10 days away and it can't get here soon enough! I was lucky enough to get a free hotel stay in the mountains this week while my wife visits her mountain accounts and it turns out that
@Dsnow9 was also going to be up here visiting family. So we put a scouting and shooting day on the books for Friday. I came up a day early to drive the unit and get a feel for a few of the potential glassing and camping spots for our 1st and 4th season hunts here in the mountains of CO. It was also nice to really test out the new truck and get a feel for how it performs as well.
It turned out to be a great day battling rutted out roads, sporadic rain storms and really chatty archery hunters. Anytime I passed someone or came near a camp, someone flagged me down to chat. Not sure why everyone was back at camp during the day, but to each their own. I heard story upon story of seeing elk, but them not being chatty enough to call in. It's been pretty quiet in my neck of the woods too, so maybe the rut is going to be a little later this year. I mean summer didn't really start in the mountains by us until mid to late June, maybe the elk are off too.
My first stop turned out to be a good one. Glasses up 4 cows, 2 spikes and a bull. I couldn't get my magview gear on fast enough, so all I have is this spike being the only one wiling to feed out in the open after they moved through the trees to a new spot. It was fascinating watching these elk move through thick timber and getting to do so from a slight above angle, it was awesome.
After watching these guys feed for a bit and hearing a clap of thunder, I got off that high point and back in the truck. Upon heading down, I looked over to my right and thought I saw a really odd shape sage bush. Well the minute I hit the breaks, this sage bush jumped up and starting trotting away. and then turned around and started trotting toward me. It was the oddest thing. But he's small, so he's probably used to people passing on him
I then left this general area of the unit, drove out and back to the highway, and headed further east into the unit. Down an even more rutted out and rocky road, and up and up and up. As if seeing elk and deer already weren't enough, I was fortunate enough to spot 3 rams, including a tagged ram that I have now named Slurpee (tag 7-11). Slurpee had a set of balls on him that looked ready to breed the next generation of rams for Colorado and for RMBS to work to converse habitat for. A few texts to the one and only
@Oak and it sounds like this guy is roughly 7 years old and
@Oak even had a picture of him from March of 2021. I get now why some people enjoy Bighorn sheep so much that they just head to the hills to watch them. They are fascinating creatures. in this case, these guys were splashing and drinking in a creek, then as fast as you could blink your eye they were halfway up the hill and feeding up. What an end to an awesome day.
I have a ton of awesome landscape pics, but as
@trb so elequotenly put it... then you would know where we are hunting and it would get even more crowded. But needless to say it was a gorgeous day in the mountains - leaves are changing, there was some low lying fog and off in the distance some snow capped peaks. Fall is coming... and hopefully a full freezer too!