Box Elder County Fair

 Friday we came home from the hunt, cleaned out the trailer some, showered and headed to Tremonton. We had to work the Box Elder County Rodeo from 4pm-11pm as EMS. Friday night was Tough Enough to Wear Pink so we had pink EMS shirts. 

Kennedy went to spend the night at Liz's house and she was going to bring the kids to the fair that night. Its K's last big hurrah before school started that Monday. She had been so amazing camping. One night we went out and she stayed at camp (mom was there) She cleaned out camper, did the dishes, the next time she swept the floor. She was so helpful and great. When we got home I told her since she had been so good if she continued to help at home and did a chore list I gave her then she could earn some money for the fair. I gave her $20 to cover her dinner and rides and anything else she wanted. Tickets were $1.50 a piece and most rides took 3 tickets.. plus a cheeseburger is $5 so twenty bucks really isnt that unreasonable for the night. When she got the money it was in two tens. She split it in half and gave Kinlie $10 so they could each ride rides! They had a blast.

This was half of our group. 

Todd, Mom, Dad, Chris, Me and Taylor

 We were talking about how crazy it was that my parents very first date was 35 years prior at the fair. They hated each other. My mom was not impressed by him and my dad was floored a girl could resist his charm.. so he asked her out on another date

and here we were 35 years later working the same fair together!

 The fair is one of my moms favorite things. Her and my dad try to go every year.

Tiffany dressed up Taylor so we could go for a walk about to check on the masses

 It may have gotten a little out of hand before the night was over

 We had a pretty uneventful night which was great. I had to go out early the next morning and pick up K. I figured since we spent all night partying (both of us) we deserved The Pie Dump donuts for breakfast!

2016 Elk/Deer Hunt

I sucked at taking pictures this year! I have pretty much no camp picts!

Chris, K and I headed up to camp Friday after work. We took our trailer and met Mom and Dad, Dawni and Wayne and Phil who were already there. Todd and Jana came up later that night and joined us for the weekend. They stayed in the camper with us. It was so awesome to be the 'big kids' who had enough room for the parents to stay with us and we took care of everything.

That night my dads brother Terry and our cousin Daniel and their friend came over for the traditional pre-hunt dinner.

Bright and early that next morning we all headed out for the opening day of the deer and elk hunt. Its a buck deer unit and a limited entry elk.. which means if you dont have the big bull tag you can only shoot a spike or cow. 

 We walked a lot. Nothing was shot opening weekend.

There were SO MANY FREAKING PEOPLE up there. We have never ever seen other hunters in our 'special' spots we go. This year guys had tree stands set up in there, we were running into people like crazy hiking through. The camping spot was packed. Trucks were constantly coming in and hiking into where we hunt. It was insane. We have never ever seen it like that before. 

 We kind of have an opening weekend routine of where we go and hunt. We had to change it around because we were seeing ten times more people than deer.

 Todd was joking with me that the reason we haven't shot anything is because we didnt take our yearly deer hunt selfie. 

So we took our pic

 and about 10 min later he flung an arrow at a deer. The deer ducked pretty fast and his arrow went right over its back.

Next to camp is an awesome kids fort. Kennedy loved it.

 We tried the selfie luck Sunday morning and it didnt work

 Todd & Jana, Dawni & Wayne and Mom all left Sunday afternoon. 

We were kind of frustrated at the lack of animals and excess of people we were seeing so we went for a drive.

On the way back we found out there was a massive wildfire about 20 miles from where we were staying. We talked to Dusty who was on his way up to learn it was on the opposite side of the road from us and we were safe (thats Bear Lake on the right side of the pic)

 Chris of course had his radio so we turned it to the channel to listen and make sure we didnt need to pack camp fast!

 Miss K did awesome hiking with me. She rocked it! She hiked several miles a day and didnt complain. The one time we went back to camp she wanted to keep going so we could find a deer. She still hasnt mastered walking quietly but one day she will get it!

 After a large group of hikers walked out of where we were headed to go hunting at, we also ran into mom and had her take a family picture of us.

 The next night we went with Mom into a spot she wanted to go. Dad had left camp on Monday and Mom came back Sunday night. So now its just us 3 and mom. 

 Kennedy was right on Grandmas heels the whole hike. 

 I was sitting in the bushes a few feet off a trail waiting for this deer mom had seen. A guy came walking about 5 feet from me and had no clue I was there.

