Ten of my sons, grandsons, cousins and their grandsons gathered in a son's garage for this year's party, bringing antlers big and small and their stories. I took some phone pics and apparently a glitch deleted them. Rough tally from memory: 4 blacktail deer, 3 mule deer, 2 whitetail, 2 large bull elk, 2 black bears, bow killed geese and a youngster's first duck.
A favorite was the youngest, age 8 or 9 who told of hunting with his grandpa and shooting his first duck. My grandson, Zay, told of his first deer, an archery buck shot at 20 yards as it poached on the family garden. Since the garden has a deer fence around it and he shot through the open gate, it was declared a “high fence deer.†I had thought that it was button buck but it was a large older buck, grey face with antlers already dropped in December.
The menu: Lots of sides, beans, finger veggies, potato salads, etc plus the following mains:
>Whole blacktail outer strap smoked by grandson Code. Superb, my favorite of a primo menu.
>Boneless whole Canada goose breasts cooked with small red potatoes and marble sized onions, by Code. Excellent and unusual.
>Pulled elk in BBQ sauce cooked partly dry, from son D. Primo.
>Dry rubbed elk with a BBQ bark, from son D. Double primo.
>Two pies from me: Wild huckleberry and a peach pie with 10% wild huckleberries added, with Tillamook brand French vanilla ice cream.
Code had the best stalk of the season: bow kill sneak on a whitetail buck bedded in open grassland. The younger men and teens had several bear stories and kills this season.
Cousin D2 brought the big 6x6 rack from his “nap stand†elk. Three large bulls fed up close to him while he slept out a light rain squall under shelter of a low spreading tree. The bull that woke him was seven yards away and I think the one he shot was ten yards.
I got razzed and Zay had to tell his version of my 3x3 whitetail when I could find no sign of a hit and he found blood and tracked it to the fallen buck.
It was a consensus that son D had improved the gene pool by tagging a mature old blacktail buck with big forked antlers. Too bad he had to back pack it 5 miles out of the high country.
Best mule deer was 28 ½ inch wide 4x4.
Wow that sounds like a great time. Thanks for posting the highlights. May have to they organizing something like that myself
Golly that sounded like good food, good fellowship and more critters than some associations. :highclap:
Ya gotta get those young ones to take the pictures, us old guys don't know what the heck we are doing with all this new digital stuff. But at any rate you guys sound like you had fun and you sure as heck made me hungry.
Is this an annual events?
Quote from: JohnP on February 15, 2018, 01:36:23 PM
Ya gotta get those young ones to take the pictures, us old guys don't know what the heck we are doing with all this new digital stuff. But at any rate you guys sound like you had fun and you sure as heck made me hungry.
Is this an annual events?
It is an annual event now. Everybody so enjoyed the first such event three years ago that we had another one last year and decided to make it annual. This is the third. My younger son came up with the idea to get together, swap stories, look at antlers and score/measure the big ones. He hosted the first one and it exceeded expectations. Bring antlers from the season just finished, or other antlers if you want to compare or whatever. Bring stories if you hunted, whether you got anything or not (and everybody in this group hunts).
It is competent, confident men who enjoy each other's company and respect each other, and some boys growing up in that mold. It is an unusually successful group of hunters, at least in the PNW. There is genuine humility in those who hold record book critters, most taken on resident tags and none with guides. A lot rubs off on the younger ones, character as well as ways to hunt better.
Big horns are not the be all and end all, nor even filling tags. One of the best hunters there had a rough year this season and his tale of not getting a big bull he found was as riveting as his brother's 6x6, and had more info on how and how not to go after a bull elk. My mule deer doe this fall had the same right to the table as a cousin's 28 inch buck, and both were equal to the youngster's story of his first duck, yet we all enjoy seeing big or unusual antlers. That can be done without put-down of spike bucks!
Last year we ordered pizza and I doubt if we always do a fancy menu like we did this year.
Most of the men here would fit right in.
I would enjoy that party immensely!! :yoyo: :yoyo:
"Most of the men here would fit right in."
Like rubbing salt into an open wound!
Quote from: JohnP on February 16, 2018, 09:24:09 AM
"Most of the men here would fit right in."
Like rubbing salt into an open wound!
:innocentwhistle: :eyebrow: :alscalls:
Re photos: my phone locked up with an error message and in fixing it I erased everything in it, phone numbers, photos, everything.
Quote from: Okanagan on February 16, 2018, 10:44:58 AM
Quote from: JohnP on February 16, 2018, 09:24:09 AM
"Most of the men here would fit right in."
Like rubbing salt into an open wound!
:innocentwhistle: :eyebrow: :alscalls:
Re photos: my phone locked up with an error message and in fixing it I erased everything in it, phone numbers, photos, everything.
And then what did you do? :confused:
And then what did I do?
I look up phone numbers I want to call by the old fashioned way: I ask my wife. ;yes;
That's usually when I hand said device to someone and yell, "PULL". :biggrin:
Quote from: pitw on February 18, 2018, 09:27:50 AM
That's usually when I hand said device to someone and yell, "PULL". :biggrin:
You just gave me an idea! I cordially HATE this phone and it's life span is about done.