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Opportunity Swap

A couple of weeks ago the plan was to go hunt turkeys with my oldest son during the general season turkey hunt here in Utah. However, sometimes the rigors of life get in the way of hunting and that's just how it goes. Even though our father-son hunting plans got canceled due to my sons busy work schedule, I was determined to make the most out of this missed opportunity.

Despite the fact that none of the rest of my boys were old enough to hunt, our canceled turkey hunt did not discourage their eagerness for wanting to get out into the hills anyway. So that is what we did.

 

turkey hunting, camp fire
                                                             Big old camp fire before dinner

 

The forecast for the next several days called for rain state wide, so we packed our rain gear and all the other essentials and headed for the mountains. It rained off and on all the way to our destination, but the rain subsided just before we arrived at camp. In fact, the skies cleared enough that the boys convinced me to build a camp fire. Luckily we found a few dead pine trees nearby and before long we had a raging camp fire!

horned toad, horny toad
                       Found a horny toad near camp, classic pic for our family

 

scouting for turkeys  calling for coyotes while turkey hunting

          Rain gear somewhat drowned the little guy                               We tried calling for coyotes, no luck

During the weekend scouting for turkeys, we saw lots of deer and elk, had a blast riding around on the 4 wheeler and just plain had fun camping! We even managed to snap a few pictures of the wildlife.

 

turkey hunting, tom, gobbler, longbeard, beard  bull elk in the velvet

      One of the lucky gobblers on this trip                                     Saw several elk and deer in the velvet

Apparently the dismal weather forecast caused lots of people to stay home or remain way low on the mountain because we had the entire area within miles of our camp all to ourselves. Needless to say, we had a fantastic time scouting! And while we may have missed the opportunity to harvest a turkey with a gun, swapping that opportunity to hunt with our camera was a great call!