Hunting Trip

This was the trip that I have been planning for for a year. I was so excited to go and have been buying supplies here and there since last october. They girls and I went to a 3D archery shoot to get ready for this. I got my bow all sighted in and was ready to go until I found a better one and sold the one that I had sighted in and you will read what the results were from that decision. 

Last fall I could feel the chill in the air and realized that it had been too long since I had gone hunting so I called my cousin Jason to see if I could go with them. We planned and coordinated all year. It is definitely cheaper to buy your meat at the store, but the memories are irreplaceable. 

 This was the first camp that we stayed at. We left straight from camp up the mountain. For those of you who know Jason, he is a story teller. He makes up stuff and you can only believe half of the things he says. I didn't go into this hunt with high hopes. I thought we would be sitting around camp all morning and be road hunting the whole time. It was me, Jason and his wife's brother. To my surprise we were up before light and heading up the hill. This actually was no hill it was a mountain range! My feet were dead, within an hour and a half his brother in law was shooting at a bear. He was the only one with a bear tag. It was a long shot with a pistol but was a nice black bear. He missed. I guess Jason got tired of people not believing his stories so he was on film duty and filmed the whole thing. We saw a nice buck that we couldn't get a shot at and a ton of does. We got back after dark and Jason got stung by about 5 bees that were more painful than the normal bees. We were exhausted. I wasn't looking forward to doing that again. Luckily the next day we stayed low and looked for deer rather than elk. There were deer everywhere. WE could have shot a million does but it was only the second day. That morning his brother in law shot at a two point and missed, then Jason shot at a two point and went to low.

 We were so dusty and dirty we stopped at lunch to clean up. I can't sleep if I am grimy. I washed off in the river. But it was too cold for the Idaho guys.

 This was a little spring that was dammed up into a one person hot tub. I got sloppy thirds which is why the water is all cloudy. They had to bath in it!

 That night we went out again and I had my first shot at a nice wide tall mule deer. In Oregon you have to draw for these and I had never had the chance to hunt them. I was about 40 yards away and my heart was pumping and I already had the deer in the truck before I even shot. I shot and shot to the left and low. I missed. I found my arrow later and it had broke in half from hitting a tree. I ran along with it and it stopped at about 80 yards and I shot too low. Then I shot one more time and it was too far away. I was livid! I replayed that over and over again in my head. But it was a blast! I only found one arrow and only had two others so I was stressed.

 This is where the hunt got crazy on the third day. When we got back to camp on the second day we had to move because they closed that side of the road off due to a forest fire that was coming our way. That was the side that had all of the animals. The next morning we hiked straight up the other side of the mountain range. It reminded me of Grizzly peak in Ashland.

 If you look at the bottom there is a road that goes across the river and our camp was right there. We hiked and hunted hard all day, but only saw a couple does and a sage grouse that Jason's brother in law hit and it flew away with his arrow. I don't know how he hit that bird but missed the deer. He is a good hunter and hunts hard. He basically acted like a guide for us.

 This is us at the top of the mountain.

 This is his brother in-law Glen. He is a little guy.

This is Jason and I. It was fun to hang out with him. It has been such a long time. 

We didn't know it but this was our last day to hunt. If you look in this picture there is the fire in the background. 

 They closed the only road in and out of where we were and we were forty miles in. When we got back to camp we had a note that said that we had to evacuate. I didn't want to, but Jason said that we would be charged $5,000 if we didn't. I was exhausted it was dark and we had to pack up. We got out of there around 10:00 and our elk tags were only good in that area. So we just decided to go home three days early.

 I tried to take a picture of the fire and when we left it was a lot closer than I thought it was so I am glad that we left. You can see hints of orange in the pictures, but the flash washed it out.

 This was a crazy experience, I have never been evacuated like that it was a little scary since there was only one road in and out.

 This was a sign for one of the lakes over there called Mormon Reservoir.

I got home at 3:00 AM and the only thing killed was a bunny rabbit on my way that splattered all over the trailer. It hit so hard it broke the step off and got stuck underneath. It stunk bad the next day. I was bummed that we didn't shoot anything, but it was so nice to be out of cell range in the mountains experiencing nature. I love the mountains. There is nothing like being out in the middle of nowhere in a cool place that you would never end up in unless you were chasing an animal. Jason has the videos of all the shots we took uploaded on facebook.