Well, we got back from the Bear hunt last week with some sore dogs, a broke truck, a pi$$ed off wife(my hunting buddies' - not mine), lighter wallets and some new friends. We ended up treeing 2 sows, 1 had cubs on her so we couldn't take her and by the time we treed the next one there was only 1 female left for the quota in our unit. If we would have taken her it would have closed the season for that unit and it was only the second day, so we decided to let her go and keep hunting. We hunted 3 more days, got on a few more hot tracks, but got outrun in the rocks or they could have been running elk. All in all we had a blast on the mountain. Besides the first night, we stayed dry and had perfect weather. If you haven't tried bear hunting with dogs, I'll tell you that there is nothing more exciting than hearing the dogs bay echoing out of the canyons while going straight up.
We ran into another group of Texas hunters that were being guided by some locals. While chatting with them they asked where we were from and found out that I live less than 5 miles from where the head guide grew up. In fact his daughters still live and go to school where I live. Ended up that we have mutual friends. They invited us to their camp for steaks and cold beer later that night. To make a long story short, made some new friends, set up for him to come to Texas and hog hunt with us and he gave us some good areas on the mountain where bear are always staying.
Now for the bad: On the way home we got about an hour and a half away from the mountain and thought we had a flat. Got out to check it and found out that the brake caliper had locked up and trashed the front wheel bearings. We had to call my buddies wife to bring his deisel to New Mexico. We stayed in a motel that night while his wife drove all night. The nearest U-HAUL with a car hauler was in Lubbock. So, we drove to Lubbock the next day while she slept and picked up the trailer. Got back to the motel and found out that the truck was 10 inches longer from axle to axle than the trailer was. So how is this gonna work? Well we drove the 1 ton truck onto the trailer and luckilly for us there was an electricion with a boom truck at the motel. We asked him to lift the rear of the truck up so that we could pull the ramps out the extra ten inches. He set the truck on the ramps and we strapped the tires to the ramps and away we went. We averaged 41mph from Tatum New Mexico to Denton, Tx A very long ride, but we made it.
I forgott my camera and my cell phone died after the first day so this is the only picture that I got. Sitting on a rock cliff at about 11,500 ft.
