What a way to be greeted home. We traveled all the way back from Colorado under sunny skies but last night (10/26) we hit New York under clouds, light rain and snow. Welcome to the real world of the Adirondacks.
My friend Bob Miskanin said he didn’t even have his snow tires on yet. Luckily it was only 33 degrees and it wasn’t sticking to the road.
The trip east was uneventful. In the plains states we passed several wind turbines with blades going in both directions.
At over 150 feet long those blades sure do take up a corner when you’re getting on or off the interstates. We had to wait a couple of times as these big rigs made these corners.
There certainly are more wind turbines in place since we went out last year.
Some of the controversy over them stems from the fact that there is no inter structure in place and there aren’t transmission lines going to these locations to carry the power away.
I’m not completely sold on the wind power. They are being given many special privileges which protect the environment—and they don’t have to abide by them.
Many of these pertain to protected bird species.
A new project is currently being proposed on Amherst Island in Canada, a big wintering area for hawks and owls.
Many projects in the U.S. are also being planned in sensitive areas with little regard to wildlife or birds.
Only local planning boards are given complete control under the prospects that these are green projects and the money that may come from them in the end.
Let’s take a longer view into the future before jumping the gun and doing more long term damage than the short term profits which may or may not happen.
Back to the hunting trip out west. It was uneventful for three straight days as we only saw mule deer buck after mule deer buck and no elk.
The weather was nice so the songbirds were enjoying the nice weather and the abundance of food.
I did jump an elk on Tuesday but didn’t see it or have it go to anyone else.
On Wednesday we took an A-key from Bob Schenck our host that went to his South Forty Cabin in the Ragged Mountains south of Carbondale.
It was a beautiful day to go to the top of McClure Pass. From there it’s about fifteen miles back on a one-track road to Bob’s cabin at the end of the road in the deep woods.
We went up over 10,000 feet in elevation around many switchbacks, through six inches of snow and some red mud before finding his neat cabin.
It sets on a small beaver pond surrounded by even higher mountains covered with snow.
We found the key to the cabin and toured the surrounding property for an hour or so.
We saw a few elk and mule deer tracks but if we shot something there it would be a carry up or down depending on where it was shot.
The hills were very steep in both directions.
We saw another hunter from Wisconsin. He and his party had taken a cow and bull elk the first day but said they had not seen anything since.
I took several pictures of the cabin and surrounding scenery. We got out of there with only a little extra mud on the truck.
We went back to Cattle Creek for an afternoon hunt and to pick up my trail camera and rope we had left there.
I told the guys I was going to the pond site for one last time.
As I crested the hill a ways from the pond there were 17 elk standing about two hundred yards away on the next ridge.
There was a nice bull standing broad side, so I put my scope crosshairs on and fired. I heard a hit but he didn’t fall down.
The cows just stood there and milled around. I fired a second time but missed. He was standing there with his head down and I waited but he didn’t fall so I fired a third time.
This time he went away from the cows over the hill and I saw him go down.
The cows stood around a couple minutes before moving off in the opposite direction. I walked over and put a finishing shot in the neck of the bull, a nice 6×6.
This was the biggest bull I’ve ever gotten. But now the work begins.
I gutted the animal but then had to walk over a mile back to the truck to get help as our radio system failed us that last day.
Brother Bob, my camel jockey, took the four-wheeler up to the elk but we had to winch the animal up a hill before we could hook on to him and pull him out.
The four-wheeler wasn’t running that well and ran out of gas about two hundred feet from the truck.
We backed the truck up the rocky hill and loaded the animal and were off to Silt and Gross’s Meat Packing Plant again.
With this animal—which was ready for us to pick up by eight the next morning—our meat box would certainly be full.
It was another fun, successful hunting trip to Colorado that yielded a freezer full of meat.
The snow sure pushed some birds farther south, but that’s another story. See ya.