November 6, 2022 – A Quick Stop at Home

Hi All!

I didn’t have time to write anything before heading to deer camp, but Press is shut down and we are home, although only briefly. We got home from camp on Tuesday, October 25, and were on our way deer hunting by Thursday. We spent 9 days at deer camp coming home yesterday evening, and will be on the road for Montana around 3 AM Wednesday morning.

We had a great fall at camp! The fishing stayed very steady right through the final week of the season, and with the exception of a few days that last week, the weather was really nice and unseasonably warm. We had a slower moose hunt than normal and went 0/2 during archery season and 2/4 during rifle season. Both of our archery groups had cow tags and despite many days in the field and a lot of moose seen (one group saw 10 animals, only 1 cow) neither were able to get in close enough for a shot. Cow hunting with a bow can be a real challenge as our terrain is not overly friendly to spot and stock hunting, and cows don’t generally come to calls. Both groups had a great time and saw 10+ moose each, with multiple opportunities on bulls, sometimes it just doesn’t work out.

Rifle season started rough as the first few days of the week were very cold and windy with a mixture of rain and snow. Not a lot of animals were seen the first few days but by the end of the week two groups had filled their tags; one with a bull and the other with a cow and calf. My personal group of friends are yet to fill our tag as we ran into the same issues as our archery hunters, we have a cow tag and could only find bulls! Finally our fourth and last group had fewer hunters than normal and ended up going home mid week, I believe a little defeated after multiple days of very poor weather. After Wednesday the weather broke and the rest of the week turned out to be beautiful and temps shot up from low 20’s to 70 three days later.

Unfortunately, that beautiful warm weather followed us deer hunting for the week. Lindsay and I didn’t have intentions of shooting a deer unless we stumbled into a really nice buck as we still have our Montana trip coming up. If successful, we won’t need any extra meat. We are also fortunate that deer season is open for two weeks after we get home, so if we don’t end up doing well out west we have plenty of opportunity to get a deer or two for the winter. We are very lucky to be in such a favorable position because it sure was a tough week of deer hunting! We didn’t see temperatures below freezing until two days ago, and had a couple of days that hit nearly 70 in the afternoon. As you can imagine there weren’t a lot of deer moving and very few of them were bucks. That being said a friend of ours was able to connect on a nice doe opening weekend with limited time, and we did watch quite a few other does, and passed one small 8 point we would like to give another year or two. Slow hunting aside, it was a great week with friends and a highly anticipated break after a busy season.

Well that’s a quick update in the meantime. When we get back from Montana I will be sure to have a few updates about our hunt, and once all of the dust settles we have more pictures to post from the end of the season. Some final fish pictures and some various hunting photos as well.

Take care and for those who are out, happy hunting!

Ryan