Super Saturday of Elk Hunting, Tree getting and Shop fire

Like Id mentioned we have been doing a lot of elk hunting. Like morning and night each day. Chris has his tag filled but Todd still needed to fill his. We have been seeing big bucks each day we were out. I finally started taking some pictures. They are right in the middle of the rut so theyve been focused on one thing! And thats not people...

 We found some elk for Todd but they were about 300 yards on the wrong side of the fence and they were headed the wrong way. Its hard to tell in the pictures but it was snowing SO HARD that morning.

 This guy was HUGE but the snow and sage brush obscured a lot of his antlers. If you look close you can see the outlines

 Dad had made homemade cinnamon rolls the day before and sent a pan home with Jana. We had those for breakfast. It was perfect!

 We hunted for a few hours and didnt see any more elk. We drove into the ranch to look and see how many were on Hardware. Daddy was helping K look at the big bull thats in. Hes huge!

 From there we headed to get breakfast and then Christmas trees. It didnt take us long to pick out a tree! Chris really liked this one so we got it.

 Kennedy pretty much slept the entire time. We woke her up to get the tree and for her to play in the snow for a minute.

 Todd and Jana found a tree in the same spot as we found ours so we were done before we knew it!

 We went home and I put up all the decorations inside while Chris and Kennedy worked on hanging lights. 

 We had dinner and were just getting ready to put up the tree when the pagers went off for a structure fire. There was a workshop on fire and we got it knocked down super fast! Someone was taking pictures after we got the fire out and were working on over haul.

Me and Taylor inside

 Chris and Taylor ventilating the roof

 Todd our IC

 It was so cold outside.. like high teens. My helmet and turnouts were covered in ice by the time we were done.

Thanksgiving

 This year for Thanksgiving my parents wanted to do dinner but they wanted to do it at Todd and Jana's house to better accommodate everyone. Both my sisters showed up so we decided to do kid pictures.. that was like baptizing a cat trying to get everyone to look and smile and hold still at once.

Top Row: Kennedy, Parker and Kinlie

Bottom: Klint, Koree and Macee

Us girls joined the fun

and then right after that as we were walking off the stairs and getting ready to go eat we were paged on a structure fire in Brigham to assist. We got there and helped them take care of it. We had smoke rolling out of the basement. After things calmed down some I was able to get a picture or two

This is Chris helping take a line into the house

 We came home a few hours later. Everyone had eaten. The kids were full and having a blast playing. Chris and I had some time to eat some dinner and pie. Then we were paged out again on a heart attack. Good thing we have a house full of Grandmas for Kennedy! 

End of swan hunt and Chris's Elk

The next day after Todd and I went swan hunting Chris and him went out that night. 

Todd was able to bag his first swan

and about an hour Chris bagged his first ever swan

These were two happy boys!

 We spent a lot of time elk hunting. A lot

Wednesday morning Kennedy and Chris were glassing the elk in at the ranch on Hardware. Dont mind her hair, she had been sleeping for hours in the truck

 Wednesday night Chris went out hunting all by himself.. in a blizzard.. and got a cow elk! We met up with him after being stuck in Sardine Canyon for over an hour with a 7 car pile up. He was completely exhausted and frozen and soaking wet. We took his quarters and hung them.

 He was pretty proud that his cow had two ear tags. We called and hopefully they will be able to tell us how old she is and where shes from. You can tell how exhausted he is because his turkey timer is popping out. When he gets ran down and is exhausted the bb on his forehead pokes out. We call it his turkey timer cause when it dings hes done!

Elk and Duck hunting

Saturday morning Chris and Todds elk hunt opened. We left our house at 5am and headed up to the fields by Hardware hoping to find 2 cow elk. We watched the sunrise and the temperatures drop. We left our house it was 22 degrees. By the time we got to Hardware area we were at 4 degrees. We didnt see any elk besides what was on the ranch. We did see a ton of deer on about every stinking hillside. We decided to head down Ant Flat road to see if we saw any herds. The hard part is with out a lot of snow to push them down the elk are still pretty high right now. We found a herd of 4 NICE bull moose and one cow moose with them right off the side of the road. It was hard to get some good picts but these boys were big!

 When we got to the moose the temps were even lower.. I had layers on and my blanket in the back of the truck.

 We made the loop and came down through Huntsville and over the divide. When we got back home we cut up Chris's deer and mostly did burger.

From there he went to take Steve and Taylor to his pheasant club where he guides. Taylor had bought a certificate for 2 hunters 6 birds at an auction and Chris told him if he did he'd give him a free guide. The boys loved the pheasant club up there and are wanting to go back. While they were out Todd and I went to Harold Crane to get him a swan. The last time they were there the water was so low so we just walked out the dike 1.5 miles in our waders carrying all our stuff. We found a nice place to set up along the bank and threw out some decoys.  We had swans everywhere. I called in a bunch and got a lot to turn and circle us. No swans fell from the air though. I called so much I lost my voice. I wasnt shooting any ducks because I really wanted Todd to get a swan. Finally when there were no swans coming in a duck landed in our decoys and I couldnt NOT shoot him. 

He was a nice 2nd year mallard with just one curl. We didnt get any swans but we had a fun night!

Pheasant Grove Pheasant Hunting

Friday afternoon Chris, Taylor and Steve were planning a trip out to Pheasant Grove which is a hunting club Steve and Taylor go to. The boys were all getting ready to go when Taylor and Steve asked if I wanted to go too. Yes! So we headed out to Corinne. We picked a pretty heavily covered spot and started hunting. We had 10 birds out. Our dogs were up at the club guiding with Kyle and Steve and Taylor wanted to see how their dog would work. It was a lot of ground for him to cover by himself!

 We walked our butt off from 230-5 and got 8 out of the 10 birds. They were runners! They didnt want to flush up at all. I dont know if they'll invite me back.. I shot 4 of the 8 birds :)

I havent gotten to see this guy much between work and our two school schedules lately so it was really nice to get to spend some time hunting with him.

 Chris, Steve, Duke and Taylor

When we got back from hunting Tammy even had dinner ready for us for Taylors birthday! It was a great night.