Bison Hunt 2012

One day right before Halloween this year I got the mail and there was a letter from the Wildlife Administration with my name on it.  Turns out they had added a bunch of cow bison tags to the Henry Mountains unit and I was offered a tag.  We debated for a weekend on whether or not to go, and I had just about decided that I couldn't do it when we changed our minds and I called and took the tag.  The hunt was a month later, and we got all the plans made to go.  Dave decided to go out to the Henry's a couple days early so he could get an idea of what was where.  We had heard from quite a few people that had been out the weekend before looking at bucks that the buffalo were out and about.  I was pretty encouraged and thought we'd be able to find one quickly and maybe get home to my kids early.  Once Dave got there and he realized just how big of an area the Henry's are and the fact that they could be anywhere from the tops of the mountains at 10,000+ feet clear down to the mesas, we got discouraged.

The day before the hunt started my dad and I headed to Panguitch from Kanab where we left the kids and met up with Rob, Jeff, Dakota, and Dusty and made the long trip out.

Dave met us out at the turn off of the Notom Road and led us back to where he had set up our trailer right near Steele Butte, but it just happened to be the windiest place on the whole mountain.  We set up camp and jumped on the fourwheelers to have Dave give us a quick tour of some of the closer places he had been to get us familiar with the area closest to us.

We got up to a big lookout where we saw a couple pretty impressive bucks.  I've never really gotten too excited about seeing big bucks and used to think that people who would drive that far to look at deer were crazy, but these animals were incredible.  I don't know how anyone can see bucks like that and then go back to a regular unit and shoot a dinky 3-point!  We watched them for a while, but as soon as I realized there were people on the point on their phones I called Lori and talked with the kids to make sure everything was going okay.

We got back to camp and ate dinner and then met up in our trailer in what ended up being a tactics meeting. The guys busted out their maps and made some decisions on what the plan for the next day would be.

The next morning we got up and split up.  Rob and Dusty went south, Jeff and Dakota went north of McMillan campground, and Dave, my dad, and I headed out to some reseeds.

My dad stayed up on a point to glass while Dave and I hiked out to the edge of the reseed where he could set up the spotting scope.  After we finally made it to the edge and Dave got set up it wasn't 5 minutes before he started almost squealing that he had spotted some.  He took his time getting good landmarks and making sure he had a plan and then called everyone on the radios and got them headed back to the trailer to regroup and go after them.  He thought it was a small herd of 3 bulls, but because it is so hard to tell on bison we were going to go after them anyway.

We left the fourwheelers and had a pretty good hike up to the top of a ridge where we were hoping to be able to look down in and see them.  Dave got us right where he had seen them, but they had moved on so we walked along the ridge trying to see if we could tell where they had gone.

We still couldn't see where they'd gone, so Rob, Dakota, and Jeff made their way back to the fourwheelers while Dusty, Dave, and I followed their tracks through the drainage.  It was SO frustrating because we had fresh tracks, poop, and even hair at times the whole way through that drainage.  We were trying our best to be quiet and sneak while moving as fast as we could, and every time we got to a new little ridge I think all of us felt like we were going to come up on them, but we never did.  We walked about 3 miles or so in that drainage until we came to a road where the bison tracks got mixed in with the tracks of domestic cows and we lost them.  It had been a long hike, and to come out empty handed was hard.

We went back to camp and got lunch and headed out on the fourwheelers toward the Horn.  We ended up going out on top of Tarantula Mesa looking for a place to look down in to the areas below.  Lots of people we talked to said that those areas are where the bison are, but the road has a seasonal closure on it, and the only way in is about 5 miles to hike or on horses.  It was a long ride out and back to the trailers that night.  With our hike that morning plus the hike up the ridge and through the drainage Dave thinks he and I ended up going about 5 miles on foot that day.  I was worried I wouldn't even be able to walk the next day.  That fourwheeler ride had about done me in, and Dave noticed.  I was alone in the trailer for a minute after dinner, and he told me he would put on a movie for me and let me "be a girl" for a minute.  I wasn't sure what he meant but then I started to get frustrated tears in my eyes and he said, "Yep, be a girl and cry for a minute."  I had pretty much given up on the hunt, and it was only the first day.

