Still working on some caping and fleshing, but will get this tale started from the beginning.
Back in late October I walked out to pick up the mail and in sorting through the usual junk I noticed an envelope from the State of Utah. Probably some survey or something I supposed. Imagine my suprise when the letter inside said that I had been chosen for a cow bison tag! Apparently population surveys this year indicated a higher than desired number of bison on the Henry's, so some additional cow permits were approved.
I received the letter on a Monday, and it gave me only until Friday of that week to decide whether or not I wanted to accept the permit. Utah bison tags are "Once In A Lifetime" tags. If I accepted the tag, I would never even be able to apply for this hunt again. I could refuse the tag, and hope to someday draw it again in the normal draw process with more chance to do my research ahead of time. Or I could take this one and scramble to try to make the best of it.
The odds of actually drawing this permit are very low, so I really hadn't done any real research into the hunt. I guess I figured I would cross that bridge when I came to it, and assumed I would have plenty of time to figure it out if it ever happened. Not true!
Phone calls, emails, and internet searches started immediately, and initial reports were not very encouraging. It seems that the Henry Mountains can be one of the most physically demanding hunts in the west. In addition, there would be about 25 other hunters with tags, most of whom would be using rifles. Since most of the tags go to Utah residents, and buffalo tags are highly prized, most hunters line up as many friends and relatives as they can find and bring them along to help locate the herds. I was told to expect to see 10 times as many people as there were available tags.
It quickly became apparent that this was not a trip I could just load up my truck and go camp in the mountains on my own. Competing with so many people, most carrying high powered rifles, and all with lots of help running around on atv's and in trucks. Finding a bison in an reasonably accessible area would probably result in many others who had found the same thing.
The vast majority of my hunting is done on my own, without the help of a guide or outfitter, and I normally much prefer it that way. In this case however, I decided that the only way that I could make this happen would be to find an outfitter that could hunt with horses to help me get away from the crowds.
I received a great tip from my friend Nathan Kanous. It turns out that his wife's cousin is an outfitter in Utah and had a lot of experience hunting Henry Mountain bison. He runs a string of mules, and after talking to him on the phone I was convinced that he would be able to do what I was hoping for.
Arrangements were made, and my hunt was scheduled to begin on December 17th. Depending on how things went there was a very good possibility that I wouldn't make it home for Christmas, so in addition to burning up my Utah bison preference points, I had to cash in every "good husband and father" point I owned at home.
Topic: Joe (Whip) Lash - TATONKA! Story pg 9 (Read 7097 times)
