Well my archery season started out well, with my good friend Jim Brennan and I heading over to North Dakota to hunt Whitetails with Van Daele Guide service and Tyler and Christy Van Daele. Jim is a regional manager for Mossy Oak’s pro staff as well as working with Montana Decoy doing promotion. Jim is also a whitetail guru and has taken many Pope and Young trophies including his most famous a 240 + monster in Kansas that gave Jim national attention. The season n North Dakota starts August 29th so we were able to fit a few days of hunting in before our Montana season started.  The weather was hot and the wind ever changing, but in the final hour I was able to take a nice eight point buck, my first out of a ground blind, and Jim captured it all on film. While there we saw some giant mule deer and you can bet that Jim and I will be back each year to hunt with our new friends. If you are interested in a western North Dakota whitetail or mule deer hunt for a very reasonable price, contact us.

From there Terry and I both went to work guiding for Elk, Deer and Antelope. We really feel we work for one of the top outfitting companies around and are fortunate to harvest some great trophies with our clients. Terry spends the early part of archery running our semi guided antelope hunts. These are great hunts for the more experienced bow hunter. For a very reasonable rate you are set up in camp on our private ranches with pre scouted water holes and maps of the boundries. We have a very high success rate on these hunts. I was fortunate to guide a client with a deer, elk and antelope tag the first week. We didn’t kill an elk but we had fun and killed a nice antelope and a 160 + mule deer. I should mention that while there one of our whitetail hunters killed a huge 180 + monster in full velvet. These whitetail hunts are taking off fast with some great deer being harvested the last few years. I then headed up to our elk ranch for three weeks and had a ton of fun guiding there. I went two for three with my hunters including a 330+ bull. This ranch is absolutely incredible. I would put it against any place in the country for elk in the rut. The rife tag is very very hard to draw so in essence it is a bow only area and that’s why you see bulls over 350 regularly. This ranch is pricier than our other hunts but it is worth it!

I also got to hunt for myself in Montana with Jim Brennan on the ranch that he is running for bow season. Our good friend Trevon Stolzfus came up from Colorado and we hunted Elk and Antelope while trying to get some footage. Long story short I ended up running camera most of the time I was there as usual! I had a blast though, Trevon killed a great antelope buck that we decoyed in using a Montana Decoy. The footage is incredible. The elk hunting was tough, both physically and because of the hot weather. But we saw some giant bulls and I would suggest anyone try this hunt out next season. The elk antelope combo works perfectly since you can stalk antelope while the elk are bedded mid day. Dog Creek Outfitters in central Montana, Matt and Jamie Wickens, were our hosts and Ill be back to their place next year I hope!