Hunting season officially began August 15 when three buddies and I started hunting Antelope in the wide open sage.  This hunt wasn’t going to be as much about my success as it was the success of my hunting partners.  My cousin Jonathan and brother Lucas, along with my good friend Darris hunted with me and none of them had ever shot an Antelope before.  In fact, Lucas was the only one that had ever hunted them before.  We had 4 buck tags and 3 doe tags amongst the group and the goal was to notch all 7. 

Typical of Wyoming, there were antelope everywhere, and anticipation was high as we rolled into our area the day before season.  I have hunted this unit in the past and knew of several productive water holes that we immediately checked out and set up blinds.  With the number of antelope running around it always seems like it should be a slam dunk.  However, hunting antelope with a bow never seems to be a slam dunk. 

 

On opening day I opted to stay close to a vehicle and try to find something to spot and stalk and let Lucas and Jonathan crawl into the blinds.  Darris wasn’t going to arrive until later that night.  This allowed me to be close in case someone was successful.  Thankfully, Jonathan was able to break the ice early in the first afternoon of hunting.  The buck came in for a drink and Jonathan made a good shot and was able to watch his first pronghorn, as well as his first big game animal ever with a bow and arrow, fall within sight. 

Darris arrived that night, and the plan was to put Lucas in the blind that Jonathan had killed out of and then Darris and I would use his ATV to search the drainages for some hidden water holes.  Much to our dismay we found quite a few water holes that were being used.  We made a decision on what we felt were the best ones and set up a few more blinds.  Darris and I climbed into the new hides and were ready to wait the rest of the afternoon.  As it started to heat up the clouds started to build.  Sure enough, less than 2 hours into my first sit the skies opened up and it flat out poured rain and hail long enough to cause the floor in my blind to be covered with water.  Needless to say this is not what one hopes for when banking on antelope coming to a waterhole. 

The following day I relocated to another part of the ranch that appeared to have dodged the storm.  After a short sit in the blind I had a doe come into water and was able to make a good shot. 

Jonathan was being the shuttle man that day since he had already filled his buck tag.  In the process he was able to locate a doe in an approachable position and slip in on her.  He sent an arrow right behind the shoulder and was officially tagged out!

Lucas and Darris spent most of that day sitting in the blind, but never had anything present a good shot.  The following day they were back in the same blinds.  If they could only keep the sheep and cattle out of their water holes they might have some action.  Everytime an antelope would approach they would be spooked by the commotion that the livestock would make.  Finally lucas had a unique doe come right into his set up and was able to kill his first antelope ever. 

With 4 tags filled the trip was already a success in my book.  If Darris could kill his first antelope, and we could fill our buck tags it would just be a bonus.  Darris headed back to the area Lucas killed his doe, while Lucas and I headed back to the area Jonathan shot his buck.  I was going to sit in the blind on the water hole and Lucas was going to still hunt down a drainage to the south and look for more water holes.  Lucas decision paid off.  He was able to find a hot water hole and tuck into some cover and wait for one of the many bucks using the huge sage flat to get thirsty.  Like previous sits on the trip shortly after noon he had a good buck headed his way.  He was able to get a shot and killed his first buck, likely a pope and young qualifier!

Unfortunately Darris had to head home and was unable to fill his tag on his first antelope.  We had a blast and he was able to see some new country which is always a great time.  I would venture to say that this will not be his last attempt at archery hunting antelope.  With Lucas and Jonathan tagged out and Darris headed into the sunset I was the only one left to hunt. 

I headed to the blind early and was prepared to shoot the first buck that presented a good shot.  The first buck to arrive to water came on the wrong side of the blind and never offered me a great shot.

I wasn’t about to force a shot on the last day and let him walk.  A few hours later another buck approached and it looked like he would walk around the blind and come in right in front of me, but as he neared the water he started to take the path of the first buck.  I decided to get a little aggressive, went to my knees and slowly opened a side window on the blind.  I expected to get busted due to the noise as it was completely still, but the buck continued on and presented me a broadside shot at 30 yards! 

It was a good feeling tagging this buck and ending the trip on a positive note.  One of these years I will catch up to one of the big boys that hangs out in the wide open sage flats of Wyoming!!  With coolers full of meat we were loaded up and headed home to get ready for the next adventure!

Hello Everyone!

September is FINALLY HERE! That means opening day of my NM elk hunt is just a couple of short weeks away!!! Things have been pretty crazy around here, and finding time to keep up with the scouting needs for my hunt has been difficult at best. I had planned to hit the trail cameras this last weekend and do some scouting, but duty called and my wife and I headed to Phoenix to represent Sitka Gear at the Big Game Classic at Cabelas. 800 miles, 2 seminars and a couple of busy days of talking Sitka with tons of people later, we finally made it back to New Mexico and started getting serious with the plans for the elk hunt!

