The 2019 Application Period Opens...

As always, best of luck to you on your draws this year... hopefully in your research and in developing your strategy for application this year you have found some value in the tools and information available on our blog. Remember to subscribe by entering your email in the box on the right sidebar to stay up to speed on the adventures of The Glassing Tree friends.

In your research for the 2019 Utah big game application period, there is a lot of great information available here on The Glassing Tree - Utah Big Game Odds site:

Check out the Tips for Increasing Your Drawing Odds page and the Drawing Analysis page with a bunch of information about each of the limited entry and once-in-a-lifetime species.

Also check out a series that we posted prior to the 2018 application cycle on the topic of "Point Creep":
Part #1: Point Creep?
Part #2: Variable #1 - Tag Allocation
Part #3: Variable #2 - The "Point Buyer"
Part #4: Variable #3 - The "Unit Jumper"
Part #5: Variable #4 - The "Inactive Applicant"
Part #6: Wrap Up - A Real Life Understanding

---

To get the optimism and excitement going take a few minutes to relive a handful of the Utah limited entry hunts that we've drawn in the past several years (for the complete write ups visit the Hunt Stories page):

2010 Book Cliffs Limited Entry Deer

The DWR info we got hinted that deer would be starting to migrate, so we would be wise to find “transitional habitat” and we would know when we found it because deer would be everywhere. We had been spending most our time at elevations of 7200 to 8000 feet… let’s just say the deer WERE NOT everywhere! We rode some of the familiar roads opening morning and didn’t see any bucks. Cody would stop occasionally to ask me what we should do & I’d tell him to either get lower or get off the ATVs... but we would continue on our current path. After a frustrating morning we headed back for a snack & regroup. He looked at me and said “we should get lower.” We chose a route through some lower sagebrush & juniper and headed out. As soon as my GPS read 6600 feet in elevation we started seeing deer… lots of them, herds of 8-15 does every couple hundred yards. We saw more deer in 500 yards than we had in a full day and half, it was only a matter of time before we saw some bucks. We came across a couple old guys that said they’d seen some good bucks in the area & passed on them, but a camp down the road had shot a really nice 4x4 that morning. When we drove past the camp “nice” was an understatement… deeply forked, wide, perfectly symmetrical, and dark chocolate brown antlers!
Wow. Talk about a shot of optimism. We decided to loop back & move camp. Mostly because we were seeing deer, but we were also nervous about having a rental RV at an elevation where the forecasts were projecting several inches of snow overnight.
We trailered one ATV & I took up the rear in the pickup, following Jeremy in the RV and Cody leading the way on ATV. A couple miles down the road, after seeing a handful of does, we spotted a good buck. I watched him bound through the clearing to my left then across the road in front of us. This was the nicest buck we’d seen so far. But he was running hard and in my hunting experience I thought that there was no way he was going to stop for a decent shot. I stopped behind the RV and saw the ATV angle off to the left… riderless. I waited for a couple seconds with my view of Cody now blocked by the RV and heard him fire. Out of the corner of my eye to the right, through a tiny opening in the brush I saw the buck drop. It’d stopped 30 yards off the road for a perfect broadside shot. We bailed out of the vehicles and the hooting, hollering, high fiving, and back slapping started… followed by the realization that it was 1:30 in the afternoon on opening day and the hunt that had built up expectations & excitement over the course of 6+ months was over. That wasn’t how we pictured it would go down at all, no spot ‘n stalk, no glassing, no passing up good bucks with hopes of a bigger one… just jump off the ATV and BLAM!!! Done. I retrieved the ATV & helped get the buck cleaned up. With pics taken, we got loaded up as the storm started to roll in. Since we had camp all packed up we decided to try to beat the storm down the mountain. We spent the night on the banks of the Green River just outside Vernal, cutting two hours off our drive home Sunday.

