Wouldn't give no cares about NO moose if I woulda killed a ram!  Unfortunately not the case.  Goat and caribou is correct.  Sheeps next year!

Alright, got a visual on the first outing.  

Visual of what, I've got no idee.  

Three parts per day, this will take as long as the trip. Oh well, the master storyteller is slowly building his suspenseful tale of derring do in the far north woods.

PS. Thanks for breaking up the pics for us dial up folks, especially those webtv diehards with dial up. (like me) :-)

AAAAAAARRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
I feel like Charlie Brown and Lucy (played by wingnut) just yanked away the football again!!!

HEY MIKE!!!!!!

Wake up and git on wid man!!

Come on lets have some more....

Going away for the weekend, expect the next installment will be posted by the time I get back ha ha

Going to Bear Bay for the opener this weekend... can't remember if we've had that cable modem installed yet    

c'mon - how 'bout one more installment and one more pic before this afternoon?????

Looking good, Wingnut.  Keep it coming Brother!!!

Next morning we were up early readyto go after one the the bulls on the hill opposite camp.  Only problem was he was no where in sight or any of his buddies.  We glassed for hours with no luck only spotting a couple of cows, a small yearling bull and a calf.  Well back to camp for lunch.  John was taking his turn with the flu and decided to sit the afternoon out. (sleep)  Jason and I went out and finally saw the big bull again just before dark about 2 miles from camp.  We headed back with a plan for the am.

Morning broke with other plans, high winds hit camp about day break and we spent the day fortifying our position.  Big rocks were packed in to anchor the tent stakes and we sat out the storm warm and dry until a big gust (50 +) folded the stove pipe in half.  We quickly put out the fire in the stove and assessed the damage.  Temps were mild so we stowed the stove and settled in for the night.

Gotta find the journal now as the memories are runnign together.

LOL

Mike

     

Dang, thu suspense is killin us! Next thing ya know Wingnut is going to withhold the last chapter till he receives 10 bow orders.  

That's NOT FUNNY Ray,,,,,,,,geez, don't go ta givin' him any idears.

Bulletman

HMMMMMMMMMMMM! 10 bow orders would be nice.  LOL

Mike

Grizzley!!!!

Dang we were sitting on the hill minding our own business and I see something moving down by the pond.  Through the glasses it was a BEAR.  Not big as Griz go but enough to get the blood running around the pipes.  Then the fierce eater of bowhunters proceeds to jump in the pond and chase ducks around like a lab for 30-45 minutes.  Man it was cute and we all wished that we had it on video.  It finally gave up on the ducks and got out, shook off and walked into the spruce trees.  We kept the pistols close to the pillow from then on.

Mike

Man this suspence is killin me....

In the morning we were back on the hill glassing with no results.  After lunch we were back at it and soon spotted a 65" bull on the far hillside.  Now we had a plan for the am.  We decided to take the proactive/stupid approach and go to him instead of trying to call him to us. We would hike around the basin (1 mile) and call in the bull.  

As morning dawned we were packed and ready to go after the bull.  Hitting the trail we made our way to the other side, stopping once to shoot at some ptarmigan.  They proved to be just as hard to hit as grouse and we shot 0/4 only taking a few feathers for the stew pot.

When we arrived at the rock outcropping, the bull we had glassed the evening before was nowhere to be found.  We set up and called for a while with no results so we glassed the surrounding hills.  By golly there was another bigger bull on the next hill down the valley. Off we went like we had sense with a plan of just going over the next ridge to get a better look.  Well one ridge turned into three and finally we were in position.  The wind was fickle and we setup cross wind from where we had last seen the bull.  John did his best cow in heat imitation and Jason was soon looking at a very large bull above him in the trees.  It stopped head-on at 65 yds and slowly looked over the situation.  Finally it turned and headed in my direction or so Jason thought.  How the heck does 1600 pounds of animal disappear.  We tried to setup a couple more times but the wind switched and we knew we had been had.

(the little lump in the middle is where the bull was.  Pic is from camp.)

We took out the GPS to get a read on how far we were from camp.  (1.75 miles as the eagle flies.)  More like 3 miles as the fat man walks.  The three on us headed back by cutting down to the creek and following the centuries old caribou trail up the valley.  It was good going for a while with only a couple of crossings.  We did encounter a large grouse as we spooked it from a tree that scared the heck out of us. We also saw a set of shed antlers that were huge and looked like they were dropped at the same time.

We traveled the first mile and found ourselves at "bear pond".  There was lots of moose sign in the bottom and we were now at the base of the climb to out newly named "Bent pipe ridge"

The hill climbed through the berry bushes and willow for 50 to 100 yards at a time and now it started to rain.  Great!  We climbed and rested and climbed and rested.  Jason led the way and seemed to get a lot more rest then John and me.  We would climb for the same length of time but he would cover twice as much ground.  Then stop and wait for us to catch up.

Product review:  We were fueled on this climb by Slim Fast diet bars, which were both tasty and hearty. Unfortunately there was an unpleasant side effect to these bars, they gave the three of us horrific gas, I'm not talking about little toots, I'm talking about deep from within the earth out gassings, stop the rotation of the earth blasts, if there was a fire near by the northern hemisphere would no longer exist explosions, harvest the methane and power a small country for a year. And there were a lot of them.  From here on out these bars shall be named "Fart Bars".

Half way up, I ran out of gas and needed another bar or two to make the top.  It took a total of 3.5 hours to travel the distance and when we reached the tent in the rain we thanked the bowhunting gods for not letting Jason shoot the big bull.  We would have spent the rest of the trip hauling meat.  LOL

More later,

Mike and Jason

Chad, a good story takes time to tell.    Go on Mike take your sweet time I got all day      :D

you did say STOVE PIPE?  Jeesh this sounds like roughing it 101  :D !!!