Fishing, and hunting reports (share yours)

I put this new rig together for my Colorado mule deer hunt. Still need to sight it in. Not completely a current pic. Now it sits with suppressor cover, sling, and Harris bipod.
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Bergara B-14 in .300wm
Otter Creek Labs Polonium 30 silencer
Area 419 picatinny & scope rings
Nightforce NX8 2.5-20x50mm with sunshade
 
oldmanwilly said:
Brian77 Brian77 Wow, you have had a productive fall so far. Congratulations on your bear and your bull and thank you for sharing your experiences with us!

I've got to ask: which knife(knives) did you use for all the fun work after the shots? Did you have to sharpen up during and/or between animals?
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Unfortunately I did little knife work. Dave and the other guys cut up the bear. I helped with some with boning with a knife I made for that purpose. And on the elk, my guide Church did most of the work. I helped as i could but i was still puffing and sweating from a 1/4 mile sprint across a rocky slope behind Chuck who was 62 years old and not even breathing hard. I did make a note in my prep notes to make sure to have a pack knife along. Dave processed and boned almost the entire bear with a Case Trapper. Small knives impress me the older I get.
 
Brian77 said:
Unfortunately I did little knife work. Dave and the other guys cut up the bear. I helped with some with boning with a knife I made for that purpose. And on the elk, my guide Church did most of the work. I helped as i could but i was still puffing and sweating from a 1/4 mile sprint across a rocky slope behind Chuck who was 62 years old and not even breathing hard. I did make a note in my prep notes to make sure to have a pack knife along. Dave processed and boned almost the entire bear with a Case Trapper. Small knives impress me the older I get.
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Thanks for following up. I'm always interested to know what different people like to use.

Perfectly understandable. I've been on guided hunts before and stepped aside to let the professional skinners do their job, so I get it.
 
Well, neither my boy nor my buddy got their bucks. :( 🤬 We had some hellacious weather the rest of the week of our hunt. Winds most days were in the 20's-30's, with gusts in the 40's. It froze at night. Thunderstorms with hail, a tornado warning (funnel cloud went right over my buddy's Mom's farm!), and tons of lightning. None of that makes hunting any easier.

We worked our asses off, but only had shot opportunities on doe the rest of the week. Any more bucks we saw (not many) were either on private land, or too far away to get to them before they got away.

Hope the Elk hunt (cow licenses) next month goes better...

A few photos:

Radar screenshot of the pending doom. 😬

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Here comes the hail core!!! Thankfully the larger hail had already dropped further SW,

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Mostly dime to nickel sized hail. No damage to vehicle or trailer, thankfully.

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Angry skies!

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The weather made for some pretty cool sunset photos though!

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The lightning show after dark that night was INSANE!!! I took a couple videos, and for a full minute in 2 different videos, a half second doesn't go by without lightning going off and lighting up the entire horizon. It was pitch black night too!

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A few more pics...

This is mostly the type of area we were hunting. The Republican river valley below the former (now drained) Bonny reservoir. Lots of public access in the area.

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Some critter photos taken along the way.

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It was surprising the number of Monarchs we were seeing that still hadn't migrated. This one landed on me, and wouldn't let go haha!

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A good sized Argiope spider, ~3". Missing some legs.

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SpyderPhreak said:
Well, neither my boy nor my buddy got their bucks. :( 🤬 We had some hellacious weather the rest of the week of our hunt. Winds most days were in the 20's-30's, with gusts in the 40's. It froze at night. Thunderstorms with hail, a tornado warning (funnel cloud went right over my buddy's Mom's farm!), and tons of lightning. None of that makes hunting any easier.

We worked our asses off, but only had shot opportunities on doe the rest of the week. Any more bucks we saw (not many) were either on private land, or too far away to get to them before they got away.

Hope the Elk hunt (cow licenses) next month goes better...

