high quality hunting episodes outside of high fences or without the benefit of outfitters and the private estates that most shows depict.
 
But, we did it. We hope you like it. It is our best effort to tell the story of hunting as experienced by the average hunter – Reality Hunting.

The OYOA website allows viewers to interact with Randy in his Blog, called Randy’s Rants, and the Hunt Talk forum  where members can discuss the episodes and hunting on your own.

After watching the first episode, I was impressed by the quality of the production.  It was a Wyoming Elk hunt, complete with bugling bulls, and made more difficult by competing public land hunters, and severe weather which required moving camp and finding a new spot.  These are things most self sufficient hunters can identify with and will recognize.

  If you would like to catch this unique hunting  show, the airtimes are:

 Friday – 1:30  pm (Eastern Times)

Saturday – 12:00 am (midnight Friday)

Sunday – 5:00 pm

On May 1st he connected on a tom with a 9 inch beard, and 3/4 inch spurs.

Then he connected again on the 17th with a 10 inch beard and 1 inch spurs.

Those birds along with his opening weekend success on a young tom, filled out his 3 tom allotment for the 2009 California turkey season.

“I was very happy with the year; I got all three with my bow.”

The late Spring rains, and cool foggy weather has really made for a good feed year.

*Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight
And bull-strong.

*Keep skunks and bankers at a
distance.

 *Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.

* A bumble bee is considerably faster than a
John Deere tractor.

 * Words that soak into your ears are whispered…not yelled.

  * Meanness don’t jes’ happen overnight.

* Forgive your enemies. It messes up their heads.

* Do not corner something that you know is meaner
than you.

* It don’t take a very big person to carry a
grudge.

* You cannot unsay a cruel word.

* Every path has a few puddles.

* When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.

* The best sermons are lived, not preached.

* Most of the stuff people worry about ain’t Never gonna happen anyway.

* Don’t judge folks by their relatives.

* Remember that silence is sometimes the best
  answer.

* Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get
  Older and think back, you’ll enjoy it a second time.

* Don’t interfere with somethin’ that ain’t Bothering you none.

* Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a Rain dance. 

   * If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’. 

* Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.

 * The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever
Have to deal with, watches you from The mirror every mornin’.

 * Always drink upstream from the herd.

 * Good judgment comes from experience, and a
lotta that comes from bad judgment.

 * Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot
easier than puttin’ it back in.

* If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some
influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around.

 * Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply.
Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God.

*Don’t pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight,
he’ll just kill you.

So now I have a Hunting license in Utah, wonder what I could do with it?

Thank you for your recent applications for the Big Game Drawing. Your results are:

Appl # Hunt # Result

———————————————————————————————————

787273 DESERT BIGHORN SHEEP BONUS POINT DESERTBonus Point Earned

787276 ROCKY MTN SHEEP BONUS POINT ROCKY MOUNTBonus Point Earned

787271 DEER BONUS POINT BUCK DEER Bonus Point Earned

787272 ELK BONUS POINT ELK BULL Bonus Point Earned

787275 ROCKY MTN GOAT BONUS POINT ROCKY MOUNTABonus Point Earned

787274 MOOSE BONUS POINT BULL MOOSE Bonus Point Earned

—————————————————————————–

John, is there anywhere you have not lived, worked? You and POPS could publish your own series of books on life in these United States! I hope someday to be able to see half the country you guys have…

CR I don’t feel that well travelled, But I have had a chance to check out a lot of country that is between North Idaho and CA.  There ARE places that are still a mystery to me though, Like the SouthWest, Central plains, Mid West, etc. 

Career and Family has certainly cut back on my travels in the West.  My college years were the height of my Western Exploration since I seemed to have a biannual trip between home and school.  I miss the windshield time. 
You know there are a lot of routes to try out in that 800 mile stretch. 

So it got me thinking about where I have been.  Most of the places I remember the most are on a narrow highway or gravel road…

Places I have Been (Blue), Lived(Red) and Want to go (Green).

 This handy little application on Facebook doesn’t have all the little communities and such, but imagine the highways and roads that connect the pins on the map.