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WKR
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2014
- Messages
- 613
I'd like to preface this recap with a big "thank you" to all the people on this forum that have and do impart so much of their wisdom and personal tips & tactics. This was my first backpack hunt, and it couldn't have been more awesome. It was like winning the outdoorsman's lottery.
This hunt first came up on my radar back in 2013 when I was going through my contact list in my phone and doing a little tidying up of numbers I no longer had a use for. I came upon a number of a friend of mine from back in the day who I hadn't talked to in a few years. I still considered him a good friend, we'd just grown a little out of touch. I sent him a text and luckily the number still belonged to my friend. Anyway, we go to talking about life and soon the topic of conversation turned to hunting, as it should right? He told me he had drawn a muley tag in wyoming and had done some scouting so far during the summer and was excited for his hunt to open (it was probably in june/july when this happened). He told me I should look into applying for it next year, and if I drew, he'd take me to his spot and show me around. He said there were big bucks up there, and that's all I needed to hear. He also did end up dropping the hammer on a really pretty 4x4 that scored in the 180's. I was drooling when he sent me the picture of him behind his trophy.
Fast forward to spring of this year. I ended up drawing the tag I'd put in for. My friend had also put in, but hadn't drawn. I contacted him the day the results for wyoming were released and shared my excitement of drawing with him and one of the things he said is 'we've got to get up there and get to work finding you a good buck!' That was music to my ears.
We were only able to make one scouting trip up there before the season opened, even though the original plan was to make several. But we managed to find some sweet bucks, one in particular that would haunt my dreams (literally) for a while:
The picture doesn't do him justice, he was pretty heavy and really wide. And this was only mid July, so he had some time left to grow still.
We also saw some good bulls up high:
And you know you're up there when you see these right across from you:
The friday before opening day I drove up with my buddy after we got off work. The plan was to do as much glassing as possible and hopefully find a shooter buck that we could try to pattern as much as possible before opening day. We started the ~4 mile pack in at 11 pm. It had cooled off substantially in the recent days based off of weather reports, and we found the reports to be pretty accurate as we saw frost all over during the midnight hours of the hike in. We left the truck and were able to hike by moonlight for quite a ways as long as there wasn't much tree cover. Watching our shadows sprawl out in front of our every step over the frost covered ground and walking by the soft light of the moon, it almost felt surreal. To say I'd been looking forward to and anticipating this hunt was an understatement.
As we climbed the rolling hills and passed through meadows we could hear bulls bugling in the distance. When we were in the middle of some dead fall we heard the closest bugle of all, and it sounded like it was getting closer. We stopped and turned off our headlamps. Soon we heard some crashing coming right for us. When it was about 15-20 yards away and began to slow, we flipped on our headlamps and pointed them in the direction of the noise. The big 6x6 bull swung his head back and forth in the beams of light, looking pretty confused, and promptly took off the way he'd come. I think he figured out we weren't elk.
We rolled in to our campsite at around 2:30-3 am. Soon after dropping my pack and helping my friend with the tent, I was pretty chilled. I'd gotten pretty lathered up on the hike in. The steepest part was a big hill just off the lip from our campsite. I got out of my sweaty clothes and into my merino base layers and slipped into my Western Mountaineering down bag and slipped off to sleep with visions of big bucks running through my head.
After about 3 hours of sleep, we were up and glassing. The morning was a little slower than we had expected buck-wise, but we saw some activity that gave us hope. Here is a pic of one of the best bucks of the morning that I spotted:
He was still in full velvet, the only one of the trip we'd see that was like that. Later that morning I also spotted a black bear, which was cool since I hadn't seen one up there yet.
The rest of that day was pretty slow. Not a whole lot sighted that got us too excited. All in all, not the best day for spotting huge bucks. All I could think of most of the day was the big buck I'd seen that morning in full velvet. Little did I know we'd meet again...
The next day, the morning glassing session produced almost nothing, much to our surprise. In the afternoon I managed to spot this 4x4:
He was probably 24-26ish wide.