A few photos:

Radar screenshot of the pending doom. 😬

View attachment 3010487

Here comes the hail core!!! Thankfully the larger hail had already dropped further SW,

View attachment 3010488

Mostly dime to nickel sized hail. No damage to vehicle or trailer, thankfully.

View attachment 3010482

Angry skies!

View attachment 3010483

View attachment 3010484

The weather made for some pretty cool sunset photos though!

View attachment 3010485

View attachment 3010486

The lightning show after dark that night was INSANE!!! I took a couple videos, and for a full minute in 2 different videos, a half second doesn't go by without lightning going off and lighting up the entire horizon. It was pitch black night too!

View attachment 3010489

View attachment 3010490
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SpyderPhreak said:
A few more pics...

This is mostly the type of area we were hunting. The Republican river valley below the former (now drained) Bonny reservoir. Lots of public access in the area.

View attachment 3010497

Some critter photos taken along the way.

View attachment 3010498

It was surprising the number of Monarchs we were seeing that still hadn't migrated. This one landed on me, and wouldn't let go haha!

View attachment 3010499

View attachment 3010500

A good sized Argiope spider, ~3". Missing some legs.

View attachment 3010501
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Bummer that your son and buddy didn’t bag any thing but you got some awesome photos. Better luck next time. With the black tail deer in Northern California one needs to expect that a lot of hunting days just enjoying being in nature and a buck is just a great bonus if and when it happens.
 
JACKMANDU said:
View attachment 3010593View attachment 3010592View attachment 3010591View attachment 3010590View attachment 3010594
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😍 Looks a LOT like some of the places I chased Trout in South Central Tennessee! 😎 (Duck and Elk Rivers)

Mendoman said:
Bummer that your son and buddy didn’t bag any thing but you got some awesome photos. Better luck next time. With the black tail deer in Northern California one needs to expect that a lot of hunting days just enjoying being in nature and a buck is just a great bonus if and when it happens.
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We had a good trip, and it's one of my favorite things to do, so no complaints. Just a little frustrating, we hiked 20+ miles in the 8 days we hunted. Had a couple 4.5+ mile days, but nothing less than 1.5 in a day. Those aren't terribly hard days in the river valley, but it would have been nice to punch at least one more tag. It will be a different story next month on the elk hunt. LOTS of elevation change on those hikes!

We will be sure to have at least one doe tag between the three of us next year (I never could have guessed that all 3 of us would have drawn a buck tag).

Retired UPS Driver said:
Gave it up and now my acreage is is preserve. It used to to wonderful, guaranteed a Buck in the first 2 opening days.

Nowadays it’s a preserve for them👍
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Nothing wrong with that, I get it.
 
SpyderPhreak said:
😍 Looks a LOT like some of the places I chased Trout in South Central Tennessee! 😎 (Duck and Elk Rivers)


We had a good trip, and it's one of my favorite things to do, so no complaints. Just a little frustrating, we hiked 20+ miles in the 8 days we hunted. Had a couple 4.5+ mile days, but nothing less than 1.5 in a day. Those aren't terribly hard days in the river valley, but it would have been nice to punch at least one more tag. It will be a different story next month on the elk hunt. LOTS of elevation change on those hikes!

We will be sure to have at least one doe tag between the three of us next year (I never could have guessed that all 3 of us would have drawn a buck tag).


Nothing wrong with that, I get it.
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A doe tag you should get between the 3 of you.

Elk Boy at UPS always filled his doe tag every year.

Never hunted them, so don’t know the conditions, but if he could do it, so can the 3 of you, at least 1 of you 👍
 
SpyderPhreak said:
😍 Looks a LOT like some of the places I chased Trout in South Central Tennessee! 😎 (Duck and Elk Rivers)


We had a good trip, and it's one of my favorite things to do, so no complaints. Just a little frustrating, we hiked 20+ miles in the 8 days we hunted. Had a couple 4.5+ mile days, but nothing less than 1.5 in a day. Those aren't terribly hard days in the river valley, but it would have been nice to punch at least one more tag. It will be a different story next month on the elk hunt. LOTS of elevation change on those hikes!

