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2011 Season Re-Cap

December 30, 2011.

For me, 2011 was a good year.

My fall 2011 season started nice and early, with an August hot-weather muzzleloader season for antelope in Wyoming. The population was down in the unit where we were hunting, and the land was painfully flat, but we still ended up with some decent goats -- certainly big enough to make the black powder record books, if we could get motivated enough to get them scored. Getting started hunting in August is awesome, and I'm trying to figure out how to pull that off again in 2012.

September was a little rough. I drew a muzzleloader bull elk tag in a unit in Colorado where I had hunted a few times in the past. Despite having some experience in the unit, I got badly blanked, never seeing an elk. Trips like that can really try your patience. Coming out of this hunt, I realized how truly unsuccessful I've been as an elk hunter, and am resolved to focus more on cow elk hunting in my home state of CO -- it's both more fun and more productive, for me.

Heading in to October, things quickly got back on track. My Colorado antelope hunt with Brandon McCullough of High Plains Adventures turned out great. Brandon is a great guy and a hell of a judge of antelope, and we took a nice 78" buck on the last day of the season -- after passing on an 80" antelope 3 minutes in to the hunt on the first day of my two-day hunt! I rebooked with Brandon pretty much on the spot, and will be hunting with him again in 2012.

Later in the month, I pulled together a last-minute eastern Colorado whitetail hunt by picking up a landowner voucher off of Craigslist. The farmer who sold me the voucher treated me like family, and I had a very nice hunt with very warm temperatures. I even took a buck, although I badly misjudged his size and was confronted with a bad case of ground shrinkage. Still, it was my first Colorado whitetail, and the first deer I've taken with my .257 Weatherby.

My deer season continued in November in South Dakota, where my .300 Winchester and I picked up a whitetail on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation and a mule deer on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation. Learning two new areas was a lot to bite off in one extended road trip, but fun and a great learning experience. I'll be back up that way sometime in the near future to hunt the reservations again.

I haven't talked much about it much (because it was a little anticlimactic), but I also took a trip to Alaska this past June. Me and 3 buddies went to Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska. POW gets a lot of coverage in the hunting magazines as a place to go for do-it-yourself spot-and-stalk bear hunts, but I suspect much of that reputation may be based on its glory days of a few years ago. Logging has all but ended on the island, and we found the clear cuts where we hoped to spot bears to be badly overgrown.

Our party of 4 only took 1 bear. We had spotted a very big bear near an old logging road, and set up to call for it. In less than a minute, we had a bear charging in to the call. HTW Bird Hunting Editor Paul Vanderspek hammered the bear as it came towards him on a dead run, only to discover that this was a second smaller bear that had been in the area -- not the big one we were trying to get on.

The bear hunting was disappointing, but we caught a few fish and enjoyed good company and awesome scenery. Overall, though, I probably wouldn't return to POW for a bear hunt.

2011 still has the potential for a few more outings -- like the January 8th goose hunt I have planned -- but it's largely done for me.

Like I said, a good year with lots of good memories.

As satisfying as it was, though, I got withdrawal pretty quick after that last deer hunt of the year was over.

The wheels are already turning for 2012 ... Colorado antelope for sure ... Probably Wyoming antelope and deer ... Kansas spring snow goose ... Nebraska turkeys .... Arizona and Colorado mule deer, if I can draw .... maybe another bear hunt or two....

I hope you all had a good year too.
All the Best,
Hoov

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