well, my opening day was pretty short and not very sweet. no big deal though; morale is high and i'll be ready to go again soon.

0520 alarm goes off - do the snooze thing till 0600, when i suddenly realize that my wife is sleeping away and not getting ready for work. then it hits me! it's not 0600, it's REALLY 0500! daylight savings, and all that....so i decide to give it another hour...

0520 (for REAL this time) doorbell....open it up to see two of the neighbor girls, all dressed with hats and coats and ready to go. they didn't remember the time change either! so, since i am up, i decide to get ready. i realize that my son (this was supposed to be his first hunting trip with him as a fellow hunter) didn't do ANY of his chores yesterday or even last night, even though he was told that if he didn't do them, he wouldn't go. this sucks. as a FATHER, i knew i had to leave him home, but as a DAD, i sure regretted it. still do. anyway, get ready....check the weather. already pretty warm with a high of 65 predicted. winds too. not good. on top of this i am pretty discouraged about my boy, but decide to give it a shot anyway.

oh, by the way, my wife DOES work today. she asks who's going to watch the baby; well, he's not REALLY a baby, just a few days shy of a year-and-a-half, but you fathers out there know how it is....i wasn't about to call anyone that early to watch him, so i bravely decide that hell yeah, we can take him along.

so we set out. me, the baby, two neighbor girls and my two younger boys. oldest son looking out the window as we drive away, looking pitiful. i feel like dogshit, it's going to be a warm day, and i've got a bloody daycare service going on in my pickup. i realize that this is not going to be a hunting trip, it is really only a scouting around trip, with a very remote possibility of a "roadside" opportunity. no big deal, it's been done beore, and i've only got a doe tag anyway, so we gas up and head out.

driving down the highway, deer on both sides. turn off the higway and start up the road, deer everywhere. get to where we can hunt, and i see two in the field, probably 400 yards off. i think briefly of korey and his warbird, then proceed to keep driving down the road and then make the turn which runs along the other edge of the field. no other hunters. i see one nice doe standing right there in the field, looking at me, probably 40 yards away. she's got a fawn. i'm not about to shoot her from the pickup or from the road, so i wave at her and tell her that this is her lucky day. the boys in the back are fighting over the nintendo gameboy that they brought without my knowledge. the girls up front are pointing at every deer they see and asking me if it is big enough to shoot. the baby is looking out the windows left and right and stuffing reeses pieces into his mouth as fast as he can. i can't believe that i am actually out here on this "non-hunt."

so we drive past the field and a few miles down to another place where i can hunt. nothing. i debate getting out and walking around a bit with my cz 7x57, then decide that it probably wouldn't be a good idea, even though it is perfect creek bottom country. kids are all starting to make noise, but quiet down when i tell them too. i remind myself that i am really just on a scouting mission, not on a hunt, so i turn around and head back to my first area, which is a huge sentimental favorite.

i get there and decide to pull off for a while. to put it in your mind visually, it is a right turn, then straight for maybe a third of a mile, then a left turn for about 3/4 of a mile. on your left the entire way is a huge hayfield bordered by the turns in the road described above and trees and brush opposite. this is assuming that you are headed north (back to town). at the right turn is a little approach to the left which ends at a gate. i turn into that and stop the pickup, looking around. a person could get out here, and walk the brush on the edges of most of a mile, then turn right and walk the edges for another third of a mile or so, but i am just on a couting trip, remember? so, in effect, i am in a noisy 1973 chevy treestand by the side of the road. good news is that there is absolutely NO traffic and it is a beautiful day. too beautiful, in fact, warm and getting warmer. meat doesn't keep well when it is warm. the wind is blowing too, which means that the deer are bedded down, but i can't go stalk them because of the circus going on in my pickup. the girls get in back with the boys, and promptly start fighting. the baby starts squirming around and is trying to bang on the window to let the kids know he's still there. i'm thinking that only a deaf or retarded deer would cme within a mile of us, then remind myself that i am just scouting. i keep hearing this dee-dee-doo-dooda-doo-deedo-dada sound. oh yeah, the game boy. i supress a real urge to snatch the thing from them and throw it into the air and start shooting.......on top of all this, i am still feeling like crap because of my oldest boy, so after about half an hour i start up the pickup and head home, stopping along the way to see my wife at work.

all of her co-workers welcome me like a long-lost cousin and slap a piece of coffeecake in my hand and ask me what i want to drink. water, please.....get to talking with one of the dietary aides, and it turns out that her husband was going to go hunting, but had no one to go with him. i tell her to have him give me a call and we could go out either later tody or later this week when it cools off. then i go home. oldest son still hasn't done his chores. slow learner. i see we got home just in time for the kids to change their clothes and go to sunday school, so i do this and lay down on the couch with the baby and we take a nap.

HELL of an opening day!

considering all the bad vibes, i think that going this afternoon would be not good, and i am bothered by the temperature. i think i'll call up the husband of my wife's co-worker and ask him if he wants to head out either thursday after 1500 or this coming weekend....if my boy does his chores by then, he can come too. any other kids? probably not. i already checked, and my wife has this coming weekend off.

Hows this for an opening day. Get up at 4:00AM. Hunting partner and me hiking up moutain at 5:00 AM. Hunting partner shoots bull elk at 7:30 AM about as far up and back as you can get. Spent from 8:30 AM until dark getting first half out. Thats about 8 hours to get first half out to truck. Going back in morning to get last of elk out. Dead tired, going to bed more info later.
Russ

MtElkHunter,

Your opening day sound more exciting than mine, which was about as productive as Tasunkawitko's.

Alarm goes off at 0400, out of the driveway at 0500. Arrive at my chosen spot a half hour before legal shooting time; still dark & windy as hell. Got to a vantage point where I could watch a large park as the sky brightens. No elk in its right mind would be exposed in that wind. Discover four other hunters in the same drainage where I chased elk around during archery season. Head into the timber. Tracks, droppings & scrapes indicate use in the last week or so but no hides spotted. Setup and blow cow calls and an occasional bugle for over an hour. Nothing.

I basically scouted for the rest of the day. Figure I covered close to six miles in about as many hours. My new CZ got to see some pretty country but no action.

Forecast is for cold & maybe some tracking snow by the weekend. I'll try again.

Yep, mine wasn't all that fun either.

We were hunting a new area (18B) here in Arizona. We glassed, walked and drove for 2.5 days and never cut sign and never saw a deer. We spoke with a Ranger and he said that he only knew of three bucks being taken on opening weekend. Two of those were by two guys hunting together that jumped a group of young bucks. And we'd seen at least 15 camps in our area.

Oh well, it was a part of the state we'd never hunted before and it was some beautiful country.