2010 Book Cliffs - Any Weapon
derekp1999
12/17/10 7:27pm
Hey guys, I really enjoy reading the stories… so I thought I’d share mine. It’s more about the build up to opening day because let’s just say the actual pulling of the trigger was rather anticlimactic. It really wasn’t what we were expecting from a hunt on the Book Cliffs… but I hope you find it at least entertaining.
Last spring I got a phone call from a friend with what he declared to be “huge news.” He told me a certified letter arrived that day & he’d drawn a Book Cliffs any weapon deer tag for 2010 from his unfilled ’09 Dedicated Hunter tag. He was excited & asked if I’d help out. Um, duh… stupid question, I sure would (to the dismay of my wife).
Through the summer, neither of us could find time to scout between family & work (we both had additions to our families in the summer making things really tough). He made one trip shortly after archery season & saw a handful of good bucks. During that trip he was sitting on the tailgate of his truck just after dark grilling hot dogs when a black bear decided to join him for dinner. It was a long uneasy night’s sleep for him in the bed of the pickup & decided that he’d rent an RV for the hunt. So we had to rely heavily on info that we got from the Northeastern DWR branch.
We headed out from Layton on Thursday morning, picked up another guy in Heber, and arrived in camp at the top of Rector Ridge about 3pm. We unloaded the ATVs & headed out to take advantage of the last few hours of light. We saw a small herd of elk with some really good bulls and three small bucks on Indian Springs Ridge. Nothing to get excited about & I was a little concerned... I had read several forum posts saying we should expect see 35-50 bucks per day & it would be a matter of finding “the best one.” Since we hadn’t seen any good numbers of deer we saddled up the ATVs Friday & put 120 miles on them riding from Rabbit Mountain to Indian Springs Ridge (and everywhere in between). We saw about 30 deer and ZERO shooter bucks, the biggest being a two year old 3x3. We did run across a very nice bull elk on Rector Ridge, a beautifully symmetrical and wide 5x5 (I am a sucker for symmetry), but we weren’t hunting elk now were we!
Here are a couple of the little bucks we ran across Thursday & Friday.
Last spring I got a phone call from a friend with what he declared to be “huge news.” He told me a certified letter arrived that day & he’d drawn a Book Cliffs any weapon deer tag for 2010 from his unfilled ’09 Dedicated Hunter tag. He was excited & asked if I’d help out. Um, duh… stupid question, I sure would (to the dismay of my wife).
Through the summer, neither of us could find time to scout between family & work (we both had additions to our families in the summer making things really tough). He made one trip shortly after archery season & saw a handful of good bucks. During that trip he was sitting on the tailgate of his truck just after dark grilling hot dogs when a black bear decided to join him for dinner. It was a long uneasy night’s sleep for him in the bed of the pickup & decided that he’d rent an RV for the hunt. So we had to rely heavily on info that we got from the Northeastern DWR branch.
We headed out from Layton on Thursday morning, picked up another guy in Heber, and arrived in camp at the top of Rector Ridge about 3pm. We unloaded the ATVs & headed out to take advantage of the last few hours of light. We saw a small herd of elk with some really good bulls and three small bucks on Indian Springs Ridge. Nothing to get excited about & I was a little concerned... I had read several forum posts saying we should expect see 35-50 bucks per day & it would be a matter of finding “the best one.” Since we hadn’t seen any good numbers of deer we saddled up the ATVs Friday & put 120 miles on them riding from Rabbit Mountain to Indian Springs Ridge (and everywhere in between). We saw about 30 deer and ZERO shooter bucks, the biggest being a two year old 3x3. We did run across a very nice bull elk on Rector Ridge, a beautifully symmetrical and wide 5x5 (I am a sucker for symmetry), but we weren’t hunting elk now were we!
Here are a couple of the little bucks we ran across Thursday & Friday.
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Jeff
12/17/10 7:44pm
Nice, I drew out in 02 and 08 for the Books, Love it.
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sneekeepete
12/17/10 7:45pm
Congrats to all involved and thanks for the story. :thumb
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derekp1999
4/6/11 9:26pm
Got the mount back the other day. Sure is an interesting buck, I like the triangular shape of his antlers.
As you can see I have friends that are quite successful... I can't wait until it's my turn to take a nice buck!
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firefighterbraun
4/7/11 12:29am
Good looking mount! Congrats to your friend. And that is a little different with how the antlers kinda angle up instead of going out flat like most.
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dahlmer
4/7/11 10:00am
Fun story. Congrats to your buddy on a nice buck. Some friends and I hunted the Books in 03 and 04. Probably some the of the funnest hunts I have ever been on.
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MuleyMadness
4/7/11 3:55pm
Not sure how I missed this thread, but I seemed to have. Great job and thanks for sharing. Nice looking bucks.
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NotEnufTags
4/7/11 7:57pm
Congrats. I'd like to hunt the book cliffs at some point.
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huntfishnv
4/9/11 12:39pm
Sounds like you had a great hunt, looks like the mount came out good to!
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