- Joined
- Aug 25, 2001
- Messages
- 3,759
- City & State/Province
- Pamelot, TN, Ghost Ranch, MT, Palmilla, Los Cabos
Montana. Where the deer and elk and antelope play you say? The hardest part of the trip is getting the tags. March 15 is the Montana application deadline and results at the Parisian home are eagerly awaited. As luck would have it I was fortunate on deer and elk. I was shut out of an antelope tag but hey, I felt lucky. As the economy flops around in the stagnation of Fed intervention, foreign puppet wars, higher oil prices, big bank bail-outs and bigger banker bonus�s fewer non-resident hunters seem to be making application for their dream hunt. I don�t know how many passions I have but they are few. I don�t fish, golf or play video games. Killing time on a video game doesn�t equate to killing big game. Getting a mature mule deer buck on the ground happens to be one of my passions. I still yearn for a magical 30-incher someday, maybe next year Santa will see to it!
I was flying out of the Atlanta airport during the heat of the Montana rut and had plenty to contend with just getting to the plane. Here are some photo�s taken above the speed limit from my I-Phone I thought I might share.
My hunting partner of nearly 20 years was along for his 6th foray into the Montana back country and we eagerly awaited our time afield. Due to some scheduling conflicts we didn�t get into the MT airport until nearly 11 pm local time and by the time we closed our eyes in our beds hours out of the airport the night was about over. Alarms came far too early as we went to work checking and rechecking gear for the days weather. It was to be warm and maybe wet late in the day. Little did we know what was in store for us as the week progressed. It got ugly and in Montana it doesn�t take long. Wait five minutes and things can change drastically.
Day One found us with a good pal (and client of Chippewa Partners) and we glassed a tremendous amount of acreage looking for Mr. Big. We started off the day with a flat tire about the time the sun was up and because of the remoteness of the country we figured we should shut down for a bit and get the tire fixed. I wish I owned a satellite phone, maybe someday they will be affordable. Being 30 or 40 miles away from people who can bail you and your rig out of a jack-pot is priceless in nasty weather.
Nothing like getting the kinks out by having to change a tire instead of hitting the hills! At the end of Day 1 we did the math and figured we had put the glass to about 65 animals of which about 35 were bucks. Not a bad buck-doe ratio for this part of Montana for sure. In fact this area probably has about one deer every 2.5 to 4 square miles. You have to hunt hard just to find some deer! None of the bucks were shooters but more than a few were in what I call the �give him a year and he�ll be a shooter� class. For sure, the older I get the more I love my Swaro�s. Spending any amount of time behind good glass beats bad glass. If I had a couple of things to redo in my life I would have bought them 20 or 30 years earlier. Covering a lot of ground without good optics doesn�t make good sense. Good glass is an investment.
The older I get the more I feel the need to practice shooting my rifles. Maybe it is just a confidence builder, maybe just a way to think more about putting Mr. Big on the ground when the chips are down but any way you look at it, shooting your rifles to the tune of a box or two every year will make you a better killer. Here are the .243�s that I shoot and use to get it done.
The Model 700 was purchased in 1969 and has really been a friend. She was bought with wages from working on a Montana cattle ranch while in high school. All of my scopes are pricey simply because with optics one usually gets what they pay for. Just another aspect to my approach to help me reach my goals of what I want to get out of my hunting time. Remember to practice how you will shoot. When I look back on many of the bigger bucks I have killed they were taken in nasty weather and in a hurried shot situation. Most big muleys in a spot-n-stalk situation, if they see you first won�t give you but seconds of time to get on them. Probably because of my background in killing fox and coyotes when there was a real price on their hide I am good at getting down and using the closest thing I can to keep the wind at bay. You see, the wind is always blowing in Montana and what these pictures don�t reflect is the gusting wind.
This summer my physical conditioning was really helped by this contraption.
