Yes, Stephen, was up in the NW part of the state (near White Earth). Only drew one tag this year, an any-antlerless. Thought that would be very easy to fill & passed up what I thought was a pretty small adult muley doe one hour after season opened. Should probly not done that, as never did get another shot the whole three days we were out. Rancher said he found over 50 dead whitetails right around his yard and hayfence this Spring. So many he and his son took a half day to gather them up and got rid of them. No EHD up there, so it was the bad winter, and they got into the hay (which they will die with a belly full of).
Only one of our four filled, and niether the rancher nor his two sons shot anything either. I'm afraid after the last two hard winters and a few previous to that that were harder up there than they were here in the middle of the state spells the end of our three deer a year days. Dwindling CRP and less cover also play a big part. Deer, pheasants, and even Sharptails are way down all over the state. Huns are about extinct.
With the opening w/e socializing done, I might not even make the trip back up there for a doe, which would likely be a muley (not that there's anything wrong with a muley). Fried up liver and onions in camp, and that young muley liver is the best there is. Hardly even has a liver taste.
People and traffic up the @$#%# due to the oil play in that country now, and more coming. Went in on an old abondoned homestead place we hunt and found a hand living in an old schoolbus he's got covered with blue plastic tarps and skirted with more tarps held down with a ridge of crushed rock, with four big cooler chests outside for larders. No electric and no water. The 40+ mph wind on Sunday may have already pulled his skirting out from under the gravel, but I know his coolers will work good unless he plans to use them to keep stuff from freezing
I was in there a couple of years ago after we had only about a foot of snow, and had fun doing that with a 3/4 ton 4 wheeler. He might have some trouble getting to work
For the bears, I've shot two blacks in Idaho with my .54 Hawken copy with Large barrel and Roller lock & round ball twist, both of which would have made the book as a grizzly on the bottom end. Didn't have any trouble with either one, but can't say I didn't feel a little trepidation. My backup was a .45 Peacemaker with stout loads, that I was happy to not need. I don't know why anyone would say that a .50 is ballisticly superior to a .54. I suspect they meant it's easier to find .45 or .44 plastic-saboted jacketed bullets to shoot out of a fast twist in-line. A perversion of the whole muzzleloading tradition and the main reason the whole "feathers and leathers" (as one put it) and I prefer to call traditional m/l sector is in severe decline
Ken
