Hunting & Fishing Montana Bob Marshall Wilderness Area early season rifle hunt

hognuts

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Apr 18, 2009
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Getting ready for my Montana hunt. We are doing a drop camp in the Bob Marshall with Mills Outdoor Adventures out of Augusta Montana. We are going in near the confluence of the White river and the Southfork of the White River. We will be near the Chinese Wall and Needle Falls (atleast within hiking distance) Looking forward to a great hunt, we both have Deer/Elk combo tags and wolf tags. (which according to regs allow you to take 5 wolves each, looks like Montana is wanting to eradicate those fuckers, I hope I can oblige! :) )

Looking forward to hunt, I am going to take my 375 Cheytac and we are going to hump that heavy bastard up on top of a ridge overlooking a burn area that burned two years ago, very excited about that spot with that rifle! Then I will have my Winchester model 70 30/06 for a light rig to pack around while we are hiking. Bringing the 454 Casul for my bear gun. We are going in on September 13 and coming out the 21st. Season opens September 15th. That will give us one day to get in and set up main camp, next day we will hike out and set up secondary camp with small tents and put the Cheytac in positon and possibly stay there that night and be on the ridge for opening morning. (sounds like its a full day's hike to where we are planning on setting up secondary camp) Will be nice to have "a home away from home" in case we run out of daylight on other outings while we are up there.

Weapons of choice:

375 Cheytac, 30" Benchmark barrel 1.250" straight no contour barrel, Stiller TAC 408 action, Jewel trigger, Ross Schuler brake, Atlas bi-pod, Mcree Chassis, (in multi-cam by shortbus), Barrett 40 MOA rings, Stiller 20 MOA base, Night Force 8x32x56, running cold bore program on trimble Nomad, with blue tooth Kestrel. Running 350 grain Sierra Match Kings with 133 grains of H-1000, around 3150 fps. The cant between my base and the rings roughly gives me an 1150 yard zero, that of course changes a bit depending on conditions, but it ends up being perfect because if I lower my magnification to double my subtensions on scope I have just enough hold "unders" to hit anything between 100-1150.






Winchester model 70 30/06:

Barrel has been floated and action bedded to stock. Put a piece of rail on the front of stock so I can run an Atlas on it as well (bi-pod, cost more than the rifle! :) ). Put a VAIS 360 brake to tame it down a bit. Running the Nikon Buckmaster 6x18x40 scope with BDC reticle and Kenton Industries elevation turret that is calibrated to my load for the Berger 185's. It has my drops on it out to 600 yards. EGW 20 MOA base. Nikon also has an app for Iphone that is pretty impressive, its called "spot on" and it has all of Nikon's reticles in it and you enter your ballistic info on it and it shows a picture of your reticle with the appropriate hold on the BDC reticle based on what magnification you are running, I am very impressed for a $300 price range scope. It is very accurate with either holdovers, or using the Kenton Industries elevation knob. Not to say that it will ever replace my USO's or NF scopes, but for this rifle and the ranges I expect to use it it works well, I have shot the rifle quite a bit and it does well out to 600 yards.








This is a blown up view of what the BDC reticle looks like on the Nikon Buckmaster and what the holds would be if you are on 16X, you can make one for each of the different magnifications from 6-18X. Like I said it is not going to take over the world as far as precision rifle scopes go, but for hunting application I think it is going to serve me well. I just had it out last weekend and verified dope, both with hold-overs and dialing with the Kenton Industries top turret and I made it out to 500 yards shooting a medium sized IPSC target and it was beating the shit out of steel. For the money I really like it on that rifle and the VAIS brake was a nice addition, that thing used to punish me with the 185's.

Good luck to you all with your hunts this fall, once I get back from Montana we are hunting mule deer/cow elk management tag in the Rubies here in Nevada, I think my 6.5 SAUM and 30/30 marlin are going on that trip...hopefully I can get my hands on some 130 Bergers before then...but I digress, one hunt at a time! :)
 
I am chomping at the bit to get up there, have been sweating my ass off down here in Vegas all summer, will be nice to be on top of the mountain in "The Bob"! It is less than a month away now....can't get here soon enough, just got my wolf tag ordered tonight on-line. Last time I hunted Montana, they had a 5 day waiting period before the over the counter wolf tag was valid, I pre-empted that and ordered it on-line only to find in the regs after the fact that this year it is only a 24 hour waiting period, which would have been fine since we are going in 2 days before the season starts, I guess better to have it early than the other way around. (not that it would have stopped me last time had I seen a wolf! :) )

I am looking forward to seeing some of this:










Nothing like the back country in Montana and Wyoming in the fall!
 
