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End of Season Recollections |
The season started with such promise and with our hopes so high . So what the Heck happened! Reality set in. Reality and rain to be more accurate. Most of the province was suffering through a drought this summer and fall so it's time to confess. We were stealing all of their moisture!
So yes we bragged about this being the year we were going to have 100% success on our sheep hunts. The rams we saw during the winter counts were impressive, the best in 5 years, and the winter was a mild one so survival was high. The survival rate through August - October was high too. At 4 for 9, we didn't quite make 50%. But for a bit better shooting and hunters who would stay for the full length of the hunt we probably would have topped 75%. But there was no denying weather played a major factor in the lack of success of at least 2 of our hunters.
We did get some nice rams though, one 8 1/2 year old and 2 that were 10, all in the 36 - 38 inch range. And just like good fishermen we can say the big one got away. A miss at 200 yards and away went the biggest ram that Shane had ever seen here.
To verify that our sheep are doing well we had our quota increased by the Wildlife Branch this year.
Of course, once we finished sheep hunting the weather did improve although it was still wetter than normal. And the hunting certainly improved as well. I was wondering if the moose rut was going to be early when we got a big bull moose on Aug.31 that was completely out of the velvet. That was the earliest I'd ever seen but it turned out the rut happened normally.
I don't know what dictates antler growth but whatever it is seems to be different in moose and caribou. Our moose were about average and while we got a number of bulls 55 inches and over, I didn't see many real monsters. But the caribou were truly exceptional and I saw at least a half dozen bulls that would go over 400 B&C points. We ended up getting 2 that did and had I been a bit more patient on the early September hunt we would have had another. No sooner had our 350 bull hit the ground before we spottted his granddaddy. But it was such a great day we didn't want to pass our bull up again. We had let him go 2 days earlier and then got into a pack of 11 wolves. My hunter did a great job of reducung the number by 3 after I had called them in. While we were picking them up a grizzly came in almost face to face to see what all the commotion was about. He didn't stay around long enough for us to take advantage of the situation but the same bear later buried the remains of our caribou. I flew by to try and get a picture of him after and he charged the airplane on 2 occasions.
We ended up getting 9 caribou for 10 hunters and 17 moose for 19 hunters.
The season was a challenge at times but in spite of the weather we had a lot of great hunting with some wonderful hunters and a great crew. And one thing our crew and hunters all commented and agreed upon was that we had one of the best string of horses they'd ever used.
Among the highlights were:
>Neal Ainsworth finishing off his grand slam on our first hunt. I beleve this was our 5th hunter to do so.
>Jeff Meyerl coming back and getting the same ram that eluded him last year. He also get a heck of a nice moose. Jeff has hunted almost everything all over the world, so when his parting words were"This hunt was as good as it gets!" we picked up a little swagger in our steps.
>Stan Cosart getting his 10th moose with me. He said he had to come back for another one as he had a total of 13 and that was an unlucky number.
>Abe Drury getting an 8 foot grizzly on the first day of his hunt. This was his 5th try for grizzly including a trip with us last year when he got a B&C moose. Abe also got a nice caribou this time.
>Thomas Pigeon (pronounced P-John) of the Canada In The Rough Television series filming a caribou hunt with us. We'll certainly post the time and place it airs on our site.
> Having my younger son Rob help on the first hunt and my older son Brian on the 2nd last hunt as well as having Shane's son Corbin wrangle on the first hunt. It's definetely becoming a family affair.
It's not too soon to be planning your 2008 hunt and it's getting almost too late to get a good 2007 date. So if you're looking for a hunt, quit dreaming and start scheming. Give Shane or I a call.
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