My beautiful wife at the Sitka Table at the Big Game Classic

Doing a seminar at the Big Game Classic

With my duties done, it was time to get up north and pull the trail cameras and see if the big boys had come off of the mountain yet. Sometimes, what you see “on the way” is the best part!

Hope he sticks around until January!

Now, for the trail cameras …. not the size we are looking for, but, the bulls are starting to move (along with a couple of other critters …. and the country is showing signs of the rut being right around the corner!

A couple more years and he will be a stud!

Another good young bull

If his horns only matched that body!

Maybe part of the reason the big boys are not around yet?

This tree started out at about 8 feet tall, and was reduced to nothing! We saw a number of trees like this right in the area where the cameras are placed, indicating there are multiple bulls close. We also found an old apple tree with branches broke off over 9 feet high in the tree!

Even though the size of the bulls on the cameras is not what we had been hoping for, seeing the number of elk moving through the country is very encouraging. The mornings have gone from warm to cool, and that smell is in the air – the big boys will be out in no time at all. We will be looking at one more area about 6 miles to the north and west later in the week. I will post more as we have more.

As always, good luck out the, God Bless each of you and your families, and remember, a bad day hunting is better than any good day at work!

Spent my last two Sunday mornings on the river wading for some more spot and stalk carpin’.

August 22nd was rainy, but nice and warm so we hit the river anyway…”we’re here, we might as well try it”.

Although it was hard to see in the water and any disturbance on top, we did ok.
My friend Glen got one only staying about 1/2 hour…

I got one and my bud Tim got 3…

Last Sunday, Aug. 29th, , dawned absolutely beautiful…

This time it was just me and my bud Gary(Tim’s dad)…another good morning…

This coming weekend we’ll be camping, bowfishing, fishing, and shooting getting ready for the fall season…can’t wait!

Good Luck to all you guys out west that have seasons underway, or are about to open!!

We look forward to this trip every year its a 8 day backpacking trip in to the wilderness area of northern California. We arrived to camp the day before the opener and went out to are favorite glassing points and saw  a lot of deer and some really good bucks by the way it looked we know that this was going to be a great year come Saturday mooring the hills where crawling with people hunting the lower parts of the mountains.I have never seen so many people back that far in the 8yrs that Ihave been back their. I guess the word is out about the quality of deer in the area.

 

As the week went on a lot of glassing and even some blown stocks

After about the fifth day we had some success with this great buck that rough scored 110 P&Y

We had tree days left so we stared glassing some more

On the last evening i was able to connect on a nice buck

 buck rough scores 94 P&Y

This was a great trip after a rough start we where able to come out with two great bucks.

TCR, my acronym for (trail cam revelations.)  No matter how well I think I know my properties, each and every summer reveals just how little I actually do know.  Like most whitetail nuts we have history with certain deer but amazingly bucks also show up that we have no idea even exist.   This makes for long evenings waiting on the opening of season but it sure does add even more excitement!

I know we’ve all got elk on the brain but here’s some belated photos of my family turkey, fishing, morel mushroom hunting trip.

 

 

 

 

 

Ever since the day that I got nominated and up until I got the word that I was chosen to be part of this Pro Staff, I have been “On Cloud SITKA.” 

I started out my journey for my first post on a little road trip with my wife to go and visit family in South Bend, IN for a few days.  We wound up going up to Saugatuck, MI for the day on Saturday to ride the sand dunes and then spend the day milling around town.

 

In town, we walked around the awesome little marina town which was full of people vacationing, hanging out at the Yacht Club, enjoying some of the local shops(very artsy place), watching the first day weigh-in of a fishing tournament, and we even found a little Black squirrel that was enjoying the chips that were being tossed to him!

 

Sunday morning found me spending some time with my cousin on a quiet little river he likes to go and fish.  It was very calm and serene….the fishing was a little slow, but who can argue with fishing on a cool Midwest morning and sharing my excitement of being on the Sitka Pro Staff with my cousin.  He loves to bowhunt whitetails, so we had quite a bit to talk about and we did manage to land a couple of bass…

 The rest of the day on Sunday we spent with more family before hitting the road early Monday morning.  Funny thing about the whole trip, the farm that my buddies and I hunt in Southern Illinois just happens to be on the “EXACT” same route that our drive to Indiana is on…Good Ole I-57.  My wife, being the trooper that she is was more than willing to let me go and spend a little time running through some soy beans and corn to check on a few stands and of course, some trail cams…nothing like trail cam photos in August!!  It is like Christmas!

 

And the end result….

 

And his little brother…

 

The Perches….

In my last post I mentioned that my son and I were practicing hard in preparation for this shoot. It was an outstanding weekend! The weather, the people, and the shoot were all wonderful!

After not shooting his bow for a week(he was on vacation), he started out a little slow on Saturday and sat firmly in second place in the youth division.

