Next in line for both of us is a trip to Wyoming in August for an archery antelope hunt with our good friend Jay Lesser of Wyoming Professional Hunters.  We’re sure to have a great time and we’ll post any stories and photos from that hunt.

The Texas Dall Sheep originated in Texas in the 1960′s on the YO Ranch.  A successful cross between a Rambouillet ram and a Mouflon ewe created this white shedding sheep now known as the Texas Dall.  These sheep can grow horns that weigh up to 30 lbs which is more than all the bones in their body combined.  We are really excited about the opportunity to offer trophy Texas Dall sheep at Dismal River Outfitters!

Thanks to Alice, Robin, Dirt, LJ, and all my great staff at DRO for making this a terrific hunt!

Every year we take the kids back to the ranch for Christmas.  The lodge you all stayed in makes a good place for us to hole up and eat some of Grammy’s cooking and beat up on Uncle Jim.  Every morning and evening I took the kids out with my muzzleloader looking for meat to fill the freezer.  It’s actually more like an armed field trip than it is a hunt.  I do my best to educate them about things like the land, the animals, and the ranch history, but I usually end up being the one who gets educated.  My four year old gets a little confused and calls mule deer mules for short.  I laughed when with my binoculars around his neck he said “whoa Dad, back the truck up, I think I saw a mule in dat tree.”  Don’t laugh too hard, he might be guiding you one day.  Of course, the kids always want Uncle Jim to come along because they know he’ll have plenty of snacks.  Jim questions my parenting methods when the kids get to fighting and I tell them about our first mountain lion sighting on the river this year and then threaten to make them walk home if they don’t knock it off.  It might sound a bit harsh but it sure makes for a very quiet, hands to ourselves vehicle.

Spending Christmas at the lodge gave Jim and I time to reflect back on the hunting season.  Lot’s of great memories and stories about a lot of you frequently came up.  We had a very interesting season this year.  We killed our first 500 inch bull elk.  We had our very first mountain lion sighting.  For the first time a client caught a monster brown and rainbow trout out of the Dismal River.  I had a very close call with a buffalo charge the last hunt of the year.  Jim had a nice somersault trip inside a double bull ground blind from the top of the river hill to the bottom.  Joe taught us power washer engines won’t run when you fill the gas tank with water.  And once again, many of you taught us that grown men scream like girl scouts when they think the black dodge is going over a cliff!  Man do I need to mount a video camera inside that truck.

Anyway, the gang is all doing well.  Jim is chopping ice, caking cows, and fixing up the ranch house next to the lodge so he and my sister can move in soon.  Joe’s back in Cleveland with his family.  He’s been spending time with his girls and bow hunting Ohio whitetails.  Becky is back in Colorado with her family.  I hear she is on strike and her poor husband Pewee has had to eat PB&J sandwiches and beanie weenies everyday because she refuses to cook ever again.  Mom is doing great and is fully recovered from being deathly ill all summer and half the fall.  I still tease her about faking it so she didn’t have to do the cooking this year.

Well, that about wraps things up.  If it’s ok with you all, I’ll be sending out these newsletters with word around the campfire from Dismal River Outfitters every now and then.

From all the gang, thanks again to each and every one of you for all the great moments, laughs, and memories from the 2009 hunting season!  We greatly appreciate your business and hope to hunt with you again soon!

Take care.

John “Master Guide” Howell

After couple of years  hunting with a rifle I’ve decided to try something new this time. NIck Hansen, dear friend of mine, said bow-hunting is fun and challenging. I’m always in for some fun. Nick has helped me to get the gear and setup together, and I got a bit of practice in our garage and behind our house after killing tool box, wall and my wife’s decorative vase behind it.

The Dismal River  ranch is only 7 hour drive. We’ve arrived a bit late on Monday and went straight to bed. We have three  hunting days ahead of us. This trip will be quite busy. My wife wants to kill a mouflon, one of the exotics that are available at Dismal River and I need to learn everything there is to know  about bowhunting and hopefully kill a turkey and a whitetail deer.

First day of hunting. I woke up around 10am and there’s nobody around. I’m guessing everybody has gone hunting. After preparing my hunting gear and bow I’m practicing outside the lodge, trying to sight in the bow. Jimmy, guide and good friend, is coming to help me with my baby steps, then Joe, the co-owner I’m meeting for the first time is joining us to give his advice. After couple of hours I get tired and fed up with looking for arrows. I’m good on 20 yards, and feel comfortable to head out this evening for my fist bow-hunt.

