Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Thanks Montana (solo backpack elk) and 2013 season

Formidilosis, I for one commend you. I think while you may have done some planning "on the fly", you seemed from your diary (ok, text) to approach things intelligently and it seemed you knew your limits as you went. Life isn't risk-free regardless of what a risk-adverse culture would like; nor is risk the same for everybody in the same circumstance. Physical ability, temperament, equipment and the knowledge to use it effectively are all on different locations on the Bell Curve for all of us.

For some, getting out of the truck and walking a mile would be as risky for them as "Form's Little Adventure" was for you.

While I've never been pressed physically to quite the point you accepted I can relate; before GPS, cell phones, etc, I enjoyed nights alone on timbered mountain slopes with a fire and a candy bar wondering how I could have gone wrong after vetoing my compass. But, it's remarkably quite, calm in the "black timber" after one has a fire and nourishment. Even almost comfortable in early fall.

Great effort and, really, your bull is a world class trophy, worth more in my eyes than any 400 + bull taken on a yellow-aspen hunt on a ranch hunt in NM. Not even in the same universe.

Thanks for the effort in the posting!

Edited to add: maybe with a few more years it will occur to you but one suggestion I would make for an "extreme" do-it-yourselfer, rental fees aside, is a sat phone. You know, for those you know, who care.

George, I second your commendation.

I'd like to know what brand and model scope holds zero after a 60 foot drop (onto the rocks?)

Gotta agree with George and Doc I enjoyed Form's post a lot. Unless I'm mistaken his rifle is a Model 7 Remington SS Magnum in 300 SAUM or maybe 300 Wizzum.

Heck of an adventure

If I retained anything from reading Formid's past posts I would believe he was carrying some variation of .300 mag with either a SWFA SS, or a Night Force scope. He likes both for durability, tracking, and zero retention.

When I make a fire at night and leave my boots out in the rain and sleep out on a rough night and wake up and stuff is covered in a foot of snow the next morning I always put the boots on and make sure the fire is dead out before I go hunting too.

I hate when those campfires start forest fires in a foot of snow and mess up a good hunt.

That post has once and for all proved that you are a [bleep] idiot.

As usual, you get congratulations?

Freaking unreal. Who heads out into blizzard conditions to overnight in snow with $7/ pr thin, un insulated leather gloves. I've been in too many situations when my fingers were too numb to feel anything or do anything with them. I was born, but it wasnt yesterday.

I too, know how far you can go in snow over gaiters in rough country without your pants above them getting wet.

Huh? Isn't that what the OP did? Perhaps you best read his thread again.

IMHO, Formids posts here and elsewhere have left a breadcrumb trail of kernels of info that even Helen Keller could follow,
YMMV

consciously aware of my energy level, expenditure, and knowing how hard I could push and still recover at night. I could already feel a bit fatigued from the last 2.5 days, and I had an hour and a half to drop 2,600 feet or so to the valley floor down a very steep slide, go up and over two 1,500ft or so ridges, and across at least one rock slide, and then up 2k feet or so to get to them. I figured at least one creek crossing as well, but hopefully that would be frozen. I knew that if I made it, it would be a literal sprint and I would not be able to recover from

At this point in talking to myself is when my real personality kicked in and I sated out load- "there is no way you are going to let this bull mock you" . No matter what, I was ruining his day.

I started stripping clothes, put out the fire using half my water to soak it, broke down the spotter and was about to take off when it occurred to me that I might want to ensure that the bull had brow tines (brow tined unit). Out came the spotter again, and in a minute or so he silhouetted himself against a spruce and I could see that he was in fact legal. Packed it back up, snapped a wide view pic of the ridge they were on and my proposed path, and down I went.


Now at this point it gets truly stupid again. (OPs words)


To hunt sheep in high country you need to be able to cover 1500 ft vertical in an hour. Some, I guess can cover 2600 down, 1500 up, 1500 down (first ridge- one mile away),1500 up, 1500 down (second ridge -2 miles away) (as the crow flies), and 2000 up to get close when they have an hour and a half. So like 4-6 miles in rough, steep snow covered country to make by dark in 1 1/2 hours because some elk on a ridge 5 miles away were mocking him? Who was going to get them before the next am or pm? No hunters that far back in. Three more weeks to pull it off, right? Oh yeah, just for fun.

eyeball,

Reading comprehension isn't your strong suit, is it?

If eyeball dedicated as much time to hunting as he did to crying about this thread, he'd be in the Super Slam club.

Tanner

no schit......

Tell me that Tanner, when you get my age.

I'm not crying about this thread. I'm going back through it and using my head. God gave me a brain to use.

why don't you just keep it in your 'head' then? no need to junk up formids thread...

You are the one who said you had an hour and a half to go down 2600 feet, over two ridges of 1500 feet and up another ridge 2000 feet. You are the one who showed how steep the terrain was in a pic, not me.

When gramps brings in a little three year old kid with a burn in an eye that looks like it was made from a cigarette I start contemplating.

Someone has enough for a 500 yard rig and top class pack and hits the outback with gloves worse than nothing it makes me wonder.

I'm not saying you didn't do it. I'm saying it doesn't make sense.

PS I'm not the only one.

PS when you bivy out in the cold and rain, you can wrap your boots in your coat, crawl in your bag and have a pretty fair pillow if you place them sole down. Then they aren't full of ice in the am and are rather warm. If they make your coat damp its easily dried by climbing some steep stuf a while with it on.

JFC......

I only have one pair of gloves isn't that all y'all own?

You guys kill me, I live in the South and have like 8-10 pairs of gloves in various thicknesses and all you can hit on is a pair of leather work gloves?

Mike