Nothing but a heavy hunting belt and a 15 pound weight. It worked for me and will be a staple in the years ahead as I slow down. I walked a lot this summer and felt this was a great tool to replicate a loaded rifle on my back. I put a lot of miles on between 5 and 6 a.m . and after 10 p.m. It will work for you too if you are considering a hunt where a lot of walking is involved. If nothing else you will get into shape quicker with the extra weight. You see, in the area of Montana I hunt as in many states across the West there are a tremendous amount of animals killed by the Ford sneak or the GMC sneak or the Toyota sneak or whatever brand of transportation gets hunters on animals. Though not a rocket-scientist I have found that invariably bigger bucks hang in the country where pick-ups have difficulty getting around so in my leg-work work I like to find and put myself into the rough stuff that keeps the pick-up shooters at distance. Each to his own on how hunters want to kill their deer this is just how I like to do it. Some guys love shooting over feeders, some love high fences, others love food plots. I may be the only guy I know who hasn�t hunted over a food plot but I don�t miss it I guess. I once sat on a haystock overlooking an alfalfa field so maybe that was considered a food plot by some. You see, I may be a glutton for punishment but I feel the harder I work the greater will be my reward and a better sense of accomplishment in taking my animals. I think the saying goes something like the harder it is, the more fun I�ll be having. This trip was all of that and more.
The weather became a factor on Day 2. The wind, grey skies, blowing mist and snow flurries turned to rain. Rain in the land of gumbo does two things very well. It keeps most rigs on the hard-packed roads and gets people stuck who think gumbo doesn�t apply to them. Once tire grips fill up with gumbo you might as well sit in your truck until temperatures drop and freeze the ground. Gumbo doesn�t care who you are or how slow or fast you are going or how soon you have to be there. In some ways gumbo is like the highway patrol, if it really wants to get you, it will. The rain didn�t let up and by Day 3 we were road bound in 4x4 mode so we headed into some areas we knew were tough to get to by pickup but we could get to on foot and get back out before dark. Early afternoon we were wet and tired. Sitting in the truck munching on �Nut Goodie� candy bars was almost preferable to getting wet all over again and by this time the wind was gusting and the snow and ice flakes were coming in at us on a horizontal angle. We took a 15 minute power nap and away we went with the wind blowing in the absolute worst direction it could have. The gumbo was accumulating on our boots and it was miserable. Miserable but fun. We were a couple of miles out and my hunting partner and I saw the doe group way ahead come out of the creek bottom testing the wind. He waved in my direction to say, �deer ahead� as we have our own hand signals to converse as cell phones and walkie-talkies are illegal in Montana to use while hunting. I got down in the closest sage brush and sat tight. They had not seen me nor smelled me but they must have smelled my partner and were up and moving. They crossed over to my side of the creek and were going to start coming my way upwind. The snow was coming in good and kneeling in the wet soggy gumbo wasn�t exactly my idea of stand hunting. Of course all of the things that go through one�s head when waiting for deer to close the gap started to appear. You know what they are, you may have your own demons or devils that interfere with clear thinking! My major worry became my wet stinky Stormy Kromer cap. Made of wool it just had that wet wool smell that doesn�t smell like the wool of sheep. I just know any deer worth his DNA would have smelled my old friend, my blaze orange Stormy Kromer that I was wearing over a stocking cap to keep the wet from taking my body temperature down. I had my bino�s up and was using a handkerchief to keep the lens dry. I saw more deer come out of the brown brush ahead and wasn�t certain if there was a decent buck in the bunch. Lots of guppies but none that looked decent. I was starting to question just how I might get a deer out of this quagmire if I did put one down and even if our trip might be cut short with such terrible hunting conditions. I had been planning on getting into some country where this bomber had shown up last fall
and I wanted to get a crack at him but now with the rain it would be impossible to get even close to the range of hills that he was photographed in. I saw the does and small bucks headed upwind toward me and I kept looking for some good bone. Finally, I saw something interesting and went to work trying to get a good look in the poor light. Was he at least a 4x4? Did he have �crab claw� fronts? (I hate crab claw fronts, heck I have even had bad dreams about them.) These pictures turned out much brighter than what I remember it to be. In fact, about the time these pictures were taken the snow stopped pelting me. The group came by about 100 yards away at full tilt. This buck, the little bucks and a bunch of does headed upwind about as fast as they could. I couldn�t take the shot as the buck was on a doe and he was firmly in the middle of the group going hard. I know I am a decent shot but to take a running shot at a buck in the middle of a small herd running full tilt is not my idea of managing your odds of putting a nice buck down. One could easily be gutting a lonely doe in such a situation. Things happen quick and they bolted over a ridge a couple of hundreds yard to the north of me, upwind. Now things got crazy. I was on my knees, rifle at the ready thinking that my walking was far from over if I thought I could run that buck down yet today and all of a sudden what appears on the ridge where the buck had just bolted over was him! And there was a doe about 80 yards away looking directly at me. This guy came back at full tilt trying to get her to move and low and behold she starts walking right at me. So, now I have this guy coming my way directly behind her and all I can see of him is his horns that are coming out on each side of her. She finally breaks away and he gives me a quick standing shot and it was over. Being on the ground, in a kneeling position, bracing myself against gusting winds of 25 m.p.h. made all the difference. An off-hand shot would be for shooters far better than I.
