First Elk Hunt

Well, I wish I had a whole bunch of pictures to post on here, to show off my new experience.
unfortunately, the camera never left the truck and i didn't get any :(. On the bright side I had an unbelievably awsome weekend. I got my first spike tag this year, and Josh and I went to Beaver with my brother in law Wade. The three of us were joined by my nephew Cooter, Wade's father Russel and brother Jeremy. We drove up to Big Johns Flat in Beaver Canyon where we loaded up 5 horses and 6 mules, and headed to camp which was 7 miles away. The camp was already set up with an enormous canvas tent (complete with wood stove). We woke up at 6:30 the next morning and readied the horses. after about 2 hours riding, we came upon a small herd of elk. Russel pursuid them for a minute, hoping to push them over another hill towards us, giving us a good shot at any spikes that were there. He planned wrong, killed one spike, and the rest ran down into the bottom of the canyon. Wade rode his mule around one side, while josh and i hiked to the bottom on the other side, hoping that they would be pushed to one of us, giving us a chance at the second spike. it didn't work. we decided it would be better to start a fire and cook some burritos before heading out the find the second herd that we had spotted the night before. (by the way, if you remember a few weeks ago there was a fire in Beaver that was blowing smoke through emery county for over a week. we where the fire had burned).    An hour or two later we found the second herd, and rode around the mountain across from them, giving us a straight across shot. There were three of us with tags left to fill and four spikes in the herd that we could see. about 600 yards or more away. So we eached picked the ones we wanted and they waited for me to shoot first. I hit him in the leg lol. honestly i'm amazed i hit him at all at that far away. In the end we got all three spikes. we loaded them on the mules and headed back to camp, where we decided we might as well head home since we had all filled our tags. 4 spikes in 6 hours. By the time we got back to camp and loaded it was starting to get dark and we had barely made it halfway back to the trucks before it got dark on us. we ended up riding at least 3-4 miles in the dark. We had made a total of at least 30 miles on horseback that day.
   I'm sad i didn't get any pictures of my first elk hunt/camp trip. but i wouldn't ever take it back. i'm crossing my fingers that i'll have the chance to do it many more times over and next time i will get pictures to show it.

Last mountain weekend

We decided that this last weekend would be a fun time to go camping

it would be our last chance for the year before the snowfall and the hunts

so we loaded up the trailer and away we went. Eddie and Karidon joined

us and the weekend turned out awsome. we had elk bugling on all sides

of us all night and morning. it gave me the fever for hunting like no other