Opening Morning --- Oregon Blacktail 2007

God, it felt good to get in the stand. What a process. Up early, shower, get gear loaded up, meet Chad Montgomery, my buddy who offered to film me, pack our butts in the pitch black to our stand, through pouring ran, thunder and lightening. Not the best weather for tree stand duty, but what do you do? Finally, we were at the tree, then it was the inch worm thing up with our Lone Wolf climbers. About 45 minutes before first light, we were settled in, letting the woods settle back down. We had made it all the way in and up without saying a word and without using our flash lights. That fact alone had me in a good mood.

We sat for 6 hours – saw four small bucks about the same number of does, but no shooters this morning. The giant forked horn came by but not in slam dunk range. I was contemplating hard on shooting him – he is so unique. Here is a good pic of Chad I snapped with my Treo after about 5 hours in the stand. He is having fun – doing a good job keeping the camera dry though. Incidentally, we did get a ton of cool footage for Eastmans’ Bowhunting Journal TV.