I put my tag on the buck and off we went miles back to the truck. A couple of days later we snaked our pickup to about a half mile of this guy and after a tough drag over frozen ground here he is after we put him in the truck. He had been chewed on by magpies and eagles and the back hams on one side were now in the circle of life! I was scared that the birds or coyotes may have chewed my tag off the buck but it remained on after the feast.
After the rain stopped winter became a reality for the next week. Temperatures plummeted and the snow started. Two things I would never do without are a GPS and a compass. And throwing in not one but two Leopold neoprene scope covers was sheer brilliance on my part. We kept up the hard work and pounded some serious snow in the hills. With the wintery conditions we were privy to the fall migratory blast of Canada geese blowing out of Ft. Peck headed down to the Yellowstone River and it was enough to juice any waterfowlers senses. Snow geese, swans and Canada�s with no end of them in sight. Wow. My hunting partner missed a couple of great bucks and will forever remember one in particular that was pure heavy and wide and dark chocolate. I know I will never forget it as I had the range-finder on him at 237 yards. Just a great animal that for one nanosecond and a nasty gust of wind would now be venison sausage. As the temperatures remained around the zero mark we kept hunting. My partner finally settled for this fine young buck and was elated to get him on a great shot. When we skinned him we found he had been shot previously. He neared the 25-inch mark.
We turned out attention to filling our cow elk tags and moved our focus to the timber on some new property that holds elk and usually a lot more bulls than cows. As a non-resident it is difficult to draw a bull tag in the Unit we were hunting and after getting lucky last year I wasn�t optimistic I might get lucky again. I was right.
It was tough going for sure. Under the snow was ice and traversing side hills was not only dangerous but sometimes a tad silly. I busted my rear and rifle on more than one occasion and the cold kept biting. I put my face in the snow and ran the end of my gun barrel into the frozen ground which proved difficult to remove. I must admit and owe an apology to the folks at Irish Setter boots. Those �Elk Hunter� boots I bought this year were really special at 200 grams of thinsulate. The great bottom grips and hard leather soles really allowed me to dig in and move up and down vertically with ease. I was really lucky not to be wearing my uninsulated Danner Pronghorns every day. I had them with but didn�t wear them.
After the snow stopped the elk were on the move looking to pack on some grub. It was about daylight and 18 below zero when we put the lead to a couple of cows. We were hunting an area that we both knew well because we had to drag a buck out of there in 2006 that I had shot and we were fortunate the snow had not packed in and formed a crust. It was quiet and allowed us some fairly close shooting. When this picture was taken we were attempting to load the cows and it had warmed up to a balmy 10 below zero. If the wind had been blowing it may have been miserable. This cow will make some fine eating for my family and friends this year and was extremely fat! Great rainfall this year across Montana set records and made for some very healthy animals.
All I will say about the two whitetail doe tags that we filled is this. We are going to edit a video tape of one of those days and will put them on YouTube when time permits. My pal is the star of the video while I did the videotaping. What you will see you won�t believe. Heck I can hardly believe it now and I was running the camera. Trust me, you will enjoy seeing it.
Due to the extreme cold and wet weather we didn�t get as many pictures and video as I wanted. We had a beautiful 6x6 bull skylined in the sunset and the video screen simply said, �too cold to operate�. Oh well, we tried. All in all, as usual it just seems like a great dream. Montana time flies and the concept of time revolves around the position of the sun. Without cell phone coverage it makes for a real get-away! What would I change? Not much. I may have held off for another buck but neither life nor bigger bucks are guaranteed.
