Hunting 2011

Writing my first blog post ever about my hunting trips to an audience who may not see eye to eye with the activity is a difficult task; however, I'll do my best. The second half of my hunting in 2011 started in the first few days of November. My brother in law Shane Nye and I started just after sunrise and began hiking a steep mountain. After one of our mini breaks to catch some air we decided to split up and go up the mountain along a couple of ridges not too far apart. I'd reached the top and saw some human tracks in the snow that couldn't have been Shane's. They weren't a size 14 shoe. After patiently waiting I decide to do a hunting pace back and forth about quarter of a mile. After 20 minutes I started to wonder if he saw some animals and went in a totally different direction. After pacing up the trail for about the 4th time I noticed a magnificent sight. There were antlers bouncing up and down about 20 yards from me. As soon as I noticed him he noticed me and bolted back down the mountain. I responded faster running up to get a better vantage point I looked through my scope with both eyes open, the left eye following the deer and the right eye through the scope (like I'd practiced a billion times) and boom, my 30-6 fired and his speed slowed down to a walk. Did I hit him? I quickly but quietly crep back up and around the small slope and saw him again and boom, I delivered the second shot. Seconds later I heard the thud. What an extraordinary sound. I wondered before the hunt and every hunt how I'd feel after shooting an animal. A single word comes to mind, gratitude. What an experience! Thanks be to Shane, he'd stirred him up about 15 minutes before I saw him.

This is a mountain goat that was within about 10 yards of the Great White Shane Nye and I. After he let us look at him for what seemed like 30 minutes he ran down the mountain that where we were and back up the other side. It would have taken me 20 minutes and it took him 2 minutes. After getting my camera out of the bag he let us take a few pictures of him. He had a broken right horn.

This is my nephew Johny West holding up a pine hen that let him shoot about 4 times at him. Johny's first pine hen and you can tell, because there were enough bb's in the meat to warrant feeding it to another animal. In September there were lots of bears and pine hens but not a lot of dear and elk.

In fact there were so many pine hens Johny ran out of bullets for his 20 gauge shotgun. As you can see my two nephews Johny and Jacob had a blast hunting. They skinned these pine hens and then we ate them. They are a mix between chicken and turkey I'd say.

This is s a picture of the Great White himself posing for a shot with his amazing stache. This was the first time I'd seen Shane with a mustache. WOW. I don't have a picture of my brother Jeff and my father Chief but they were with us on the first trip as well.

Special thanks to Shane for helping me drag him out, Jeff for helping me hang him, Chief, Craig Myers, and David Wagstaff for helping me cut him up. Most of all thanks to Mrs West for helping me package up all the meat that is now in the freezer. She's wonderful!