Spotting Week #10 August 6

Another really good week of spotting. Today's adventure was a little more involved though. So much that we were hard pressed to get off the mountain before the sun rose the next day. Well maybe not that bad, but it was late enough that hiking out from our last trail cam installment of over 1/2 mile in the dark of the night with only the stars to light our way was pretty crazy. We had flashlights, but it's kinda cool to leave them off and just feel your way around the mountain. We knew which direction we needed to go, and there were a couple trails here and there that we caught, but otherwise it was a log here and a tree there that got in our way.

So why were we out so late? Other than the cold hard fact that's the mountains are just dang enjoyable, we got tied up getting a tree stand in the tree, and checking on all 3 camera's. It had been two weeks since we checked them last and we really needed to make sure we swapped out the cards in the camera's. With the luck we've been having lately with all the elk, it was a must to get to them all. Not to mention right at the last moment of what little bit of light we had left we decided to venture off in a different direction to hand camera #4. We knew it'd be on a good trail, and knew that it was a high traffic zone for animals of every kind, the only hard part was finding it in the dark. But, found it we did, and we found a few stinky elk beds right off the trail too, so that was pretty exciting. We hung the camera, snapped a couple night shots to make sure it was pointed in a decent direction and climbed a good 500 feet out of the canyon.

Here are just a few off the fun trail cam pics that camera #3 picked up this week. And some more action shots that were taken. I'll be sitting on camera #3 with my bow on opening day, hoping that the first legal animal that presents itself is one of those yummy spikes, Otherwise I'll probably not have to guts to pass on a cow.
Also here's a good shot of the night sky as we were heading in to check the camera's.