AT Hiker
Well-Known Member
As mentioned in the Elk thread with @wjohnson1983, we drew MT pronghorn tags this year as well.
We decided to wait the first week of season out. Made sense, give the roads a break from our elk trip and let the opening crowds die down. We lucked up with this decision as that part of the state finally got drought relief in the form of a rain/snow weekend opener followed shortly after with as much as 12" of snow falling.
Usually this stuff melts and dries relatively soon, not this time as it stayed around and made the unimproved and 2-track roads impassable. We found out the hard way.
We had also planned on making this a hotel hunt. No other reason than because our elk hunt was 10 days of no running water, aka no shower. Lady luck at it again, all that snow was either drifted too deep for a tent or made the BLM Praire ground a swampy mess.
What we arrived to in Spearfish SD
Hard to tell but this drift Im standing in is knee deep. Not ideal for stalking these Praire ghost. It was either drifts, swampy ground or loud n crusty snow.
Same chunk of state ground just a few hundred yards apart. Mostly melted snow on fully saturated soil. Notice the antelope hoof in the pack
Bentonite soil is like quick Crete. Once it is dry it's there for a long while. Its not uncommon for us to bring home a couple tons of it.
We decided to wait the first week of season out. Made sense, give the roads a break from our elk trip and let the opening crowds die down. We lucked up with this decision as that part of the state finally got drought relief in the form of a rain/snow weekend opener followed shortly after with as much as 12" of snow falling.
Usually this stuff melts and dries relatively soon, not this time as it stayed around and made the unimproved and 2-track roads impassable. We found out the hard way.
We had also planned on making this a hotel hunt. No other reason than because our elk hunt was 10 days of no running water, aka no shower. Lady luck at it again, all that snow was either drifted too deep for a tent or made the BLM Praire ground a swampy mess.
What we arrived to in Spearfish SD
Hard to tell but this drift Im standing in is knee deep. Not ideal for stalking these Praire ghost. It was either drifts, swampy ground or loud n crusty snow.
Bentonite soil is like quick Crete. Once it is dry it's there for a long while. Its not uncommon for us to bring home a couple tons of it.
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