Bjorn, did he catch that beauty in that little creek? What a great pic! Glad to hear you had a great experience.

Hey Snag, yes, that is where the Rainbow came from. A young person could have jumped across the stream in parts!
It was Adam's first big fish on a dry fly-barbless of course-we returned her to the water afterwards.

I bet that was a surprise when Adam set the hook! I bet he thought he had "snagged" the bottom of the creek!      Very cool.

Dang, "California" Adam, nice fish!!!  
Great stories, hope to hear more from all the Youth!!!

Tuesday was a big day. After the mentoring talk Larry had a book and a hat for the hunters.





Larry got a batch of cookies under way




Then came the blanket shoot. Each one of the youth was to make a hunting related item to swap. They chose to do the swap by shooting off. Here are some of the items.

Vince



Lucas





David

Zakk



Dan



The whole group with everything.



The object was to shoot the apple and you get your pick.
Now we have two versions of what happened here. The boys said they were just being gentlemen and let Jade hit it first. The rest of us just think she is the better shot.



After the blanket shoot we packed everyone up and headed to Bear lake for swimming, lunch, and 3 guest speakers Guy lined up. Not sure what Jim was up to but next thing we knew everyone in the van was pushing the van.



Fajitas for lunch.

This is a MOST EXCELLENT adventure  

Our first speaker was Steve McGrath. According to Guy: Steve McGrath is our Marketing Director at Camp Chef. Steve is a hiker and an avid fly fisherman; what I call a "hunting fringer". By that I mean he is a non-hunter but exposed to the out of doors enough that he should be easier than most non-hunters to pull into hunting. Steve spoke about what turns him off about hunting and why he has a hard time getting involved with big game hunting. When Steve first came to work with us. He attended the Western Big Game Conservation Expo in Salt Lake City. In his words, "What was conserving that? It was all about killing big animals".
Steve's perspective was good for the youth to hear and keep in mind.

 


Our next speaker is an undercover game warden. He specializes in the career game violators. He had some real good stories on violators.


Our last speaker was Ernie Perkins. Ernie is a member of the Utah Game Board. He talked about some of the problems managing game.

 

Larry asked a question about Utah's policy for managing for trophy animals and said he felt it does more to prevent young people from taking up hunting.

 

While the rest of us were listening to the speakers Larry cleaned and packed up his kitchen and then went around picking up garbage regardless of it's origin. At a latter camp fire I noted that and presented Larry with the rare and deeply coveted clean camper award.



Wed evening Vince and I went with
guy up to the north spike camp. No luck but it was pretty up the all the same.

 

Wed. David, Vince and myself did our presentation on Doug Kerr. If anyone has picture of that please email it to me.
Next Craig sat down and showed us his collection of special arrows. He had one that was his dads, another that his son made his first kill with and another that set a flight record. He then passed out an arrow to each of the that he had made for them. The shafts were footed shafts donated by Bob Burton. Craig made broadheads from moose bone and wrapped them on.

 

And last the Bassets did a presentation on conservation and ethics.

 

Thursday morning we hunted with Craig on a water hole. A spike came in and Vince shot under him. I think it was partly due to shooting sitting down and I don't think he was able to get to full draw due to his angle.





Craig took us on the scenic route on the way out.



Vince and Craig



Back at camp an artist commemorated the event for us.



Larry made another batch of cookies.

We had 2 more speakers. These were from the national forest service. One worked in the office and the other worked in the forest itself. They spoke about the rules but mostly about the abuses by ATV users.



Lucas and Floyd did a great job entertaining us at the camp fire.





This is the master hunt sheet. As you can see it was revised. Guy kept changing it and blamed it on David for shooting his elk too early in the hunt.

On Friday morning Vince was back hunting with Chuck in the "Iron Butt" stand. He had a little spike come in and missed the first shot but he hung around for another. This time he nailed him right in the heart. Chuck stopped him with cow calls and the watched and even heard the blood pour out until he went down.



Vince and Chuck



Well thats it. I can't begin to thank Guy and Rich and the vast number of others the helped make this hunt a success. I knew this would be big from the beginning but once we got there it just blew me away. The whole week ran without any problems to speak of. Thanks so much to everyone, I hope to share with all of you again someday.
Please if anyone has anything to add put on here.