We will be sure to have at least one doe tag between the three of us next year (I never could have guessed that all 3 of us would have drawn a buck tag).


Nothing wrong with that, I get it.
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This is up Boone Creek off the Kentucky river. You gotta have a jon boat or a kayak to get up there. Plus you gotta hike a ways after you can’t boat any farther. Always worth the trouble getting away from everyone. I’m always alone in nature when I go there. All I heard for hours was sounds of the stream, wind blowing through the leaves, and the screeching of an eagle that was often flying overhead.
 
Retired UPS Driver said:
A doe tag you should get between the 3 of you.

Elk Boy at UPS always filled his doe tag every year.

Never hunted them, so don’t know the conditions, but if he could do it, so can the 3 of you, at least 1 of you 👍
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We all would have punched our tags if my son and buddy would have had doe tags. I had a doe tag last year and punched that one. I'm now on a "streak", punching my deer tag 2 years in a row.

JACKMANDU said:
This is up Boone Creek off the Kentucky river. You gotta have a jon boat or a kayak to get up there. Plus you gotta hike a ways after you can’t boat any farther. Always worth the trouble getting away from everyone. I’m always alone in nature when I go there. All I heard for hours was sounds of the stream, wind blowing through the leaves, and the screeching of an eagle that was often flying overhead.
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Ah, so similar part of the country, no wonder it looks similar to the area of TN I fished. We kayaked up the rivers sometimes to get away from the "crowds" (not that many other people though, lol).
 
Brian77 said:
Following the wrap up of the bear hunt in Idaho I angled North and West a couple hours to visit my daughter and son-in-law in Montana. Spend a couple days there with them at their farm and enjoyed some nice weather and some campfires.

Then last Saturday I headed down to North Central Utah. I had booked and an elk hunt with an outfitter there a couple years ago. I had nice weather down through there. Then it snowed overnight and the next morning when I was out scouting around and driving some gravel roads up into passes there was quite a bit of snow in the Wasatch range.

The first two days was spent doing a lot of hiking and glassing to try to figure out what the elk were doing. There was a lot of pressure over the weekend on the public ground in the area. Then the following morning we were watching a steep mountainside with two drainages in it from 1 Ridge over. We knew there were some hunters up a lot higher than us and the day before they had created some movement and we tried to capitalize on that.

We were able to intercept this bull coming up a steep slope from early morning feeding and heading into a dark timbered canyon. He came across a little opening and we were set up above that and I was able to make a couple good shots at about 230 yards.

I was able to see several other bulls that people took and they were typical 5 by 5 and 6 by 6 clean racked bulls... This was the only non typical that I've ever seen in the wild and to be honest I was shooting 1st and asking questions later. I was surprised when I got up to him to see how non typical he really was.

There was some fog was moving in and there was a lot of low cloud cover that morning and the tops of the peaks were obscured in the clouds and I was counting myself really blessed have been able to pull it off because the next day or two they were calling for high winds and rain.

I am shooting A300 win mag and I was using 180 grain barns TSX bullets. All three shots were passed throughs.View attachment 3001679View attachment 3001680
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Holy crap man!!! 🤩 That thing looks like a Red Stag! What an amazing animal! :cool: CONGRATS!!! :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
 
JACKMANDU said:
This is up Boone Creek off the Kentucky river. You gotta have a jon boat or a kayak to get up there. Plus you gotta hike a ways after you can’t boat any farther. Always worth the trouble getting away from everyone. I’m always alone in nature when I go there. All I heard for hours was sounds of the stream, wind blowing through the leaves, and the screeching of an eagle that was often flying overhead.
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That IS the perfect getaway, regardless. You have discovered the meaning ❤️
 
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