This season flew by for me. Maybe because it wasn't long enough. Maybe because I needed it more this year.
Maybe because the hunting was so slow that some days were so uneventful they bled together.

I half expected to show up to camp & them say "we've got bulls bugling all over & here's the plan." But I got there & it was the exact opposite. They had spent the past few days chasing a single bugle or going into completely new & quiet areas in hopes of getting far enough back there something would be different. It didn't matter if we were 5 miles deep, the bugles were almost non-existent & when we did see elk, it was either a lone spike or a set of lone cows. Still, we knew that an elk wasn't going to put itself in the freezer if we slept in or pitied ourselves at camp.

We battled 80 degree days & snow storms so loud you wouldn't have heard a bugle even if it did exist. We spent the days talking about standards & what we'd put a tag on if God somehow presented a miracle. Some areas, a cow was fair game. Other areas, it better be well worth the 2 days it would take to get the elk out of the crap hole we were in & there may be a chance we hiked 9 miles that day just to come out of the woods with an "I passed on a......" story. But hunting was so slow that I never even had to make that decision. I passed opportunities to pursue a cow or spike that we spotted but never actually passed a shooting opportunity.

I had 2 regrets from last season: not following Jeff at 6:30 pm deeper down a drainage in the opposite direction of the truck for a screaming bull, and not changing our entire plan & location for a bull that screamed at us multiple days in a row across a drainage & I instead chose to go home because my knees hurt & I missed my baby. 

This year, I went into the season vowing to say YES to everything & I did just that. I didn't get mad when I found myself in crap terrain. It didn't ruin my day when I literally had to slide down a dirt/rock hill 100 yards because it was too steep. I didn't pick easy hunting areas because I was tired or hurt. 

I came home with zero regrets knowing I gave it 100%

-BZ