He was a ways away, so it isn't the best pic since I'm all the way zoomed in. There was also a lot of wind when I took it which didn't make it any easier to get a good picture of him bedded.
(more to come...)
This hunt first came up on my radar back in 2013 when I was going through my contact list in my phone and doing a little tidying up of numbers I no longer had a use for. I came upon a number of a friend of mine from back in the day who I hadn't talked to in a few years. I still considered him a good friend, we'd just grown a little out of touch. I sent him a text and luckily the number still belonged to my friend. Anyway, we go to talking about life and soon the topic of conversation turned to hunting, as it should right? He told me he had drawn a muley tag in wyoming and had done some scouting so far during the summer and was excited for his hunt to open (it was probably in june/july when this happened). He told me I should look into applying for it next year, and if I drew, he'd take me to his spot and show me around. He said there were big bucks up there, and that's all I needed to hear. He also did end up dropping the hammer on a really pretty 4x4 that scored in the 180's. I was drooling when he sent me the picture of him behind his trophy.
Fast forward to spring of this year. I ended up drawing the tag I'd put in for. My friend had also put in, but hadn't drawn. I contacted him the day the results for wyoming were released and shared my excitement of drawing with him and one of the things he said is 'we've got to get up there and get to work finding you a good buck!' That was music to my ears.
We were only able to make one scouting trip up there before the season opened, even though the original plan was to make several. But we managed to find some sweet bucks, one in particular that would haunt my dreams (literally) for a while:
The picture doesn't do him justice, he was pretty heavy and really wide. And this was only mid July, so he had some time left to grow still.
We also saw some good bulls up high:
And you know you're up there when you see these right across from you:
The friday before opening day I drove up with my buddy after we got off work. The plan was to do as much glassing as possible and hopefully find a shooter buck that we could try to pattern as much as possible before opening day. We started the ~4 mile pack in at 11 pm. It had cooled off substantially in the recent days based off of weather reports, and we found the reports to be pretty accurate as we saw frost all over during the midnight hours of the hike in. We left the truck and were able to hike by moonlight for quite a ways as long as there wasn't much tree cover. Watching our shadows sprawl out in front of our every step over the frost covered ground and walking by the soft light of the moon, it almost felt surreal. To say I'd been looking forward to and anticipating this hunt was an understatement.
As we climbed the rolling hills and passed through meadows we could hear bulls bugling in the distance. When we were in the middle of some dead fall we heard the closest bugle of all, and it sounded like it was getting closer. We stopped and turned off our headlamps. Soon we heard some crashing coming right for us. When it was about 15-20 yards away and began to slow, we flipped on our headlamps and pointed them in the direction of the noise. The big 6x6 bull swung his head back and forth in the beams of light, looking pretty confused, and promptly took off the way he'd come. I think he figured out we weren't elk.
We rolled in to our campsite at around 2:30-3 am. Soon after dropping my pack and helping my friend with the tent, I was pretty chilled. I'd gotten pretty lathered up on the hike in. The steepest part was a big hill just off the lip from our campsite. I got out of my sweaty clothes and into my merino base layers and slipped into my Western Mountaineering down bag and slipped off to sleep with visions of big bucks running through my head.
After about 3 hours of sleep, we were up and glassing. The morning was a little slower than we had expected buck-wise, but we saw some activity that gave us hope. Here is a pic of one of the best bucks of the morning that I spotted:
He was still in full velvet, the only one of the trip we'd see that was like that. Later that morning I also spotted a black bear, which was cool since I hadn't seen one up there yet.
The rest of that day was pretty slow. Not a whole lot sighted that got us too excited. All in all, not the best day for spotting huge bucks. All I could think of most of the day was the big buck I'd seen that morning in full velvet. Little did I know we'd meet again...
The next day, the morning glassing session produced almost nothing, much to our surprise. In the afternoon I managed to spot this 4x4:
He was probably 24-26ish wide.
He was a ways away, so it isn't the best pic since I'm all the way zoomed in. There was also a lot of wind when I took it which didn't make it any easier to get a good picture of him bedded.
(more to come...)
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