Welcome to the Hunting Page

(photo courtesy of White Brothers Elk)
We are a hunting family and try to eat only wild meat. I believe the stuff that you buy in the store is so full of hormones and antibiotics that it isn't fit to eat. My kids have been raised on home grown or wild meat most of their lives and hope they are healthier for it. The hunts have also given me and my kids many fun and happy times together. I only hope my grand children will have the same opportunities that my kids have had.

Jenny's First Buck

This is a good story and I wish I had more pictures to go with it. It is a classic Buck Fever story. Jenny was lucky enough to draw a tag on private land in an area known for some big bucks.

I had never hunted there and was excited about looking over a new area and Jenny maybe bagging a nice buck. We had scouted the evening before her hunt and saw several nice fork horns and 3x3's. Not one trophy size buck, but plenty of nice little bucks that any first time hunter would be proud to display/eat.

We got up at about 5 am and were rolling by 5:30. The sun wouldn't be up for almost 2 hours and that would give us plenty of time to get to the area we wanted to hunt. The sun was just making itself known as we pulled into a little clearing in the aspen to wait for shooting light. We hadn't seen many deer on the way in and I was a bit worried.

There was a little road heading off to the south that we had scouted the night before. It looked good then and even better now. We didn't get 200 yards down the road when it looked like the whole side of the mountain was moving. There was a herd of about 50 or 60 deer hanging around a water hole. We glassed them and saw several nice 3x3's and a small 4x4, but it was early and we could come back. We slowly backed off so as not to spook them and took another trail. It was one we didn't go down the night before and I saw that it was a dead end after about 1/2 a mile. As I was getting ready to turn around, Jenny said,"Dad, there's deer!!". We look up on the side of the hill and saw a small bachelor herd of 8 bucks. 4 of them were monster bucks. The kind that people pay thousands of dollars for a shot. Jenny could take one for a $25 tag fee. She got out of the truck and I grabbed the movie camera. " Get on one Jenny" I said as I started to shoot the movie. Seconds passed. "Come on Jenny, take the shot". More seconds passed. "Just squeeze the trigger". They started to slowly move over the top of the hill. "Hurry Jenny, they are moving". Still no boom.

That whole herd of bucks, just strolled over the hill and down the side of the mountain, after standing around profiling for over 20 seconds. I can't get angry at my darlin daughter for not pulling the trigger on one of the nicest bucks I have ever seen in the wild. And after I looked at the movie I took, I won't say any more about it. You could hardly see what I was filming for all the shaking going on. I was shaking the whole truck and Jenny was trying to use it for a rest. She couldn't keep the cross hair on the boiler room cause I had a terrible case of buck fever. She ended up settling for a nice little fork horn. Perfect shot at about 75 yards through some aspen trees. Good ol Dad.

The Dove Hunt 2001

The dove hunt started slow this year and didn't really pick up any speed. Opening morning I only got 2 dove and wished I hadn't. Max was in good form, taking off chasing rabbits when he got bored waiting for dove to show. We ended up with about a limit by the end of the season. Next year.

Max did good

Next year Hunting buds
This is Seki. She became part of our hunting family about 2 weeks ago. She is smarter than she is cute if that is possible. I have high hopes for her next dove hunt.

Country home cures:

Sore throat, head colds, flue symptoms, sore joints and a bunch of other stuff I can't think of at 14,000 feet. I had a sore throat a few years ago while visiting a friend of mine in Idaho. My nose was also stopped up. My friends wife came up to me with an eyedropper about a 1/4 full of a brown liquid. She said "tilt your head back Jim and open your mouth". I did as instructed, she isn't the kind of woman you argue with, and she squirted the contents of the eyedropper to the back of my sore throat. I thought the gates of Hell had opened up in the back of my throat. My friends wife calmly put the eyedropper back in the brown bottle and said, "about the time you can talk again you will feel better". About five minutes later, my nose was draining and I could squeak out a few short adjectives, my sore throat was gone. Since then I use TINCTURE of CAYENNE for just about everything. Try a few drops in a table spoon of Vaseline and mix well. Rub that into a sore joint. About 6 or 7 drops in an ounce or two of water will keep colds and the flue away. It burns, but I think that is how it works. It dilates the blood vessels and allows the blood to do it's antibiotic magic.

Put your trophy buck on a T-shirt or hat.

The Muzzle Loader Deer Hunt of 2001

This was a pretty good year. We started opening morning hunting Missouri Flats, up in the hills above I-70 . It could have been a good area if it were not for a couple of idiots with spot lights every night we were there. The big bucks got spooked back into their hidding places and all we could find were a couple of spikes and about a million does. We hunted there for 2 days and moved back to a place we are a bit more familiar with. After passing up several smaller bucks, I took this little 3x3. It was getting toward the end of the season and he was as good a buck as we had seen. He dropped in his tracks with a 360 grain ball through the pump room. Good eating.