Elk, Deer, and Ducks: Hunting Season 2025

This time of year always feels like a whirlwind; waking up every day, hours before dawn, and loading up guns, dogs, packs, and whatever else we need for that days adventure. Big game season was good for some (me) and decent for others (Lia). The only real snow we received happened at the beginning of the season, and soon melted away with our temps hanging in the 30's and 40's. Suprisingly, the temps have not changed in over a month, with rain being far more common in our forcast than snow. Some of the ski resorts have opened, but are only operating one or two lifts.

Lets start with big game season. Lia and I drew cow elk tags for our local unit which is everything north of the Big Hole from the fly shop to Mudd Creek. The season started a little slow for us but picked up in November. I was lucky a couple of times; First, Lia and I were walking a little patch of timber and I was standing in the woods getting my bearings, a calf elk came trotting through the trees, completely oblivious to my presence. The elk stopped about 40 yards away and hit the ground in one shot. Being only 500 yards from the truck on flat ground made it even better as Lia and I were able to pack it out in one pack. After getting my elk down we focused on getting one for Lia. We were seeing elk (and wolves) almost everywhere we hunted, but could not get a decent shot off. A week later we began to see elk moving east, on their typical migration path along the open ridges. The following morning, e put ourselves in the right spot to catch them at first light. We saw the elk feeding up towards us and it looked like it was going to happen, but as the sun popped up over the ridge a huge fog bank came off the river bottom and blinded us for about 15 minutes. When the fog cleared, all the elk were "missing". We did a couple little walks to some high points but were still unalbe to locate where the herd had gone. Lia and I split up as we walked back to the truck. I wasn't 50 yards from where we split when a bull jumped out of its bed right in front of me. It ran toward where the truck was parked over a small ridge and I ran after him as hard as I could (I still had a bull tag). When I came over the ridge, the bull was standing there looking confused. Caught between the truck and myself was an unfortunate place for him to be. And so he went down with one shot, at about 40 yards, and only about 50 yards from the road. Long story short, we were able to winch the bull onto the truck whole and be home in time to watch some football. Lia did come away with a nice white tail, and a bonus turkey, so we are grateful for full freezers.

Watefowl and upland hunting has been open since October. We were able to get a few hunts in before big game season, but since Thanksgiving I have been hitting the water as much as possible. The birds have been working their way south (slowly), but enough to keep us shooting. With the way the weather is going it looks like we will be getting a full season in this year. Its been so nice that we are still seeing Teal in the valley, which I don't ever remember seeing in December in my hunting career.

Now what? I suppose we will kill more ducks before Christmas in Erie, Pa. We are going back to Andros in February and are currently booking weeks at Brigadiers/Dream Villas. Give us a call or shoot us an email if you are interested in going somewhere warm, full of fish that are not going to catch themselves!