---

2014 Central Mountains, Manti Limited Entry Elk

We got camp set up and waited for my dad & Darren to arrive. That afternoon the bulls began bugling all around us, from the timber on both the east and west. At about 6pm I was able to spot a bull & his eight or nine cows on the east hillside. He stayed put for several minutes and Grandpa got a good look at him. He was a bull that Grandpa would be more than happy to take home with him. It set our bar pretty high...
Sunday was adventure day. We started out driving the roads again but Darren noticed that the rear passenger tire on the truck had gone flat. Luckily we had a full size spare, but since camp is 15 miles or so from paved road we decided to head into town to try and get the tire fixed. Unfortunately the only open establishment we could find was an AutoZone so we plugged the tire ourselves and hoped for the best. On our way back up to the top we were cruising along the highway and spotted a small bull just off the road. It was absolute chaos as we screeched to a stop. All of our gear that was in the cab ended up on the floor and Grandpa and I were trying as quickly as we could to get out. Just behind the smaller bull was a little bit nicer one. He looked like a good sized 5x5 and Grandpa was running down the middle of the highway working a round into his gun. I’m grateful that there were no cars behind us & no cars passed us as I ran down the middle of the highway next to him. The bulls crossed the road and ran parallel to a big snow drift fence with no real shot ever presented. We piled back into the truck and tried to gather up all our gear & I couldn’t find my phone. So we drove back to where I got out and looked for my phone. I couldn’t see it anywhere in the road so Grandpa started looking around in the truck. He ended up finding it way up under his seat, which was crazy because he was in the front passenger seat and I was in the rear driver’s side seat.
We again spent the evening glassing the hillside across from camp. My dad spotted a really nice 6x6 bull about 650 yards up the hill and we tried to get Grandpa on him. He had gone just north of camp to sit for the evening and that change in angle was just enough that Grandpa couldn’t see it. I bugled at the bull and he stopped and stood in one spot like a statue for at least 15 minutes! I ran over to Grandpa to try and show him where the bull was, and all I could see was the right antler and right ear behind an aspen. We never could get a clear view for a shot. Grandpa cow called and I bugled at him for a couple minutes but he never moved. Then, he took a couple steps and was completely gone from our view. We stopped paying too much attention to this bull though because with all the ruckus that we had made another bull had dropped all the way to the bottom of the canyon and was coming towards us aggressively answering my bugles. He sounded like he was going to pop out at the end of the clearing at any moment. We could hear him stomping on the ground & raking trees between bugles. We decided to get a little bit more aggressive and Grandpa grabbed a tree branch and starting raking the nearby trees with it. Then the next time he bugled I decided to cut him off and I started to bugle before he was done. This seemed to really tick him off and his bugles changed getting very low and growly. I really think we could have had a shot at this bull had we not made a tactical error. This bull was coming in from the same direction that I had just come to meet up with Grandpa and he hit my scent. As soon as he hit my scent it was like he was shot out of a cannon and he wheeled around and headed back to his hiding place as quickly as possible. I had never been successful at bringing a bull in while calling and this was an intense 40 minute back and forth as he gradually got closer and closer… and more and more agitated! My only regret is that we hunkered down and tried to bring the bull into us, I think that if we had worked closer to him ourselves that we may have at least gotten sight of him.

---

2018 Late Muzzleloader Limited Entry Deer

After lunch the wind had shifted so we decided to revisit our morning plan and work our way south into a large bowl that always seems to have game. As soon as we began dropping into the bowl I spotted a small group of deer down in the bottom. We sat and glassed a cluster of trees in the bottom for several minutes and spotted a couple deer working in and out of the trees. Cody decided that it was time to take matters into his own hands and be the aggressor. The wind was actually quite perfect for a stalk so he got the wind in his face and slowly made his way towards the trees while sat and watched from about 600 yards away.
I lost his location as he neared the clump of trees and thought that the deer must have made their way out of there unnoticed earlier. Movement caught my eye as a doe burst from the trees… followed by another… then another. There were deer coming out of the trees everywhere, more than I anticipated. I scanned the deer searching for anything with antlers and didn’t see anything. Then in the bottom left of the field of view of my binos I saw something different. I noticed a large set of antlers protruding from the head of the last deer to emerge from the trees and almost as soon as I spotted him I was startled by the report of a muzzleloader. The buck ran a short distance and then slowly started working his way up a small fold in the bowl. A second muzzleloader blast caught me off guard and I just happened to be watching the buck at the time of the shot. The buck appeared to jump and quickly made his way to the top of a small clearing in the shade and stood motionless for several minutes. I thought that he was hit but the way that he was acting it wasn’t a very good hit.
Cody slowly emerged from the trees and was glassing the area in front of him. I couldn’t tell if he could see the buck or not, so after several minutes I left my perch and hustled down to meet up with him and let him know where the buck was. As I was nearing Cody’s location he started waiving frantically at me and I was waiving frantically back at him. Cody had seen the buck bed down and didn’t want me to spook it by coming in noisily while I was wanting to let him know to slow down because we really didn’t want to be pushing what I had thought was a poorly hit buck.
Once we realized we were on the same page he let me know that both shots were actually misses and the buck was currently unharmed. While Cody and I were planning our next move we watched as 14 does that had scattered from the trees made their way back to where the buck was now bedded and just milled around him. I had never seen that before, this buck was the boss of that little group… the does actually came back to him!
We worked our way to within shooting range again but the buck was bedded with a number of does very near him so there really wasn’t much of a shot opportunity with the only part of his body visible being his face and antlers. So we waited… but Cody lost patience and took what was likely an ill-advised shot on a bedded buck with very little margin for error. After the smoke cleared the deer were gone so we began scanning the area where he was bedded and caught glimpses of deer scurrying through the trees in various directions. We scanned deer to the left and all were does, then some more movement caught our attention up and to the right of where they were bedded. The lead deer in this group was the buck so Cody readied his rifle. As the buck stepped into a small clearing in the trees he stopped, turned and looked back at the handful of does trailing him as if to tell them to hurry it up, and gave Cody just the half second he needed. The rifle barked, I watched the buck react to the impact, and then begin rolling down the hill.
The buck died half buried under a log and some brush, so we untangled him and were pleasantly surprised and very pleased with the caliber of buck that was laying on the ground in front of us.

