Fall Hunt 2009

My two brothers in-law Troy and Travis and myself got our tags for Unit 27 and 28.  These areas covered a good chunk of the white mountains so we had good hope to find something with antlers.  We pulled into the Blue Wilderness area south of Alpine Arizona around 2am for our October deer hunt.  Our campground was incredible with view and the best part of it was that we were alone in the campground.  We woke up around 9am and found ourselves chilled with a temp around 29 degrees.



Our camping area in fall colors.





Once we all got our stuff together we headed out to one of the trails.  Grant Creek was our first stop with a hike ahead of us.  We made our way up the drainage valley of Grant Creek for about a mile or two before we stopped to glass from above the trail.  Troy went ahead to get a better angle and we did not end up seeing him again for about 6 hours.

Travis and myself spent about 45 minutes trying to get a good view of the canyon and the canyon wall to the north of were we stopped.  We sat and waited for Troy to come back for about an hour, then made our way down the trail to see if we could find him.  You will have to get the full story from Troy for the rest of the day.  Needless to say, I got a good workout going back and forth along the trail.  The next day we got up late as we were just worn out from the hike the day before.  I ended up taking the morning to wonder off myself and see what I could find.  I started off on the Tutt Creek trail head and headed for a spring located a few miles down the canyon.

Along the trail down to the spring.

Found a used game trail along the creek.

Bear country and wishing nothing would pop out on me.

The last day of our time in the Blue Wilderness area I had to make a run to Alpine for fuel.  Along the way I snapped this picture of the canyon rock face and the only fall color around.  We ended up finishing our fall hunt with no success, but that's why they call it hunting!