Long weekend

Joe and I hunted together Saturday morning without seeing anything other than a little bit of elk sign. Joe helped me set up a camp then I drove Joe down to Eagle where he met with Nancy, Heather and all the kids. I drove back up on the mountain to hunt and camp until Monday. I made a short hunt and saw a couple small bucks and a doe Saturday evening but no elk.

I got up at 4:30 Sunday morning, got all my stuff together (should have done that the night before) then drove to the location I would start from. It was getting light, so I was rushing to get to the ridge top and walked right into a big mule deer buck. I circled him to try and get ahead of him for an ambush, but I never saw him again. I then spotted a couple elk in the awful hole that Joe and I hunted last weekend. Of course I bailed off into it again. I stayed in there all day and managed to hear one bugle, but before it was over with I believe the wind gave me up. At the end of the day I had to climb up out of there again, but chose a different route than last week. It was still a tough climb, but not even close to as bad as the last choice.

I debated it for a while, but decided I wanted to spend some of Monday with the kids and Heather and see Joe for a while before they were to leave on Tuesday, so I drove home that night. On the way down the mountain I saw another big Mule Deer buck and was wishing I had stayed, but there is always next weekend.

On Monday we fished at Turquoise lake for a while and kept 8 fish caught between myself, Joe, Kelsie and Michael. We could have caught more, but the weather was nasty and we were hungry. I had planned to hunt near Leadvill that evening with Isaac, but it was raining hard. So, I drove Joe to pick up their rental car in Eagle for their drive through the Rocky Mountain National Park on Tuesday then to the Denver Airport. Of course the weather looked great up on the mountain I had been hunting.

I've still not loaded any pictures onto my computer, so no pics yet.