 Tuesday we ran down to Bear Lake for some shakes for fun. 

 and we stopped to watch the fire. If you look close on the left hand side in the smoke you can see a Huey dropping water on the fire

 That night Kennedy Chris and I hiked the 2.5 miles into our 'bog' We had a guy and his kid walking in front of us the entire way in and they sat just a few hundred yards from us. 

Kennedy brought a book to keep entertained. Shes sitting behind a tree so the animals cant see her where theyre coming in at. 

 This is how we hang out lol

and then she crashed. We stayed in there for about 4 hours and then hiked out. It was getting close to dark and we were kind of frustrated about how this hunt had been going.

We were getting close to camp and just walking not paying attention when I came around a tree and kicked up something. I told Kennedy and Chris to stop. She hikes in the middle of us. I was a few yards ahead of them and saw antlers. I pulled up my binos and was shocked to see an elk in the middle of a meadow. I couldnt believe it. Its not really elk area and here it was standing out in the open meadow!

I pulled out my rangefinder and it said 88 yards. I didnt have much of a clear shot. I could see it was a spike (what I had a tag for) and it had its back to me. I snuck around some trees and was about 80 yards. I figured what the hell. Might as well try. So I rolled my sight to 80  yards, pulled up my bow and connected! I saw the elk run off with my arrow in it.

We walked over to where it was standing when I shot to find the spot and we found blood. Kennedy sat under a pine tree eating granola bars (it was pretty much dark by this time) and reading her book by flashlight. We followed the blood trail to the edge of the trees and flagged it to come back the next morning. With archery if you let the animal rest they die fast. If you push them and make them run it takes longer and gets them all worked up. Leaving that night was one of the hardest things I have ever done.

I hardly slept a wink. I was up all night praying my shot was good, it was really a spike, that we would find it dead.. I knew it was a spike when I shot and I knew my shot was good but thinking about it all night you start doubting everything you saw and did. Morning FINALLY came. I was so stressed we wouldnt find it. Elk are very very hearty animals and to take out an elk with a bow is hard. 

All 4 of us hiked in. We found the blood trail and left Mom and Kennedy. We hiked about 100 yards in following a great blood trail when we kicked up the elk. He took of running (stumbling)

We knew by the amount of blood we were following he was fatally hit and couldnt believe he was still alive. We could tell by his tracks he was stumbling and struggling. We followed the blood trail for a while and heard some thrashing. So we walked out of the trees to the road and waited. After a little bit so we didnt push him we went back in on the trail. We knew we were close, we could smell him and the blood trail was thinning up (he didnt have much left ) The area we were tracking him through was FULL of dead trees that had fallen and a ton of overgrowth. It made walking through rough. Chris had a tree (a little aspen) in his way and pushed it aside and there was my elk! I couldnt believe it. He was 20 yards from us. We were so ecstatic. We had been getting frustrated and were tired and hungry! 

This is the first elk I have ever killed with a bow. It has been a goal of mine for 3 years. Ever since I didnt fill my big bull tag. Finally after a lot of dedication, constant shooting, hiking my butt off and lots of missed sleep I got my elk with a bow! I dont think I could smile any bigger!

Thankfully the elk had ran through some thick areas and back towards camp and an old road. We had to drag him (Chris and I dragging a full size elk...) about 100 yards down the hill and over some fallen logs. He left me to gut him and he went to get the deer cart to take him out on. Mom and K came back in with them. Id gotten most of it gutted but its really hard by yourself. You need an extra set of hands so Chris helped me finish up the last parts.

 We drug him down to the 'road' and loaded him on the little deer cart. Where he was at it was easier to take him out this way than in quarters. We had to cross a barbed wire fence. Chris stopped and gave me a congratulations kiss.. and my mom made us do it again for a picture ha. I know it may seem weird kissing over a dead animal but it meant so much. We put in so much hard work, so many miles, so much of our time. We hunted together. We found it together. We got meat for our freezer to feed our family through the year. A lot of heart went into it!

 My arrow was still in the elk. I couldn't believe it!

 Chris and I got it out the road to the side by side, took it to his truck and headed for Willard to hang it in the cooler. Todd was at work and wasnt able to come help us search for it that morning and Dad had to be at the County Fair (that was the opening day) They both were so bummed they couldnt be there. Dad met us at the shop and helped us skin and quarter it.

 We showered (which felt amazing. We have a shower in our trailer and had been showering every day but the water pressure is pale in comparison to a house shower) and headed back to camp for the night hunt!