Joe has setup a nice place for me – down by the river, in a small clearing with the river just behind the blind. Beautiful place, almost like a painting in the late afternoon sun. This will be nice. Joe, my guide for tonight, is quite patient and explaining me 101 of bowhunting, which in my case came down to quit making noise and sit still. Don’t move! and Sit still! are especially popular phrases of Joe, but my ass is going numb, I’ve been here for an hour and a half already. I’m full of excitement and it is so hard for me to keep it down. And the moment is finally here. And I’m of course missing my first doe, and the second one too. It is dark now and we are meeting back at the lodge with my wife and her guide John. They are sharing a story about their day pursuing mouflon and then getting distracted by finding a fresh mountain lion’s track.  Apparently it is something unheard of in this part of Nebraska. Well,  who cares, I’ve seen lion before but I am bummed by missing the two does. That’s my first day of bowhunting. All the excitement is gone and I’m sad like a little boy with a broken toy. Only till morning though.

Second day of hunting starts early in the morning with a little surprise. I’m being sent to hunt on my own. I’m amazed by everybody’s confidence in me. They apparently do not know me god enough. I’m 35 and still sleep with a light on when alone, and here they are, sending me to the dark strange woods all by myself. I’m a city boy that has never been alone in the wilderness, I’ve always hunted with a guide. My loving wife is telling me not be a wuss, that this wilderness is only 15 minutes from the lodge and there are no bears and wolves here. What does she know?!

It is still dark when I get on my ATV and head out to the blind, same one as yesterday. At least they gave me a radio, and I have my pocket knife in case a bear shows up. I’ve parked the ATV as close to the blind as possible (apparently not a smart thing to do when deer hunting, but hey, only one of many stupid things I do). I walk to the blind, get everything ready and sit and wait.  In ten minutes it is getting brighter as sun comes up, and it seems it will be a cloudy day. I’m sitting quiet and still, just like Joe has taught me. Near heart attack comes when bunch of turkeys that were sitting right above the blind decide to fly down and land on the clearing in front of the blind. This turns out to be nice learning experience; there are louder animals than me in quiet woods, and it takes a while to settle my irregular heartbeat. Damn turkeys. For the next hour I’m watching the turkeys come and go. I take couple of pictures, and decide to test my luck today. There is about 8 hens, and 2 gobblers. I pick one, and shoot. Hit! The turkey flops its wings three times and quiets down. I’m amazed and happy. My first official bow kill. The remaining turkeys could not care less about my success. I wait for about 20 minutes. I’m not sure what to really do, so I go and put the gobbler away into the ATV, thinking dead thing in the clearing would only scare the deer.

I’m sitting in the blind for another hour. The turkeys came back. There is no other action, I’m taking out my camera and taking  pictures of the turkeys. As they slowly leave, I’m leaning out of  the blind’s front opening taking last camera shots. Suddenly I feel there’s something moving on the other side. I’m slowly backing into the blind, camera still in hand. I see big tan spot moving through the brush into the clearing. My heart beats like a bell and I forget to breathe. Instead of deer there is a mountain lion standing 20 yards in front of me, looking right at me. We both are staring at each other for 30 seconds. My professional instinct of a photographer finally kicks in, and I snap the picture. God bless Nikon for Image Stabilization system in their lenses, because my hands were shaking violently. I’ve been around mountain lions before, never wild ones and  never alone, and never in Nebraska! This is for me the same like seeing a polar bear in this place. Couple of quick pictures flash in front of my eyes; cougar running towards me, cougar jumping into the blind, cougar chewing on my lifeless body, or nice cougar mount in a living room, or me in jail after strangling a cougar. Fortunately the cat does not give me much more time to think. It turns and slowly and gracefully walks away.

My hands are shaking when I’m picking up the radio and calling the lodge. At first they do not believe me, then I hear them to relay the story to John. He seems to be excited when I tell them that I have the picture. My only thought is to get back to lodge and get the picture on the computer. I’m not feeling all that good walking to my ATV only 50 yards away, and I’m not feeling good riding to the lodge in the direction the cougar went. I can almost feel its paws on my neck. My wife is right, I’m a wuss.

