Our Utah season started Aug 20th so my neighbor and I decided to bivy out up on a local wilderness area. I had never hunted it before so we didn't have much of a game plan. We hit the high country and found the deer. We came across this nice Shiras moose on the drive in.


We hiked most of the way to our camp in the dark so I didn't get any pictures of the site but opening day was very eventful. Here is the view of what we woke up to.


Our hike started out steep and got steeper as the day moved on.

We stalked into this Doe and very small 2x2 buck, they tried to figure out what bothered them from feeding and slowly wandered off.


The higher we climbed up the mountain the cover began to fade out and soon we found ourselves above timberline in the high country and open basins.


Not long into glassing it was time to get out the spotting scope and confirm the size of the buck, you be the judge....

Nice pictures. I like the one through the spotting scope!

Keep those pics coming, buddy. I leave for a Wyoming mulie hunt on the 29th.

The buck was bedded up against a cliff face, he has us pegged the minute we came around the bend. He got nervous and stood up to give us another look. We had a 30 minute face off as I tried to think out a stalk. He was directly above us about 400 yards. The red arrow in the picture is where he was bedded.



We made a game plan to hike up and around the cliff and try to stalk down above him. I made it about 50 yards before he ran out of the canyon. I guess they don't get big by letting guys within recurve range!

The deer like to live up higher where it is cool and they can get away from the people. The mountain also holds a lot of mountain goats and big horn sheep. My friend being crazy and taking a  short cut down the mountain that the goats use.
 

We got a little low on water so we hiked down the mountain to the snowfields that were left over from a very late spring. We just filled up and drank straight from the mountain side and it never tasted so good.

 

Hope you have more, THat place is GORGEOUS!!!

Thanks,
Nathan

There is nothing like sliding down a steep snowfield to add excitement to your day. The deer had left the basin so we decided to have a little fun on the hike down.



Dodging the rocks on the way down was the best part. My Black Widow limb acted as a brake/ice ax and slowed me down before the scary part.

Great pictures.  Sure gets the adrin flowing.  So what happened with the buck?

The long wet spring left quite a few snowfields up in the high country. We found this cool snowfield that had a wind tunnel cut out through the center that was the best air conditioning that mother nature could have provided. It was a nice place to cool off and drink during the heat of the day.

Round trip we did close to nine miles. Saw a good amount of deer, three elk, and one bighorn sheep. I am not a great photographer so they didn't get pictured but it was a great hunt. I didn't even get to knock an arrow as the big boy outsmarted us and took off for another canyon. But I was happy to have seen him and spent time in the high country. This picture gives great reference as to where we started and ended up hunting. My legs are still a bit sore and the hunt was a week ago! Good luck to everyone this season.

 

Great report with some fine photos.       Thanks for sharing.  

That is some nice country!  

What a great story. Awesome pics Conner    Thanks for taking us along!

Great story and pics!!

THANKS!

Brad

Thank you for your story and pictures.

God bless,Mudd

Great story and pics, thanks!

I guess you can add this one to the lore of Widows being tough, being used as an ice axe!

That there is what its all about.  

Looks like you had a great day.  Thanks for the pictures and story.

Love the story and the accompanying pictures. They quickly tell why we love to hunt. Best of luck -- with those rocky and dangerous conditions, you might need some -- but I was talking about seeing and perhaps getting a mulie. I really like the looks of the one you photographed in the spotting scope.    

Allan