Trailbuilding and My First Hunt!

I know it has been a while since I have posted, but that is again due to not having too many adventures lately.  I have been pretty crazy busy working.  And when I am not working, I am usually trying to catch up on sleep.  But this weekend, I decided to forego the whole sleeping thing and have some adventures.  After working all through Friday night and getting home at 5 am, I slept for a couple hours and then went over to Moscow Mountain to help with a trail build day.  It was really hard to actually peel myself out of bed, but after working up on the mountain, I was very happy that I did.  I had a ton of fun, worked myself until I was sore, met a lot of cool people, and experienced some cool sights and sounds on Moscow Mountain.  One cool things that I heard was just as we were getting started, I heard a bull elk bugling in the distance.  It got me pretty excited for some elk hunting in a few weeks.

Here is a really big hole in a tree made by a very big woodpecker.  These were all over the place in one area we were working.

Here is one picture of the trail I was helping to build.  That log was actually already very conveniently cut down and cleared off a nearby logging road.  It served very well for a retaining wall. 

 Then after working hard on the trail, I made it back to Pullman started getting ready for the next day's adventure.  It might be about 20 years late, but on Saturday, I got my first ever hunting license!  I got the small and large animal license with tags for deer, elk, bear, and cougar.  I only had to work until midnight on Saturday night, so waking up early Sunday wasn't as hard as Saturday.  I got up and headed up to a spot a little north of here to hunt quail, chukar, and grouse.  I flushed a couple birds while I was out, but they were both too far away for me to get a shot.  I also saw a coyote in a field below me, but he was way too far for shotgun range.  I tried to get above him on the other side of the tree stand that he entered after the field, but he never came out.  And then I saw a couple deer, but deer season doesn't start until this weekend.  So, I came home empty handed for my first ever hunt, but it was still a ton of fun and it was a beautiful morning.

I also saw some cool things while I was out on this land.  The first picture on this post is a really cool old railroad bridge that crosses the South Fork of the Palouse River and was my access over the river to get where I hunted.  Below is a picture of an old homestead.  Once I saw the homestead, it made the random apple trees I had found make a lot more sense.  There are actually of a lot of relics and remnants of homesteads in the area, especially over on Moscow Mountain.  Then the other two pictures below are more pictures of the old railroad that was following the river.  The one that didn't turn out so well because of the lighting was a shot of it going straight through a hill, which this particular railroad does a lot.

And finally, yesterday I also made the drive up to Cabela's to get some other essentials for hunting, particularly a rifle.  Unfortunately, the trip was mostly unproductive, since they didn't end up having any rifles quite in my price range.  I did however, end up getting an awesome hunting pack that wasn't actually on the Cabela's website when I was scouting them out.  The inner chamber is much bigger than my current backpacking pack and it also has some other big pockets on the side and front.  One of the coolest parts about the pack is the hide-able hauling flap for hauling game out of the woods.  Now I am all set to do some backpacking hunting.

That's all for now.  Hopefully some future posts will have some pictures of some successes!