Before the area became a draw only limited entry buck hunt the Willow Creek Free trappers used to try and get into the Crawfords to hunt during the late muzzleloader deer season.  We had a few pretty good hunts in there.  I’m sure you have read the nose to tail story.  That was a hunt in the Crawfords.

Well, all good things tend to come to an end eventually and so it was with the Crawfords.  The fish and wildlife people from the states of Wyoming and Utah got together and decided we were shooting too many of Wyomings big bucks; bucks that were coming into this area as their wintering and breeding area.  So, Utah made it a limited entry draw area.

As luck would have it, Wapiti and I drew out on the unit the second year it was a draw unit.  We were really excited because it was to be held just after Thanksgiving and would run for a couple of weeks.  The snow was just starting to stick in the mountains and the Wind River Range in Wyoming had really been dumped on.  What that meant to the Crawfords was the snow would push the deer out and down into their winter range.  And that would be right where we were going to be.  Two of the happiest muzzleloader hunters in the whole world.

As the time approached to head for the mountain, Tracker was for sure going to be going with us.  He wanted to film the entire hunt and capture all the highlights as they occurred.  Next was Many Steps.  He was just a youngster and had decided not to go to high school any more and his mother insisted he go with us into the Crawfords.  It was just fine with us.  So the four of us planned our hunt and made arrangements for trailers, trucks and equipment.

That time of year you can expect almost anything as far as weather goes.  You can have an unseasonably warm spell, extreme cold, deep snow, rain or sunshine and typical late fall weather.  The Crawfords are located on the Wyoming and Utah border near the town of Randolph.  Randolph is historically “the coldest place in Utah”.  This particular year was just that!  During the hunt the temperature dropped to minus 20 degrees!

Have you ever stood outside in minus 20 degrees?  Your nostrils stick together on the inside of your nose.  And if that’s not enough, if you breathe through your mouth the moisture from your breath freezes to your face in a big circle around your mouth.  Your eyes are constantly tearing up and your nose freezes on the end!  And that is just what happens to humans.  In the animal world the domestic cattle, stuck out in an open meadow, hunch up, putting their feet close together, they turn their back side to the wind and hope the closeness of all their internal organs is enough insulation to keep the blood pumping through their heart, which is in the center of the hunch.

The whole world is COLD!  Nothing escapes the cold.  When I opened a can of beer, which was in the cooler in order to keep from freezing, it almost always immediately began to freeze and foam out the top.  I had to set the can between the fire and the rock fire ring in order to keep it from freezing solid between drinks.  Tracker was going to make him and Wapiti a whiskey type drink one evening.  We did not have any ice cubes.  So Tracker, being the ingenious one he is, put some water in an ice cube tray and sat it outside on a stump.  Went inside the camp trailer and poured whiskey into two glasses, went back out to the ice cube tray and cracked ice cubes for their drinks….the time lapse was only a couple of minutes….THAT’S  COLD!

Inside the trailer, we had some liquid Crisco brand vegetable oil for cooking.  One day I went to get it to cook with and it was as solid as a stone.  I looked at Tracker who was filming the event and holding the Crisco up in my left hand, I spoke in sort of a Mexican voice saying “Hey Crisco, how cold is it”?  Yep!  20 below is mighty cold.  So cold in fact that when the day time temperature rose up to zero degrees, we felt like taking our coats off.

So here we are on this great adventure in the Crawfords.  Ya, it was cold, ya there was a bit of snow on the ground, but there were buck deer in almost every direction you looked.  Some were very small, some not so small and some were gigantic!  We had our pick from the candy store for sure.  Actually, we did not know exactly how good it was for choosing a large buck from the area.  We were used to hunting during the regular muzzleloader deer season and if you had a chance to shoot a buck you took the chance, whether that buck was a spike or a big four point.   It did not matter, it was a legal buck and so you took the shot.  In the Crawfords we could pass up shooting the smaller bucks and go for the bigger ones.  If we saw them in an area one day, they would not be too far from there the next day.  Just like choosing candy from a candy store.

We got to know quite a few of the other hunters in the area as well.  They had only let about 30 hunters into the entire area to hunt, and where we camped was on the main road in and out of the Crawford mountains.  Everyone would stop each night and show us their deer or talk about what they saw that day.  It was just like a big family in the Crawfords and everyone was there for the same purpose and everyone was having the time of their lives.  That is the same way it is today.

On this hunt there was a very special thing that was going to happen and we didn’t know it at the time.  Many Steps had brought his snowboard.  So, what do you think he did when we were heading back toward camp?  Snowboarded as much as he could until the roadway didn’t have enough slope to let him slide.  We believe to this day that he was the first and the only one to ever snowboard in the Crawford Mountains!

We spent nine full days hunting In that wonderful place and I ended up with a fine 3 by 3 muley buck with a spread of 27 inches and height of 28 inches.  A very nice fully mature buck that had a harem of about 25 does.  Wapiti took a very nice 4X4 buck that was very symmetrical but it was a younger buck, maybe 4 years old.  What was the most awesome thing about it all though was the number of VERY BIG bucks we did see.  Wapiti shot at several that would have dwarfed the one I tagged.   But for whatever reason he couldn’t hit them or if he did it wasn’t in a vital spot.  To get buck fever is very easy to do in the Crawfords.

I have hunted the Crawfords on two separate occasions since the draw began and been with two other groups of hunters on two other occasions.  None of those hunts was a bad hunt and every one brought back some very fond memories.  Every hunt found the hunters filling their tags with some very nice bucks and every hunter had at least one good shot at a record book animal, whether they took the shot or not, the chance was there.

Good luck drawing the tag, that’s the single hardest thing to do about the Crawford Hunt!

Bears Butt

June 6, 2011