From Oct. 20th to Feb 28th I hunted all but 20 some days and had an education of a life time, both of animal behavior, and marksmanship. Two times windage left my heart empty! I kept two horses in great shape and on the thin side! Many miles in the saddle, sore legs from power marching, frozen cheeks, and personal days in the hills became the normal.
I have the best wife who thankfully understands my obsession!
There is not enough time or space to describe this past wolf season! On this day it started off in classic fashion. My friend who killed the mangy female had a new saddle horse that was acting as though it had intensions. Low and behold my reason for not carrying my true long range rig in a saddle scabbard played out in grand fashion! This guy does not get bucked off, except today! That horse bucked so hard that the rifle came out of the leather, broke both leather straps and then that cuyuse, used the side focus knob on the ol' Nightforce scope for traction! Snow angel was made!
So we decided to share a rifle. All the while we needed to boogie because we had mutts howling a mile away! Wolves that we had spent two weeks locating!
After a short ride we figured we had wolves at 800ish. We decided to glass a bit as we came out of the timber, and my horse and ol' Buck were just pinned on a ridge. Well there trotted a buck wolf at 150 yards, oh baby, unlucky day for you wolf! 95 grains of 243 diameter smk tore through the shoulders! DRT, but I let the lifeless body have another for insurance!
We still had wolves howling at 900 yards and closed the distance 200 yards and tied up the hay burners. We ran another 75 yards and set up. We howled together and here they came! It was not my turn to shoot and my 6 foot plus friend was shooting my rifle with a 12 LOP, 'twas an interesting sight! The mutts were at 727 and stopped broadside. Then just as he squeezed the trigger the wolf moved, darn! So that was a miss! We ran, wheezing like frenzied maniacs to the target location for another look and a blood check! As we approached the location they began to howl again so we set up glassing and howling again, and unbelievably here they came again! My turn to shoot! We had a wolf standing at 599 yards, chip shot! Ya right, some idiot forgot to take the safety off as he followed the wolf, and when it stopped the gun no go boom. Away it trotted, stopped for an instant,,,,,, swing and a miss! Argh!
We glassed for an hour and headed for the rodeo horse! After a magnificent rodeo for the forth time and a short ride we were standing at the first wolf we encountered! After a few pictures we hear howling again, and in total disbelief, we watched as a wolf went to our last location and followed our trail for several hundred yards! Hmm maybe we should have done as we thought we knew we should and just stayed put, **** calving time! We did get home just in time to save a calf that needed pulled 1 mile from a wolf kill site!
