We were grateful to have Linda close to where we hunt. We stayed at her place until the rain and snow stopped before we went up on the mountain. She's always fixin' us something good to eat. Linda has the perfect place for us and the mules. Thank goodness for family!
Caught a picture of a beautiful Trumpter Swan on the river on the drive in.
You can see our new tent in the background. We picked up a nice 12x14 tent this year and used
our stashed poles to put it up. Nice tent and a wood stove to keep us warm and out of the weather.
However, this year was the warmest year we have had so far. Usually we spend 1 to 3 days in the camp because of rain, wind, and snow. Last year it snowed 9 to 10 inches on us.
The first morning it started to rain again and fog us in. We decided to go for it anyway and sure enough we
were fogged in with rain and wind most of the day.
We stopped to build a fire under a pine tree. But the rain and wind wouldn't give up so we headed down to the outfitters camp.
Me and Jeff
Outfitters camp.
We borrowed their warm sleeping tent with stove to keep warm and out of the rain. The fog and rain never quit so we headed back to camp.
This is such beautiful country to visit each year. One of the best things about it is there are no other hunters. We hardly even see the Outfitters unless we stop by to say hello.
Jeff leading the mules.
As we were coming down the trail I was telling the boys this is where I shot at a nice buck a few years ago and missed. Just as I got the words out of my mouth, Jeff said "There's a deer". We all jumped off the mules to get a good look and it just stood there. We watched it for several minutes and Jeff decided it wasen't the one he wanted. We thought we'd wait a minute and see if he might have a friend somewhere in the trees.
Sure enough as we started to move around a bit it spooked and out came a nice 4 point. Jeff had to make
a instant decision to take it or not before it was into the trees.
He took it!
Jeff had to make a quick Texas heart shot, (which, by the way, hit it's target on the run).
Jeff with his deer.
Ryan is always playing around at camp, this time pestering his mule Midge.
Ryan can't keep still - he's off into the woods with his chain saw cutting up a fallen tree to make a bench and table.
Another nice part about having mules is you can bring up on the mountain handy tools like a chain saw to cut
up enough wood in a couple of hours to last you the week.
Going down the burns switch backs, seems like it gets steeper every year. I don't know how we made it up
and down these switchbacks with motorcycles. I must have been a lot younger!
We made another tip to bring up hay for the mules. The mules were happy campers with all the hay they could eat.
Ryan training his mule to jump the tree.
We dropped off the North East side for a day to do some scouting. Jeff found a nice Moose drop.
Bringing back Jeff's deer.
It makes the walk back easier hanging on to the tail!
Conrad came up the last weekend to keep us company.
No problems this year! Just a fun pack trip. No worries!
You might notice we didn't bring the donkey this year. He has gotten too lazy and we were tired of dragging him up the mountain. The first year he did great. I don't know what happened to him.
How time flies! This was one of the funnest years we had hunting. The weather was perfect for me! The boys wanted snow. Because of the good weather we were able to scout out more of the country. We didn't see the deer we usually do. We usually see larger deer on these mountains. As usual we saw more Elk and Moose than anything.
