 By: Chase Galley
Everyone has their own way of hunting elk at different times of the year. When it is late October and the bulls are in their little sanctuaries, I found that a lot of my recent success stems from past experience and e-scouting on google earth. A lot of guys just pound timber and cover country, which can be effective. There is a reason people still hunt the thick timber or track, it can be effective. It seems like there are more limitations with that strategy. I still call a lot all through October, but my preferred method of finding bulls is to let my optics do the work for me. While using google earth, I scout places throughout summer that I plan to hunt in September. I find myself paying for attention to terrain features, when I am looking for a location to rifle hunt. However, when I am looking at spots to bow hunt, I’m looking water, feed and thick timber. In preparing for rifle season, I look for isolated, steep areas that provide significant levels of feed and decent cover for elk. I believe that if bulls are unbothered and comfortable, they don’t tend to worry about cover as much and will lay down in fairly open timber. The last thing I look for on google earth and if this one thing isn’t in that spot it may not be my first choice to hunt, that is a good glassing location! If you can find an isolated area with little to no pressure, it is often steep and ugly, but with feed and water there will be a bull in that location. Typically, the steepness of these areas will provide glassing location. To be able to see a good portion of land, to be able to glass a south facing slope of that location. South slopes, late in the year, seem to have the least amount of snow and therefore provide the best feed. Lastly, I found that beyond the types of locations mentioned above, you should not discount areas close to or easily accessed by roads. Last year I found a steep area within half a mile of a road that held multiple bulls. Even if a steep an ugly area is close to a road there is a good chance there will not be anyone there, because there are easier places to hunt. It often doesn’t matter how close you are to a road. If a bull has everything he needs, is not pressured, he will be there. I recommend that hunters check out any spot that is within a half of a mile from a road. You never know, when you walk into a hell hole it may turn into a honey hole.
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 By: Chase Galley
I don’t know how long it has been since the Wyoming draw results came out but all I know is I have not been this excited for a hunting season in a long time. I put in for antelope with Tanner, his girlfriend Nicole, and good ol’ Logan. We put in for an area outside Laramie where we attend the University of Wyoming. Luckily, we drew an antelope tag, the bad part is there is not a lot of public lands to hunt. In fact, hardly any at all. On the brighter side, there are two big hunter management units we can apply for and hopefully at some point, get a permit to hunt one of them. I am really looking forward to this tag. A big reason is that this is Nicole’s first-time hunting and antelope always seem like a good starter hunt for a new person. This will hopefully be the first time that I see Logan fill a tag. Logan has helped me pack out a deer and elk and I have yet to help him. The second to last reason I am so excited is Tanner has only had one antelope tag and has not harvested anything since 2014 I believe. The last reason I am excited is I will finally get to hunt antelope again! For deer and elk tags, I have a general deer and general elk tag. I am looking forward to these hunts because I am still learning a new place. Also, elk is elk, and nothing beats chasing bulls in September. This year I am deer hunting in a totally new location and that is really exciting to me. The hunt I am looking forward to the most as an individual is the white tail deer hunt. I drew an additional white tail deer tag here in Wyoming. So, I actually have two deer tags. I am really excited about this hunt because I have never had an opportunity to seriously hunt and harvest white tails. It will be a totally different hunt and I will need to learn quick. Luckily it is a really long season, but I am excited to give it a try. Now that it is summer and draw results are out it is now time to start scouting and our first trip is planned for this weekend. We are going to go check out where we are going to hunt deer this fall and see what is around. This might be our only scouting trip this summer for deer until we move back to Laramie this fall. I am excited to get a feel for the area, see what wildlife is there this time of year and hopefully what will probably be there in the fall.  By: Chase Galley
