Wyoming Safari 2013

[MinnesotaHunter]

Part 2: The Reckoning.

We are only days away from part two of our Wyoming safari. We leave Friday for another week in WY. There will be five of us again, but I am the only one who was out in September for archery season. Most of the guys have deer and antelope tags, but two of us will be chasing cow elk. We have a couple "elder statesmen" coming along (my father in law and my buddy's dad), so I am anticipating a "dang I must have left my packframe at camp" once or twice .

Yesterday, I brought the rifle and muzzleloader out to the range to get them dialed in. I had been shooting Hornady 154 grn Interbonds out of my 7mm Rem, but they quick making that factory load, so I picked up a few boxes of bonded and all copper rounds to try out and see what shot best. The rifle, a Tikka T3 lite stainless, ended up really liking the Federal 160 grn Trophy Bonded Tips, putting them inside an inch at a hundred. I got the rifle zeroed at 200 and then using the Rapid Z-600 reticle dinged the 12" plate at 400. Good to go..... The muzzle loader was another issue, it was wet a drizzling all morning and I was having a tough time getting consistent performance, so I am not sure what do do there. I was hoping to bring it out and fill my cow tag with it, but unless I can sneak out yet this week, which is very unlikely, the Encore might be staying at home. I usually bring out a second rifle in case someone else's or my rifle has an issue, so I will throw in the trusty Kimber 84L 30-06, it is a reliable killer.

Tonight, with the wife at the gym, I threw together the majority of what I will be bringing out. I have been looking at everyone else's piles of gear and something seems to be missing. I am afraid I am going to have to go out and buy some Crocs, or I am never going to kill an elk!!



Now, I just need to survive the rest of the work week.

 

[MN Public Hunter]

We are only days away from part two of our Wyoming safari. We leave Friday for another week in WY. There will be five of us again, but I am the only one who was out in September for archery season. Most of the guys have deer and antelope tags, but two of us will be chasing cow elk. We have a couple "elder statesmen" coming along (my father in law and my buddy's dad), so I am anticipating a "dang I must have left my packframe at camp" once or twice .

Yesterday, I brought the rifle and muzzleloader out to the range to get them dialed in. I had been shooting Hornady 154 grn Interbonds out of my 7mm Rem, but they quick making that factory load, so I picked up a few boxes of bonded and all copper rounds to try out and see what shot best. The rifle, a Tikka T3 lite stainless, ended up really liking the Federal 160 grn Trophy Bonded Tips, putting them inside an inch at a hundred. I got the rifle zeroed at 200 and then using the Rapid Z-600 reticle dinged the 12" plate at 400. Good to go..... The muzzle loader was another issue, it was wet a drizzling all morning and I was having a tough time getting consistent performance, so I am not sure what do do there. I was hoping to bring it out and fill my cow tag with it, but unless I can sneak out yet this week, which is very unlikely, the Encore might be staying at home. I usually bring out a second rifle in case someone else's or my rifle has an issue, so I will throw in the trusty Kimber 84L 30-06, it is a reliable killer.

Tonight, with the wife at the gym, I threw together the majority of what I will be bringing out. I have been looking at everyone else's piles of gear and something seems to be missing. I am afraid I am going to have to go out and buy some Crocs, or I am never going to kill an elk!!

View attachment 37545

Now, I just need to survive the rest of the work week.

I just got back from there and with all the snow you better have tire chains and if not better get some.

 

[MinnesotaHunter]

Chains are packed! We have them all around for both trucks. I ordered some new gaiters this week too just in case we get some more snow.

 

[jarheadhunter]

Keep us posted. You should have a good time. I have the same sleeping bag in the 23 deg model and it has been awesome for backpacking. Good Luck.

 

[idnative1948]

Yes, keep us posted. Really enjoy the play-by-play!

 

[MinnesotaHunter]

We took of this afternoon and after fighting our way through rush hour traffic we hit the open road southwest of the twin cities. I am typing this as we cruise across SD. We are coming up on Chamberlain, so we are about halfway there.

It was a rough week trying to stay focused at work, and next week is about as bad a week as possible for me to miss work, but I am sure they can hold down the fort without me.

I didn't have a chance to get back out to the range this week to get the smoke pole zeroed, so it got benched and the Kimber is traveling in its place.

Looks like we might get a little more snow in the next few days, we have our fingers crossed.

Anyway, good luck to all of you heading out in the next week.

 

[MN Public Hunter]

Good luck and have a safe trip !

 

[MinnesotaHunter]

So, we got here Saturday morning and started looking for elk and scouting for deer and goats. We have only found a couple of elk so far. We have seen some definate shooter goats, so that front is looking good. Starting yesterday the weather came in and the roads have gone downhill quick, and it doesn't look like it is going to get better for a couple days, so we decided to make a bold move. We left our antelope and elk area to a little Muley honey hole I found a few years ago to hunt it, while the other area dries out. This is a little drawback for me as I notched my deer tag with a bow, but for the next couple of days we can get the other guys a legitimate shot at a decent Muley. We will probably hunt this area until Wednesday and then head back down to our goat/elk area for the rest of the week. I hope this pays off, I would like to see these guys get a shot at a nice mule deer. We are heading outgo try and put some bucks to bed for opening morning.

 

[MinnesotaHunter]

Wrap-up

Well, things did not go as intended. I ran into connectivity issues, but you didn't miss a whole lot.

We went up to the area I mentioned for deer on opening day, and we were on bucks all day long. We didn't see any big boys but we shot some pretty nice 3x3s and my father in law got a decent 4x4, that he was thrilled with considering it was his 2nd deer he's ever killed. I don't have alot of time this afternoon, but I will finish the update. I am goign to try and get in the stand for whitetails tonight. Had a buck I think was a shooter last night but he came in too late to tell for sure. I had him at 25 yds, but while the black gold would have still let me shoot, I didn't want to regret a bunch of ground shrinkage.

