Friday, December 19, 2008

Recent Hunts

We were able to get out on a couple of nice hunts this past week.  The weather turning colder has brought in some more birds and we were able to have a couple of nice mixed bag hunts.

Avery and Chase with band #11 on the year.  It has been a good year for jewelry for the crew and we're hoping to get a few more before the season wraps up next month.

Rip, Chase, Tyler, and Desi with the take.


Avery, Brandon, and Blake with a nice mixed bag.  This ended up being a great hunt.  


With the weather turning like it has it looks like it's time to fire up the air boat.  Bring on the ice baby!  

-Blake 

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Green River

We made our yearly pilgrimage to the Green last weekend.  We get out there every year around Thanksgiving.  This year it was Paul, Trav, Willis, and Tyson that made the trip.  Usually it is a day trip but we decided to get a room and make it a two day trip.  The first day we fished various stretches of the A section.  The fishing pressure was a little heavy but we were still able to get some good fishing in.  The numbers were down from years past, but the fishing was still pretty good.  The wind was blowing pretty good all the first day making it a little tougher to have accurate casts, but it was still fishable.   

The second day we decided to hike down to Grasshopper Island.  There was a couple of spin fishermen down there, but we never were to effected by fishing pressure.  The problem that day was the wind.  The wind blew constantly at 30+ mph and we had gusts up to 45-50 mph.  It made a lot of the day unfishable.  We did manage to get into a bit of fish here and there though.  We did not catch any of the really large fish we have become accustomed to catching out there, but we did get some nice 15-18 inch fish along the way.  The colors were incredible on a lot of these fish.  One rainbow that was hooked but not landed would have made for an incredible art specimen.  Here are some of the pics from the weekend's action.   



Although the fish numbers didn't end up what we were hoping for, the weekend was still an awesome time out on the water.  Thanks for the good time fellas. 

-Tyson 

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Montana Hunt

We headed for our annual trip up north to Montana to target honks and pheasants.  The numbers were down a bit this year compared to years past, but they increased every day we were there and should be getting better as time goes on.  We were able to shoot a good number of geese with a bunch of Lessers and even a Ross.  We shot a good number of roosters but didn't get any pictures at the end of the pheasant hunts.  All in all it was a good trip and look forward to doing this again in the future.

Blake and Jedd with a portion of one of the day's take.  

Jed, Brandon, and Avery out in the spread with a few honks.  
Blake with a Ross that will likely end up on the wall.

3 bands were shot this trip.  Here is Blake and Coot with a couple of them.
Got to give a shout out to the hounds.  Avery and Coot got their work between the honks and the pheasants.  It's always nice to have a couple good dogs to do all the real work!


Have to give old Coot a shout for hunting with a bunch of porcupine quills in his face.  Later this day we were hunting pheasants and while working got hit by a porcupine.  We did what we could to field treat him but knew he had to get to a vet to get them all out.  We were about 1.5-2 miles from the truck so we started back to go see a vet.  Coot hunted the whole way back, flushing a couple hens and pointing a nice rooster.  We winged that rooster and Coot ended up finding it a couple hundred yards down the field, brought it back with a face full of quills!  It was cool to see him want to keep going and wish we would have had the camera to take a picture of that.  

It was a great trip boys.  

-Blake  

Friday, October 24, 2008

Dream Hunt

I had to share this hunt.  My dad has long held a dream of shooting a nice bull elk.  He has shot cows and a couple spikes, but he has never shot a nice, big, bull elk.  He has been putting in for a tag for a long time.  He had 14 bonus points built up (one short of the max) and had always come up empty handed.  Well, his health has really deteriorated lately and has some pretty bad health concerns, and this year he finally drew.  He had some limitations on what he could do as he has to use a cane to get around and can't go too far at a time, so he wasn't too hopeful that he'd get the bull he's always desired.  Well, I have to give a shout out to Tom and Kenny for getting my dad on this bull.  It exceeding his expectations and I think the smile on his face will tell you how he feels about it.  Some viewing this bull will say to themselves they've seen bigger.  But to my dad, with what it means to him, it is a trophy in every sense of the word.  Congrats to my dad.  I didn't get to go on this hunt with him unfortunately, but my brother Trav did and it was worth all the effort by everyone.  