I recently spent a week in the “backcountry” of Wyoming looking for bears. I have backcountry in quotations because I was very limited by the amount of snow still in the mountains. I spent my first couple of days just driving around trying to figure out what trails I had access to, as well as identifying the low hanging fruit that I could look at first. With a lot of the roads still snowed in and not being able to access the trails I wanted to right away, I took a more popular approach to trying to find a bear in the spring. At least more popular for a spot and stalk strategy. I spent the first two days opening up our family cabin and getting everything ready for the summer cabin season. I then hunted down a snowed in road on the third day of the trip. I love this time of year in the mountains. Although bear hunting can be very frustrating and downright cruel sometimes, it’s an amazing sight to watch life comeback to the mountains after a cold harsh winter. I think part of the attraction to spot and stalk bear hunt is to get to see more of the mountains. It is absolutely breath taking, with half of the mountains still in hibernation and the other half full of life. Sorry I got a little sidetracked. Anyway, that third day I hunted down a road that no one had driven down yet that spring and sure enough I found a bear! The challenge was that he was about 2 miles past the end of the road at the head of a drainage. I made the short walk to the side by side, resupplied, and, lucky for me, I was able to drive around the drifts that were in the road, and reached the trail head. I made the mile and a half hike to where I thought the bear went, but turns out I had mistaken which clear cut I saw the bear go in. Things got really interesting before I even got where I was headed. I got about a quarter of the way there and bam! A fresh cut bear track and bed underneath a live pine tree on an old logging landing that survived through the large forest fire that swept through the area a couple years back. I myself forgot how far it felt hiking in and after a couple of years, with snowdrifts thrown in, it was a pain. Anyway, I started tracking this bear and walking in his steps to try and limit noise but make the walking a little easier. As I approached the end of the road, I could see something black through a couple of pine trees and thought to myself “what the hell is that”? I got ready because I thought that had to be him; I assumed him because the bear was alone. As I came around the tree and broke through the snow, we both saw each other at the same time. Before I could get my gun up, he was gone. I fought out of the snow just to see him run over the ridge and out of my life forever. I stayed at that landing for about six hours glassing and only seeing one bull elk after that. On the hike out, I did see a big herd of elk that had nine branch antlered bulls in it which was encouraging and made the hike even more worth it. The rest of the week was very slow I might add. I didn’t see another bear until Saturday when my friend Tanner arrived for the hunt. So, I will just skip ahead as the middle of the week was quite boring. We checked some more roads, hiked back in to that previous spot (where I saw the bear) a couple of times, we saw some deer, checked the bait, saw a lot more elk, and drank some beer. Unfortunately, I also had to replace the alternator on my truck Friday afternoon. Lucky for me my dad and brother decided to come up for the night and help finish up some other cabin tasks. They were able to bring me an alternator and I was back in business. Saturday morning everyone woke up (my Dad, Grandpa, Tanner, my brother Cooper and me) and ate breakfast. Once Tanner and I ate we left and headed to the only spot up to that point I had seen a bear. We made it about halfway and took a little break to glass and try and stay out of the snow. As we were getting ready to head up to the top, I took one last look and there was a bear making his way down a finger ridge to get out of the snow. We packed up our stuff and moved up the ridge about 400 yards to an area I thought we might be able to get a shot. We got to that spot and the bear was nowhere to be seen but we could tell he was in the bottom as he spooked some elk, and they were watching him down below. If that was true, we followed the eyes of the elk and moved to the head of the drainage hoping to cut the bear off as he was traveling. We sat at the landing looking over the drainage for about 4 hours and finally decided to head out and get something to eat and figure out what to do that night. After we headed back to the cabin and ate some classic biscuits and gravy, we set out for a new drainage that we thought that bear may have ended up in. Sadly, we were wrong. But saw a goose nest, Tanner fell in the creek; we saw some more elk, and a lot more bear sign. That’s basically it pretty quick little run down of the evening and middle of the week. I would have touched more on Tanner falling in the creek, but I don’t think he would like that very much. Pretty boring but extremely fun, relaxing, and a much needed week in the mountains. If there is something you would like to see us write about, contact us and we will try and make it happen.  By: Matt Helmick
Over the last several years I have transitioned from being a recreational outdoorsman, to having hunting and other outdoor activities become part of my everyday life. I’ve become obsessed and dedicated to the hunting lifestyle for several reasons; hunting creates food, it gives me incredible experiences with the natural world, and it challenges my mind, body, and spirit. Hunting Creates Food One of the most appealing parts about hunting for me, is that the results are tangible. Not only tangible, but nourishing. I killed two bucks last year and harvested about 100 pounds of meat. That’s roughly 55,000 calories and 10,000 grams of lean protein that fuels myself and my family over the course of an entire year. Finishing a deer season with an entire freezer full of protein is my biggest goal every year. Few things are more satisfying for me, then watching my two-year-old daughter chow down on a deer steak or a turkey nugget. Another awesome part about creating my own food