The next day we went up higher towards Bull Pass.  It was fogged in and COLD.  The crummy thing about stopping to glass was that we always stopped on top of a ridge so we could see, but that's also where the wind blows!  By the time we got up to Bull Pass we decided the fog wasn't going to lift any time soon and we wouldn't be able to see much anyway, so back down we went.

After getting back to camp we decided to split up again.  I had liked the reseed we had hiked the day before (because I knew the hike was doable!), so while the older guys went to town to get fuel, Dusty and Dakota went down low while Dave and I hiked back out on there.

Dave took us up this STEEP road on our way out to the reseed to see if he could glass it from there..  This picture doesn't even come close to showing how steep it was.  As we went back down I was standing up behind him on the fourwheeler.

It was WINDY, but while we hiked back out on the resseed it wasn't too bad because the wind was at our backs, but I was dreading the hike back to the fourwheeler.  We got to a spot where Dave set up his spotting scope, and I hunkered down out of the wind and fell asleep.  About 45 minutes later we started making our way slowly back to the fourwheelers with Dave glassing as we went.  Dusty and Dakota met up with us, and we found a spot where we could get under some trees out of the wind, and we sat down to watch.  We got talking and laughing loud enough that if anything had been coming in to get water at a nearby pond they would have turned and run before we even saw them, but sitting there with those boys that afternoon was one of my favorite parts of the trip.  Right before dark we made it back to the fourwheelers.  We saw a herd of deer with a few nice bucks that we watched for a minute and then headed back to camp.  I was feeling better by this point and had decided that the deer were cool enough for me and that I wouldn't be too disappointed if I didn't end up with a buffalo.

The next morning we decided to split up again, with everyone going out to different spots to glass.  Dave and I were heading back out to my favorite reseed.  The last part of the hike out of that area sucked because it was uphill.  Not terrible, but sidehill and uphill enough that it made me out of breath every time we had done it.  We had just gotten to the bottom of that area when Dave heard Dakota trying to call Dusty on the radios.  Dave answered him and Dakota told us to meet them at the spot we had seen the big bucks.  I was not super happy because that meant I had to turn right around and go right back up my least favorite part of that hike right after I had just come down, but I figured if they were telling us to come they must have had something spotted.  Of course, Dave also had this figured out so he practically ran back out with me chasing and huffing and puffing and lagging behind.

We made it to the lookout point where Jeff and Dakota filled us in on what they had found.  They got up there and didn't see much at first when all of a sudden Dakota saw some bison move out from behind some P/J.  They had kept an eye on them, and pretty soon Dave, Dakota  and I were bailing off the side of that tall lookout after them.  It was an awful hike down!  The whole side of the mountain was loose rocks, and we slipped and slid all the way down.  When we got to the smaller ridge where they had last seen them I thought the worst of our hike had to be over.  We tracked them through the P/J and after a while we could hear them on the other side.  We hiked a little further and all of a sudden I saw movement through the trees.  I stopped and hit Dave on the shoulder until he whispered that he had seen them too.  I moved back to where Dakota was where there was a bigger break in the trees and sat down to try to get a shot.  They moved through so fast that we couldn't get a shot and definitely couldn't get tell if they were cows or bulls.  We chased them through the trees for a while, but they were gone.

Listening to Jeff and the others on the radio we knew which way they were headed and we looked up and saw them going up onto a reseed.  It looked like it was FOREVER away.  I sat down and gave up.  There was no way we were going to get to them before someone else did.  There were so many people up hunting, and there was a herd of buffalo out in the middle of an open reseed.  It was silly of me to ever doubt that Dave would go after them, and pretty soon he sent Dakota up somewhere and he and I were practically running through the trees.  I don't have any idea how I was able to keep up.  I know actually SEEING the buffalo and getting that bit of adrenaline helped and also knowing that I had gone that far only to basically chase those things out in the open for someone else to shoot made me mad.  I learned that I don't like to hike for nothing, and I definitely don't like to hike for someone else's benefit!