We didnt see hardly anything the rest of the trip. We were averaging about 10 miles a day of hiking

I love when he cooks us breakfast!

 Kennedy made a bow and arrow for the weekend to play with. She was shooting deer out of her blind

We headed home Friday morning 

Broad Mouth #2

 Sunday Chris and Taylor, Todd and I went back out to the Broad Mouth Fire. We left the house at 5am, had breakfast and morning briefings and then headed to the fire grounds with our Division. Todd was the supervisor over the Hotel Division and I was riding as his second. Heres an idea of the area burned and the maps showing the divisions.

The job for the day was to go Cold Trailing. Basically you go through all the areas burned in your division and check the ground for hotspots. You get a lot in heavy ashes, or at bases of trees etc. There had been no flames (in our division) for over 24 hours by this point but hot ashes can hide really easy. We started working on central and western end of our division. 

 Todd and I took an end to cold trail on a section that was hit the day before while the crew worked on another section. We had (including us) a 22 man crew.

It started raining on us which was PERFECT

 We made the rounds towards the western end and checked on a few places that had issues the day before. The rest of the crew was working on a spot theyd marked as a hot spot the day before (with a flyover plane and heat sensing camera). So while they were working we were checking on everything else around making sure we didnt have any other issues.

This is DUST and ASH blowing off the mountain. The winds were crazy. We had a pretty much constant 25mph winds with gusts a lot higher.

 We dealt with good winds most the day. After lunch we were ordered to hunker down and get off ridge tops because massive wind storm was coming through with lightening. So we got off the hill top and waited for the very strong winds to blow through. We were feeling pretty good about the day. We hadnt found too many hot spots and the ones that were worked on were ones we knew about already.

It was just after 2 and we had the airplane doing fly overs checking areas looking for smoke puffs we cant see. She came across and told us we had a fire on a ridge top (it wasnt anywhere we could see from where we were at or the canyon we were working in) We were in Little Canyon and it was the next canyon over in Johnson Canyon. We lined the crews off the mountain and headed to safe staging spot because we weren't sure exactly where the fire was and by the directions it was blocking one of our ways out if it came off the ridge.

 As soon as we started getting to the bottom end of Little Canyon we could see smoke and flames and knew it wasnt just a little smoke puff. The massive winds that had just came through found some little hot spot to stir up and started another fire. 

We had to have the plane direct us in on roads (dozer cut lines and 4 wheeler trails) to finally find some access to where the fire was on the ridge. When we got there we had big flames and lots of smoke. Chris and I grabbed a line off his truck and a tool and headed down to try and put it out while we were waiting for the rest of the resources to get to us. Taylor was feeding us hose and Todd was running command. I guess while we were working on that fire we had 3 large spot fires start just to the south west of us and the crews coming to us had to stop and take care of those first. We got about half of our flames put out and looked to the east and with some of the smoke gone saw we had another fire that was rapidly spreading. The hot ash stirred up quite a mess on a windy hot dry day.

The helicopter launched and started bringing us in bucket drops. This fire bordered the black in one spot but had open unburned to the east and south of it.

 and of course while were fighting this fire the winds pick back up like crazy

 After a few hours we finally got all the flames knocked down, a line in around the fire, we had a dozer come in an dig a line and we were working on hot spots.

We were filthy and exhausted. We'd hoped to be starting off the mountain by 7pm and instead we were just starting mop up

 Its hard to tell but this is just the very top of the fire. That drop off there goes pretty much straight down and thats where we were fighting the fire at.

From just over the drop off looking up and still towards the top of the burn

 Tabitha (the EMT assigned to our group) and I took care of the entire first spot of the fire, hand dug a line around and mopped up all the hot spots. Once our side was done we went over and started helping the other side that everyone abandoned us for :) it was a little bigger.

 We got another weather warning from the plane that high winds, lightening and rain were headed in and about 20 minutes out. That storm passed over with out starting a new fire thankfully.

 We earned our money thats for sure!

 We headed off the mountain just after 9pm.

Dinner was at 8pm so they held some over for us. We had some problems getting out of the area and FINALLY made it down to flat ground. One of the brush trucks from another agency was having problems and we had to tow it back to base. We had dinner, finished our paperwork, debriefed and finally it was time to go home just after 11pm. Plus Todd and I still had to stop and pick up Kennedy on the way home! We made it home just before midnight. Chris and I showered, crawled into bed and died for 4 hours before it was time to get up and go to work the next day.

It was a LONG 19 hour day but we got it done and worked hard.