is that my family has to rely on less people to do it for us. Currently, there are meat-packing plants across Kansas and the rest of the Midwest that have been hammered by the COVID-19 pandemic. People are buying up meat at grocery stores at record rates. It’s very satisfying knowing that my family has plenty of meat in the freezer to weather the storm. Hunting Gives me Incredible Experiences with Natural World Most of my best experiences with our beautiful planet and its enchanting animals have come during while engaging in some sort of hunting activity. Some vivid memories from last season include a squirrel sniffing my hat in an effort to figure out what I was, an owl landing 5 feet from me while I was sitting in a tree stand, and a massive whitetail buck snort-wheezing 10 yards away from me as the sun was peeking over the horizon. Hunting has given the motivation and opportunity to explore new places, and see new habitat & animals. I’ve hunted all over Kansas, from the wide-open Flint Hills covered in endless seas of grass, to the thick, muddy creek bottoms in the Southeast, the plateau-covered Red Hills in the Southwest, and the hidden suburban oasis just up the street from my home. I’ve spent time in the high desert of Southwest Wyoming chasing mule deer, and many weeks in the rugged mountains in the Northwest part of the state. I’ve been lucky to explore many places in our great country, and the cool thing is, I’ve barely scratched the surface. The number of wild places to explore is too numerous to reach them all in one lifetime. I’ve got a bucket list of places to hit in the coming years, including the hilly desert of Southern Arizona, the unforgiving back-country of Idaho, the bass haven that is Lake Okeechobee, the Loess Canyons in Nebraska, and the forests of Maine. I will not see everything there is to see, but I am going to have fun trying. Hunting has not only awakened my adventurous spirit, but it’s also given me the desire to protect the amazing places I have seen, and the animals that live there. I want my daughter, and someday her kids, to be able to have the amazing experiences that I have been lucky enough to enjoy. “Green energy” and “environmentally friendly” are buzz words that are thrown around a lot, but I truly believe that hunting has given me a much greater understanding of the natural world, and how important it is to protect it, than any news article or political debate ever could. Hunting Challenges my Mind, Body, and Spirit For me, perhaps the greatest appeal that hunting provides is an all-encompassing challenge. Outside of competitive sports, I have yet to find something that so thoroughly tests my mind, body, and spirit. Mind - Mental Toughness Achieving lofty hunting goals is not for the mentally weak. Consistently filling tags and my freezer required several years of failure. My first couple years of deer hunting, I rarely even saw a deer. I had no idea what I was doing, and it would have been easy to just quit, or continue struggling. Perseverance and a competitive fire to overcome obstacles and learn new things is what kept me going back to the woods. It is what earned me the experiences and knowledge that I have used to find consistent success in the last couple of years. If you cannot handle failure, take up a different activity. Every single hunter fails more than they succeed. Even on my good years, the number of hunting days that end without a harvest, far exceeds the number of days that end in success. There are plenty of other ways I have been mentally tested by hunting:
Mind - Intellectual Ability At a high level, hunting is intellectually challenging as well. You have to learn about the habits and behaviors of the animal you are pursuing, and then try to figure out the best way to get into a position to kill that animal. Where will a deer bed? How can I ambush him? Am I hidden well enough? Is the wind in my favor? There are many good choices that have to be made to enjoy success on a hunt (especially when using a bow). Another less-discussed intellectual challenge associated with hunting is the need to have good organizational skills. I’ve yet to go on a backcountry backpacking hunt, but I have a lot of admiration for the organizational abilities of the guys that spend weeks in the backcountry every fall. They need to have the gear to live, and hunt for days a time, and it all needs to fit into a pack that they can carry. There is not a lot of room for error. For me, good organizational skills allow me to go on a quick hunt before work or hit a fishing hole on my lunch break. Good organizational abilities have also been essential on my trips to hunt in Wyoming. Driving 900 miles and realizing you forgot an essential piece of gear is not fun. Body Hunting can be very physically taxing. Being in good shape is a key part of the hunting lifestyle for me. Common physical challenges for many hunters include carrying heavy loads, hiking miles through uneven terrain, and operating with a lack of sleep. Some physical challenges I have faced in the last few years include:
If all goes well this season, I’ll get to experience the pain of packing an elk out of the mountains for the first time. I love these physical challenges, and they motivate me to stay healthy and workout hard on days I’m not hunting. Spirit Hunting has challenged my spiritually as well. Taking the life of an animal is something I take seriously, and it tested me the first couple of times it happened. I also wounded multiple deer last year by hitting them with arrows in less-than-fatal locations. That was extremely taxing on my mind and spirit. It made me doubt my abilities and decisions, and it pained me to know that I wounded an animal instead of quickly killing it or missing all together. There are other instances that have tested my spirit as well:
