It started with a range-finder.

More precisely, it started with a "WTB" ad I placed here on the Campfire. I was looking for a used range-finder for my son Rowdy. He had just turned 14, and was beginning to venture out on his own in pursuit of critters. I think I had $200 at hand, and was simply looking for the best "deal" I could find. Shortly after posting the ad the blinking envelope appeared and a hunting trip for the ages was set in motion.

Greg (AH64guy) from here on the campfire responded that he had a couple of options if I was interested. We exchanged phone numbers and struck up a conversation. In what came to be a pattern, Greg stated the rangefinder in question wasn't working perfectly, and insisted I'd be doing him a favor if I would simply take it off his hands...gratis. Plainly stated, he was completely full of chit. Rowdy is 21 now and is still using that range-finder whilst finishing his senior year in college. It still works perfectly for the record. He simply wanted to do something nice while being as low-key as possible about it. That would be the pattern in the years to follow.

I tried to make a habit of sending field photos of Rowdy's adventures with said rangefinder along the way. Greg genuinely seemed to enjoy the photos, and it was a nice conduit to continue various hunting/life conversations. The military had taken him out east, but he'd grown up just a few miles north of Moscow and the University of Idaho where we'd both graduated from college. Greg was more than a little tickled when Rowdy later decided that was where he'd also be attending school.

As it happened, Greg was still coming out to Idaho each fall on an archery hunt for elk a few hours north of my home in Boise. We were finally able to link up for dinner a few years ago before he flew home at the conclusion to one of his hunts. He was just as affable in person as he was in electronic communications. He also kept sending things to Rowdy....muzzle-loaders he wasn't using, nice KUIU gear he'd "outgrown", AR parts he said he didn't need. I very much appreciated all of it, but at some point I started to feel terribly guilty about how decidedly one-sided this friendship had become...at least in terms of material things. One night I had an epiphany...I could host him for a moose hunt and maybe try and balance the ledger a bit.

I'd already offered as much to Tim (TDN) here on the Campfire, as we had exchanged various hunts over the years. I had Greg and Tim start putting in for a particular moose hunt I've had success with a couple of years ago. To my utter shock, Tim drew a NR moose tag in the unit on his first try! That hunt was chronicled for the Campfire shortly thereafter...MOOSE HUNT #1.

It was an amazing hunt. A great time with a great friend. It would be hard to top quite frankly. The most difficult portion would be simply drawing the tag. Unlike Tim, Greg's application would be a part of the resident pool which gave him considerably better odds...which is to say still in the single digits, but certainly more likely than Tim. SOMEONE has to draw as they say. I think it was late June when I found myself slack-jawed and looking at a screenshot from Greg that read "successful for moose applicaiton"...or something to that effect. Holy chit...we were going moose hunting!

The season is extremely long, so we had some flexibility in deciding dates. For reasons I won't bore you with, we settled on the first week of November. It would hopefully be late enough for the leaves to have dropped and assist with long-range glassing, but early enough that we wouldn't be battling snow the entire time. I would leave the mountains of central Idaho on the 27th of October from my own elk/deer hunt, and pick Greg up late that night from the airport in Boise. We'd depart the next morning on the 28th. I'd also invited a colleague/friend of mine (Randy) to join us. Randy has been applying for the unit for several years and wanted to be a part of the fun. Randy has been around the block as they say, and I knew he'd add value to the camp and he and Greg would likely get along. For the record, I was right on both accounts.

Greg's flight was a little delayed, but sometime after 1 am we got back to my house and Greg sauntered off to bed in the guest room. The alarm sounded extra shrill when it began shrieking at me at 6am the following morning. We hastily re-packed my pickup and brewed some coffee for the road. Randy pulled up in front of the house at 7:30 sharp, and our little caravan pulled out of Boise at 8am on the button.

The drive took considerably longer than I had anticipated, as the roads were a bit greasy coming in. It didn't help that I kept stopping to glass as we entered the hunt unit. The good news was that I spotted the distinct outline of three moose on a distant ridge I knew we'd be hunting the following morning. Even at a distance of a few miles, I could make out their paddles through my binoculars. Seeing those three bulls really had everyone excited when we pulled up and hurriedly began setting camp. We were rapidly running out of daylight when Greg finished pounding the last of the tent-stakes.....

[Linked Image from i.ibb.co]


 
To be continued....

If you're not burning through batteries in your headlamp,...you're doing it wrong.