Colorado 2025: A Bull for Brian

   Please feel free to follow along as I recount my journey to Colorado this year and share the ups, downs and everything in between that happened during the trip. To give everyone a little history on the trip, I must share a few things before I begin transcribing my journal onto this online platform from my leather journal. 

  In the fall of 1991, I packed my bags, boarded a plane by myself and made my way to Denver, where I would pick up a shuttle flight to a little town called Alamosa, which is located just a little bit to the north of the New Mexico border. 

  I had no expectations and didn't know if I would ever return to elk hunt again in my life. After being stranded due to a massive, record-breaking snowfall that left hundreds of hunters in the woods, we were finally able to venture into elk country. The snowfall put the migration in full force, and we saw the results. The snow looked like a bloodbath and hundreds upon hundreds of elk were on the move to lower elevation. 

 That initial trip introduced me to Unit 76, one of the few special draw units in Colorado at the time. I would go on to hunt in that unit three different times through the special draw, drawing it with one point, three points and six points in 2006. However, I never imagined I would have to sit out for 19 years before hunting that unit again. Well, I never got to hunt the unit again and made the choice to hunt in Unit 66, which borders Unit 76. Although we had never hunted there, we figured it would be similar to 76, so we went all in and tried drawing tags as a group. In June, we learned we had drawn a tag and would be heading to Colorado in September. Our group would be made up of myself, Dad and Dave Russell. Brian would be going too, but he would not have an elk tag. He drew a rifle bear tag, and his main goal would be to help us wrap our tags around elk antlers. If we got lucky enough to do that, he would then hunt over the elk carcass in hopes of taking a bear after it showed up for a free meal. 

  So follow my daily journal that tells the story of our hunt. We gave it everything we had and didn't leave anything on the playing field. 

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