Colorado Adventure Day 5

Day five of our great Colorado adventure started out like the day before, getting up early and hitting the field before daylight. This morning was a little easier to get across the creek than before. I was starting to figure out how to cross in the dark. Although it wasn’t too dark, the moon was full and high, so you could see pretty well.
I slipped into the stand and got set up. I watched another beautiful sunrise on the mountain, there is something to be said about watching the dawn of a new day while in the field especially in Colorado!

Colorado Sunrise!

Later that morning I watched two deer come down off the mountain. It is really cool to glass the side of the mountain and watch the deer make their way down the steep slope. They bounded into the meadow, that is when I lost sight of them. I could only hope that they would pass my way. It wasn’t long until I saw them cross in front of me then disappear again. About 15 minutes later I saw the little buck coming in. He stepped out at about 20 yards, but he was behind a bush again. I could see his front leg though and I noticed that there was a raw spot on it, I had noticed that the night before when I took that shot at him that the arrow had hair on it but no blood. I must have just nicked him. He never did present a shot for me, but instead he circled around behind me with the doe and left back out into the meadow. Later that morning I was getting ready to come in for the morning when the land owner came down to the blind to discuss some changes he wanted to make to the blind. He climbed up into the blind with me and it nearly fell in! The guys who built it for him left a few nails out! Later that day Kevin and I went back and reinforced it and shored it up.
Kevin had moved to a different blind this morning since he wasn’t seeing anything. He managed to see one doe that morning.

Valley We Hunted

After fixing lunch and fixing the blind, we decided to take the four wheelers on a ride down the road. We saw some really beautiful rock formations and mountains. Along the way we saw what appeared to be goats, until I grabbed my video camera and zoomed in. I thought they looked like deer from such a far distance across the valley. Kevin noticed that since they were white, they couldn’t be deer but instead probably elk cows. So we blasted down the road and around the corner to sneak up on them. When we got near them we could see that it was a herd of antelope. I had my camera rolling and managed to video tape about 5 minutes of them from a fairly close range. The buck in the bunch was an awesome animal. He was every bit of 14 inches with wide beams and a fork at the top of each horn, truly a world class trophy and I have it on tape!

Antelope Jumping Fence

We also managed to find 3 rattle snakes that had been road killed so we took two of the rattles and a head from one. The land owner Bill had run over one on the way in and we grabbed that one also. We skinned it out and kept the head and rattles also.
After an afternoon of joy riding we came back in and got ready to head into the field to hunt. Kevin wanted to try the high blind at the opposite end of the property over a mile away. I wanted to try something different also, so I headed to the mountain to sit where the deer made their way up onto the mountain in the evenings. I sat down and managed to see five does, but none were close enough to shoot. I did have a porcupine climb a bush right over my head, that was interesting. Kevin managed to hear a lot of action but didn’t see anything. He heard two different bull elk sounding off along with some cows. He also heard a coyote nearby along with what he thought was a bear rumbling through the brush. So another day has passed with a lot of excitement but no meat in the freezer yet. We still have two full days to hunt though.