 

[noharleyyet]

Did you take the Dyna Wide Glide with you?

 

[MinnesotaHunter]

Couldn't find chains that would fit. Plus my wife wouldn't let me, that one is Her's. Mine is the ugly one you can just see the back tire of next to it. It is one of those ones with the Porsche motor and a corvette back tire.

 

[noharleyyet]

V-Rod....sweeeet!

Nice hunt account MH.

 

[MinnesotaHunter]

More to come tomorrow, I have some pics and will relate the cautionary tale of what can happen when you are hunting broken public ground and don't have a good backup plan.

Now I have to go and harrass the local whitetail population.

 

[sdstalker]

And??

 

[MinnesotaHunter]

The Wrap-up

Well, Gents. I apologize if any of you have been waiting on the edge of your seats for this (I hope not). I have been out in the whitetail stand almost every spare minute, so this is a little delayed.

As I mentioned before, on this hunt I once again learned a valuable lesson about hunting out west. As most of you know the weather out in WY during the rifle season was less than ideal, and this ended up having a big affect on our hunt. Last year we went to a new area and found a decent chunk of BLM land that had alot of critters on it, none really big, but lots of opportunity and alot of varying terrain, so the elder statesmen in the group could still get alot of action, but if the4 young bucks wanted to they could hike back into a couple of areas. This worked great last year, we had a blast, everyone got to fill all their tags with decent goats and so-so deer. Well, the factor that I missed was the fact that the ranch that was adjacent to the BLM will let anyone on their ranch to hunt, as long as the roads are good, so they don't get torn up. Some of you can probably see where this is going already.

So, come this September, as you read earlier in the post we checked this area out the first few days and we were seeing good elk and goats, but still small deer. Regardless this was goign to be our primary area in October because the areas we hunted up high were not accessable with all the snow.

Long story, short. When we got out there and the roads were crappy, no one was getting on the ranch, and as an unforseen result hundreds of goats and about 50 elk spent the first week of rifle season un harrassed out in the middle of the nice flat ranch land, while a dozen or so ravenous hunter sat pearched above the canyons and slopes up above them on the BLM waiting for them to head up into the thicker cover; which never happened.

So, now that we have learned the lesson, back to our story. Last I updated while out there we were heading north to a little spot that has produced some decent bucks for me in the past. I was really trying to get my father in law a decent muley, this was my main goal. My other two buddies wanted meat bucks, and I think they felt guilty because I was giving up my hunting time to go up there, since my elk and goat tags weren't good there.

The first morning we hiked up onto the main ridge that dominates this area. This ridge straddles a drainage and two basins, so we psread out and started glassing. We had about 2 inches of fresh snow, so it was perfect glassing, and we quickly found a couple groups of bucks. Right away I found a really narrow and tall 3x3, and was able to get one of my buddies onto that buck, and he dropped it no problem. I had to talk my father in law out of shooting it. It would have only been his second deer, but I thought we might be able to do a little better. We got his buck quartered up and all of the meat up to the top of the ridge on the route back down to the trucks. He told us he would shuttle his meat down, and that we should keep hunting.

We headed into one of the basins after the other group of bucks which I wasn't sure, but thought their might be a little bigger buck in. We were able to spot them again, and moved down a secondary ridge that looked like would bring us to within a couple hundred yards of the deer. We left another buddy up the ridge a little as we moved down so he could close the back door on these deer if we bumped them, and my F-i-L and I kept moving down the ridge. We hit our predetermined point to creep over the top on them, but when we did they were nowhere to be found, but looking to either side of us there were 3 washouts that cut back into the ridge we came down. We check the middle and then the down hill cuts and no deer, so we composed ourselves figuring they had to be in the uphill cut, so we crawled over the edge and the 6 bucks were bedded at 225 up undernieth a ledge. One was a decent little 4x4, and I thought this would be a great second buck for him. They had no idea we were there, so my father in law was able to get real comfortable, get over a little buck fever, and I gave him the range. He hammered it with a 130 grn TSX out of his .270. The other 5 deer didn't even no what happened other than big brother got out of there in a hurry and fell over about 200 yds away. they trotted up the basin towards my buddy and he picked out a 3x3 and dropped it in its tracks. All three deer tags notched opening day by 3pm.


Now we had to get 2 deer out with only three guys, and I figured I could only give my father in law 1 quarter and the head to add to his pack, so my buddy and I did a little cross leveling and loaded up the rest of the 2 deer and both of our gear. Thew only reprieve was that I didn't have a rifle with me, so that saved about 7.5 lbs. It was only about 3.5 miles as the crow flew and about 2/3's of it was down hill, so it wasn't too bad. We weighed our packs my buddies was 115 and mine was 105 (carrying the spotter/tripod by hand)


That night we stayed up north in Sheridan, hit Sanford's Pub & Grub for burgers in beer before heading back down to our original camp. The next night though we fired up the grill and cooked up the heart and tenderloins out of a couple of the deer we got the day before!


The next few days were frustrating. We tried just about everything, walked all over the place, cruised the roads for goats, and nothing. The last day we found a little piece of BLM that required a little bit of rock climbing out of a canyon to get to as the slope was land locked from the bottom, but it had goats up there, so we went after them and were able to get my buddy a decent goat, and I was able to get a doe antelope for the freezer.


It wasn't how we hoped the trip would end. Another elk tag going into the soup pot for me, but that is ok. We had a great time, learned some more lessons, saw alot of great country, put some good meat in the freezer, and weren't working, so what else do you really need?

 

[CabinFever]

Looks like a great time, congrats on the success.