Last Trail Cam Pics of 2018

It's been a while, but here are pics from my trail cameras that I pulled down off the mountain back in November during the muzzleloader elk hunt:

Camera #1:


Camera #4:


Camera #5:


Camera #6:


Camera #7:


Don't forget to follow us by subscribing to The Glassing Tree blog by entering your email address at the top right.

The Best Bang for Your Buck: Idaho OTC Bear!!!

As a graveyard shift forklift driver working at a local dairy my funds were limited. At the time I was a father of 3 living in Utah and attending college obtaining my undergrad. With my limited resources, I still managed to spring for a $154.75 non-resident hunting license in the State of Idaho. Along with the hunting license, I purchased a $186.00 non-resident black bear tag.

My intentions were to hunt black bear in the spring and if I was unable to fill my tag, I would return in the fall. I had allotted four days to drive north and spot & stalk a black bear. I joined a few friends, only one of them had actually harvested a black bear. Unfortunately my first ever non-resident tag went unfilled and I was never able to return in the fall in pursuit of this new species.

If only I knew then what I know now…

Life happens, and three years ago I became a resident of Idaho. I can happily say that I have now harvested 3 bears in 3 years. My first year, I harvested a small yearling boar that was jet black in color (left). I could not believe my eyes when I actually observed a bear in the wild for the second time in my life. The little boar made the fatal mistake of climbing up on a rocky outcropping to take a second look at me while I dropped my backpack and shouldered my rifle. My second bear was a 5 foot cinnamon colored sow (center). My 3rd bear was harvested this year and he is my largest bear to date. He is a dark chocolate boar with a white blaze on his chest and I have measured his skull to be close to 19” (right).


The optimistic outlook of spot and stalk black bears in the State of Idaho became a reality for me. My coworker was not exaggerating when he shared stories of spotting and stalking these mysterious creatures. Hunting over a bait site would require an unrealistic level of commitment of time and patience. 2 of the bears that I have harvested were located within reduced price units. Reduced price bear tags can be purchased by non-residents for $41.75, with a second bear tag also available for purchase at the same price in reduced price units.

In Utah, bear tags are issued on through a bonus point drawing... I would argue that Idaho's OTC opportunity rivals that of some of Utah’s premium units. Idaho does offer tags through a drawing for three "controlled" hunts (similar to Utah's limited entry) which boast high populations of bears in optimal habitat for spot & stalk hunting. Another huge benefit to Idaho’s OTC bear tag is the generous seasons which are often split between spring and fall with one tag being good for both spring and fall seasons.

Remember to subscribe to The Glassing Tree blog to recieved notifications when we post up something new!!!

Processing Game Yourself: Snack Sticks and Summer Sausage

The last piece of processing that I do every year is making snack sticks and summer sausage. I’ll combine these because both are stuffed into casings using similar procedures. For the snack sticks I have developed quite the process over the years that I have found help me to create the best possible end product. This was my first year making summer sausage… and believe me it will not be my last!

I make snack sticks from ground deer meat, I have tried ground pronghorn and elk but for some reason the ground deer has always turned out best for me. I use 100% ground deer with no added pork or fat and prefer the hickory flavored kit from Hi Mountain. The kit includes everything you will need to produce the snack sticks… seasoning, cure, and casings. In general, the kits provide far more casings than what the seasonings can make so I hang onto them and save them for future use, I’m currently on the third year of my current bag of casings. The actual seasoning and cure is no different between the jerky kits and the snack stick kits, so since I have casings I just buy the jerky kits for less than half the price.

