1FastGambler
Active Member
- Messages
- 982
My story began on June 18th when we learned the great news! I have two lucky boys ages 11 & 14 who drew 16C youth tags. I have never seen 16C before so we decided to go down and learn the country.
My oldest son & I just got back from our scouting trip to unit 16C. Good lord man what an adventure!! We left early Friday morning and after our 1st 7 miles of dirt road (actually lava rock) we got our first flat tire (left rear). Since we were not that far into the wilderness and the day was still early I decided to turn around and go to Magdalena, NM and get the tire fixed. Well... the "tire guy" had gone home for the day and being the ONLY ONE in town I chose to buy a tire plugging kit and "fix" it myself. The initial fix seemed to work pretty good so just in case I bought a 2nd tire plugging kit and 2 cans of "fix-a-flat" and headed back out. We made it a whopping 6 miles and got a 2nd flat tire (right front). Not wanting to use up my 2 cans of "magic fix a flat" I plugged the hole and changed the tire to the one that came off the left rear since the plug had more time to dry and headed back to Magdalena to air up the tire at the gas station. Once we got done we headed back out with great anticipation of seeing lots of elk and know for sure that our bad luck must come to an end...
We drove until a little after dark and picked a decent place to camp. We were camping with a Truck Tent and Truck bedz brand air mattress. I nearly froze to death, but my son slept like a baby in his new -20 deg sleeping bag that we picked up at Sportsman's Warehouse in Albuquerque. (by the way, have you ever tried to setup a truck tent in the dark for the first time?)
The next morning we ate bacon & eggs for brkfst and headed out. We videoed a heard of cows and calves about 1/4 mile from where we were camped. (So far the tires are all doing fine) We saw elk nearly everywhere we went and found a heard of 100+ on one of the many Private Ranches. The elk were obviously there because this place had just about the only green grass we had seen. (conditions were very dry, but the monsoon season is just starting and thundershowers are all around us) I decided to head down to a new area of the unit and my son abruptly rolls his window down and revealed that unmistakable sound (pffft, pffft, pffft... or something like that) air coming out of the right front tire. Knowing that the semi-permanent plug had come out I quickly grabbed the tire plugging kit and ran around the truck and shoved another plug in the hole as quickly as I could in order to conserve what little air was still in the tire. We decided to change the tire out with the other plugged tire since the plug had more time to dry and continued on our way.
The spot we were headed to more than lived up to my expectations... as we topped the hill that overlooked "the spot" we saw literally hundreds of elk.
We got out the spotting scope and watched them for about an hour. Looked at a bunch of small bulls, but mostly cows and calves. I'm still amazed at how many calves there were. Almost every cow had one calf and lots of them seemed to have twins! We had an absolute blast watching them run around playing like school kids at a playground!
Since we didn't have much of a spare tire anymore I decided to start heading back north check out some new country on the way. The rest of Saturday was pretty uneventful other than the lightning, rain, and what seemed like an elk behind every tree!
This morning I awoke, teeth chattering, after another cold sleepless night of rain, wind, lots & lots of howling coyote's, and a snoring 14 year old all "snug as a bug in rug" in his new sleeping bag, decided to get up and get rollin' so we could go see some more of the beautiful Gila before we had to head home. We had a wonderful morning and I got to laugh my butt of watching my son trying to shoot a skunk with my 22-250. (I have it zeroed at 200 yds) He got off all 5 rounds without putting a scratch on polecat... all
5 shots were about 3-6" high and the skunk escaped down a burrow. I was laughing the whole time hollering at him, "if you keep missing you're gonna get Skunked"!!
Around 9:30 Sunday morning I decided we better hit the road and head home.
About 20 miles outside of Magdalena the first tire I plugged went flat again, so I swapped it out the last tire that I had quickly replaced the plug in and added a can of fix-a-flat and limped into Magdalena. Once we got to the gas station I figured that since that tire made it 20+/- miles with only 20 lbs of air in it that I could just air it up to 35-40psi and go on home... WRONG! We didn't even make it thru town and the plug blew out yet again... so, we change the tire AGAIN and went back to the gas station and asked the tire guy if he could fix two tires. He tried to patch the tire that had just lost the plug (again) and it didn't work. He tried to plug it and couldn't keep it from leaking air and said he couldn't fix it. Not wanting to try and "push my luck" driving all the way home without a spare I asked him, "what if we put two plugs in it at the same time"? He seemed to think that was a good idea, so we each put a plug stip in a plugging tool and on "three" shoved them into the hole. This seemed to work pretty good so my son went and got the other tire that had been trying to kill our fun so the tire guy could fix it properly. After a thorough professional visual inspection of my outstanding "plug job" he said we'd be better off leaving it alone since it wasn't leaking air at the time.
We left Magdalena and headed for Farmington praying that we wouldn't have another flat tire around 11:30AM. I am happy to say that we did make it home with out changing any more flat tires!! My son & I are now willing to compete in the NASCAR pit crew championships!!! We have a bunch of elk & a few antelope on video and quite a few pictures to enjoy and remember the Gila trip in June 2008 forever...
Moral to the story...
#1 - Take plenty of tire plugs, an air compressor, fix a flat, & maybe even some of that green tire slime...
#2 - If your truck has the factory stock 4 ply tires DON'T go to the Gila! (These tires only had 8000 miles on them) At lunch today I went and bought 5 new 8 ply Cooper Discoverer S/T's!
