The hike to the first set of cameras went quickly enough. The first camera that I checked (this is the one I call Camera #3) had 500+ pictures on it. I pulled my laptop out of my pack and quickly copied all those pictures over, cleared the memory card, put the card back in the camera and checked the battery status. The camera still said 40% power, so I figured I'd "let it ride" on that set of batteries. The second camera had malfunctioned and not taken any pictures. Unfortunately, this happens to me at least once every year. I re-formatted the memory card just to make sure it wasn't the card, checked the batteries (40%... so we'll "let it ride"), and set the camera again. I made sure it was taking pictures before I left it. It was slightly later than I had hoped so we hurried as fast as we could out of that area, the hike was mostly downhill so it went quickly. My grandmother timed us from the time we left until the time we got back and she clocked us at 35 minutes.
The hike in to the second set of cameras is slightly longer, more uphill elevation, but gratefully it also went quickly enough. My friend was running out of gas since he had been doing some serious physical labor all day while I sat at my desk in front of a computer screen, so I left him about halfway up the first incline and quickly checked these cameras on my own. I bumped several deer on my way to the cameras, all does and fawns. The first camera (this is the one I call Camera #1) also had 500+ pictures on it. I quickly transferred the pictures to my laptop, replaced the card, and checked the batteries. The second camera in this series had a malfunction as well and over the course of about 6 weeks it only took 3 pictures... one of which contained a lone deer butt. If I was a baseball player I'd be a Hall of Famer batting .500, but I was a little discouraged that half of my cameras had not functioned properly.
I hustled down back to the car from checking these two cameras and we were able to drive all the way up on top to the spot where I like to glass across a large canyon and we immediately began spotting game. Dark clouds were beginning to gather and roll in, off in the distance we could see flashes of lightening and hear distant thunder. It was ominous, we knew we didn't have much time at our fingertips. We had already seen deer and moose, so the primary goal of this glassing session would be to spot some elk. Not five minutes in, there she was... a lone cow fed into a clearing just below a large pine tree and stood broadside. She was way over in an area that holds a handful of ponds and one of my favorite places to hike in to on the muzzleloader deer hunt. We watched as a small herd of about a dozen elk followed single file behind her. Not long after they trailed off into the trees our visibility was completely gone. Within a couple seconds, we were getting drenched so we quickly threw our gear in the car and headed back to the cabin.
Back at the cabin, with my grandparents watching over my shoulder, we looked at the pictures and saw a good mixture of deer, moose, and elk. One camera picked up some elk where we hadn't seen any elk before and had a serious amount of moose. I'm not seeing anything that is outrageously huge... but this is a general season deer and an OTC any bull area so I'm thrilled with what I do have. Here are a handful of my favorites:
Camera #1:
Camera #3:
Check of the rest of this batch of trail camera pictures... HERE.
