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After early archery season (Sept 1-9) was wasted on us, Mike went with his rifle in the early morning of the 10th to where we had seen this great buck previously. It came up the hill just like it was supposed to - his best whitetail yet.
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Against stiff odds, the boys and I drew coveted bull moose tags in a zone about 1 1/2 hours from home. We all met up in the latter half of October and pounded the area for 2 days on our initial visit. All I got was exhausted.
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After casing the joint for awhile, we met to decide on the most likely places to hike to. It worked a bit - Aaron found a cow and calf but other than that no moose were spotted.
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After a few days at home, Mike headed back to the moose zone solo. He shot a few grouse, saw a number of elk, and heard wolves howling. No moose again, but he met up with this humdinger of a mule deer on the second afternoon, November 6. He's having quite a season as this beast scored just over 170 B&C.
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The rut is always a really fascinating time to hunt and this year was no different. At dawn on November 21, I encountered this guy tending a doe and got him after a long stalk, including over 200 yards crawling through the weeds. Just after my son and I loaded the buck in his truck, we spotted another similar buck with a girl friend not 100 yards from us. Sure would have been a lot easier than my marathon crawl.
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