Eli is too cute!

Well, the weather was beautiful the last couple days, so I decided to ride my bike to work today. Got home early and grilled some steaks, enjoyed some time with the family. When I got home I had just set my helmet and stuff on the couch, well Eli decided to wear my gloves, and even ended up getting my helmet on, and started walking around the house with it all on! I thought he was too cute!


Oh well, not much of a post, but I thought he was too cute not to share the pictures.

Nathan

I Got Lucky!

Well, the results for the 2009 Wyoming Non-resident Elk license drawing were posted online today, and I was drawn for a general tag for the second year in a row!!

Since I drew last year I wasn't able to buy a preference point, and based on last years drawing my odds of getting drawn were around 15% so I'm pretty excited. I'm not sure if fewer people applied this year due to the economy, or if I just got lucky, or a little bit of both, but I'm not complaining!

More than likely we'll go ahead and hunt the early season in September like we did last year. Since I was lucky enough to shoot a decent bull last year on my first day out, I'll probably get skunked this year, but it should be fun anyway.

Maybe I'll get REALLY lucky and connect on a big bull like the one that an outfitter took out of the same area we were hunting just the day after we spent the entire day camped out in the bottom of the canyon. We were less than a mile away the morning they got this bull, and heard him bugle and then heard the shot. We were hoping it wasn't the big one, but it was. The area where we were hunting is so thick that we had this bull at only a couple hundred yards twice the day before but never did see him. They are using this picture for their main photo on their outfitting website now.




Okay, I doubt I'll get that lucky but who knows! We saw the bull in person after they packed it out, and it looked to be about a 360" bull. It made my 245" 5X5 bull that I shot on the first morning look pretty dinky, but I was still proud of it for my first real attempt at elk hunting. If I shot a bull like that I would probably quit hunting!

Nothing else too exciting. Really busy at work. Hopefully I'll get to go hog hunting next weekend but nothing for sure yet.

Update - They already have this years drawing odds posted. There were 2,381 applicants who put down the general license as their first choice with no preference points, and there were 551 licenses available for an overall drawing odds of 23%. A little better than the 15% odds from 2008, but I was still pretty lucky to get drawn!

Title.

I was having problems coming up with a title for this post so I decided to just punt and skip that part!

Things have been pretty busy at work, I've been out of town the last 3 weeks, but I'll be home for a few weeks in a row now so that's good.

Our friends from Wyoming were down here the first week of February and we had a good time visiting them and Eli got spoiled quite a bit. I took Mike and Zeke down to the land last Friday, but I held true to form and didn't get them lined out on anything. If I charged for my guiding service I would probably have a few upset customers, but feral hogs just aren't very predictable and it seems that everyone only has 1 night to spend hunting them and it always turns out to be the wrong night.

Thinking back on my guiding services, I've had my brother-in-law out twice and although we saw deer both times, we didn't see a deer that I wanted them to shoot and we saw some pigs once, but not within shooting range. I've had my friend Mike down 3 times now and we've seen plenty of deer, but he is never here during deer season and we've struck out every time on pigs. My niece came down once and we also saw deer but no pigs. The only time I've had someone down to pig hunt that we actually got one was my friend Greg and his son Garrett and his friend Nathan. We had a whole slew of pigs come in that time. So when I've been guiding other hunters they've only connected 1 time out of 7 attempts. Not a very good track record. I do think that if folks were willing to spend 2 or 3 days down there their odds for success would increase dramatically though.

Speaking of which, I may have a deal lined up where I'll be trading a hog hunt for a mule deer hunt in Eastern New Mexico. I have some friends there that seem to have a pretty good track record of connecting on some nice mule deer each year and their son really wants to shoot some hogs. It's all tenative right now but it looks like they might come down in May or June to hog hunt and I may get to go mule deer hunting next fall.

Oh well, nothing too exciting on the trail cameras. I did get a couple more pictures of a bobcat though. I'm amazed at all the bobcat pictures I've been getting. Not the best picture, but you can tell this cat has some pretty good spots.

Even though I trapped 19 raccoons in 2008 I still am getting pictures of raccoons. I got 3 in one picture at the protein feeder.

This boar hog looks like he has some pretty good tusks.

Here's what we would have liked to see on the 6th but it looks like they were there a few days early. They seem to be roaming quite far right now, sometimes I'm going almost a week between pictures of this big sounder.

I think this guy will be at the top of my hit list for next year. He looks good on the left side, but his right side was all broken up this year. I'm pretty sure he is 3 1/2 this year so if he is around next year he should be big enough that he'll be the one breaking the antlers on the other deer instead of the other way around this year. He's not as predictable as the tall 8 point right now, hopefully he'll get into a good routine and stick around until hunting season.

It looks like I'll be back down there in a couple weeks to check on things and might get a chance to try to line another guy up on some pigs then. We'll see how that works out.

I think that's about it for now. Nathan