My dad is the one who got me involved in hunting and the outdoors and I will be forever grateful for it.  Thanks pops, and congrats!  You still got it old man!  

-Tyson 

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Nice Greeny

Took Coot out today for a run and was able to get the first really nice looking green-head of the year.  All of the greenies we'd shot up until this point have been pretty shabby looking and eclipsed.  This one had some nice color.  



-Blake 

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Opener AKA The Bandathon

Blake and Brandon went out on the opener after a goose/mallard combo hunt.  The pictures will tell most of the story.  6 geese down, 5 of them banded.  One of them was double banded!  6 geese, 6 bands...unbelievable!  They were able to get into some mallards as well, but had to pass on a ton of flocks because of all the eclipsed drakes that made differentiating them from the hens difficult on the fly.  Felt it was better to be safe than sorry.  

Brandon with his jewelry

Blake with his jewelry
Blake and Coot with the day's final take
And one last shot with all the birds and the bands.


Opener Part 2

A few of us went out for a teal shoot at Ogden Bay.  Trav, Tyler, Tyson, Brett, Kelly, Jake, and Ryan made a formidable teal shoot crew.  When we saw the weather report we were hoping that last year's poor shoot in the rain on the opener would not repeat itself.  We were lucky as the birds were out in numbers.  Because of some major moss on our pond we were not able to set up in our usual location.  It forced us to the north side which meant the wind was in our faces.  Not the ideal situation for duck hunting.  The birds were getting in on us and out quickly as they were mostly coming from behind us.  It was a lot of quick draw action but about as fun as a teal shoot could be.  We shot close to our limit but decided about 10:00 that we'd had enough opportunities for the day and didn't need to stay out any longer just for a few more birds.  Shot a couple gaddies and the rest were teal.  With the wind blowing like it was it sure made for some fast shooting action on those teal bombing us.  Made for a great day.  Thanks boys.  

Had to post up a few pics of basically the same thing to get the whole crew here as the whole group pics we took didn't turn out because of the rain.

Travis and Tyson

Ryan, Brett, Kelly, and Jake
Tyler and Tyson


And one last picture of the day's take.  Great shoot today boys.  Thanks.  



Monday, September 29, 2008

Wyoming Honks

We made the trip up north so that we could kick off the waterfowl season a week early and target some geese.  We had scouted this area many times in the past and finally were able to put the hunt together.  Blake, Tyler, Brandon, and Tyson headed up to see what we could make happen with the honks.  A couple weeks ago Blake got pictures of this and some adjacent fields where we hunted where there were 8 bands in a group of 12 birds hanging together.  So we were filled with anticipation with what we might be able to pick off.  We ended up filling our limit in about 2 hours.  It was an awesome hunt, even with the tree huggers that heard the gun shots and then spotted us when we sat up to shoot out of our ground blinds.  They sat on the road a few hundred yards away and honked their horns and yelled to try and flare birds every time they came in to the deeks.  Too bad they were out of range!  (just kidding.......kind of)  

Team Lock Em and Rock Em hard at it this weekend going after some pretty crafty honks.  Had to show off our better sides here.  (Really, they are our best sides, but it was more for the logo!) 

Our few couple pictures of our final take with some of the deeks and a couple blinds in the background.  If you look, you may see a prize.  Had to get a few different shots as it's been too long of an off-season and we were pretty excited to finally get out again this year.


Even though we had high hopes of getting the flock of 8 bands in to take home some serious jewelry, we were only able to pull down one band.  Since Tyler didn't shoot any geese today we decided that we'd let him claim the band and take the picture with the bird.
But, we couldn't go without putting the rightful owner of the band on here just to make sure we are giving full disclosure of all things.
Blake and Brandon have rightful ownership claims to that band as well.  We really didn't know who shot it since we all spotted it and all shot at it.  (Yeah right guys, you know I was the only one shooting at that bird!)  Either way, we all took part in one way putting that bird on the ground.  