First few pics is last years Wyoming hunt, last one is from a few years back in the Absaroka Beartooth in Montana. Just chomping at the bit at this point! :). Had to put up a few old pics to get the juices flowing! :)
 
Got my wolf tag today! Looking forward to getting up there!



One thing I am not understanding though is this:


Regs say you can shoot 5.


There are 4 tags to "attach to animal immediately upon kill"....don't get me wrong, it is highly optimistic to think that I will get a shot at one, much less 5, but it seems like they are setting you up to fail if you actually do lay five of them down!
 
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Heading up to Montana tomorrow, got my gear all packed up and ready to go.....

8 days worth of gear packed into a 2 pound sack!





Should have some great pics to share when I get back if nothing else of some amazing country! Good luck to y'all this fall!
 
We just got off the mountain. No luck. My partner missed a bull and that was the only opportunity we got. I got some amazing pictures of the area. I will post them when I get home. Beautiful country and we got our adrenaline going when we bugled those bull in that my buddy got a shot at, he and a few others came in hot, but it was thick timber and only the one came out in a clearing. It was disappointing that he didn't connect on that one, but all in all it was a good time.
 
The juxtaposition of multi-thousand dollar rifles with cheap-ass Walmart tents made me chuckle.

Looks like a good time!

Be careful to judge a man by where he buys his tent.

The conditions of this hunt would have killed 99% of the typical Walmart clientele; something the photos do not convey. Reaching the drop camp (the larger tent) took one day on a horse or two days of back packing over sometimes very exposed trails while gaining 2200' to cross the Continental Divide at 7600' and then rapidly loosing about 1200' down to the camp. It did not get any easier after that.

I met hognuts and his friend when they came back from their spike camp and was impressed what these guys were humping through this terrain. A .375 Cheytac is not exactly what I would call a light mountain gun and that was on top of a 'normal' rifle, a monster of a revolver, and associated camp gear.

This area is so beautiful that it can get you close to tears but the challenge of tagging a bull there and then getting meat and rack to the next horse/mule can also get you close to tears. There are many places where it is a lot easier to fill the freezer or the trophy wall but I have seen few hunting grounds that are more breathtaking - in every sense.
 
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Be careful to judge a man by where he buys his tent.

Uhhh... sorry, come again?

No judgement passed here. I'm just saying the contrast of the multi-thousand dollar rifle and a cheap tent is an ironic image.

As for the terrain, I am very familiar with the terrain. I was with the Forest Service in Wyoming doing trail work on the Wind River Range and the Greybull River... on foot.
 
Uhhh... sorry, come again?

No judgement passed here. I'm just saying the contrast of the multi-thousand dollar rifle and a cheap tent is an ironic image.

As for the terrain, I am very familiar with the terrain. I was with the Forest Service in Wyoming doing trail work on the Wind River Range and the Greybull River... on foot.

Sorry, I did not mean to criticize you or your comment. Just wanted to use your humorous remark as an opener to give those guys credit where credit was due, assuming that most readers are not familiar with the area.
 

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Sorry, I did not mean to criticize you or your comment. Just wanted to use your humorous remark as an opener to give those guys credit where credit was due, assuming that most readers are not familiar with the area.

Good to meet you up there on the trail, hiking in there was a hell of a journey! Not to mention finding us in there in that vast wilderness area. I am not a big stickler for what kind of tent I am sleeping in, if it keeps most of the moisture off of me I am just happy to get back in back country, sometimes we are lucky enough to fill a tag or two! :) I have one more hunt this fall in Nevada and then I will be looking forward to next fall! Again, good to meet you up there Alpine44, and again I take my hat off to you for making that 40+ mile round trip over the continental divide on foot, that was an impressive feat! We put on some miles while we were in there and I lost about 10 lbs. of baby fat up in those mountains, but would have never even considered trying to get there afoot! :)