Well now I'm even late with a Happy Thanksgiving greeting. Man alive, these holidays just don't let up, but at least I didn't go shopping on Black Friday. No, we were skinning buffalo, just like most of the other recent days. Good thing the elk hunting hasn't been worth a darn, as we had one eight-of-ten day skinning sprint, followed by several two and three-day'ers. My inspector nearly gave me a complex by saying he'd been in on bison slaughters where two guys (and himself) did thirty in a day!

We've discussed this matter internally here at Buffalo Bill's, though, and our conclusion is not quite half that many takes a toll, and so we must find out if they did thirty once, or just what... I tell you what; it gives you a whole new respect for Native American women out there on the prairie with a stone knife! But who knows, maybe they were better off than us with these so-called "professional" butcher knives anymore. POS, is what they've become! They're fine, for a very brief interval that amateurs won't approach, but buffalo skinners sharpen their knives continuously and within a week or less; pitch 'em. Disposable. We're mostly back to carbon-steel old-time skinners. They got us by last evening, at least, when I received news not much prior to sunset we had five more coming. Thank God I was able to flag my son down as he was leaving the driveway. No, this is not the sort of news anyone in their right mind welcomes. At that point, the money is moot, and really, you'd be surprised what buffalo skinning pays.

Especially when you're under the kind of motivation that a setting sun and plummeting temperatures provides. We whipped through those five in, well, let's see... about an hour and a half, I believe.

Six times that might do me in, though. Criminy! That would be worse than elk hunting!!

Most of the elk hunters I know seem a little brittle lately. At least we have some season extensions, including bulls for the first time maybe ever. But blast it, not where I like to hunt them. Some of my alternates remain open, though, and maybe Thursday & Friday...

True to form anymore, though, we went from September to December overnight. Before global warming went away, though, I took a brief packtrip up to what I call the South Pole.

Now this is the kind of place where there aren't too awful many elk around, but if you do run into one it might be great big, which you know, drives some to undertake these ventures. If I'd been hunting mountain goats, I'd have been in fat city!

Oh yes, goats were almost at nuisance levels </joke> as I first came on this group of ten, and then another of eight, and then the big billy. Elk, though...?

Be serious.

The biggest of the big boys were secure behind their impenetrable expanse of styrofoam snow. Not to mention they're way in there, far beyond the goats, and can lark over to the next basin with abandon, leaving you with the stark realization this "fair chase hunting" thing is a laugh.

There ain't a damn thing fair about it! I bet some elk even think it's funny!

The primary lesson from that trip was not to overfeed your horses, though. Yes, I may spoil my nags at times, especially when I've brought enough horse feed for three nights, if need be. High-octane certified weed-free hay, and quite a bit of pellets also. I even packed pellets out, but let them pork out on this "candy" hay and even though I know better, too many pellets. Plus I'd forgotten a bridle. Not that big of deal, most if not all my horses can be ridden with just a halter, and in fact Sonny did fine on the way in, but I decided to ride Buddy out. He may have been a halter champion, and is just a peach of a horse, but reining he's about six of ten and perhaps far less if he's coming out of the mountains just absolutely full of it, with Sonny just as frisky trying to pass and both going sideways about half the time, Buddy kicking and poor loaded Strider in the back literally trotting the whole way out. It just took all your attention, but at least we didn't have any wrecks. Unlike the day before, when Buddy's packs had slipped, but then he and Strider were so calm, waiting for help.

All the same, I'd have gladly taken them again when I had this past Tuesday-Thursday "off". Except it dumped an even foot of heavy, wet snow here, and then the temperatures went sub-zero. So I just made a day hunt of it Wednesday. Up where you need waders to get to, and was kind of dismayed to find there was only four inches of snow up at 8000', same as down in the parking lot. I climbed up to a spot I'd rank an eight of ten for odds of having elk, and nada.

No, they were up there looking down and chortling, "can you believe it, he looks tired, hahahaha..."

Or maybe they mostly laugh at the guys driving around and glassing down on the roads. That really struck me Wednesday. From daylight on, there was pretty much a constant parade of pickups down on the road, quite a few of them with ATV's in the back.

You couldn't even begin to get one of those up to where I was, let alone where the elk are, even if it were legal, which thank God it's not! I was questioning my own sanity, and thinking dark thoughts like "well maybe they're smarter than I am, at least they can see there's no elk on this mountainside". But no, just over the ridge is where no one hunts, and that's where the elk were, before they decided to move up to their fall home, where the seclusion and views are unsurpassed.

I'm looking forward to the upcoming Elk Summit meeting in Bozeman, where we're going to figure out how to kill way more of these pesky elk. Personally, I think there's some holes in that whole train of thought.

The magical solution hasn't occured to me yet, but I don't think off-road vehicles and camo underwear will factor into it.