Cade warming up Sunday morning…

I was out shooting all morning Sunday in my competition rounds. But while I was out, Cade did his shooting, and from what everyone and him told me, he’d shot really well and may have moved into first. The results were being tallied, but had yet to be posted.

Meanwhile I’d had one “bad round”, and ended up shooting for 3rd or 4th place in the recurve division with non other that Fred Eichler!

His wife, Michelle(CEO of Muzzy Corp. and the sponsor of the shoot for 29yrs.)had finally dragged him along with her to the shoot. Fred’s had been trying to come for years, but because of his busy guiding, hunting, and filming schedule, he could never get to NY for the shoot…but this year he did.
For those that have never been around Fred, he’s as “down to earth”, and “fun loving” as anyone you’ll ever meet…just a really “good dude”!

Getting ready to head out…

Some of the highlights of our round…

We went back and forth, him starting out strong.Then in the middle of the round, I came back and passed him…

Two pix that caught targets tumbling with the arrows in them…

Fred having some fun with my son…

Fred came back strong, and needed to knock down the last target to tie me and force a shoot off in….. “The Chair”!

He nailed it! It would come down to a shoot off in the chair! All shoot-off’s are decided in the chair which in in a spot where everyone gathers, so there’s always an audiance!

As we approached the The chair, we could see a big crowd already. the shootoff for 1st and 2nd had come down to the chair , they were tied 6-6 as well…we waited….

Then it was our turn. I won the coin toss and decided to shoot first.

I got lucky and drilled it on my first shot…

Fredthen, got his turn to tie, but pulled his shot a little left….what a fun round!

Right after the shoot-off Cade ran down to check out the posted results and came running up to me to let me know he’d come in 1st… how cool! I’m so proud of my little man.

Here’s a pic that Fred wanted us to take…Him 4th, Cade 1st, and me 3rd…good fun…

Cade getting his ribbon for 1st. Standing with Michelle Mussachia-Eichler, Fred’s wife, and the heart and soul of the Muzzy Stump Shoot…..
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This pretty much sums it up…

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The “Champ”…

Well, with several hunts fast approaching I haven’t been scouting as much this summer as I would have hoped, but I have been fortunate enough to see a few potential shooters to look for this fall. 

Scouting is a great time to get some decent photos of wildlife.  I added some new toys to the camera arsenal for this year and it has been fun playing with them and learning more about manual settings on the camera.  I purchased a Pentax PF CA-35 Camera Adaptor that mounts to my Pentax K100D digital SLR camera and allows me to use my PF80ED spotting scope as a camera lens.  It is important to have a very sturdy rest for decent pictures.  I use a Bogen 3130 tripod head, either with a Bogen window mount or 3221 Tripod.  It is a heavy setup, but the majority of our observations are done from the pickup so it isn’t an issue. 

I also picked up a smaller “superzoom” point and shoot for using while hunting.  It is a Panasonic DMC FZ-35K.  It has a 12.1 megapixal camera with a 18x Optical Zoom, ranging from a 27mm wide-angle to a 486mm telephoto.  It is a compact little camera that is very quiet compared to a dSLR with a zoom lens.  I look forward to using it this fall. 

My main reason for purchasing the Panasonic was for the big zoom in a small package.  I also have a Sigma 170-500mm  lens for my K100D, which is a great telephoto combo, but it is very cumbersome and noisy when trying to take photos while hunting. 

I have a ton to learn and have excepted the fact that it will take years to become a good photographer, but it is fun learning.  Here are a few pictures from the various options I discussed. 

As the 2010 season gets reved up and rolling i had a great invite to film Cameron Hanes in the Backcountry of Nevada on a 10 day Mule Deer hunt.  I’ve personally hunted Nevada numerous times and enjoyed every minute of it, so my answer was absolutely i’ll do it.

However, this was in a unit in which i didn’t have any experience and didn’t know much about at all.  We ended up spending 9 nights and 10 days beating around the wilderness and was hands down the most physically demanding hunt i’ve ever been on.

 

 Pretty hard to keep pace with a dude that runs 100 miles for fun, and i’m not embarrassed to say that he could have walked away from me at any given time.  It’s always good to hunt with people you can learn from.  I walked away from this experience a better hunter in the end forsure.  The majority of our water was gathered from the remainning snow packs and the not so prevelant springs that we came across.  I can say that i’ve never hunted with anyone who has the drive and mental toughness of him.  I believe his favorite saying on the trip was, ” I think we need to be up on that ridge:)” And up we’d go! 

 Anyway, great experience and i can say my legs are ready for elk season now. Just a few short weeks away.  I ended up loosing about 18lbs on the trip, probably mostly water weight, but feeling good none the less. 

Even managed to take pretty good care of my skin at those high eleveations and slightly breezy conditions:)

Happy and safe hunting to all you guys! Good luck out there!