By the time I had settled on the species and area we were hunting it was late December and the late archery season was beginning to wind down in PA. This freed up some more time to be able to come up with a solid hunt plan. At this point I had already began soliciting guinea pigs for my grand DIY Wyoming hunt plan. The state of Wyoming allows you to apply for tags in groups of no more than 6 hunters. This seemed to be the best number to work for many other things. We wanted to hunt in pairs, take 2 vehicles in case anything were to happen on the way out, sleeping arrangements, and it prevented us from overcrowding each other while out hunting. So from the beginning myself, Justin, and Nick decided six was going to be the limit. We asked a few guys that had gone to bear camp with us and while people were interested, they just weren’t ready to “pull the trigger” yet. The total tag cost was going to be right around $900 and we had figured fuel and food would be another $400 or so. That’s a big commitment to make when you have no idea what to expect.

Justin was able to get his dad John on board, and Todd was a yes so we had 5 who were a definite to go. It seemed everyone else we had asked just couldn’t make it happen between work, weddings, money, or other situations, they were out. We finally convinced one of our friends that it would be worth taking the week off from farming to come along. At over 6 feet tall and 250 pounds, he’s the epitome of a farm boy and has no issues throwing on a pack. Our first week of October trip just happens to coincide with the fall corn harvest and he was torn between staying to work or going to hunt. He pulled through and made the right decisions. With everyone on the list we were ready to put in for the draw.

We had a few thirsty Thursday WayPoint hunt meetings between January to March to discuss logistical items, or at least that what we told our significant others. We were faced with hunting a terrain none of us had ever experienced before for game we knew almost nothing about. I had more rocks to turn over to figure out what was next.