In closing I will share this memory and will take this image to my grave. As an avid hunter of both whitetails and muleys I was able to see up close and personal the largest whitetail buck of my life. Somewhere in Garfield County Montana is a whitetail buck that made me shiver. The mass, the width, the height and that baloney sized 10-inch drop tine on his right side was enough to make my hunting partner and I simply speechless. Not even a buck on Ted Nugents high-fenced ranch in Texas came near to this giant. He was in a place you would never expect to see such a buck and was trailing a doe about 80 yards away.
I will never forget him. Maybe some day I will put some bone that big on a wall I own. And God willing, may I have another opportunity to put in the effort to get it done. I still think the best is yet to come.
I was flying out of the Atlanta airport during the heat of the Montana rut and had plenty to contend with just getting to the plane. Here are some photo�s taken above the speed limit from my I-Phone I thought I might share.
My hunting partner of nearly 20 years was along for his 6th foray into the Montana back country and we eagerly awaited our time afield. Due to some scheduling conflicts we didn�t get into the MT airport until nearly 11 pm local time and by the time we closed our eyes in our beds hours out of the airport the night was about over. Alarms came far too early as we went to work checking and rechecking gear for the days weather. It was to be warm and maybe wet late in the day. Little did we know what was in store for us as the week progressed. It got ugly and in Montana it doesn�t take long. Wait five minutes and things can change drastically.
Day One found us with a good pal (and client of Chippewa Partners) and we glassed a tremendous amount of acreage looking for Mr. Big. We started off the day with a flat tire about the time the sun was up and because of the remoteness of the country we figured we should shut down for a bit and get the tire fixed. I wish I owned a satellite phone, maybe someday they will be affordable. Being 30 or 40 miles away from people who can bail you and your rig out of a jack-pot is priceless in nasty weather.
Nothing like getting the kinks out by having to change a tire instead of hitting the hills! At the end of Day 1 we did the math and figured we had put the glass to about 65 animals of which about 35 were bucks. Not a bad buck-doe ratio for this part of Montana for sure. In fact this area probably has about one deer every 2.5 to 4 square miles. You have to hunt hard just to find some deer! None of the bucks were shooters but more than a few were in what I call the �give him a year and he�ll be a shooter� class. For sure, the older I get the more I love my Swaro�s. Spending any amount of time behind good glass beats bad glass. If I had a couple of things to redo in my life I would have bought them 20 or 30 years earlier. Covering a lot of ground without good optics doesn�t make good sense. Good glass is an investment.
The older I get the more I feel the need to practice shooting my rifles. Maybe it is just a confidence builder, maybe just a way to think more about putting Mr. Big on the ground when the chips are down but any way you look at it, shooting your rifles to the tune of a box or two every year will make you a better killer. Here are the .243�s that I shoot and use to get it done.
The Model 700 was purchased in 1969 and has really been a friend. She was bought with wages from working on a Montana cattle ranch while in high school. All of my scopes are pricey simply because with optics one usually gets what they pay for. Just another aspect to my approach to help me reach my goals of what I want to get out of my hunting time. Remember to practice how you will shoot. When I look back on many of the bigger bucks I have killed they were taken in nasty weather and in a hurried shot situation. Most big muleys in a spot-n-stalk situation, if they see you first won�t give you but seconds of time to get on them. Probably because of my background in killing fox and coyotes when there was a real price on their hide I am good at getting down and using the closest thing I can to keep the wind at bay. You see, the wind is always blowing in Montana and what these pictures don�t reflect is the gusting wind.
This summer my physical conditioning was really helped by this contraption.
Nothing but a heavy hunting belt and a 15 pound weight. It worked for me and will be a staple in the years ahead as I slow down. I walked a lot this summer and felt this was a great tool to replicate a loaded rifle on my back. I put a lot of miles on between 5 and 6 a.m . and after 10 p.m. It will work for you too if you are considering a hunt where a lot of walking is involved. If nothing else you will get into shape quicker with the extra weight. You see, in the area of Montana I hunt as in many states across the West there are a tremendous amount of animals killed by the Ford sneak or the GMC sneak or the Toyota sneak or whatever brand of transportation gets hunters on animals. Though not a rocket-scientist I have found that invariably bigger bucks hang in the country where pick-ups have difficulty getting around so in my leg-work work I like to find and put myself into the rough stuff that keeps the pick-up shooters at distance. Each to his own on how hunters want to kill their deer this is just how I like to do it. Some guys love shooting over feeders, some love high fences, others love food plots. I may be the only guy I know who hasn�t hunted over a food plot but I don�t miss it I guess. I once sat on a haystock overlooking an alfalfa field so maybe that was considered a food plot by some. You see, I may be a glutton for punishment but I feel the harder I work the greater will be my reward and a better sense of accomplishment in taking my animals. I think the saying goes something like the harder it is, the more fun I�ll be having. This trip was all of that and more.
