2022 Failure Thread

[Khunter]

this was a fail this year. points for tryin’ the impossible?
I am sure it is difficult to discern the real antelope is in middle of photo and fake antelope is lower right. haha

 

[Beignet]

Well, we’re now 0 for 2 on antelope outings, and with two more failures to report.

Winded an elk herd yesterday that’d had been hiding just over a ridge. I’d say about 50 or so, and got to watch them storm through the sagebrush for about a mile. True to current MT management objectives there were about five bulls in the mix. One that wasn’t a spike or a rag horn. Was pretty damn cool to see the hillside unexpectedly explode with life though. Bummer it wasn’t a week later as the one bigger bull was at the end of the pack and stopped a few times.

We figured that cacophony would’ve spooked any antelope out of the area. Wrong. The distant “rocks” turned out to be a nice sized herd. Put a heck of a stalk on them, sneaking around for what seemed like an hour. Got right up to the ridge line and made just the wrong noise as my GF’s rifle was getting raised. Herd out.

Today we went back to the Impossible Honey Hole (just past Sisyphus Hill), and see three ‘lopes looking down on us from 200 yards away. We got the gun ready and waited for one to turn broadside. I’m gonna take the blame for this one as I don’t think a new hunter responds well to the pressure of “shoot now!” Swing and a miss. That antelope got whiffed and was off for the day.

On the way out we decided to knock on a landowner’s door to try and get permission to an area where we’d see a ton of critters on our hikes. He seemed sad to say no as they’d leased it to an outfitter to make ends meet. Looks like we’re gonna burn some more PTO at the end of next week to try and wrap this up before the general season pumpkin militia shows up on Saturday.

Screenshot from some video of the elk dashing around:

 

[Deleted member 20812]

I don’t think a new hunter responds well to the pressure of “shoot now!”

Typically no

 

[Stocker]

Every Mathews shooter

 

[Stocker]

Mule deer are currently taking me to school. I can’t turn up any of the good bucks I found earlier in the year. In the past month I’ve put 1 stalk on a buck that I honestly wasn’t too excited about shooting, a nice 4x4, but not really good. I can turn up giant white tail bucks where I’m trying to hunt mule deer, but if I kill a WT there then I have nothing to hunt at home.


The only surprising thing is me finding the big WT bucks, the rest is pretty much typical of my hunting seasons.

 

[Hunting Wife]

Driving around scouting antelope, happened upon 3 sharptails in a spot I might actually be able to get a shot. Pull over, get the shotgun, load up, hobble over, gingerly cross fence. Birds get up slightly farther out than I thought but still in range. Empty the gun. Not a feather falls.

The entirety of my sharptail season right there.

 

[R.K.]

Driving around scouting antelope, happened upon 3 sharptails in a spot I might actually be able to get a shot. Pull over, get the shotgun, load up, hobble over, gingerly cross fence. Birds get up slightly farther out than I thought but still in range. Empty the gun. Not a feather falls.

The entirety of my sharptail season right there.

I followed a friend and his dog around some dry country yesterday. 7 miles, found a couple nests and two feathers. Not a single bird in all any of it.

I’ll probably pick the spots going forward.

 

[antlerradar]

I have been good at archery elk failure. Two years in a row I have had the same bull at less than 40 yards on the last day of the season, but it was past shooting time.

 

[Stocker]

I have been good at archery elk failure. Two years in a row I have had the same bull at less than 40 yards on the last day of the season, but it was past shooting time.

That’s salt in the wound man.

 

[MtnElk]

a failure is a failure... but I am blaming this one of the stomach bug that robbed me of 3 days of my 5 day season

Hoping for redemption with a nice cow elk in 3rd season

 

[antlerradar]

That’s salt in the wound man.

If he survives rifle season I can go for the three peat next year.

 

[Chama Grande]

2022 New Mexico bull

I had some big hopes on this one. Last year I found these two areas, both loaded with bulls. One tends to get blown out by an outfitter within an hour on opening day, and them guys never fully leave the area. I assumed that area was just gone. The other is lesser known, but its a tight canyon with fresh sign all over it. Well, someone removed the gate that blocked atv traffic, and a pretty big storm blew in. Between the jeep guy who drove in like twice a day and the winds that never seemed to settle down, I couldn't get the conditions I needed to be successful there.

Lessons:
1. I should have also pre-scouted a 'bad weather' area, or something more open. The tight canyon hunting that I had planned required really stable thermals, and instead I had 20-30 mph prevailing winds and really erratic canyon winds. I couldn't get anything to settle down predictably. Every time I entered a canyon the winds were either swirling or going the wrong way. 'Can't kill 'em from camp', my partner would say and we'd go anyway. That was probably also a mistake.

2. Meet other hunting partners. My friend hunts with so much anxiety that he's just exhausting to hunt with, and he has zero fun until the hunt is done. If he hears a shot in the distance, he takes it to mean that we are failures as hunters, and as men. He took weird parts home as a mark of failure. I was glad when he left. I spent a lot of time following tracks, and chasing whatever I wanted and had a good last two days.

3. I gotta stop camping so damn far away from the hunting area. It was at least a 40 minute drive no matter where I was going.

Anyway, there's more but 2022 bull is over and in the books.

