Floating and Fishing Teton River on small pontoon boats. Used Canon G7x...

This is a video I took of us floating the Teton River with two small pontoons that are hand made.  This was October 3, 2020 and because it was so late in the year, not too many people were on it just to float.  During the summer, the traffic on the river seems to have quadrupled just in the last year or so.  The pontoons are very fun to float in and make for a good fishing trip.  Since I live right by the Teton River I tend to float it the most but you could take this pontoon boat down a variety of rivers and on lakes and be pretty safe.  I hope you enjoy the video.

Some Bald Eagles

My Sage Rod and Galvan Reel

Hunting Trip Albion and Three Nice Bucks, around 2006

Me in the pickup with my two-point, Dad with his 4 point and Hal with mom's 2x3.

I believe this was the year 2006, but it might have been 2005 or 2007.  I will eventually have to figure out this date.  Me, Mom and Dad had drawn a tag for Albion area which is the area where Mom and Dad live.  I don't believe Hal was with us the first section of the hunt.  We had left the house early in the morning and walked west up the ridge, which is a pretty gradual slope, toward the Independence mountains (what I call them).  Mom usually hikes around up here for exercise and she said she had seen some bucks this way, which is why we decided to do what we did.   After awhile me and mom followed one ridge to the left and Dad went to the right.  Then a little further mom went even further left and I was on a ridge in between mom and dad.  When I came to the point of the ridge I could see around three deer straight west but they were quite a way off.  I could see mom to the left and she was pointing at them but she would have been about twice as far away from them as me.  I believe they were a couple of does and a small buck.  I debated, but I decided to try a shot.  I shot and hit below them and it spooked them off.  Afterwards,  mom came toward me and we started toward Dad who was on the other side of the small spring.  As I approached the spring I saw the same deer on the hillside a little lower than where I had first seen him and I took another shot and  brought him down.   This is the small two point that I'm holding in the truck in the picture above.  Apparently, my first shot had not spooked them too bad.  I cleaned him out and either while I was doing that or shortly after, I heard a shot, and lo and behold, Dad had shot a nice 4x4 that was laying in the brush trying not to be seen.  It wasn't very far, maybe a  hundred to hundred fifty yards or so.  Dad is holding that buck in the picture above.

At some point we had decided to go down and get the horses so we could pack the deer out.  Dad might have been leaving to get the horses when he shot his buck.  It seems to me that we both ended up going down and getting horses and then riding them back up.  It was an easy pack down and out since Dad knows the ranchers and where all the gates are.  

Four sets of deer antlers.  These are deer that I got between probably 2007-2013.  There should be one more set in there, which was the two-point in this story, but some creature ran off with the head.  I had left it by the shed overnight and it was gone the next day.  Mom felt sorry for me and gave me her 2x3 which is the second from the bottom.  That was the one she got in this story.  The first set was a deer I got in Sublette, it is a tiny two-point, almost just a 1x2.  The third one I got in Sublette as well, which will be featured in another story later as that one is very interesting.  The bigger one I got in Albion on the other side of the mountain from where this story took place and that was in 2013.  That story is featured in this blog already in January of 2014..  I also got a nice 4 point in 2016 (along with Hugh and Dad) very close to the same place as this story and that I wrote about in February of 2017.  

I think it was later that week, somebody told us they had seen some deer down by the highway near an intersection with a dirt road.  We all drove down there and saw a small herd.  At this point we had Hal with us.  Mom still needed to fill her tag and so Dad and Hal stayed in the truck and drove off out of sight while I went with mom and snuck through the sagebrush and junipers until we saw the deer.  They were in a little ravine and the first one was a nice 2x3 buck just walking toward us.  There was also a smaller two point behind it and possibly another small buck and some does.  We shot the 2x3 and it dropped dead.  This is the deer that Hal is holding in the picture above.  Fortunately it was not too far from the road and we were able to drag it to the truck and take it home and clean it up.  

Dad's Version:

The year that these three buck were taken, blanked out but here is the story.

Harriet had been walking up through the back sagebrush to the forest line across north to Lloyds and down to highway and back home.  Several times while hiking west, she would jump deer out feeding in the sagebrush.

So when we drew out we decided to hike up through there on opening morning and see if we could get one.  

Myself, chad and mom left at daybreak and hiked up through the sagebrush towards the mountain and forest ground.  As it started getting light we were at the base of the forest ground and hadn’t seen any deer.  

We decided to split up so Harriet and Chad went left up a deep gully towards the mountain and Lloyd’s spring.  I went to the right up the bottom gully of the springs.  As it got light enough to see well, I counted 73 head of deer feeding in the bottom of the gully and up the Rocky side.  All does No bucks. As I worked up the gully, I spotted Chad getting to the top of a hill looking into the steep side of the mountain above the springs.  Harriet was up further south on the steep side.  We were all conversing to the center point above the springs.   

As I watched through the Binoculars I could see some deer feeding along the side right next to the tree line above the springs.   There was a two point in the bunch.  It was a long shot but Chad knelt down and shot at the buck.  It hunched but kept walking towards the south into some brush.  I never seen it come out of the brush so I decided it was down. 

I hiked up the side and followed the path that the deer was on and Chad was working his way up there.  Harriet was above coming down.  I found the deer and it was dead.  Chad said that was a longer shot than he anticipated.  We cleaned it and we decided to go back home and saddle the horses and bring them back up to carry the deer out.  

As I made my way down past the springs,( Chad and Harriet were still tidying up the deer), I looked back up towards the mountain next to a rockslide inside some brush there was a four point kind  of hiding watching me.  It was probably 200 yards.   I yelled to Harriet that if she could somehow sneak down towards me she could get a shot at this buck.  She hesitated so I crouched down and snuck, crawled up a few yards, and took a steady aim and shot.  The four point buckled and now we had two.  

We cleaned the deer and Chad decided to go with me and we would hike back to the house and get two horses and the pickup and come back up.  Harriet was going to stay up there and hunt.  We hiked down to the house, saddled up and Chad led one horse and rode the other and I took the pickup up through Jay Blacks land and stopped at the forest Service gate line.  We took the horses up to the deer, Chads first, and then mine, loaded then up and took them down to the pickup for the trip home. 

During that week of the hunt, we decided to slow cruise the roads around close to home.  As we came down the lane next to the Lloyds over in a juniper covered ravine, we saw a small group of deer; I saw horns but didn’t know how big.  We didn’t stop the pickup, we just went real slow and Chad and Harriet quietly and quickly slipped out of the pickup and we kept driving very slowly.  They snuck over towards the ravine to see if they could get a shot.  Hal was with me and as we got to the bottom of the lane and turning around, we heard a shot.  We drove back up and he got out and went over to see what happened.  They were able to get a decent shot and they dropped it at the edge of the ravine.  We didn’t feel right about cleaning it on private property, so they drug it over to the road and we muscled it into the back and took it home were we cleaned it out and hung it up with the other two.  So we all filled our tags that year.