{"id":4306,"date":"2025-12-22T04:24:36","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T04:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/2023-hunt-recap\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T04:24:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T04:24:36","slug":"2023-hunt-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/2023-hunt-recap\/","title":{"rendered":"2023 Hunt Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The 2023 hunting season was filled with lots of highs and a few, I wouldn\u2019t call them lows, but disappointments.\u00a0I don\u2019t\u00a0need to kill an animal to call a hunt successful\u00a0or enjoyable, but sometimes you\u2019re just bummed with a lack of opportunity, especially with\u00a0a tag that isn\u2019t over the counter and you can\u2019t get every year.<\/p>\n

I started the year early with a late-season Iowa muzzleloader\u00a0tag for whitetails.\u00a0We had one good day of weather and then it changed, getting warm and I never had an opportunity at a buck.\u00a0In fact, I only saw one buck that was mature and he stayed out at about 300 yards on the second to last evening.\u00a0Our annual wall tent turkey camp was another great time.\u00a0It was a smaller group than the last few years, by design, and was filled with great friendship and camaraderie.\u00a0I was successful, hunting solo without a cameraman and the rest of the camp had success as well.\u00a0It\u2019s always been a special time of year and a great hunt with good friends.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The start of the fall season was a bit disappointing.\u00a0I helped Chris Nowak in NM, who drew a unit 30 tag.\u00a0I was only able to go down for the last 4 days of his hunt and the weather was too nice for the first two.\u00a0When we finally had a change in the weather, it was good action.\u00a0I called a couple bulls in for him and when he finally released an arrow, the bull moved as the arrow was in flight and he hit him poorly.\u00a0No fault of his own, I was over his shoulder and saw the whole thing, but we didn\u2019t recover the bull and he burned his tag. I hunted on the same place in NM as the previous 3 years.\u00a0Since Chris hunted unit 30, I invited Jason Matzinger to take Chris\u2019 spot and it was a challenging hunt with the elk not being vocal at all for 3 full days.\u00a0 We were seeing elk, seeing fresh sign, but there was ZERO bugling, even distant bugles.\u00a0I finally had an encounter on our last morning but the bull stayed just over a rise and I never had a shot.\u00a0 That evening, our last and the last of the season, I called a bull in for Jason and he killed it.\u00a0 The true bottom of the ninth success story.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t hunt any other species except for whitetail after the elk season and it was a pretty good one.\u00a0I hunted on an outfitted hunt in Kansas, a lease in Ohio, my whitetail lease in my home state of Montana and wrapped up with an invitation in Oklahoma.<\/p>\n

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I was successful taking nice bucks in Ohio with archery gear and in Montana and Oklahoma with a rifle.\u00a0I missed a true Kansas giant with my bow.\u00a0The jury is still out on what happened but after talking to a lot of people about it, it was likely an improperly seated nock on my string.\u00a0I shot right under him and I am still reliving that shot today.\u00a0I was self filming that hunt and captured it all.\u00a0I filmed each of the other hunts as well and all will be short films coming out on the website in the coming months, including Jason\u2019s kill in NM.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what the 2024 fall season has in store, but the spring is going to be fun.\u00a0Jason and I are heading to Patagonia in March to hunt Red Stag together and I drew an Iowa turkey tag and will be hunting with Tom Petry\u00a0in early April.\u00a0I\u2019m hoping the summer is filled with camping, fishing and golf before chasing elk in Montana for the month of September.<\/p>\n

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Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2023 hunting season was filled with lots of highs and a few, I wouldn\u2019t call them lows, but disappointments.\u00a0I don\u2019t\u00a0need to kill an animal to call a hunt successful\u00a0or enjoyable, but sometimes you\u2019re just bummed with a lack of opportunity, especially with\u00a0a tag that isn\u2019t over the counter and you can\u2019t get every year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/purehunting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/blog_willi_deer_image.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hunting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4308,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4306\/revisions\/4308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}