For whatever reason, it seems like just after September begins I get this rush and can’t help but feel the need to go “kill” something.  Doves, grouse, whatever.  The weather begins to change and the early mornings get crisper and crisper.  I can already see a change in how the foliage looks up in the back of the canyon.  Fall is upon us and like it or not, winter will be right behind it.  But, while Fall is here, I love it.

The paper has already had articles from people complaining about the elk bugling out in the South of town in that high fence area elk herd.  So that means the wild elk in the mountains are no doubt bugling as well.  Maybe it’s time to take Weasel and his cow elk tag out for a one day trip?  Listen for the bugling and then move in to take one of that big boys cows home.

There was a post the other day on Facebook from one of my friends.  She is bow hunting in the mountains and she was telling her daughter to get her rear end up in the mountains.  She said the weather had been cold enough to “frost” the ground!  Her daughter has a limited entry bull elk tag and when they are bugling it is easier to know where they are and sneak in for a possible shot.  Frost on the ground is a great sign that Fall is on us.  And with that comes the elk breeding season.  I love the Fall!

And more than Fall, I love the muzzleloader deer hunting season.  I have said it a million times…”The muzz deer season begins and ends my year”.  I begin counting down from the last day of the season until it begins again the following year.  From now until it actually comes will be a long set of days.  20 days, but who is counting?  This Saturday at 5 p.m. we will be gathering for our annual muzz deer season planning meeting.  In reality, we don’t need to meet to decide who is going to go up on the Tuesday before the opening day, who is staying in who’s camp trailer, who will be pulling the trailers with the atv’s, who will be leaving camp early or coming up later, what meals we will having on what night.  We have already decided on all of this for years and years in the past.  But it gives us a great excuse to get together, have a few brews and talk about past hunts.  It gets all of us focused on one subject….”The Hunt”!  Winemaker rolls her eyes every year when I tell her the planning meeting is on “X” day, “Y”‘s house and “Z” time.

So, for the next 20 days, I will be thinking, planning and gathering all my stuff and it will no doubt end up all packed and ready to the point that I will start to doubt myself as to whether I have put it in the camp trailer or not.  Up at camp I will find I have packed WAY TOO MUCH STUFF, stuff I really don’t need, but felt I had to have it “just in case”.  I think of all the hunts of my past, there has only been one or two times that the “just in case” stuff ever got used.  Sometime in the next 20 days I will thaw out the sweetbreads and get them ready to cook.  Sweetbreads are always a good snack item on one of the days of the hunt.  This year I have something very special to give each of the participants of the sweetbread eating time.  If you have any doubt that you won’t make it to camp for that eating extravaganza, well, all I can say is, “you won’t have one” of the special things and for sure you will miss out on some very good eating.

Sometime in the next 20 days I will take my rifle to the range in Perry and see how well it digests and shoots 90 grains of blackpowder behind a patched roundball……Yes….this year I am joining the ranks of the “ball babies”.  For the past two years I have tried and tried to get a recipe that my rifle liked shooting the Hornady Great Plains conicals and in those two years I have missed two deer and one very big bull elk.  Good by my “conical head” friends.

Sometime in the next 20 days, I will take the old cardboard off the “Boobin Baby Board” and put on a fresh cardboard, clean of any marks….this in preparation for a fun filled hunting event where there will be a lot of shots taken at deer and those deer not being brought back to camp.  I love it!  BOOM!!!!  “If Idda, Yabutt”.  Another dollar in the biggest buck contest bag and another name on the board!

(This was from the hunt in 2007)

Another fun hunting season is in store for us all and maybe, just maybe we will bring home some venison….I hope!

Sometime in the next 20 days………………..

Bears Butt

September 3, 2014