Deer Hunt...

Last week I spent my time in the mountains bow hunting with Jared. He drew out in San Juan Elk Ridge for a deer tag, which he had been waiting about 12 years for. He and his brother, Matt, put in together and both got tags this year so they were super excited! Only 9 tags in the whole state of Utah are given out and Jared and Matt had two of them.

We left on Thursday, got there at about 3 am Friday morning, slept for 2 hours in the truck and then went to find where all the deer would be for opening morning on Saturday. On Friday we saw so many deer, especially that night. The deer down there are huge! I have been hunting a time or two in my life and these are the biggest deer I have seen.

We spent Friday playing cards, eating junk food, Jared and Matt practiced shooting, and we may have snuck in a nap somwhere along the way.

Jared practicing up to get himself a big buck.

The other days were filled with hunting. We did a lot of that. Then we would come back about 10 am, have some breakfast, they would play Spades for a few hours, we would hunt some more, come back, play spades, eat some dinner about 5 pm, then go back out for the night hunt. Good times.

It was nice because we got rain everyday we were there..which was six(that is a lot). So needless to say there was lots of mud, but I would rather have mud than dust.

And yes, we had our own personal Flying J down there with us. That may look like we had plenty of gas for the four-wheelers but we almost ran out. If we would have stayed through the week we ould have made an emergency trip to Blanding for gas. Jared put about 350 miles on his four-wheeler.

Here's a fun story:

On Sunday we all went on a hike up a mountain. We all split up but we had 2-way radios to communicate with one another. Jared and I were about 3/4 the way up the mountain and about 80 yards straight across from us was Matt. A couple of other guys we were with were slightly down the mountain and could see us from where they were. They called Matt on his radio and said a mountain lion just ran right between Jared and Matt down the mountain. We must have spooked him. I heard them saying they had seen a mountain lion about 30 yards away from us, but I thought they were talking about earlier in the day or something...not at that moment. Probably a good thing I didn't know that until we were off of the mountain. I may or may not have freaked out. Not to mention the couple of bear sightings on our trip, one of them just down the road from our camp. Yikes!

Here's our camp.

All the men playing Spades. It's tradition. I simply am not very good at it so I mostly just watched so Jared didn't get frustrated with me. Also, since he and Matt share a brain they are really good at Spades.This was our camp pet. Her name is Daisy and we could expect her in camp every morning, noon , and night. She was not really afraid of us and we kept giving her chocolate chip cookies, Pub Mix, and chips. She was a frequent visitor and quite enjoyed our snacks. After a couple of days she started bringing her friends with her and by the end of the week there were about 5-6 deer in camp at times. The only bad thing about Daisy is she ate our bar of soap we had by the water jug to wash our hands...

These are the Sweet Alice Hills. Beautiful.

Jared got his deer on Monday night. He doesn't think it is as big as it should be, but I think its a pretty good looking buck. The problem is he had expectations of getting a 30 inch 5 point and since he only got a 4 point he was slightly disappointed. Its pretty big in my eyes though. Plus, I was with him when he shot it and it was cool to see.

I actually had a really good time. We rode the four-wheeler A TON and I was not going to complain about that. We got to see a lot of deer and he and Matt both got off a a lot of shots. Matt got his deer on Tuesday night so it was a successful hunt.

However, it is good to be home!