They are waiting for me at the lodge, all ecstatic to see the picture. In about 10 minutes John and my wife show up all excited. The picture came out nicely. And I feel like a thousand bucks. John wants to see the tracks, and after about an hour we do find them by the river bed and take pictures of the tracks. I am not going to the woods alone again, so in the afternoon I’m joining Alice and John in the hunt for her trophy. The mouflon is nowhere to be found, so we got to the bottom of elk pasture to see the cougar tracks from yesterday and it turns out they are about twice as big as the ones from this morning.  Great, that means two different cats within 20 miles, what a special day for Dismal River and for me. My picture and talks about mountain lions are all that we can talk about that night and John is answering tens of phones of his hunting friends who just received the email with my cougar picture.

The last day of the hunt. I’m going back to the blind. Not empty handed, John lets me have  his revolver. One never knows. It is beautiful and I’m sitting for about 3 hours not seeing anything. What animal would hang around cougar anyway. When I get back my wife is smiling at me, she’s got her mouflon, and she’s telling me all about her hunt. In the evening Joe and John set up different blind for me, and Alice joins me. I want to show her what bowhunter I am. We get excited when a doe shows up and I am estimating the distance (forgot my rangefinder in the ATV, duh). My estimate is off as I can see the arrow hitting dirt in front of the animal and before I draw another arrow, she is gone. I’m missing my third doe. But who cares now, after day like yesterday.

That evening we said our goodbyes and we head home, leaving behind one of the most exciting days of my life. This trip turned out to be quite an adventure for me. I’m hooked on bowhunting, I got nice gobbler, and I’m the only person who has seen mountain lion in Sand Hills of Nebraska. I can’t wait to get back to Dismal River next spring for turkey hunt.

Thanks to John, Jimmy, Joe and everybody at Dismal River Outfitters.

R.

We have arrived early in the afternoon and went to zero our firearms. Whether I am flying or traveling by car, I always need to check the zero on my gun, it builds the confidence. Three shots at 100 yards are touching, so I am a happy camper and I am ready to go hunting. During the evening I have a chance to meet John, the owner and guide and we instantly click. John tells me the history of the Dismal River Ranch and my eyes go big when I found out about his football career with Seattle Seahawks and previously with Tampa Bay. What a nice, modest guy John is.

The next day I am shown the winding Dismal River and I instantly fell in love with the place, we glass for elk and then decide to do a little stalk. Dirt, John, cameraman and I form a small group and we try to sneak up on elk. It is not as easy as it seems. Four people will make noise and after a decent walk we are resting, the elk is gone. Never mind, we got some nice footage of the river and the stalk and after a break we glass for different animal. We got lucky, there is a very nice 14-point management elk not too far from us. My heart beats faster as we were able to get to 150 yards from him, and he has no idea that we are there. His antlers reflect the late afternoon sun. I set the shooting sticks and make sure that camera is focused on the elk. I set the single set trigger on my CZ 550 as I am a firm believer in the first shot and look through the scope. My breathing got to normal and I am focused on the spot behind his front shoulder. I gently squeeze the trigger and the animal is instantly down. It is a heart shot. My first elk   and it is all caught on camera. The shot was exactly where it should have been and both John and Dirt are as excited as I am. It is a very nice bull and after shooting the still pictures for our albums, John guts the animal. I am taking the meat home with me.

For our second hunting day John has prepared a pheasant hunt for the morning. We got  couple of English Pointers helping to point the birds by the Dismal River. Dirt is a quick shot and if I want to have a chance at a bird I need to be fast. I took out  CZ Woodcock 12 Ga. over and under, John is using one of the Redheads to test out CZ shotguns. He has not shot them before. First point. Gentleman Dirt lets me take the first shot and I get the bird. The game is on now and everybody is praising Dirt for his 70 yard kill shot with Hevishot ammo. What an unbelievable shot! The hunt was fun and again the best shots were caught on tape, I can’t wait to watch the show on Television when it is all edited and produced. That afternoon Dirt got his elk on the camera.

The last day we are filming few interviews and talk about the product and John has suggested to go out with him and shoot round of sporting clays. Yes, I forgot to mention that at Dismal River they have 100 rd sporting clays course designed by professional. The course features 10 stations with very well designed target configurations. I am in heaven. The course is available to every hunter who comes to Dismal River.

When I am leaving home the next day I am sad. Every hunter gets treated like royalty. Whether you are first timer or whether you are accomplished hunter, you will always feel welcome at Dismal River.

Alice