Hunting Time again!

Looks like its been a while since we last posted, so here is a new one, not really about the kids though. This one is about my hunting trip. Every year I go out "hunting" (usually come home empty handed, but hey its hunting not catching!) Anyhow, my buddy and I drew two tags this year, 1 elk tag for later in January, and a Buck tag for October (gotta have head gear to shoot'em). Well a couple weeks ago my buddy and I packed up and headed out to the Oregon/Idaho border in an area called Hells Canyon where the Snake river makes the border. The driving trip out there was about 7 hours to the last town and another 2-3 hours driving dirt trails to get to our locations (some of the dirt trails looked more like goat trails). Only one casuallty was suffered, we slashed a tire driving across what seemed a boulder field, after that I hoped and prayed that we didn't get anymore flats as I was outta spares (mental note: take lots of Fix a Flat next year). Well we ended up camping in two areas, the first was about 6300 feet and lots of rain, wind and ice. A few days later we moved lower to sunny, warm, and dusty. Crazy stuff. As usual we came home empty handed, but....my thinks that I dont really hunt and dont even see deer, but just sit around and drink beer and whatnot. So this time we were able to shoot some deer.....with a camera..... to bring home the "proof of life" so to speak. We actually saw three herds of doe and fawns totalling about 20 deer, but couldnt find the daddy's anywhere around, stupid smart deer.

Here's the pics:

This is the view from the first area we went to and set up camp at. Beautiful but desolate country, and the terrain is pretty easy walking too....if you are a mountain goat!

This is some of the country and road that we had to drive to get to our second spot for our trip. I would love to have a cabin down there along the river. Very nice.

This is the second spot we settle on and set up camp right next to the river, a stones through across the river to the state of Idaho!

We didn't take our trailer due to some of the roads being very "non existent" so went fairly primitive this time. This is our cover shelter for cooking and kicking back, this particular design worked well and was rated I would estimate to about 25 mph of wind gusts. That is my orange sleeping dome in the back.

Hmm, well as you can see we now have a different design, as stated earlier, the previous design worked well .... for a bit, and then we had some crazy winds come through the canyon and pretty much destroy our wonderful design. This designe however I would conservatively estimate is rated to about 45 mph and it stood up well the rest of the trip, ohh well sometimes you have to make adjustments.

The small little hills in the background are actually about 3000 feet tall, we ended taking a little jaunt up the one you see behind the truck there, almost to the top, you know just for a little exercise and all. We were pretty much dead when we got up there, it definitely kicked our butts.

Some friends of ours we found along the way

Here they are again, alas no head gear on any of them though! Safe for another year

This was the best one yet, were able to get close enough with our friends to take pics with me and the deer, sick really sick, you dont know how mad I was. Just one, all I wanted was some horns on just one of those guys and it would've been in the back of the truck and into the freezer. This was my piece de resistance for Julie as my proof that I do see deer and go out hunting.

Well for the year I am 0/1, but still have an Elk tag for a January hunt so who knows, we may still get some meat this year.

Next post should be after Halloween.


Ryan