 

[westbranch]

ID archery Pronghorn - hunted 3 partial days since that is what fit the schedule. Was doing spot and stalk, only found them in wide open country and never made it closer than 120 yards. But fun to explore a new part of the state. Crappy cell phone pic of the bucks we found:

View attachment 244272


WY general elk - five days of the best elk hunting I ever experienced. Then poor shot on a bull and did not find it. Last sign of the elk, small drop of blood on little stick:

View attachment 244273


Plenty of hunting to do still, tags remaining:
ID general elk tag - hunt the next couple of weekends.
CO mule deer second season - me and a friend
ID regular deer tag - wife and I
ID extra antlerless whitetail - me
ID late season cow elk - wife and I

I have not shot a deer since 2013, deer hunted 5-10 days every year. Passing up young bucks or does early in the season because I wanted to spend more time hunting and then having something come up where I end up not shooting anything. Haven't even fired a shot at deer since 2013. Maybe this will be my year for deer.

I ate all of these big game tags in 2022. Passed a couple whitetail does and fawns, so counted coup on those. Hunted multiple new areas and spent a ton of time outside while hunting 3 different states so shouldn't complain too much. But should really shoot something one of these years.

 

[BackofBeyond]

I ate all of these big game tags in 2022. Passed a couple whitetail does and fawns, so counted coup on those. Hunted multiple new areas and spent a ton of time outside while hunting 3 different states so shouldn't complain too much. But should really shoot something one of these years.

A wise man once said “taking the safety off increases bullet velocity by 100%.”

 

[westbranch]

A wise man once said “taking the safety off increases bullet velocity by 100%.”

I told my wife we could have channeled our inner Montanans and fired a few rounds into a group of 10 elk at 600+ yards. If you don't see em fall you can just drive away.

 

[rtraverdavis]

When this thread first started I thought, pfft, won’t have anything to post there… Couldn’t have been more wrong.

The elk were not forgiving nor gentle this season.

One for the homies, off a 30 ft cliff:

 

[FI460]

When this thread first started I thought, pfft, won’t have anything to post there… Couldn’t have been more wrong.

The elk were not forgiving nor gentle this season.

One for the homies, off a 30 ft cliff:
View attachment 258929

I don’t like this photo because I'm in it.

Questioning all of my decisions somewhere down in those trees.

 

[rtraverdavis]

I don’t like this photo because I'm in it.

Questioning all of my decisions somewhere down in those trees.

Different spot. This was the spot I should have never gone in, so I peed off the cliff.

But the fact that even you don’t recognize it makes me feel okay about posting it! Almost deleted it…

 

[44hunter45]

this was a fail this year. points for tryin’ the impossible?
I am sure it is difficult to discern the real antelope is in middle of photo and fake antelope is lower right. haha
View attachment 244648

I'd be spooked too if you took your bra off on me.

 

[NR_Hunter]

Man.... this whole season for me should just be called "Diary of a Losing Lately Deer Hunting." I have one moment in particular where I can feel still feel my body temp increase out of frustration when I think about.

I was posted up on a ledge somewhere in Wyoming, watching over a creek. The sage and brush along the creek were very dense. Even from this high above you couldn't really see into there. It was easy to see why the deer liked it and felt so comfortable in there.

To make a bad story shorter, two small popped up in a small opening in the sage. 225 yards away. I repositioned my pack and get set up for the shot, I squeeze the trigger and the buck I shot at runs out of the stage, looking like a clear hit. I fire one more time while he was running but I missed. The buck then does a 180, and runs back into the sage. Right next to the other buck. I took my eyes off the deer while I dialed my scope magnification down, and put the deer in my crosshairs once again, or so I thought.

Since I took my eyes off the buck, and the fact they moved to a little denser spot in the sage and their antlers were obscured, I couldn't tell which one was the one I hit. If you read this far, I'm sure you might be thinking I ended up shooting two deer. Luckily, I didn't do that, but I did hesitate long enough not to finish the one I did shoot. The injured buck imped forward, giving himself away, but at the point it was too late to rip another shot in there. Two steps forward and he was out of sight.

I was very angry, but I figured my first shot would have been fatal. When I found the first blood, I really thought it would be. There was a lot of bright red bubbly blood. I've killed deer with smaller blood trails before. After about 100 yards, the blood went totally dry and the sun was fading fast.

I called my buddy and said I need help. About 20 minutes later I hear two shots, and about 5 minutes after that my buddy comes over huffing and puffing saying he just shot at a big fork 60 yards away and he was convinced he dropped it, which at that time I assumed it was the injured buck. I end up picking up the blood trail, this time it was tiny and followed it to exactly to where my buddy shot, confirming it was the same deer, and he indeed did NOT hit it. At that point, we decide to get the hell out of there and come back in the morning.



The next morning, we search and search at last blood and finally find a few pin drops of blood. We follow it thru the brush to the creek, and jump the buck off a bed. There was a little bit of pooling, but because of the density of the cover, he was once again gone before I could get a shot off. It was maybe 75 yards from where we last found blood the night before.

Two days later we went back and hunted along the same creek. My buddy apparently jumped the buck once again at 5 yards. This time it ran out of the cover, and for some reason he tried to get his pack off, get his gun on it, and range the deer. Even limping the deer was gone well before he got set up. Not how I would have played it, but if I did my job in the first place it wouldn't have mattered.

I still get unhappy when I think about this. Just feel super bad. I'm thinking I played the quartering away angle of the deer poorly and hit too far forward and sent a bullet through meat and missed anything vital. I hope he's still alive. Also, I didn't proofread any of this.