This section may feel like a downer, but these are real feelings and moral qualms that I (and many hunters) have faced while hunting. One of the reasons why I love hunting is that it forces me to face these spiritual challenges and make tough decisions. It hardens me, tests my integrity, and makes me really think about an action and its consequences before I act. Sometimes the decision is whether or not to pull the trigger. Sometimes I have to choose between going hunting and letting my exhausted wife sleep in while I watch our daughter. I think these challenges make me a better person, husband, and father. The Fulfillment Hunting Gives Me Every year I set hunting goals. I dedicate myself to the pursuit of these goals because I love hunting. I love the meat it provides my family; I love the experiences I have with the natural world, and I absolutely love the challenges hunting provides. I’m a competitor. Hunting is a way for me to compete with myself and mother nature. It hardens me, makes me physically and mentally stronger, and forces me to test my morals and integrity. It also forces me to live a more efficient and organized life. Few other passions, if any, can provide so much personal fulfillment. That’s why I dedicate myself to it.  Public Land Duck Hunting Part 2
By Chase Galley Sorry it has been a while! I have been super busy starting a new job and finishing up school. Also researching big game areas for this fall. Right now, I am 100% focused on what I am about to tell everyone. It is a little hard to have my mind on ducks when I am in prep for elk and deer seasons. But here we go. This last year picking a spot to hunt was really tricky. We had a bunch of snow here in southwest Wyoming making access to some of our spots difficult and even impossible. In December we were facing temps in the negatives and about a foot of snow and drifts up to the bumper of my truck. With spots limited this past season I am really looking further into the past and how I chose spots because we were only able to hunt two or three this last season. The first thing I look for that I am sure everyone looks for is how many ducks are in the area. I try and pick a location where there are a lot of ducks around. Sometimes where I hunt that is not always possible because there are roads that are not passable. Depending on the year I could be held down to one spot. When that happens, I dig into the memory bank and pick a spot that I have had a lot of past success on maybe somewhere where the ducks like to roost at night or hangout during the day at. If I can get to multiple different sections of the river, I will hunt a spot around the majority of the ducks. Once I am at the spot, I usually look for feathers on the shoreline and how much feed is in the water. If it is an easier spot to get to that is overlooked and I don’t see ducks, there or sign of ducks being there I will move on. I do my best to avoid the “community blinds”- Very poplar blinds everyone wants to hunt- but if I do decide to hunt one I will hunt it on a Wednesday or Thursday after everyone has been back to work for a couple of days and the ducks have had a couple days rest at that spot. What I suggest for you to have late season duck hunting success on public ground is pick a location that are more difficult to get to that has a lot of ducks traveling by or seeking refuge from the hunting pressure. Look at spots that also have extremely easy access as a lot of time those spots do not get hunted because the access is easy. I have hunted plenty of locations where I drop all my stuff off put out decoys then go park my truck. Another tip that I like a lot is look for other people. If you can be around other people but hunt a spot the ducks, go to get away from them that is perfect as you will most likely have action all day long even on those blue bird days. People are constantly fishing the river I hunt, and other jump hunters are around and on nice days it makes the hunting better than it should be because ducks are always getting jumped off the water. My second to last tip is look for an area that has a lot of feed late in the year. Make this a priority if you are hunting ducks in really cold temps like we do in Wyoming. The colder the temps the ducks are going to need to feed to stay warm. So, if you find a great feeding location you have found what some of us call the X. Also drop me a pin on OnX so I know where I’m going to be hunting the next day. Lastly, don’t be afraid to hunt a spot no one else has hunted. More than likely this is going to be the jackpot even if you have to build a blind or hide under a bush on the bank. A lot of times those are the types of hunts us waterfowl hunters remember. Those hunts that we completely wing and try a spot that we have never tried or heard of anyone trying. Somethings that we all need to make sure we do before we hunt to. Check the water out and make sure getting your ducks and decoys is possible and realistic. MAKE SURE IT’S A SAFE PLACE TO HUNT!!!! Don’t just start hunting. If you guys have any questions you would like me to answer, please comment or go to our contact page and send us an email and we will get back to you as soon as possible! Stay safe and good hunting!  Chase Galley
