Dumb things I've done.... wow so many choices I don't know where to start.
So my ex-brother in law used to get me in all kinds of situations. This one started the day before the elk season opener in Wyoming Snake River country. We went in there every year around Sept 20th, bulls in the rut and rifle season, it was like shooting fish in a barrel not uncommon to see 20-30 bulls over just a few days. We could call them in within a few yards and really look them over, picking the one you wanted. We killed some nice bulls back in those days. So we leave our home town the day before opener, about 80 miles from the hunting grounds. Its fall in Wy so weather can change in minutes. As we head north we decided we should stop and get some beer for hunting camp. Back in these days most bars had a drive up window in the liquor store side, you could actually get a mixed drink to go and we did. About 20 miles down the road is another bar ( bars about every 20 miles in this parts of western Wy.) By this time we've finished our to go drinks and getting pretty thirsty (we may have had a couple of our camp beers as well) Anyway as we pull into the next town we decided perhaps we would just go in and have one maybe two drinks and head on to hunting camp. Some hours later we figure we should head on to camp pretty sure the 6 head of horses that has been standing the open top goose neck trailer are getting dang tired of our indulging in adult libations. So far we've made it about 20 miles from home (only 60 more to go) , spend 3-4 hours covering that 20 miles and have caught a pretty good buzz. Its started snowing by the time we leave the bar and finally get on our way to Fall Creek. It stopped snowing awhile later but the roads are slush and a bit slick but all is well, we're headed for our favorite hunting area. We have fresh snow and the bulls are deep in rut. With all that to celebrate we had a few more beers as we drove the last 60 miles. By the time we leave the paved highway its dark, snow had stopped and spirits we're high. We reminisced about past hunts in this area and enjoyed a couple more beers. To get near our base camp you leave the good grave road of Fall Creek and jump on some old dirt logging roads. The dirt roads are greasy with about 2" of snow, the open top gooseneck loaded with riding and pack horses is pulling hard and difficult to keep on the road. I don't know if it was the beer or the snow or both but the brother in law ends up putting us off the edge of the old logging road with the Dodge pickup off the road up against a big Doug fer tree and the trailer blocking the road. Were stuck but good and in a bad predicament. With no good way to get out and drunk as a waltzing **** ants we determined it best to not make matters worse; we'll just throw down camp here for the night and assess things in the morning. This would mean a last start opening morning but was the best plan we could come up with considering our impairments at the time. We jumped the horse out of the trailer and tied each to a tree. Dug out some camp gear and sleeping bags. Being too impaired to setup a 10x14 wall tent we decided to just roll out under the goose neck training in case the weather turned bad during the night. Well as expected the weather did turn during the night, it rained and rained. We woke the next morning cold, wet to the bone and as green as the Grinch the stole Christmas. The rain had wash the wood floor of the trailer clean of all horse crap that had ran through the slats. We smelled worse than we looked, we felt a bit ill due to one too many adult libations the night before, we were stuck and the dodge had a few new dents. We ended up riding out to the Fall Creek road a couple miles and spent the next several hours trying to flag down and talk passers by into pulling our rig out or making a call to a friend to drive up and pull us out. Odd but the folks we talked to looked at us oddly and stayed a fair distance way, guess we really didn't smell or look too welcoming. We finally got another hunting party to pull us out. They weren't happy with us and I'm sure the only reason they pulled us out was they simply couldn't get past our wreck to reach there camp. I'm sure they too have told stories of a couple stinking crap covered cowboys they had to help and wondering how long we'd been smelling that bad.
