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Pink camo, #dadbodhunter, and a whole lotta stupid!

Good ole cheese…what a guy! And he even got to put that extremely expensive rifle of his to use! Glad y’all had success and the little one was there to share in it.
 
D’s Friday

At sunrise I pulled out of camp with my full camp needs minus food and my tent which we’re going to the new camp. Weight wise that’s all the llamas could carry so I had all of my stuff for the pack out with the two llamas. 6.5 miles to the truck. Considering coming back in depending on the time to the trailhead and rest for the llamas.
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About two miles into the hike I ran into a herd of elk with a 5x5 bigger than mine and got to take a few photos.
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At about the three mile mark I noticed Otto lay down. Beau’s llamas are amazing and extremely well trained. This was not normal. I had separated their leads at every water crossing to give them plenty of water and breaks. If they are tied together the llamas in the back just get dragged across the water.
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We made it a bit further and had a good place for a long break. I pulled Otto’s bags off him to check and make sure everything was ok. I tightened up the bags and put the bags back on his saddle. We were a little over 3 miles from the truck at this time. He was doing well for about a mile and I thought we were home free but then the last two or so miles took on a turn for the worse.

Otto laid down a couple more times. Each time I would pull the bags off with half the meat from my bull, check them, adjust as necessary and reload them. This happened three times in a half mile and I was getting smoked.

I decided that I could use a break and I would give the llamas an hour or two break and sent an inreach message to the guys that I wouldn’t be coming back in that night.

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It was painful to sit that long but I knew it was good for the llamas. My toe (the one I smashed last fall) was throbbing. Every time I stepped it sent shooting pain through my foot. I’ll save the close up pics but that nail is still not grown back all the way so as it would hit the front of the boot on downhills it would dig into the nerves. It was already changing color at that point.

After an hour and a half I loaded both llamas back up, with roughly 2 miles to go. We started out well and covered about a half a mile before Otto tapped out.
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I was about 1.5 miles from camp and had enough at that point. I checked the meat bags off the side of the path and Otto stood right up with some help. He cooperated and we hiked the meat on rebel to the truck. Gave them pellets and water and took the saddles off for a while.

At this point I was messaging back and fourth and we figured out that somehow we ended up with Otto on a hunting trip but he is only 2 and can’t handle anything over 80lbs. We were aware we needed to keep his packs close to 80 but it wasn’t originally made clear that it was a hard and fast number.

Beau had just gotten back into town and was amazingly helpful working through everything and figuring out what was going on via text. We ended up setting a time to drive out and go swap llamas with Beau for the heavy duty meat haulers we should have had. Minor mistake and Beau went above and beyond to make it right.

After the long break Rebel and Otto (unsaddled) went back up to retrieve the two meat bags. That trip went well and we turned around and got ready to go meet Beau.

Then I realized that I did not have J’s key and over inreach found out he didn’t have a spare, and the llama trailer was hooked to his truck. Luckily my truck is fully loaded with gear and I’ve had to do similar things before but needless to say I got the trailer switched to my truck.
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I took the trailer to meet Beau and we swapped out these two llamas for 3 new heavy hitters. With two bull tags left to go and rougher country than we expected this came in handy.
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Got the llamas all ready for bed and then slept in the bed of my truck for the night.
What did they run you?
 
The wilderness ridge llamas and Beau are great and I would highly recommend them to anyone interested. Other than Otto getting worn out we had no issues. They hated the headlights though. When loading packs or working with them at night we tried to keep the lights away from them. When hiking we had them bring up the rear. They did not like someone hiking behind them with a light on.
What did they run you?
 
7 deer fronts and 2 deer hinds processed tonight. 4 more deer hinds to go and a full elk. Glad I’m not paying the processing bill this year but all those animals are really starting to add up now. Scraps are still just bad sealed and frozen in large bags to grind later this winter.
 
7 deer fronts and 2 deer hinds processed tonight. 4 more deer hinds to go and a full elk. Glad I’m not paying the processing bill this year but all those animals are really starting to add up now. Scraps are still just bad sealed and frozen in large bags to grind later this winter.
Have you made a rough estimate at total pounds harvested/frozen yet?
 

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