It is weird to me to think that I am 21 years old, yet I have been duck hunting for over 10 years now. I spend the majority of my Christmas break hunting ducks and a couple days during Thanksgiving. The last two years I have spent a majority of my duck season hunting solo. This gave me a great chance to try some new things, change things up on hunts and experiment overall. Last year I wanted to try some new decoy spreads as I was hunting ducks that have been hunted and shot at for several months at this point. I have always noticed where I hunt in western Wyoming the ducks tend to always want to and end up landing on the outside of my spread and then swim in. This led to shots that were 35-40 yards and I found myself in a constant battle trying my best to recover crippled ducks. In 2018 I changed that tactic and instead of putting decoys out further trying to have a good landing zone close I brought my decoys in and a lot of my decoys inside 20 yards. The change was huge! In 2018 I was only able to hunt six days total as we spend a majority of my Christmas break in New Mexico. When I was able to first test out my new strategy, I was shocked at the number of ducks that were willing to work now and that had committed sooner to the pocket. That first day I was back and hunting I think I had hunted a total of 2 ½ hours before I limited out with 4 mallards 2 green wing teal (which surprised me as they are usually gone by now), and 1 golden eye. I hunted the same spot for the next 4 days and the rest of the season. I would leave the house around 9 in the morning get to my spot around 11 or 12 and I was done hunting and headed home by 2 in the afternoon. The decoy spread changed the game for me that year. I had shot a total of 35 ducks in 5 days of hunting. I myself have never had a run of success in the duck blind like that! One thing I learned in the first two days was since I was hunting the same spot was changing my spread each day and really each hour. The spot I spent hunting in 2018 for a week straight the ducks could see me putting out decoys and picking up ducks. It was wide opened, and you could see up the river a long way and same for looking down river. This spot late in the year tends to get heavy fog and steam throughout the day so when the steam or fog would get thick and I couldn’t see the ducks I would go and just move my decoys around keeping them close but just changing things. The key for me was starting simple then changing as the day progressed. I would always start with a traditional spread with a dozen decoys. Traditional to me is five on the left five on the right then two next to the bank. I would then move one or two to the right side or left side depending on how I felt and repositioning all the decoys to try and make it look natural to how I saw ducks sitting in similar locations. If they would sit in a group close together that’s how I would place my decoys, if they were more scattered that day, I would adjust to that. The key for me was looking and taking mental notes of how ducks would sit on the water in similar locations. What I mean by taking mental notes is quite simple. It took me a while to figure it out but once I did it seemed easy to me. I would always drive up the river to my spot and take inventory of what was around, and I started to see how ducks were sitting in certain locations of the river I was hunting. I would look at how they would sit in a big side channel that was shallow with slow water compared to a rock bar that was in the river. What I took away from this is ducks never sit or feed in same “formation.” I learned fast that the majority of the ducks at a spot are going to be where the best feed is. So, when I got to my hunting location, I would place the majority of my decoys where what I thought the most feed was. Like I said I would start with what I call a traditional spread every time, then move decoys to where I thought the most feed was. It proved to me to be very effective. I think I as well was getting repeat ducks who maybe didn’t give me an opportunity to shoot or just flew by. I think they took note of the decoys and when they saw a change they may have committed. I have zero clue if this is true all I know is changing my spread seemed to help and I found more success with different spread. The 2019-2020 season had a whole new set of challenges with weather and temps and adapting to the ducks! Next Time I will cover how we changed locations and picked spots based off of duck action. Also, how we changed things on the fly and found last day success. If you are new to the waterfowl game hopefully this will help you be more successful sooner! If you have any more questions, go to the contact page and I will get back to you as soon as I can! For guys and gals like me who only think about is hunting, fishing, and being in the outdoors the college life was different. In high school my dad would make the late-night drive after a football game to wherever we were going to be spending the weekend hunting. School was not very difficult; I didn’t need to make time to get work done or projects done. High school was pretty easy for me and easy to be able to balance school, sports, and hunting. Everything is definitely a lot easier when you’re younger. When I went to Western Wyoming Community College (WWCC) it was almost the same, yeah I had to work harder but overall, I was able to balance everything with ease.
