We had a great year "camping" in Montana this year. The weather was great for camping. We did go 7 for 7 on deer but only managed to drop one elk. Last year we were 7 for 9 on elk but had fresh snow almost everyday. We only had one day of fresh snow this year. The animals were very spooky this year, probably because of wolves/griz/etc which also made the hunt more challenging. Everyday, 50cal and I were within a half second of harvesting an elk but that's why they call it hunting.
Here are some camp pics:
My Hunting Shack:
Graybrow's hunting digs
Graybrow's Entertainment Center:
The motley crew: Standing left to right: Dave (graybrow), Lynn, Steve, Eric. Seated left to right Byron (lastdaybuck) and Jim (50Cal).
Our hunt area:
This year the local Wildlife and Beaverhead National Forest authorities were handing out $225 fines for improper meat and food storage. The rules were almost rediculous. If your food was not in a bear proof container or hanging 10ft in the air and 100+ yards from camp, you were in violation. Here is what 10ft looks like:
Here is the rack pack, no monsters this year, lots of meat bucks. Maybe Graybrow can add some field photos from his deer.
The area we camp in is permit only for deer so we spent the first 3 days driving to our deer area. Not seeing any big ones 50Cal and I decided to take a couple of meat bucks so we could go elk hunting. My story is simple, after 3 days of hard hunting I made it back to the truck in early afternoon, was about to get in the truck when I noticed a deer 70 yards uphill from the truck. I can tell you I have never had one this easy before so I took him, a small 3 x 4. This is what you want in a blood trail, not a lot of guess work.
On the second to the last day, one of our crew had some elk success with this 5x5.
Here are some more misc pics:
Camp Mascot:
Fishing Was Good:
Interesting Rock Formation:
I took about 50 pics of nice whitetails on Ted Turners ranch but they were far away and didn't turn out so good. Here are a few:
On my last day of hunting elk, I did manage to get a very brief look at a 6x6 with nice whale-tails that probably would have went 320-330 which is a great elk for this area. But as mentioned before, I was always 1/2 second too late.
Graybrow, put some of your Fort Peck pics on here.
