We took one for the team and cruised home as quickly as we could and got the replacement hose. Ironically the nearest location that had the part in stock was in Utah just a couple miles from our house. Unfortunately, they did not have the replacement part in stock. Luckily there is an AutoZone near the Walmart. I popped the hood and noticed antifreeze dripping, not so slowly, from the heater hose. However, throughout the day we noticed a growing odor of coolant and when we pulled into the parking lot at Walmart smoke billowed from under the hood of the car. We were prepared to head back to Evanston and check in to a motel for the evening and come back in the morning. I realized afterwards that I should have had her set up lower to the ground, she was standing but I should have had her kneel or sit. We got to within 200 yards and I tried getting Lauryl set up on the shooting sticks but she never could get steady enough for a shot and the small herd eventually stood up and ran off. We took that 2 track and sure enough it took us to within 300 yards of the little hollow where the elk had started bedding down. Looking on the map, it looked like there was a 2-track road that would take us very near where the herd was heading. We spotted a small herd that had a young bull and 4 cows. We headed out driving again and decided to make our way out into the eastern flats of the ranch. I pulled the kids back and conceded that we had lost the footrace. We were hiking along a small ridge and I noticed another hunter hiking towards the calf just below us down the bottom of the draw. We decided to try and make a stalk on it and started hiking towards the calf. We stopped the Expedition and watched the chaos briefly, Logan was a little mystified by this and said, “Dad, I don’t like this vibe.” So, we continued driving around for several hours exploring the ranch a bit.Ī couple hours later we were driving around back by the meadow where that herd of elk was earlier and I spotted a calf running around searching for its mother which was certainly killed in the chaos of the morning. A herd of maybe 20+ elk was spotted out in a large meadow and there were dozens of trucks pulled off to the side of the road and dozens of orange vested hunters racing out into the meadow to try and get a shot. It took several hours, probably until about lunchtime for everyone to disperse enough to feel like you were out of the rat race. This made for long lines of vehicles and mad scrambles to win the footrace to herds of elk. Every DIY hunter is required to enter through the same check point so everyone is bottlenecked into the same starting location. We drove through the gate and immediately it was combat hunting at its finest. It took several minutes to get checked in because the guides were very thorough in providing maps and detailing the rules, open roads and gates, and communication expectations. We arrived at the check point just after sunrise and the line to get checked in was rather long. We stopped briefly at a Maverik to get a sandwich for lunch and headed back into Utah to the Ranch. I woke the kids up at 4am and we were out the door by 4:30am. This year the DIY hunters were given a 9 day window between Nov 11th and 19th with no hunting on Sunday (13th) or Wed (16th) so we arranged our calendar accordingly. We did not participate in the shooting class so the only requirement that we did have was to present the required signed release forms the first morning that we checked in. We received the emails and letters from the guide service that oversees the hunting on the Ranch with all the instructions to get prepared. Historically the success rates for this hunt are 85 to 90 percent so I kind of had a “how hard could it be” mentality. We elected to do the DIY option, the guided option was more expensive than what I wanted to pay and I figured that I could navigate around well enough that we’d have reasonable chances at success. It’s not uncommon to see online forum posts asking for information about this hunt so I figured I’d share our experience. My two oldest kids drew cow elk tags this year on Deseret Land & Livestock.
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