Chad Bauer, of Missoula, recently sent a description in his own words of what a great start to a hunting season is–check this out:
What a great start to the 2016 hunting season in June I was jumping up and down when I realized that I finally drew a Montana moose tag after 33 years of applying. Much to my surprise, I pulled up my wife and son’s drawing status, and, again, was blown away that Kyle (16 years old) drew a sheep tag with only 3 years of preference!
What to do now? I started scouting moose in early august thinking that we would have plenty of time to hunt the sheep in late October through November, during their rut.
I had spent every weekend and a lot of evenings from the middle of August through the first two weeks of the season looking for moose. With the moose hunting being fairly slow, we decided we would spend the weekend of the 24thscouting for sheep.
With Grandpa Max being retired, he decided to run up and do some pre-scouting for us on Friday the 23rd. He found aram with three other smaller rams on Friday evening and we decided Saturday morning to take a better look at him.
When we found him on Saturday and decided it was going to be a shooter, we had a lion come over the ridge and spook the sheep. We finally found them again later that evening, and Kyle made a great shot to take an exceptional ram (pictured below).
On Saturday (day number 22), looking for moose with my lovely wife (all of my other hunting partners were out for the duck and goose opener), we located a nice bull moose and decided to take him (pictured above and below). After 7 hours of quartering and packing him out to the truck, we have a bunch of moose and sheep meat along with a hefty taxidermy bill.
Special thanks to my wife for joining me and to Grandpa Max, Rob, Braden, Eric and Kyle for all of the hours scouting and packing!
What an awesome hunting experience! Families that hunt together really are happier together. Congratulations, and thank you for sharing!
