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Vanish and FireTiger's 2018 Hunt Journal - Season 8

vanish

Well-known member
Joined
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Location
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uc


Aww yeah, Colorado draw results are out and my excitement for hunting has not wavered in the off season. Therefore, I declare it time to start the 2018 journal! If you're new to the site or the Live Hunts forum, you may want to go blow a few hours reading our past journals. If you don't want to read them, here's the TLDR: We're a couple that hunts mostly on public land in Colorado, do-it-yourself, for any species with any weapon, and we try to recount those hunts here.

Link to Season 7
Link to Season 6

Theme of the Season

If you've read those, you'll know that we have a few friends we've introduced to hunting. The theme of this year is intended to be mentoring. B-Rad only applied for and had a deer tag last year, was unsuccessful, but had some fun stalks. Fitzy only had a small game license. Both of them jumped in head first, with no prompting by us, and applied for elk, deer and pronghorn this year. We have two other friends that have hunted elk unsuccessfully for 3 years. My dad has hunted archery elk for 7 years with a single cow under his belt.

Season Schedule

Here's the rough schedule at the moment. Some hunts overlap, so it will depend on whether we've tagged out in one unit or not.

CO OTC Archery Elk (Dad, Other friends)
CO Archery Bear ( Vanish )
CO Early Rifle Deer (FireTiger)
CO Rifle Pronghorn (The whole freakin crew, some with buck tags, some with does)
CO 2nd Season Deer (B-Rad)
CO Plains Whitetail (Vanish, Fitzy)
NE Archery Deer (Vanish, Dad)

As you can see, we're a bit light on the elk hunts. Neither FireTiger nor I have elk tags yet. Most likely I'll just buy OTC Archery, but I may just watch for tags while helping others. FireTiger has had success on 4th season elk hunts, and I would put money on her trying to get a hold of one of those tags, but she's got this idea of hunting new units, whereas I am more inclined to hunt where I already know I'll find elk.

You'll also notice a bear tag in there. Fully expect to not fill this tag as I usually only see one per year while hunting, but it will be the first time I am carrying one. I was always kind of ambivalent on hunting bears, but two things have changed. 1.) I've eaten bear twice this year, and its good. 2.) There's record numbers of bears out there this year. Why not?

Further Thoughts

We're still just over two months away from the first season, but in the meantime we'll be alpine fishing and scouting. I've got two deer points now and I'd really like to try an archery alpine mule deer hunt in the near future, either 2019 or 2020. I started researching and gathering the gear for that type of hunt in 2007 and even though we moved to Colorado in 2010, I've always focused on archery elk. Bugling bulls are hard to resist, and vacation time is limited!

Lastly, Hank and I continue for explore the CO Front Range backyard backcountry. With so much development, it can be easy to miss the foothills. It takes a good map and being willing to climb some quite steep stuff to get in there, but there's a lot more available than first glance. This meadow was our reward for 2 hours of climbing the other day, only a 20 minute drive from home.

uc
 
Can't wait to follow ya'll this year. I lived vicariously through you many afternoons from my office last fall. Good luck!
 
Thanks for following! Maintaining this journal is one of my favorite things of the season.

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We were supposed to go East for walleyes. Long story but we wound up in local wilderness instead.

This trip wasn't about fishing. Fishing was OK. I was just happy the lake was open.

Was hoping to spot some elk and mountain goats, but nobody was home yet.

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What is that white stuff all over the ground?110+ in Az. today.All forests closed down.Hunting season does not look good.
 
What is that white stuff all over the ground?110+ in Az. today.All forests closed down.Hunting season does not look good.

There's actually very little snow around this year except for select ranges; it helps being at 12k. It was 100 when we went to Denver the next day.
 
Last weekend, the weather kept us out of the mountains. We made a short overnight trip out East. Didn't quite get the walleye bite we were looking for, though we did bring some home.

I've been stuck in Chicago this week, so the closest I've been to hunting has been YouTube and forums. Looking likely we'll be in the alpine tomorrow, though.

uc
 
Weather forecast was 50% chance of snow, and considering I only got home from Chicago on Friday night, we decided to take the easy way out and head East for some walleye fishing. Fared much better this time, putting four keepers in the boat, with a total count around 20.

FireTiger is off with her friends today, so I'm going to go scout some local areas for B-Rad's deer tag. Just checking out the access points and the terrain.

uc
 
Toured an area I had not been in before. I think I got some motion sickness from the windy, bumpy roads.

I did find some deer even with it being the worst time of day to spot them.

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FireTiger did not draw Wyoming Pronghorn. We didn't think she would, but I like how there is a chance!
 
Don't forget the leftover draw if you guy's really want a tag. I drew a buck and doe tag and am putting in for another type 6 in the leftover. I'll be heading straight from my CO muzzleloader elk hunt to Wyoming to chase goats. September needs to hurry up and get here.
 
Combo Scouting / Fishing trip with a buddy this weekend. Going to explore some new country. Looking for a potential alpine archery deer spot, with a side of elk and cutthroat trout.
 
42 pounds for this trip. Would be nice to get that down to 35 or so, but its all just training for hauling elk quarters, right?

uc
 
I ended up suckering two buddies of mine from BHA into a scouting trip with a side of fishing.

Friday night, we started hiking at 8:30pm. 8.5 miles later, got to our first camp at 12:30am. Up at 5am to glass the basin. Nobody home. Moved on another 1.5 miles to glass the next basin. Found 6 bucks, with two of them being decent. Another mile later and we were at the next basin, nobody home, but we set camp.

We then bailed ~2 miles, 1200ft down hill to the lake. We arrived and immediately got into some fish, but not the quality I was expecting. Awesome looking lake though. We continued fishing for the next 4 hours in a snow storm. Landed about two dozen between us, but nothing over 13 inches. Brought some back up for extra dinner. Spotted 6 elk from camp. It was damn cold.

Sunday hiked out the ~11 miles. Hank almost didn't make it. We had to carry his pack the last two miles. 27 miles / 5k elevation in a 41 hour span.

If you recognize the area, please do not mention it. Not that anything we saw would excite anyone. :D

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Very nice.Fishing in the snow,I've only done that once and I was in shorts and a tee shirt.(AZ>)
 
I got a bit lax in my shooting, but picking things up now with a local BHA Run > Shoot event. We run ~2.5 miles and follow that up with shooting.

uc
 
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