First snow of the year

On Saturday, Oct. 25th I went on a mini hunting trip with Bryce to Whitecourt (2 hours north of Edmonton). We were hunting for mule deer, white tail deer, and/or elk. We left Edmonton at 5 am and on the way there we saw about 8 cars in the ditch and one semi with a trailer. The roads were terrible (very icy) and it was a snow storm! The forecast predicted 5 - 8 cm of fresh snow for Whitecourt. It was actually closer to 12 inches of snow!

We arrived at our destination by 8 am for the "sunrise", though it was more of a gradual awakening of the day. We hiked about a mile down a pipeline to a location we had scouted and waited. On the way down we trudged through snow to our knees and once we got to the location it was up to my mid thighs! And the snow kept falling - all day in fact.

There were no tracks anywhere. All the animals were bedded down in the trees. Thinking back, it's probably good we didn't get a deer, because dragging it a mile uphill through a foot of snow over a rough pipeline is never any easy thing to do. We left at 11:30 am, having seen nothing. It was a beautiful trip and I'm glad we went, even though we only ended up "shooting" a few pictures.

The south view from my look out

On the way back to the truck

Bryce - still a long ways to go, but then end is in sight!

We've been hunting just about every weekend since the season opened and no luck yet. Hopefully we'll have some luck the next time we go...