We finally got to the trailhead a little after 9:00 PM. My friend Mike and Zeke’s wife had texted my satellite messenger asking when we were going to be at the trailhead, but we had told them that they didn’t need to come out and we were fine. We were getting close to the trailers and Zeke shouts out “Hey, that’s my wife!”. We were taking a trail between too different parking areas and they were driving her pickup back around looking for us and drove right by. Zeke went ahead and took the pack string back to the trailers and I turned around and headed after them.
That actually ended up being pretty fun. The horse I was riding wasn’t exactly thrilled to be turning around and heading away from the rest of the horses, but We went off at a trot and I was just standing in the stirrups and we ended up catching up to them right at the last parking area before the road stops. My horse was neighing loudly pretty much the entire time. They headed back to the trailers and I followed right behind them, my horse still neighing away.
They got a little bit ahead of me and we were still at a trot and I was pretty proud of myself on my riding when she decides to bust out into a full gallop. Needless to say, galloping along in the dark had never been an item on my bucket list, but if it had been, I could cross it off now. We ended up getting back to the trailers almost at the same time and it sure was nice to see them.
They had stopped and picked up some Subway sandwiches for us and a huge bottle of diet coke for me and told us to just eat and they would take care of the horses. It was hard to just sit there and let them do all the work so we helped a little, but it sure was awesome that they were there to help out. I very happy to see them even though we had said that we could handle it and they didn’t need to come out.
We made it back to Mike’s house late that night and all that was left was packing up and heading back to Texas. I had left the ATV’s with Mike after the last scouting trip and then brought my Ranger up there on this trip so I had 2 ATV’s and my Ranger there. I had actually measured everything out and figured out that if I elevated the back wheels on my Ranger that I could tuck one of my ATV’s on the trailer behind it and put the other ATV in the back of the truck and on paper it would fit. It took a little bit of maneuvering, especially getting the ATV on the back of the trailer sideways, but I was able to get everything loaded and ready to head back to Texas.
I had left home on Friday the 19th of September and was headed back home on October 5th, 17 days later. I was tired, had a few bumps and bruises, but was very thankful to be headed home with a nice mountain goat and a bull elk. I ended up driving home through the night with a short rest stop and was home safe and sound less than 24 hours later.
I was very ready to see my wife and son and they actually seemed happy to see me too!
That’s going to be it for now. I would be happy to try to answer any questions anyone has or if anyone has any advice to give me I’m more than willing to listen. I still might add some video clips if I can get them looked at and uploaded. I have a few clips of me riding the horses for sure and I’ll have to go back and check if there is anything else worth adding.
For sure the video portion of the hunts is what I need to do more work on. That part really is hard to step back and do. I think I could do it if I wasn’t the one carrying the rifle, but for these hunts that was the essential ingredient for me.
Sorry if some of this is a little disjointed as I started and stopped writing it several times over the last several weeks. I'm sure I missed putting some stuff in there and probably put a whole lot of things in there that no one really cares about, but I just tried to document everything I could.
Hope you enjoyed reading it.
Nathan