This was one of the best hunting trips we’ve ever been on. It was filled with a ton of excitement and many stories to share for a long time. Mike and Dad set up an antelope hunting trip in Wyoming through a missionary serving in Fresno from Wyoming. His family went above and beyond to make this trip a success. Dad, Mike, Brandon, Kyle and I left on the 30th from Provo to Wyoming. We arrived that night and scouted the place out. The next morning, opening day – Oct 1st, we had three nice bucks cleaned and ready for the meat locker by 7:30 am. It was incredible!! Three shots, three dead bucks. The guy who let us hunt on his land was awesome as well. We did have to share the land with 6 guys from Minnesota, but they didn’t have the audacity or marksmanship skills as us Haroldsen’s. We heard 8 or 9 shots from their side and saw zero animals killed when we left. We had a BBQ that night and headed back to Provo the next day. On the way back we stopped by two sites that the Mormon pioneers passed through on their trek to Utah. The first was Independence Rock where the travelers signed their names in the rock (a ton of names are still there). This is also in the old school computer game, The Oregon Trail, if anyone remembers playing it. The second site was Martin’s Cove where the saints were temporarily stranded in the snow. It was really neat to see! Dad entertained the thought of serving a summer mission there until he realized there is no movie theatre, no tv, no BYU games, no family around, and no store with diet Mt. Dew! On Friday we went to a small creek in Provo Canyon to see if the rainbows were spawning yet. Unfortunately they weren’t but Brandon enjoyed getting dressed in fly fisherman’s gear anyways. Saturday morning, Patrick took us duck hunting. He is a true stud!! He set up at 4am just to get the secret spot for us. We went out with Allen at 5:30am and met Patrick there. It was a heck of a death march through mud and 7 foot weeds to get out there (90 min walk one way), but it was well worth it!! We limited out in 1 ½ hrs, and that’s only because we were picky about which ducks to shoot. We could have easily limited out in 20 mins. It was another hunt to remember!!
Like I said, this trip was filled with many stories. It was fun to hang out with the guys, especially when you don’t see them that much. Kyle said his favorite thing about the trip was messing around with “Grandpa” (more specifically, pulling out Grandpa’s arm hairs and receiving the consequence of a horse bite to the thigh from grandpa for doing it). Brandon and Kyle could not stop laughing the entire trip because of “Grandpa”. Dad did have some great quotes that will never be forgotten on this trip. Anyone who knows him will agree that he is something else to be around. Here is a list of some quotes, just to name a few of them:
- After arriving as guests at the home in Wyoming the day before the hunt, the mom of the missionary asked the kids what cereal they’d prefer in the morning. The kids bashfully said lucky charms, then dad patiently waited and excitingly said in a very serious way, “I like Sugar Smacks!”
- While driving through the ranch just before sunrise we spotted a nice buck to shoot. We all told dad to shoot it quickly. It was just getting light and dad couldn’t see all that well. A few great quotes came at this moment. “I can’t see if there’s a bullet in the chamber!!!” – repeated 8 times very loudly with the antelope 40 yards away. After Mike says, “Brian, you just take the shot before they run away”, dad yelled out, “NO, I’M TAKING THE SHOT!!” then…“I can’t see if there’s a bullet in the STINKING chamber!!!” – 4 more times. After the bullet was in the chamber and ready to go, “Ok, the first one, right? (the buck was the 2nd one in the herd)” Luckily, the buck walked up on the ridge and you could easily see his antlers, and then of course, dad’s the best shot out of anyone I know and that was the end of that.
- On the death march out to the duck hunting spot, we were all dying, walking through the mud and weeds when dad says, “I hope one of you knows CPR because I’m about to have a heart attack!”
- Finally, we had 34 ducks between the 5 of us (limit is 35) and we passed up tons of smaller ducks while waiting for one more big duck to fly over to shoot. Out of nowhere, dad pops up out of the weeds and blasts a lonely duck flying by and yells out, “There’s your big one!” The funny thing about this is it was another small duck, but who’s counting? It was an unbelievable shot!
This trip only solidifies the fact that I have the best dad in the world!! I’m pretty sure that Brandon and Kyle would agree that their grandpa is the most fun and most amazing grandpa in the world as well. I wouldn’t have it any other way!! This was not only a very, very successful trip, but also one with lots of memories that we will never forget!!
