Okanagan!

[nastygunz]

..Valley that is!

[Okanagan]

Thanks for the pic!   Humdinger of a lion!  Wonder who the guide was?

That valley tends to have BIG cougars.  When I lived there a fellow down the road killed one just above the Kelowna airport that scored #2 all time, but has slipped back.  A friend of mine runs hounds up there but I never have made it out with him with dogs.  He got the hounds after I left, but he killed the first lynx I ever called.

   

[nastygunz]

Big kitty!...sounds like hunting heaven there.

[Okanagan]

It can sound like a hunting heaven because of the tremendous variety of game available, but that Okanagan area astounded me when I first moved there at how sparsely the game was scattered through vast territory.  Instead of deer per square mile it was square miles per deer, etc.    It took me 20 years of trial and error to learn patterns of where certain game would be concentrated in certain seasons and weather.  But I took mule deer, whitetail, moose, black bear, elk and Rocky Mountain goat.  I got in on a cougar and hunted caribou, sheep and grizzly though those last three are scarce in that area.  Not bad to be able to hunt all of those in day hunts from home.  On second thought, yep, a hunter's paradise! 

Wish I had known when I lived there what I know now.  Would have more big mule deer pushing book size, along with called cougar and lynx.  No regrets.   I was young, raising a family, making a living and learning slowly year by year about how to up my hunting odds in that country.  I never tried to call cougars while I lived there and didn't know much about how to.

[Okanagan]

Made a run to the OK Valley over this past weekend for a friend's funeral on a Rez where we lived 30 years ago.  Great fry bread at the feast, with salmon, moose, mac & cheese etc.

On the way home we spotted a mule deer buck bedded on a ledge under overhanging brush 30 yards off of the highway, in the edge of town.  He was about 21” wide and equally tall, a big fork horn frame with little crab claws at the tips to make him 3 or four on top on each side, plus eye guards and a couple of junk cheater points.   Also saw a black bear strolling along a few yards parallel with the highway.    There is some game left in the Okanagan.

32 years ago I drove some neighbors to the hospital in a blizzard because their car wouldn't start and the young wife was having a baby.  Thought that she was going to have it in the car before we made it to the hospital in town, and had doubts as to whether we could make it up a hill on the way.  She made it in the front door and had the baby in the hall as they rushed her toward the delivery room.  I would have guessed that happened maybe 18 years ago but the baby is now a woman of 32.  Good memories... and good fry bread!

[Dave]

Sorry about your friend.
Good stories.  You thought 18 years ago - haha!  I hear ya, though.

Never heard of fry bread - sure sounds good!

[JohnP]

Out here the Apaches make super fry bread.  Never miss an opportunity to get some whenever at the county fair or on the rez.

Sorry to hear about your friend.  The older we get the more friends we lose.