As we got closer to the reseed we heard a shot, and then another one.  It was all I could do to not sit down and cry right there, but Dave kept moving, so I did too.  We could overhear the talk on the radio, but ours wouldn't let Dave call out.  We knew it was Dave's cousin's wife who also had a tag who had taken the shots, and that they weren't sure if they had gotten one or not.  The herd wasn't too spooked, so we kept moving to where they were.  I was so amazed at how Dave knew just where to go and the best way to get there.  I learned early on when hiking behind him I have to just keep my eyes on his boots so I 1. Don't fall, and 2. Can't see how far we have to go.  Plus I was so disoriented and tired that I could barely tell which way was up!  We came up over a small rise and saw the herd.  Dave had me lay down to try to get a shot, but I wasn't used to shooting that way and we couldn't get a good shot before they had moved past us, so up we were moving again.  By this time I was so done.  I had tears in my eyes, but I was trying so hard to keep them out of my eyes so that if we got another shot I would be able to see through the scope.  We got another shot with a dead rest on a tree and watched them go through  a small wash.  As they came through I watched through my scope and Dave and I felt like the ones we saw were bulls.  It was so hard to tell.

We moved on AGAIN.  The emotions of having found them and lost them and trying to get shot after shot plus the exhaustion from having gone so far so fast was getting to me.  We didn't go much further and we came out on a small rise and were standing probably 50 yards away from the herd.  My initial reaction was to wonder what the hell Dave was thinking and he needed to get down so they couldn't see him, but then I realized they weren't looking at us and they weren't running.  The part where I actually got the shot is a blur to me.  Dave and I had practiced shooting so much that I wasn't worried.  Dave told me where to sit and I got down and looked through the scope.  The last bison in the herd looked like a cow, except her horns were throwing me off since they were heavier at the bottom like a bull.  Dave told me he was confident that she was a cow and that if we were wrong that it would be an honest mistake.  I looked at her horns one last time as she turned her head away from me and then thought I had better take the shot before she started to move again.  I aimed right where we had practiced on the buffalo target he had made for me, and pulled the trigger.  I don't remember what happened right after the shot.  I looked up and they were gone.  Dave said later he had heard a pop and knew I had hit her, so he wasn't worried and knew we had enough people around watching to watch her to see if she kept with the herd.  As soon as I had shot though he turned to me and asked if the cows had humps.  I burst into tears and said that no they didn't.  I cried because I was tired and relieved we could stop walking and scared that I had shot a bull.  I was more or less hysterical, but I knew how ridiculous I was being and took a picture of myself.  I thought about posting it, but yeah, I think I'll hold on to that one.

We heard Dave's dad yelling "She's down!" from a hill across from where we were, so we slowly made our way to where the cow went down.  I saw her laying there, and Dave told me to stay where I was while he moved around to make sure she was a she.  And she was!  And the tears came again.  We were so excited.

I looked up and saw that one of the mountains close by was covered in snow.  I thought it was so pretty and took a picture of it, but the best part is Dave on the side of the picture mid fist pump.  I knew he was so excited for me, and it was an awesome experience to be able to do that with him.

Everyone made their way to where we were.  THE BEST thing about where we were actually able to get the shot was that almost everyone (except poor Dakota who spotted them in the first place!) was able to see or hear the shot.  I couldn't have asked for anything better.

 I was especially glad my dad was there.

And Dakota made it there finally too...

I did the easy part, and then Rob did the awful job of gutting her, and then the other guys were able to get her back to the truck whole, and we rushed back to camp, loaded up, and headed for home.

We stopped at the butcher to get her skinned, and Dave made me get up on the truck and stand next to her to show just how big she was.

Blood on my new boots...

We got home to the kids around 8 that night, and they were excited to see us and even thought the buffalo head was pretty cool.

The whole experience was awesome.  I owe the success of the trip to every one of the people who came with us and took their vacation time and skipped school and spent their money and used their fourwheelers and trucks and trailers to be there for me, so a big HUGE thanks to Rob, my dad, Dusty, Jeff, and Dakota.  I also owe an enormous thanks to my mom and Lori for watching the kids.  I was SO nervous to leave them, but knowing they were in the capable and spoiling hands of their grandmas made it possible.  And of course I owe the biggest thanks to Dave...

I think I am more impressed with how I hiked than with the fact that I made a shot at 50 yards, and I love that Dave had the faith in me and knew he could push me to that limit.  I love that he trusted me to make the shot and didn't have to tell me where or when to shoot.  I love that he knows that I'd never let him take a shot at an animal for me and wouldn't even ask.  I guess after almost 7 years the guy knows me a little bit.