One day closer to the muzz hunt and this day is the one for our planning meeting.  We could probably NOT have a planning meeting and still get all the prep work done and once we were in camp everything would be as orderly as it always is, but we need a reason to get together and jaw jack!

The planning meeting is as important as the hunt itself, in my mind.  It gets a large group of guys together with one common thought….to have fun!  We always are having fun, even when we are working our butts off in the hay fields, we make light of it and get the job done.

Hunting is a tradition taught to us by our fathers, brothers, neighbors, friends…or just on our own through trial and error.  Hunting!  The Fall Sport!  For some Fall begins with the first football game.  For others the changing of the leaves or the bow hunt, but for me, it’s the muzz hunt!  My year begins and ends with the start and end of the muzz season and then it’s a 365 day wait for it to begin again.  There is a bit of a twist on things this year for me, but it’s still the muzz hunt that gets it going!

As you all have read or know first hand, our camp is the largest on the mountain and I can’t think of a better place to be, even if you are not a hunter and just want to come and camp and enjoy the stupid things we do to entertain ourselves….I can’t help but grin as I’m typing at some of the fun things that “just happen” that makes us laugh and laugh….like “Buck Off”….(I know you are grinning right now).

You have to be there and as long as I can get myself up and going, I plan on being there even if I can’t hunt.  Like my dad, his last hunt was spectacular, we were camped at the foot of a large steep sagebrush hillside.  Dad had gone through several heart operations and was not able to climb or hike and so he stayed in camp to keep things in order and to have a good lunch made for us when we came back from the morning hunt.

It was about noon time and we were all back in camp enjoying a drink and a meal, when we heard a shot coming from way up the draw behind our camp,  around the bend in the big steep hill.  It drew our attention in that direction and that is when we saw a string of deer running about mid way up that hill and going to cross about 200 yards above our camp!  Dad was quick to grab his custom 30-06 Springfield and started popping off rounds at the bucks.  When it was all over, three bucks lay dead on that hill and all from dads shots.  With a big grin on his face, he turned to us and said “Go get em boys!”, and that is just exactly what we did.

Illegal?  Maybe, but at the time almost every camp employed the technique of “party hunting” and that was what this was.  We had plenty of tags in camp and when someone got the chance to shoot more than one deer, they did it without so much as a second thought…we always hunted for the meat back then.

Hope to see you at todays planning meeting!  4 p.m.!

Bears Butt

Sept. 15, 2013