The weather became a factor on Day 2. The wind, grey skies, blowing mist and snow flurries turned to rain. Rain in the land of gumbo does two things very well. It keeps most rigs on the hard-packed roads and gets people stuck who think gumbo doesn�t apply to them. Once tire grips fill up with gumbo you might as well sit in your truck until temperatures drop and freeze the ground. Gumbo doesn�t care who you are or how slow or fast you are going or how soon you have to be there. In some ways gumbo is like the highway patrol, if it really wants to get you, it will. The rain didn�t let up and by Day 3 we were road bound in 4x4 mode so we headed into some areas we knew were tough to get to by pickup but we could get to on foot and get back out before dark. Early afternoon we were wet and tired. Sitting in the truck munching on �Nut Goodie� candy bars was almost preferable to getting wet all over again and by this time the wind was gusting and the snow and ice flakes were coming in at us on a horizontal angle. We took a 15 minute power nap and away we went with the wind blowing in the absolute worst direction it could have. The gumbo was accumulating on our boots and it was miserable. Miserable but fun. We were a couple of miles out and my hunting partner and I saw the doe group way ahead come out of the creek bottom testing the wind. He waved in my direction to say, �deer ahead� as we have our own hand signals to converse as cell phones and walkie-talkies are illegal in Montana to use while hunting. I got down in the closest sage brush and sat tight. They had not seen me nor smelled me but they must have smelled my partner and were up and moving. They crossed over to my side of the creek and were going to start coming my way upwind. The snow was coming in good and kneeling in the wet soggy gumbo wasn�t exactly my idea of stand hunting. Of course all of the things that go through one�s head when waiting for deer to close the gap started to appear. You know what they are, you may have your own demons or devils that interfere with clear thinking! My major worry became my wet stinky Stormy Kromer cap. Made of wool it just had that wet wool smell that doesn�t smell like the wool of sheep. I just know any deer worth his DNA would have smelled my old friend, my blaze orange Stormy Kromer that I was wearing over a stocking cap to keep the wet from taking my body temperature down. I had my bino�s up and was using a handkerchief to keep the lens dry. I saw more deer come out of the brown brush ahead and wasn�t certain if there was a decent buck in the bunch. Lots of guppies but none that looked decent. I was starting to question just how I might get a deer out of this quagmire if I did put one down and even if our trip might be cut short with such terrible hunting conditions. I had been planning on getting into some country where this bomber had shown up last fall
and I wanted to get a crack at him but now with the rain it would be impossible to get even close to the range of hills that he was photographed in. I saw the does and small bucks headed upwind toward me and I kept looking for some good bone. Finally, I saw something interesting and went to work trying to get a good look in the poor light. Was he at least a 4x4? Did he have �crab claw� fronts? (I hate crab claw fronts, heck I have even had bad dreams about them.) These pictures turned out much brighter than what I remember it to be. In fact, about the time these pictures were taken the snow stopped pelting me. The group came by about 100 yards away at full tilt. This buck, the little bucks and a bunch of does headed upwind about as fast as they could. I couldn�t take the shot as the buck was on a doe and he was firmly in the middle of the group going hard. I know I am a decent shot but to take a running shot at a buck in the middle of a small herd running full tilt is not my idea of managing your odds of putting a nice buck down. One could easily be gutting a lonely doe in such a situation. Things happen quick and they bolted over a ridge a couple of hundreds yard to the north of me, upwind. Now things got crazy. I was on my knees, rifle at the ready thinking that my walking was far from over if I thought I could run that buck down yet today and all of a sudden what appears on the ridge where the buck had just bolted over was him! And there was a doe about 80 yards away looking directly at me. This guy came back at full tilt trying to get her to move and low and behold she starts walking right at me. So, now I have this guy coming my way directly behind her and all I can see of him is his horns that are coming out on each side of her. She finally breaks away and he gives me a quick standing shot and it was over. Being on the ground, in a kneeling position, bracing myself against gusting winds of 25 m.p.h. made all the difference. An off-hand shot would be for shooters far better than I.
