Winter Camping

Winter camping is fun in the wilderness except when the mornings are cold to freezing at 6:30 AM until afternoon, then it warms up nicely to T-shirt weather!  As soon as the sun goes down, the temperature immediately drops to cold then back to freezing!  Between 2AM and 4AM we are the coldest, we would wake up shivering!  Yes, we have a heater in our trailer but we need to run the generator all night long so we thought we would try without it this time.  It worked out fine for the most part because we used catalytic heater with propane bottles.  Unfortunately, they are only good for about 6 hours and then you need to place a new bottle in it for the remaining time to stay warm (when using this type of heat, it is necessary to have a window open at 6 inches to ventilate or die!).

Now for what we did.  If you are not interested in hunting, go to the next blog to read.  That is your warning.

Our Winter camping consists of great friends, ATV riding, roaring campfires, sharing good food with friends and Elk Hunting!  Our friends arrived the day before elk season opened to get our spot.  On Saturday, another friend and his family arrived the day of Open Season for Elk.  We arrived on Sunday mid afternoon.  Our friends were extremely happy to see us for several reasons.  Well, just take a look!

Just beyond the backside of the vehicle, oh about, say 300 yards straight down!!! Jody was successful by getting his elk.  The bad part was the elk went down that ridge!  Yep, about 300 yards or more.  He, Jody went back to camp to tell everyone that he got his elk and everyone was very happy that was about 8 AM Sunday morning!  It is the first time we as a group achieved to get one.  The problem, no one had enough rope and chain to go down that far and pull the elk up.

Except when we arrived, we had the rope and chain to get to the elk!  Yeah, everybody was extremely happy.  PC has the chain around his neck and getting out all of the tow ropes, ropes and everything else we can use to pull that elk up.

 I would NOT go down because it was way to steep for me so I waited for them when they came into view.  Anyway, someone had to be at the vehicle and take pictures!  That is me!!!

The elk was pulled up through the trees and rocks.  I know it will be tender now!  When I saw it, I yelled, "Oh my!  How big is that?"  

Before I tell you just how big this elk is, I need to mention this.  We had to attach all of the rope, chains and tow ropes to the back of the vehicle on the tow ball.  The guys would climb down holding the rope until they reached the elk, about 300 yards or more.  We decided that three guys would go to the elk, Jody who shot it, PC and Ed.  PC and Jody secured the elk with the ropes to get him up.  Then the guys took turns to be with Jody and either Ed or PC would go up the mountain within sight of me and the elk.  I went down the mountain just a little bit because I needed to see Joe in the vehicle and the one guy.  We had to yell to each other to have the vehicle pull the elk up the mountain until we could get an ATV safely to do the rest of the work.

Since it was Jody's elk, it was his ATV to do the honors of taking it back down the face of the mountain to the awaiting trailer for a ride back to camp!
Just hold your horses, or elk, and I will give you the answer just how large this spike elk is!  Scroll down so you can get a good look at the spike elk.

Do you know who Jody might be?  

The lucky guy who did a single beautiful perfect shot is the smilin' guy and tallest guy.

Now it is the responsibility of the hunter to tag his elk with his paperwork from the State License so that everyone knows and if needed to verify that this is a legal spike elk.

Are you ready now to guess just how big this elk might be?  Give an estimated guess.  We estimate it to be...

approximately 300 pounds! That is without me sitting on it!  

Back at camp we needed to place this elk that I named "Henry" into his bags and hang it up.  Of course, I needed to have the hunter next to Henry the Elk.  That is one big elk that Jody, the hunter got!  Yummy, elk meat coming soon!!!

By the way, the next day it was Jody's birthday!  Happy Birthday to Jody and to celebrate his birthday, I just so happened made delicious Lemon Cake Balls.  PC and I placed a lit candle on top of the cake ball and we all sang happy birthday to Jody.

Yes, we all went hunting for another elk and thought about it a lot.  Hmmm, do we really want to get another one and have to drag it up onto the trailer?

NO!  One is enough and we decided to shorten our trip even though we had two more tags for two more elks and another week to hunt.  Bye-bye for now!  Come back again and visit as often as you like.