I grind the deer meat through the course plate on my grinder and then again through the fine plate. This gives a smooth consistency and helps me get good distribution of the seasoning and cure just like when I make the jerky. There is one fundamental difference between the jerky and snack sticks… if you recall I would mix the seasoning and cure in the meat for jerky and then put the meat back in a baggie and refrigerate it overnight to allow the cure to work it’s magic, but with the snack sticks as soon as the meat starts becoming sticky when mixing in the seasoning and cure I begin stuffing the meat into the casings.

Stuffing the casings takes some planning and preparation for me. The smoker that I use is a charcoal grill with a side smoker box so I cut casing lengths specifically to fit within my smoker. I tie an overhand knot in one end of the casings and I will feed each casing onto the stuffer tube one length at a time.

The first couple years that I made the snack sticks I used the stuffer tubes with my grinder. It worked well enough but I found that as the cure began to work in the meat it got very difficult to get the meat to feed down the neck of the grinder. I made due with what I had but the process was time consuming. I decided to purchase a simple sausage stuffer that has dramatically increased my efficiency in getting the casings stuffed.


Once the casings are stuffed I place them in the fridge overnight before smoking them. I don’t have the temperature controls that many of the current smokers on the market have, so I smoke the snack sticks initially for about an hour but finish them in the oven to ensure that they are completely cooked. After about an hour on the smoker I transition the snack sticks into a 200 degree oven for two hours. The quick change from the smoker to the oven is worth it, having the smokey flavor makes the snack sticks just that much better.

Once the snack sticks have completely cooked, I remove them from the oven and place them immediately into an ice water bath. This is the most recent tip I picked up from some YouTube videos and I think that it causes the casings to shrink up quickly around the meat and stops the cooking process. The result for me was a very smooth casing on the snack sticks where in the past they may have wrinkled a bit. I don’t think that it did anything in terms of flavor, but I do think that it did improve the visual aesthetics of the finished product. I’ll probably make this step a normal part of the process.

Once the snack sticks have cooled in the ice water bath I cut the knots off the ends of the casings and cut the snack sticks into the desired lengths. This is purely personal preference and I usually cut them into 4.5 to 5” sticks then vacuum seal them using the Seal-a-Meal vacuum sealer.

The summer sausage follows almost the exact same process just on a larger scale. The instructions in the Hi Mountain summer sausage kit outlines using a 4:1 venison to pork ratio and I planned on making 15lbs of summer sausage so I used a mixture of 12lbs ground venison to 3lbs ground pork. I ground all the meat once through a course grind plate and then again through a fine plate for a good smooth consistency.


Once the seasoning and cure were mixed well into the meat I immediately began stuffing the casings. I used the larger 2” fibrous casing which actually stuffed much easier than the small snack stick casings. Each casing holds approximately 3lbsb and I was able to stuff all 15lbs of meat into five casings very quickly. I refrigerated the summer sausage overnight before cooking. The instructions are very specific on how to manipulate the smoker properly to get the best results so I had to improvise a bit because I don’t have a whole lot of control over my smoker. I started the summer sausage out in the oven on the lowest temperature it would go and kept an eye on them for about an hour until the surface of the casings was dry and a bit tacky to the touch. Once the surface of the casings were dry I moved them over to the smoker for about 4 hours. From there I moved them back to the oven and finished cooking them at 180 degrees until the internal temperature reached 156 degrees.


Like I said before, this was my first attempt at making summer sausage and it was honestly shocking just how good the end product was. On Christmas day, when my in-laws came over I had a plate of sliced summer sausage, cheese, and crackers… when they left there was a plate of cheese and crackers left of the counter. Then I took some over to my family and shared with them. My dad tried a piece and his response was, “I could eat a lot of this… like a lot of this.”

Processing my own game has allowed me to try many new things and developed into a very enjoyable hobby. I take pride in making a high quality end product that can be enjoyed by many throughout the year. I especially enjoy it when somebody tries something I have made and they tell me that they would have never guessed it was made from game meat. I hope that you have enjoyed this series on Processing Game Yourself and if you do not already process some or all of your own game meat I would encourage you to give it a try.

Remember to subscribe to or follow the blog and check back often to see what we're up to.

Previous: Processing Game Yourself: Jerky