"WIndage & Elevation Pilgrim, Windage & Elevation"
My oldest son & I just got back from our scouting trip to unit 16C. Good lord man what an adventure!! We left early Friday morning and after our 1st 7 miles of dirt road (actually lava rock) we got our first flat tire (left rear). Since we were not that far into the wilderness and the day was still early I decided to turn around and go to Magdalena, NM and get the tire fixed. Well... the "tire guy" had gone home for the day and being the ONLY ONE in town I chose to buy a tire plugging kit and "fix" it myself. The initial fix seemed to work pretty good so just in case I bought a 2nd tire plugging kit and 2 cans of "fix-a-flat" and headed back out. We made it a whopping 6 miles and got a 2nd flat tire (right front). Not wanting to use up my 2 cans of "magic fix a flat" I plugged the hole and changed the tire to the one that came off the left rear since the plug had more time to dry and headed back to Magdalena to air up the tire at the gas station. Once we got done we headed back out with great anticipation of seeing lots of elk and know for sure that our bad luck must come to an end...
We drove until a little after dark and picked a decent place to camp. We were camping with a Truck Tent and Truck bedz brand air mattress. I nearly froze to death, but my son slept like a baby in his new -20 deg sleeping bag that we picked up at Sportsman's Warehouse in Albuquerque. (by the way, have you ever tried to setup a truck tent in the dark for the first time?)
The next morning we ate bacon & eggs for brkfst and headed out. We videoed a heard of cows and calves about 1/4 mile from where we were camped. (So far the tires are all doing fine) We saw elk nearly everywhere we went and found a heard of 100+ on one of the many Private Ranches. The elk were obviously there because this place had just about the only green grass we had seen. (conditions were very dry, but the monsoon season is just starting and thundershowers are all around us) I decided to head down to a new area of the unit and my son abruptly rolls his window down and revealed that unmistakable sound (pffft, pffft, pffft... or something like that) air coming out of the right front tire. Knowing that the semi-permanent plug had come out I quickly grabbed the tire plugging kit and ran around the truck and shoved another plug in the hole as quickly as I could in order to conserve what little air was still in the tire. We decided to change the tire out with the other plugged tire since the plug had more time to dry and continued on our way.
The spot we were headed to more than lived up to my expectations... as we topped the hill that overlooked "the spot" we saw literally hundreds of elk.
We got out the spotting scope and watched them for about an hour. Looked at a bunch of small bulls, but mostly cows and calves. I'm still amazed at how many calves there were. Almost every cow had one calf and lots of them seemed to have twins! We had an absolute blast watching them run around playing like school kids at a playground!
Since we didn't have much of a spare tire anymore I decided to start heading back north check out some new country on the way. The rest of Saturday was pretty uneventful other than the lightning, rain, and what seemed like an elk behind every tree!
This morning I awoke, teeth chattering, after another cold sleepless night of rain, wind, lots & lots of howling coyote's, and a snoring 14 year old all "snug as a bug in rug" in his new sleeping bag, decided to get up and get rollin' so we could go see some more of the beautiful Gila before we had to head home. We had a wonderful morning and I got to laugh my butt of watching my son trying to shoot a skunk with my 22-250. (I have it zeroed at 200 yds) He got off all 5 rounds without putting a scratch on polecat... all
5 shots were about 3-6" high and the skunk escaped down a burrow. I was laughing the whole time hollering at him, "if you keep missing you're gonna get Skunked"!!
Around 9:30 Sunday morning I decided we better hit the road and head home.
About 20 miles outside of Magdalena the first tire I plugged went flat again, so I swapped it out the last tire that I had quickly replaced the plug in and added a can of fix-a-flat and limped into Magdalena. Once we got to the gas station I figured that since that tire made it 20+/- miles with only 20 lbs of air in it that I could just air it up to 35-40psi and go on home... WRONG! We didn't even make it thru town and the plug blew out yet again... so, we change the tire AGAIN and went back to the gas station and asked the tire guy if he could fix two tires. He tried to patch the tire that had just lost the plug (again) and it didn't work. He tried to plug it and couldn't keep it from leaking air and said he couldn't fix it. Not wanting to try and "push my luck" driving all the way home without a spare I asked him, "what if we put two plugs in it at the same time"? He seemed to think that was a good idea, so we each put a plug stip in a plugging tool and on "three" shoved them into the hole. This seemed to work pretty good so my son went and got the other tire that had been trying to kill our fun so the tire guy could fix it properly. After a thorough professional visual inspection of my outstanding "plug job" he said we'd be better off leaving it alone since it wasn't leaking air at the time.
We left Magdalena and headed for Farmington praying that we wouldn't have another flat tire around 11:30AM. I am happy to say that we did make it home with out changing any more flat tires!! My son & I are now willing to compete in the NASCAR pit crew championships!!! We have a bunch of elk & a few antelope on video and quite a few pictures to enjoy and remember the Gila trip in June 2008 forever...
Moral to the story...
#1 - Take plenty of tire plugs, an air compressor, fix a flat, & maybe even some of that green tire slime...
#2 - If your truck has the factory stock 4 ply tires DON'T go to the Gila! (These tires only had 8000 miles on them) At lunch today I went and bought 5 new 8 ply Cooper Discoverer S/T's!
"WIndage & Elevation Pilgrim, Windage & Elevation"