It was a great hunt, thanks for letting me be a part of it boys.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Chasing Elk

The trip was a goose hunting trip, but ended up with a bit of extra time on our hands.  We figured there wasn't any better way than to go out and find some elk to chase, even if it was only with a camera....this time!  Over the weekend we found at least six or seven different really nice bulls with sets of cows.  We have some awesome video footage of elk roaming, bugling, and a little bit of fighting with a couple of nice 6-points that crossed paths with their cows.  We have some video footage of a really good whitetail as well if we can figure how to get them up on the blog, we'll get them up.  We saw one very nice 6x7 that was significantly bigger than all these pictured, but could only get him good through the spotting scope, so no pictures turned out.  Blake was able to call a couple bulls after dark to within about 15-20 yards.  It was something else to have that many elk responding all at the same time.  

A few nice shots of this decent 6-point.  This guy was very active in trying to protect his cows from invaders.  There were a ton of elk in the area and he was cruising back and forth to the east and to the west where he had other bulls trying to come in from both sides to get a shot at his cows.  




We really didn't have to go far to find this bull.  Got him right at the right time to see his breath during a bugle.  Elk were screaming all around the valley from dusk, all through the night, and most of the morning each day there.

Watched this guy fight with another really nice 6-point that was a little bigger than this one for a minute.  He was chasing some cows that were straying a little bit later and a small 5-point came in on his cows.  He came back about 5-10 minutes later and ran that smaller bull off very quickly.  We didn't get any footage during the action, we weren't in position to see it with anything but our eyes.  But it was quite the show.  



Thursday, September 11, 2008

Gettin' Ready!

With waterfowl season right around the corner we're getting pumped for what promises to be one of the best seasons ever.  Early season goose hunts didn't produce anything for Blake in Wyoming but we're hoping that the upcoming season brings many of our friends from Canada into our sets and we can knock a few of them down.  

This is a small portion of a very large group of honks in a field Blake has been watching this year.  
Notice anything about these honks?
What about these ones?
Or how about these?  We've really got our eye on this early group.  They are packing some serious hardware!
Thought about posting up the zoomed in images of the banded swan, but we don't want anyone calling it in before its time!  ;)  

We had to give a little love to the elk-holics.  Some nice shots of some decent bulls.  Nothing for the record book, but some nice bulls.  



A couple of bulls are getting some practice for future bouts when it really counts.  
We've had an awesome summer and have fished a ton of different places and had some great days.  But fall is in the air and we're pumped to get at it.  Blake and Tyler have had some days logged in the hills already looking for deer and elk but we're ready to turn up the heat on some birds!  




Monday, September 1, 2008

Uintas

I took a Labor Day weekend camping trip with the family to the Uintas.  Although fishing was not the purpose of the trip, I knew that with as much water as there is around, there was no way that I could go without wetting a line.  We were up there for Saturday through Monday.  I grew up fishing many of the small streams and lakes in the Uintas on family camping trips and trips to a close friend's cabin.  It had been some time since I had been back and seeing many of these places brought back many good memories.  There was a pull between fishing many of the places that I grew up fishing and knew well, and the places that have been calling my name that I have never taken the opportunity to fish.  I decided to fish in new places with the limited time available.  The first round of fishing took place on the Bear near our camp spot.  Small cutts and a small rainbow continued to rise to what we threw at them.  It was fun to fish there, but I really wanted to hit another stream.  The lure of a new area was enough to take me to a small stream that is not far off the beaten path, but seems to be overlooked by many fisherman.  I expected to see many fisherman on this stream, but to my welcome surprise, there was nobody else there.  We only fished for an hour or so, but it was well worth our time.  We didn't catch anything large, but were able to have some classic small stream action.  A rubber-leg stimulator was the ticket for me.  A tan para-hopper worked for my brother-in-law who we were camping with.  Tried to get a couple of shots of the colorful fish we were catching.  I love catching small stream cutts.  


Kind of fuzzy, but had to show the trophy of the day.  
Pulled out a couple of brookies that are starting to show their color some.
The stream is home to some excellent water.  Wish we would have had more time to explore it further.
More fishing was planned for Monday when we broke camp.  But we woke up to this.  The storm that brought torrential rain storms in the lower elevations of the Uintas turned the higher elevations into a winter wonderland over night.  Having the wives and kids with us we felt it prudent to call it a day and let the fish off the hook for another time.


Despite the rain and the lack of time fishing, the weekend was a success.  

-Tyson