Well the best way to describe my weekend hunt is "D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R." So the disaster started on Friday morning. The idea was for me to take off work to go hunting down in Price all day Friday and Saturday. We originally planned to go thursday night to be ready early friday for the hunt. The guy (his name is Justin) I was going to go with had a test to take so he wasn't able to leave early enough Thursday so we planned for Friday morning at 3am or so. Justin had some obligations at work so then we decided that we would take off at 12pm Friday in time for a good solid evening hunt. His work took him longer than expected and changed the time to 3pm. By this time I could have gone to work and put in a full 8 hour work day (which means I lost money by not going into work). When 3:30pm rolls around he says he is thinking he is not going to go at all. So here I am packed and ready to go hunting (which for me is like christmas even night at 5am waiting for everyone to wake up to open presents) and I am without a hunting buddy. I call some friends that have mentioned before that they hunt (Lucas, Zach, Evan, Brad, Fox, Flynn, Seth) and they all have obligations this weekend. Finally I decided that it was better to have a hunting buddy than to not have one so Devin decided he could do it after work. 9pm rolls around on Friday night and Devin finally gets home from work and we take off for a 3.5 hour drive to Sheep Canyon near Wellington, UT. The drive was good and seemed to go by fast. We arrived near sheeps canyon and realized that the 4X4 road showing on my recently purchased BLM map doesn't exist so we find a picnic area and parked the truck, pulled out our sleeping bags, and slept in the truck for a good 4 hours. Our cell phones registered it being an hour later than it really was for some reason so when I set my alarm for 5:30am we were really woken up at 4:30am. When I didn't see any signs of sunrise we fell back asleep for another hour or so. Finally sunrise came around and we excitedly dressed for the hunt and ate our granola bars and bananas for breakfast. We figured we'd do a good hard morning hike to see what we were up agaist and glass the mountain tops for elk. We started hiking literally straight up a cliff with shale rocks that decided they would give way under our footing every time we stepped. It was a little more dangerous than I expected. So we get to the top of the mountain after about a 1 hour hike directly up this cliff thinking that that was the end of our hiking and we would glass for elk. We saw no signs of elk and that there were plenty more ridges to glass further back. The mountains had more timber and aspen the farther back you went which is where the elk like to hide out so we decided to continue on back. We began to see traces of elk (tracks and droppings) so we took courage and walked farther. The farther back the more elk signs we saw. We then began seeing HUGE elk footprints which made us more excited. We pushed a few canyons thinking that this is where they were at but didn't see a thing. Before we knew it it was 12:30pm and we had been hiking straight for 6 hours up these mountains and cliffs. We thought it would be a quick hike and knew that every ounce counted so we only had packed a few granola bars, raisins, and two bottled waters for the both of us. We sat at the draw of a mountain for lunch and ate our granola bars and raisins while glassing the hillside for anything on the move. We even took little naps because we were so exhausted. We decided we better start heading down the mountain and chose our route. I will just say now that we chose the wrong route because as we went down the mountain/cliff to the canyon floor we realized that it was incredibly dense forest and impossible to pass through. Many times we had to stop and rest becuase of the severity of the climb and we were soo tired from hiking all day. Keep in mind that there were no trails, we were hiking simply through the most dense forest you can imagine. At this point in the trip my mind was borderline survival mode thinking it was too hard and that we weren't going to make it back. It didn't even cross my mind until after the danger we were in hiking up and down cliffs. After making barely any progress and getting incredibly frustrated because there was no way out of the forest we decided we had to get back up the mountain if we ever wanted to make it home by nightfall. We hiked all the way back up the mountain and started down the ridges of the 4 mountains we had hiked earlier. It was a long way. About 2:30pm, from the top of one mountain we could finally see the truck (but it was still miles away). It was so frustrating to see the truck because we would get excited to see it and then walk really fast to the next ridge and the truck looked just as far way as the previous time we looked. Talk about discouraging! So finally we hit a point where we were soooooo hungry and dehydrated that it was then or never. We began ignoring our bodily aches and pains and literally jogging down the mountains. We finally made it down the mountains/cliffs. I have never been so close to going insane in my life! Good thing Devin was there because every time I gave up and just sat myself down on the cliff he would say "just one more mountain" or "we're almost there" and then I would somehow find the courage to go on. As we got to the truck we were so happy to be alive and have water and some sort of food to put in our stomachs. As I took off my gear I realized that my clip had fallen out of my pistol as I was hiking somewhere with 10 unused rounds of .40 cal ammo. But I was happy to be alive. To put it positively.... oh wait, there was nothing positive about the whole trip!!!!!! Also, we got to the top of the mountains and decided to take a picture. But my camera wouldn't even work either!!!!!!! The front lens open and close wouldn't open so it would turn on but the lens wouldn't open. Here is the only picture we took. It describes our trip perfectly. Devin is using his finger to hold the lens open enough to take the picture...
Now I have some catching up to do in my classes and with my calling. Hunting and planning takes a lot of time. Elk season ends here on Thursday and Deer Season starts on Saturday so I will be taking a trip up to Snowville Utah for some deer hunting on Friday evening. I supposedly have the ideal spot for getting a buck this year. We will see...
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