After all of our hard work planning, building, shooting, more planning, and packing the day to leave was upon us. We had decided to leave Wednesday evening before the Saturday opener. It was a 28 hour ride by GPS which meant it would be closer to 30 hours of driving with fuel and food stops. We had six people in total, taking two trucks, and two trailers. Matt was pulling the sleeping trailer (8×16 enclosed) with gear and my truck was pulling the second trailer (7×14) with a deep freezer in it. It was starting to rain a little bit as we pulled off around 7 pm. The plan was to take shifts driving between fuel stops. It couldn’t have worked out better, Matt’s truck got a little better fuel mileage but had a smaller fuel tank than mine, so we were always within a few miles to empty of each other. We averaged about 220-250 mile at every fuel stop. This was much less than anticipated, but we couldn’t necessarily predict the exact fuel mileage of the trucks while towing cross country. We made it to Chicago right at 6 am, then our clocks went back an hour, forgot about timezone changes all together. We decided to stop at a small diner just past Chicago for some breakfast.

After breakfast we looked at the maps and decided since we were good on time, we’d continue on 80 west and catch up with 90 west through Iowa, since no one in the group had been through Iowa before. It looks a lot like Illinois, Minnesota, and South Dakota. Their was lots of corn, combines, grain wagons, and more corn. We linked back up with I90 in Minnesota and had a couple hour drive through Minnesota until we hit South Dakota. We made it through about 3/4 of SD before night fell on us for the second time while driving. Running on the excitement of what was to come we rolled into Wyoming around 10 that second night. We arrived close to the first camping location I had picked out sometime in the early morning hours of Friday. We turned on a dirt road, no lights in sight, pulled over and set up camp about a half a mile from the main road after we checked the GPS to make sure we were on BLM land. It was a beautiful night out so Justin and I decided to throw our sleeping mats on the ground and crawl in our sleeping bags to sleep under the stars.

After setting up my bed for the night, I decided to take my boots and socks off, then throw my boots back on to walk over to my sleeping bag. I was at the back of the tailgate kicked my right boot off and put my bare foot on the ground. I had a sharp stinging sensation hit me immediately. I unknowingly met my first Wyoming cactus, thinking maybe I stepped in some sort of razor grass that just slices your foot up I went to bed with a sore foot. When I awoke the next day I returned to the back of the truck to notice that I had a massive cactus directly under where I was changing my shoes. I pulled the spines from my foot when it was light enough. It was a painful lesson to learn the first night of the trip.

Morning came before we knew it, the sunrise was beyond description. Never having experienced terrain like this it was something i’ll never forget and would seal my love for the west for life. The bighorn mountains were to our west and we had flatter sage land to our east. A mix of terrain and miles of visibility, we were ready and excited to do some scouting and make a plan for the opening day.

When we got up and packed up camp we decided to check out the area. First thing that morning Justin spotted an Antelope buck and 2 doe only about 60 yards from where we set up for the evening, that got everyone out of bed real quick and to their feet. We drove back the dirt road as far as we could until the road ended at a 150 foot drop off to a canyon. The spot was flat, big enough for 2 trailers easily, and had an amazing view. While setting up someone looked out across the public land and saw a 4 point mule deer slowly making his way down a crevice to bed down. We got the Binos out and watched him for a while, he blended in with the scenery so well.

We split up, half the group going up to the local game and fish office and the other half, decided to explore around camp. In the hour it took to get up to the game and fish office, we stopped counting at 300 antelope. They were all over the place, most specifically in the irrigated hay fields. After returning to camp Justin and I decided we’d hike about 2 miles into the public land that evening to get a jump on the first day. We packed up our packs, strapped our guns down and headed out to the highest ridge we could find. The last hour of day light we glassed some antelope in the distance. The next day was on my mind all night and I was ready to finally be able to hunt the west.