I put my tag on the buck and off we went miles back to the truck. A couple of days later we snaked our pickup to about a half mile of this guy and after a tough drag over frozen ground here he is after we put him in the truck. He had been chewed on by magpies and eagles and the back hams on one side were now in the circle of life! I was scared that the birds or coyotes may have chewed my tag off the buck but it remained on after the feast.
After the rain stopped winter became a reality for the next week. Temperatures plummeted and the snow started. Two things I would never do without are a GPS and a compass. And throwing in not one but two Leopold neoprene scope covers was sheer brilliance on my part. We kept up the hard work and pounded some serious snow in the hills. With the wintery conditions we were privy to the fall migratory blast of Canada geese blowing out of Ft. Peck headed down to the Yellowstone River and it was enough to juice any waterfowlers senses. Snow geese, swans and Canada�s with no end of them in sight. Wow. My hunting partner missed a couple of great bucks and will forever remember one in particular that was pure heavy and wide and dark chocolate. I know I will never forget it as I had the range-finder on him at 237 yards. Just a great animal that for one nanosecond and a nasty gust of wind would now be venison sausage. As the temperatures remained around the zero mark we kept hunting. My partner finally settled for this fine young buck and was elated to get him on a great shot. When we skinned him we found he had been shot previously. He neared the 25-inch mark.
We turned out attention to filling our cow elk tags and moved our focus to the timber on some new property that holds elk and usually a lot more bulls than cows. As a non-resident it is difficult to draw a bull tag in the Unit we were hunting and after getting lucky last year I wasn�t optimistic I might get lucky again. I was right.
It was tough going for sure. Under the snow was ice and traversing side hills was not only dangerous but sometimes a tad silly. I busted my rear and rifle on more than one occasion and the cold kept biting. I put my face in the snow and ran the end of my gun barrel into the frozen ground which proved difficult to remove. I must admit and owe an apology to the folks at Irish Setter boots. Those �Elk Hunter� boots I bought this year were really special at 200 grams of thinsulate. The great bottom grips and hard leather soles really allowed me to dig in and move up and down vertically with ease. I was really lucky not to be wearing my uninsulated Danner Pronghorns every day. I had them with but didn�t wear them.
After the snow stopped the elk were on the move looking to pack on some grub. It was about daylight and 18 below zero when we put the lead to a couple of cows. We were hunting an area that we both knew well because we had to drag a buck out of there in 2006 that I had shot and we were fortunate the snow had not packed in and formed a crust. It was quiet and allowed us some fairly close shooting. When this picture was taken we were attempting to load the cows and it had warmed up to a balmy 10 below zero. If the wind had been blowing it may have been miserable. This cow will make some fine eating for my family and friends this year and was extremely fat! Great rainfall this year across Montana set records and made for some very healthy animals.
All I will say about the two whitetail doe tags that we filled is this. We are going to edit a video tape of one of those days and will put them on YouTube when time permits. My pal is the star of the video while I did the videotaping. What you will see you won�t believe. Heck I can hardly believe it now and I was running the camera. Trust me, you will enjoy seeing it.
Due to the extreme cold and wet weather we didn�t get as many pictures and video as I wanted. We had a beautiful 6x6 bull skylined in the sunset and the video screen simply said, �too cold to operate�. Oh well, we tried. All in all, as usual it just seems like a great dream. Montana time flies and the concept of time revolves around the position of the sun. Without cell phone coverage it makes for a real get-away! What would I change? Not much. I may have held off for another buck but neither life nor bigger bucks are guaranteed.
In closing I will share this memory and will take this image to my grave. As an avid hunter of both whitetails and muleys I was able to see up close and personal the largest whitetail buck of my life. Somewhere in Garfield County Montana is a whitetail buck that made me shiver. The mass, the width, the height and that baloney sized 10-inch drop tine on his right side was enough to make my hunting partner and I simply speechless. Not even a buck on Ted Nugents high-fenced ranch in Texas came near to this giant. He was in a place you would never expect to see such a buck and was trailing a doe about 80 yards away.
I will never forget him. Maybe some day I will put some bone that big on a wall I own. And God willing, may I have another opportunity to put in the effort to get it done. I still think the best is yet to come.
