Puzzling hunts: superb weather/snow conditions but no game

Okanagan · January 10, 2012, 07:36:15 PM

Just finished another fun hunt in a Christmas card setting. Perfect fresh shallow tracking snow but only one huntable track of what we were after in a whole long weekend. Snow on the trees, crystal rivers, ice falls, stunning mountains and canyons, fair amount of wintering big game in places -- but no big predators.

Enjoyable but discouraging. I need a fish to bite once in awhile to keep me interested! I hardly took a photo this past weekend.

Take this post as a kind of personal after-trauma therapy!

code · January 10, 2012, 08:53:30 PM

Sounds like fun. Wish I could have come with.

FinsnFur · January 10, 2012, 08:56:48 PM

personal after-trauma therapy

shhhhh, were here for ya Okanagan, were here for ya.

shaddragger · January 10, 2012, 09:30:28 PM

Let it out, just let it out...

Okanagan · January 10, 2012, 10:16:37 PM

Well... I wasn't going to open up this much but since this is such a warm and caring place to share one's innermost secrets...

Hello. My n'name is Okanagan, a'and I'm an an eh'eh'elkcoholic!

KySongDog · January 11, 2012, 12:49:55 PM

Congrats! The first step to recovery is admitting one has a problem.

FOsteology · January 11, 2012, 12:58:48 PM

Better than being cooped up in an office!

Okanagan · January 12, 2012, 09:40:59 AM

Quote from: code on January 10, 2012, 08:53:30 PM
Sounds like fun. Wish I could have come with.

Code, wish you could have been along. The night we camped beside the river in 6 inches of snow in full moonlight was a special one, great campfire. But if your Mom saw one of the roads we drove up as we worked a lion track, she would object. We had to keep the 4x4 revved and charging to keep going in the deep slick snow, bucking and fish tailing some, and we came around a corner onto a face where the road wasn't much wider than the tire spread with over 1000 feet of super steep drop off the edge. Your uncle buckled on his seat belt and I did too once we got to a place where I could unwrap my white knuckles from the steering wheel.

We put on chains to come DOWN that road.

code · January 12, 2012, 11:05:38 AM

Now i'm wishing I could have come even more.

Okanagan · January 12, 2012, 12:28:37 PM

Code, I need you to come along with me! On our Christmas safari, I drove up a road and turned around past the 52 km sign when it was obvious I would soon get stuck. Snow machines had run the road but the last wheel vehicle before me had turned around before the 30 km sign. (Logging trucks radio each other where they are on the roads by the milepost/km signs).

That evening I told your grandmother that I had driven 52 km up the road, 20 kliks past where any other wheel rigs had gone. With the snow fall going on right then, that meant I was probably the last wheel vehicle to drive the road till the snow melts next summer.

She said, "52 k up a snowy road nobody else drives in the middle of nowhere -- and you think you are normal."