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You need a Burro!
I prefer wilderness areas in the back country of Colorado to hunt, fish and spend quality time. That is because I enjoy the remoteness and lack of mechanized modes of travel. As I get up in years my old football injuries and years of treating my body like an amusement park are making it harder to carry a 60 pound pack for a week-long archery elk hunt. A few years ago I was heading down the trail, deep in the West Elk Wilderness. As I made the long trek back to the trail-head, several groups of folks on horseback passed me. I must have looked pretty pitiful with my big pack and carrying my bow because they would say, “you need a horse”. After the third person mentioned my need for a pack animal I began to get a little irritated. As I plodded along I decided the next person who stated the obvious was going to get some snarky remarks from yours truly. I stopped to take a water break and as I sat there on an aspen log wiping the sweat from my brow and rubbing my throbbing knee I began to realize they might have a point.
Picketwire Canyon/Dinosaur Track Site
My family and I loaded up the burros and headed down south of La Junta to Vogel Canyon Picnic area. Vogel Canyon is a tributary of the Purgatorie River Drainage that cuts through the Comanche National Grassland and is a beautiful place with an abundance of petroglyphs within 1.5 miles of the camp that date back 5,500 years. Thursday morning after breakfast we loaded up the burros and gear and drove 15 minutes to the Picketwire Canyon trailhead. The temps were supposed to be in the 90’s and we had a 12 mile round trip ahead of us. We brought...
A NEW STANDARD... GUEST POST BY HAL WALTER
Eastman’s Hunting Journal
Check out issue 143 of Eastman’s Hunting Journal (Elk Addition). There is an article that features burros in the back-country!
Close Enough to Perfect: A Guest Post by Paul Vertrees
Each year my mind wanders from tenkara fly fishing to hunting. It gains intensity during September as small game season nears around the first of October. I usually sneak in an extended backpacking weekend of “Surf ‘N Turf” (mountain small game combined with tenkara trout) just prior to the start of the first big game season. I hunt mule deer, pronghorn antelope, and elk during the rifle seasons in my home state, almost exclusively in federally designated wilderness. The wilderness I hunt most often is an area just a mile from my boyhood home that I’ve been frequenting most of...
