The Elk Hunt 2008

Brayden drew the coveted archery elk tag for the San Juan unit. He's been putting in for 18 years and the past 3 years he thought he had it for sure. So needless to say he was very excited to have drawn this year. We went to Blanding on August 12th and started camping with Adam Bronson and Regan. I ended up camping for the next three weeks with different people coming and going. The second week of the hunt we were lucky enough to have almost all of Brayden's high school friends come hunt. Adam Bronson, Dave McPherson, and Steve Kartchner came to hunt with Brayden. It was so fun to have them in camp sharing stories and catching up. A big thanks goes out to them for taking the time to come out and help. I must also mention that thanks to Adam, everyone ate very good. High grade meat and potatoes every night. It wouldn't have been the same without you guys.

Camping was really fun and Autumn and Porter had a great time in the dirt. These pictures were taken about 10 minutes after we got to camp. They wasted no time getting dirty. We went for a lot of walks in the stoller and ended up bush wacking a few times to take shortcuts. I love our stroller, it can go about anywhere.



The third week into the hunt Brayden made it happen and put a beautiful bull down. It came into a pond he'd been sitting on and hunting around for the majority of the hunt. It was about 3 in the afternoon. He shot it at 45 yards, and the bull went down about 50 yards from where he shot. When he walked up on it he saw that one side had broken off a brow tine. It's a 5x6 with a lot of character.
We packed the kids in and took some pictures. They thought it was pretty cool. Autumn just pointed with wide eyes and would say "da, da". I think she was trying to say deer, but I'm not sure. When we moved the elk for another position it made some gurgling noises and Porter about freaked out. He cried pretty hard about it. He didn't like that at all. I posted video of his reaction at the bottom of this post.

We stayed another week in Blanding while Brayden helped Regan hunt. Autumn and Porter love their Richmond grandparents and had a blast playing with them and their cousins Sierra and Savannah. We love Blanding and enjoy every trip we take there.