When I transferred from WWCC to the University of Wyoming (UW) I knew that there was going to be a change in how I hunted and that there was going to be new challenges that I would need to figure out. What I failed to realize what the number of new obstacles in my path. Instead of being 15 minutes from home at WWCC and being able to drop things off at home whether it was meat or my gear, now I was three hours away and had to figure out meat care and gear storage on my own while living in a small apartment with two roommates. The gear storage was an easy fix as I put things in my room locked up when I was gone. The meat care, however, was a huge difficulty that I never had a great plan for. There was only one meat locker in Laramie Wy, that took care of wild game and I was never sure if they would have room or not. This is where good friends come into play. Tanner my hunting partner this last year and for more to come had a big cooler that we decided we would put meat in there and keep on ice for at most a week until we could get back home and get it in a freezer. Great plan? No. However that is what we had to work with, and we felt confident in our plan. That guy I just mentioned Tanner, yeah that was another thing we would have to figure out both him and I. Hunting with someone new is a big deal in my opinion. Especially if you haven’t known them all that long. I met Tanner my last semester at WWCC and knew I wanted to hunt with him based on how he talked about hunting. Once you get in the mountains with someone it can be a whole different thing. This was a really smooth change as he talked the talk but then walked the walk as they say. It was nice as we hunt a very similar style for both elk and deer. The biggest struggle for us as a team and sealing the deal on a bull or buck was our time in the field. My time was primarily focused on school as I figure the sooner I can get done the more time I can hunt. This was the first year I remember missing a couple weekends of bowhunting elk in September. One weekend I had so much schoolwork I could not go and another weekend I was by myself and didn’t feel great about hunting an unfamiliar place solo. And even on the weekends I did hunt it was a Friday evening hunt and a Saturday hunt. I never hunted Sundays because if there was anything I needed to get done that was my day to do it. Almost every trip was a day and a half of hunting which made it difficult to be successful. We always felt like we had a chance though because of what we learned in the past and just being in the hills you have a chance. Yeah, I didn’t get to hunt as much this year as I would have liked. But I learned a ton got to experience a new mountain range with different terrain and different animal habits. These are the experiences that we learn from and grow as hunters and humans. I learned so much about the area this past season that even with limited time next season maybe, I feel like I have a solid chance at filling a tag. The biggest thing I learned about college life at UW and hunting was don’t overthink anything. Each time you hunt a new place you see and experience new things and have amazing memories. Don’t overthink anything and just go out when you can and have fun, relieve some stress, and forget about college. Even if it is for a day and a half. By: Chase Galley Hello everyone! Sorry for the absence the last few months! We have all been super busy with life this past year. There will be a new blog series to come here soon! Chase and a friend will be writing about balancing college life and hunting, some tips for finding game with very limited time, and how to make the most of the time they spend in the hills!
Hey everyone! First off thanks for following! We are going to be doing a day by day series of this years hunts. This will be launching on January first, and it follows us through the good days and the bad days of hunting. We want to show you everything, so the videos show everything. Thanks for watching guys and we can't wait to start sharing this season with you!
Hey everyone! There is going to be some new things coming this summer and fall! So make sure that you keep up with all the new things coming out. Hopefully we will have some new content from hunting, to what we carry around on our hunts, scouting trips, and fishing trips. Also going to be doing some gear review so stay tuned!
Stay Wild! |
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