My seasons of 2017 – spring lake rainbows, spring turkey season, tenkara trout,  summer fly fishing, summer steelhead fishing, pheasant hunting, elk hunting, late deer season,  chukar hunting

I can hardly believe that 2017 is drawing to a close already, where did it go?   As I sit back and look over the year I realize that I have had one heck of a year with a lot of firsts.  For the first year in a while health was just not an issue, as you can tell from my lack of health related blog posts, so it freed me up to get back into fly fishing, to really get into hunting and to finally reach my goal of stocking my freezer by myself.   On top of spending almost one-third of my days in the field I was able to get out for daily hikes (and later runs) with Lira and still find time to work all year long.

We had a few late season pheasant hunts to get Lira out a couple of more times before the long wait until fall.   I also did a winter steelhead trip to the Clackamas River which was cold, wet and fishless but nonetheless fun with good company.  The outdoor year really began in April with the lake opener in Western Washington.   I spent an hour or two every few days on Lake Alice or Langlois Lake catching rainbows to eat for dinner and to stock up in the freezer for later in the year.    April also brought my first spring turkey season.   We went over to far Eastern Washington for a few days and I had a very successful first turkey hunt, getting two jakes which we have been eating about once a month since then.

Summer showed up a bit late this year but once the local rivers got in good shape I spent quite a few days fishing tenkara on them.  I took Lira along on these outings and got her used to the water at the same time.  We’d fish a bit then play fetch with her duck dummy.  She did pretty well by the end of the summer, mostly wading along with me and was very curious about trout.    Mostly I caught local cutthroat and rainbows on the Middle and South Forks and the Tolt.   We also took a trip in late summer up to Mazama where I got into some browns and tiger trout while scouting for deer during the day.   Lira wanted to help retrieve larger trout but after an hour or so she learned to sit patiently by my side while I netted and released the fish.

I also spent quite a bit of summer getting ready for fall.  I had a goal of putting 1000 rounds through my shotgun this year so spent quite a few days shooting trap or sporting clays, managing to reach my goal by late August.  I also started hand loading ammo this year so spent some time working up rifle loads and shot 400 rounds through my .270 and another 50 rounds through my muzzleloader trying to find the best bullet for it.   On top of that Lira and I got involved in the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Hike to Hunt Challenge and hiked over 250 miles in the six weeks and raised $325 for the challenge.  We did a scouting trip for mule deer in the Methow and I got trail cams set up locally for blacktail.

Catherine and I had the triplets back for a week this summer and we spent a lot of time in the evening fishing tenkara on the Tolt.   The kids had a blast playing with Lira and getting outdoors every day with us.  A lot of evenings we went fishing on the Tolt River and they learned how to fish tenkara.  All of them caught trout on tenkara rods at the Tolt and at Taneum Creek when we were on our way to Ellensburg.

We also did a few hikes, one with Cadence and her friend up to the Denny Creek water slide where they all had a blast playing in the water on a  sunny day.   For a few days we went to the Canyon Lodge in Ellensburg where the kids could hang out in the pool while I went trout fishing on the Yakima and shot sporting clays.  Lira and I also did some scouting for deer up in the Umtanum Canyon too and saw quite a few does but no bucks.

September brought the end of fishing with another trip to the Deschutes and the Yakima with Jeff for a week.   Steelheading was great even with the horrible fires going on, I hooked three and landed two this year and Jeff got one too.  One of mine was a hatchery buck that we enjoyed for dinner that night, the other was a wild hen that was promptly released.  The Yakima portion of the trip was fun catching loads of trout in the morning before heading back to Seattle.  As soon as  I got back I got Lira out for a warm-up bird hunting trip to Cooke Canyon before the season opened in Western Washington.  We also got out grouse hunting a few days but only ever saw one bird that flushed too far away for a shot, one day I will figure these birds out.

October brought the start of serious hunting season.   Lira did great during her second season, she went from wanting to chase other dogs to being totally focused on finding birds.   In October and November we got out 27 days and found birds on most days.  I had a dry shooting spell in the middle of the season but quickly made up for it limiting out several days.

At the end of the month I headed to Meeker, CO with Tom for the first elk hunting trip for me and the girls.   We had planned a five day hunt but ended up tagging out fully in three days and getting home early.   I got my cow elk on the first night just at dusk and spent the next days butchering the animal down to get home and helped with the other three elk we took.   Once home I spent close to a week processing elk, it was a  big job but took our freezer from empty to nearly full.

We had one elk come back positive for CWD and some confusion over which elk it was so  there was a chance I’d have to throw out the elk and decided that I needed to get out and hunt late muzzleloader season for deer to try and get some meat in the freezer just in case.   I planned a trip and a few days before we found out my elk was indeed negative and it was the bull that was positive.  I no longer needed to go deer hunting but decided to go anyway since it would be my first solo big game trip and hopefully my first muzzleloader deer.   In early December on the second morning of my hunt I managed to tag a doe and then spent a few days getting that processed.    This trip was really the best trip of the season for me, getting a deer solo and with a muzzleloader was quite the experience and the culmination of a year of learning much more about hunting.

I took Lira out again in December to Cooke Canyon where she got her first chukar while pheasant hunting and then we went back again late the next week to focus just on chukar.  We had a great hunt in the snow and bagged a half dozen chukar only missing one that took off running away from me before taking wing just out of good range and we never located the bird again.  We did some grouse hunting locally again to get through the season but still no grouse in the bag at this point.

A  lot of firsts in our hunting year – first turkey, first elk, first solo deer hunt and first muzzleloader deer.  No tags were left unfilled this year.   Throw in the first chukar and Lira also pointed (and I missed) a Northern Bobwhite Quail and she pointed (and I didn’t have a gun) Ruffed Grouse and Blue Grouse.    I managed to put in 60 days of fishing and 47 days of hunting for the year, am I overdoing?    40 of the hunting days were for birds with 31 of those after pheasants, the rest for grouse, turkey and chukar.  Add in 4 days of deer hunting and 3 days of elk hunting to round out the year.    Fishing was mostly trout, 15 days stocking up the freezer from the local lakes,  36 days of tenkara or summer fly fishing and 9 days chasing steelhead.   All in all a pretty good year for outdoor activity.

Somehow in the midst of all this I managed to work all year and still have a job despite being gone much of the fall.   I also got a few of our outdoor projects done at the home,   fixing a drainage issue and we now have a berry trellis ready to go for next year once I can plant in the spring.  We also had a very productive garden this year given the little effort put into it.   Slowly we’d like to get as much food production as possible out of our yard so that between hunting, fishing, gathering and gardening we can supply most of our food for the year.

So, how’d I do on my goals for 2017?  Overall pretty darn well.