Rawlins/Baggs weather report?

[elks96]

Curious if anyone could tell
Me how the totals
Look for Rawlins to Baggs area. Have Friday to hunt and trying to decide if I just use the truck or if I need to bring the jeep.

 

[junior]

Looking at the rd cameras you better take the jeep.

 

[elks96]

forgot about the road cameras. good call. not a ton of snow, just worried it will melt into a muddy mess.

 

[twdjr]

It was muddy a few days this past week, but dried out quickly. Spent about half the day yesterday cleaning mud from underneath of my truck. Now need to finish with the inside and outside.

 

[elks96]

It was muddy a few days this past week, but dried out quickly. Spent about half the day yesterday cleaning mud from underneath of my truck. Now need to finish with the inside and outside.

Cool TY. I was down there for the last storm in September. $50 to clean my truck outside.

Did you have any luck?

 

[twdjr]

Cool TY. I was down there for the last storm in September. $50 to clean my truck outside.

Did you have any luck?

Saw tons of lopes or tons to us, but never could turn up that Red Desert trophy I've always heard about. Spent 5-1/2 days of hunting there and put approx 1500 miles on truck in that unit alone. All the bucks were cookie cutters of the other. My buddy shot a 13"er with nice mass. I went there with higher expectations and didn't punch my tag. Talked to the biologist there and he said like so many others here have stated that the drought hurt them. We covered a lot of country but no way were we able to cover the whole unit in that amount of time. Had a good time and enjoyed the trip. However, after 9 full straight days of being behind the wheel I was glad to get out of the truck. LOL

 

[elks96]

Saw tons of lopes or tons to us, but never could turn up that Red Desert trophy I've always heard about. Spent 5-1/2 days of hunting there and put approx 1500 miles on truck in that unit alone. All the bucks were cookie cutters of the other. My buddy shot a 13"er with nice mass. I went there with higher expectations and didn't punch my tag. Talked to the biologist there and he said like so many others here have stated that the drought hurt them. We covered a lot of country but no way were we able to cover the whole unit in that amount of time. Had a good time and enjoyed the trip. However, after 9 full straight days of being behind the wheel I was glad to get out of the truck. LOL

HAHA. I had the tag last year and the type 2 this year. I agree, there are literally hundreds of the 12-13 bucks. The bigger bucks are few and far between. Last year I hunted a ton of day started archery in August and killed my buck October 31st on the last 10 minutes of light. I got so tired of looking at lopes and riving it sucked. This year my second day of archery I did a stalk with my son and killed a buck. Had so much more fun the second time, but ended up hating my first trip. I do know that a couple 83+ bucks were taken out there this fall.

Huge unit and hard to find all the places a big one might be... However the bigger ones I know about were all in easy access areas and not hidden in the massive desert.

 

[jims]

From what I've seen of the I80 corridor (at least from Laramie to Rawlins) antelope numbers are way, way down from winterkill 2 winters ago. I'm pretty sure the same winterkill was apparent at least a little further west along I80?

Most of the older age class bucks died that winter. The 12 to 13" bucks you are seeing are likely young bucks that need a year or 2 more to grow to potential. There are likely a few older bucks available but not many....and it takes a lot of bucks 3 1/2 to 5ish year old bucks to produce 1 B&C buck. There was pretty good to excellent moisture this spring but the moisture shut off in July through the end of August in most of that area. The dry weather in July through August had absolutely nothing to do with horn growth this year since horns are done growing by that time.

On the bright side the buck fawns born along that corridor have had really good horn growth from decent early spring moisture and relatively mild winters this year and yearling bucks that survived the bad winter 2 years ago had incredible mass.

As I've stated before, buck fawns born in years with good growing conditions will have great horns for the rest of their lives. Buck fawns born in drought years will be plagued with thin horns the remainder of their lives. What's nice about antelope is they grow B&C horns in a lot fewer years than a species like elk.