Iowa Report and then some....

We had a great trip to Iowa this past week. All said and done we took 3 bucks and 3 doee, all on film! Lots of encounters with a bunch of deer! The corn still standing did make it hard to see everything out there, but it was still great!

Chris Griffen from Realtree took a great 9 point buck and a doe. Cameron Hanes took a cool buck and a doe. Brad Schor tried hard, but no luck! Joe Rush from ACMedia took a nice 9 point! Ralph and I each took a doe too! We all donated our does the to Iowa HUSH program. HUSH stands for Help Us Stop Hunger! Great program!! A dollar from the deer tags goes towards the cost of the processing of deer for the hungry! You just drop your deer off at one of the participating locations and they will skin, de-bone and grind up the deer for the program!

Now we are driving home to Illinois! We need to get some filming done for the 2010 TV shows! Don't worry, we will fit the filming in between hunting by our house! :-)
We saw some great deer in Iowa, hopefully we will get back so that Ralph & I can fill our buck tags too!!

Good luck to everyone! God Bless!
Ralph & Vicki

Heading to Iowa- Tales of the Hunt Outfitters

We are on the road again and a lot has happened since our last post!

Let's see...

A couple of our Posse were up at Efford's Hunting in New Foundland. Lonnie took a black bear and a monster woodland caribou! Bucky was with him and he took a huge moose as well!! Congrats guys!!

Bill & Scott went to Eagle Lakes Outfitters in Pike Co IL and Bill shot a nice 9 point buck there!! Then the rains came & I think they had to swim home!! LOL!

While we were home, Ralph shot a big 8 point buck on Nov. 1st! He is beautiful and the footage is awesome!! I will work on getting some pictures posted up here!

We are on our way to Iowa now. We will be hunting with Tales of The Hunt Outfitters with Aaron Volkmeyer. We will be sharing camp with Cameron Haines and a couple of our friends from Realtree, Chris Griffin & Brad Schor! We are hoping for some great weather, but it looks like it might get warm! We will keep our fingers crossed! If our phone service works there at camp, we will keep you posted!

Be Safe & God Bless!!

Ralph & Vicki

North Dakota Bucks!

Success in North Dakota at Double B Outfitters - Ralph and Vicki with their beautiful bucks!

Double B Outfitters - North Dakota Ducks & Bucks!!

Wow! What a fantasic hunt we are having here at Double B Outfitters, here in North Dakota! We arrived on Tuesday, We are up here with Tom Gallagher from Cabela's and Jon Allen from Nikon!
The very first afternoon in our Ameristep blind, 45 minutes into my (Vicki) hunt, I had a beautiful 10 point buck come from across the food plot! He look majestic! He gave me a 20 yard shot and my Shockwave double lunged him!! My new Hoyt Vicxen has striked again!!

Thursday morning we went waterfowl hunting with Carly & Joel from Delta Waterfowl. David & John Brandt from Double B were a little nervous because they haven't been seeing many ducks or geese. we got out that morning and limited on Pintails and on geese!! We shot a blue, speckled, snow and a pile of Canada geese! It was a blast, no pun intended! No one shot any deer on Thursday night.

This morning (Fri 10-24) we didn't get as many birds, but we did get 9 geese and 1 duck!

This afternoon, Ralph shot a beautiful 13 point whitetail buck with his new Hoyt Maxxis! It's bigger then mine, but I guess he has too win every once in a while!! Of course, all of this is on film so far!

Jon had to go back to NY, but Tom is still here and hopefully he will be filling his tag tomorrow!!

Double B Outfitters!! Wow! David and John Brandt are th best!! Thanks guys!

Don't yell at me!! Catching up since caribou camp!!

Yes, once again I am running late with everything!! Hey, it's that time of the year when we are supposed to be out hunting & filming, right?

We were up at Mirage Outfitters for our caribou hunt and unfortunately we didn't do so good this year up there. :-( We lost a couple days to weather and the caribou bulls didn't read the script!! :-) Mirage did everything they could to get us into the caribou, heck they flew us over 160 miles northeast trying to get the whole camp into them!! Some of the hunters were able to get the bulls, but not everyone. We were up there with the winners from a Nikon/Odel Rep Group contest, Mark and Stu!! It was their first caribou hunt and they were able to each get a bull! We had sooooooo much fun with those guys! What a riot!! Thanks guys for the great friendship & laughter!!

We flew into O'Hare on Oct. 10th and had our luggage not show up! It was still in Montreal! We ended up waiting 4 hours for it, because we live 3 hours from O'Hare and we were supposed to be down in Pike County already for the Ladies hunt!!

We left home on the morning of the 11th for Pike! RJ and Nani came with us too!! When we got down there, there were a pile of lady hunters!! How cool!! They were all really nice!! We also had some of the Posse Girls down there as well, and most of the guys from the office filming it all!! Unfortunately once again, the weather didn't want to play nice and it rained most of the week!! Oh, and the deer didn't read the script on that hunt either!! I do hope it isn't like this the whole season!! LOL!!

We are getting ready to leave out for North Dakota to Double B Outfitters and the guys are not patiently waiting for me to finish this blog!! LOL!! We will be up there deer & waterfowl hunting with David & John Brandt!! You Betcha Ya!

Oh, and a GREAT note.... Freddy & Robert North (Posse) each shot a bull moose with a TC 300 Win Mag up at Kashabowie Outposts with Fern Duquette in Ontario!! They each shot a great bull!! CONGRATS!!!!

I promise I will do my best to keep posting more often!! Vicki & Ralph!!

Heading up to Quebec to Mirage Outfitters for Caribou!!

Last time we blogged we were up in Whitehorse, Yukon and time has flown since then! We stayed in Whitehorse for a couple of days and then flew home a day early and surprised our son, RJ! Thursday last week, as we were unpacking from our moose hunt, Ralph accidently sliced open his left thumb with his pocketknife!! Yes, he had just got finished sharpening it and was opening up a package with it and the knife slipped!! Well, he managed to cut the inside of his left thumb pretty good, including an artery & possibly a nerve!! I rushed him to the hospital - 4 stitches, and IV (because of all of the blood loss) and a tetanus shot later, we were able to go back home!! He cut his index finger pretty good too while we were up in the Yukon, so the tetanus shot was probably a good thing!! He was in a bunch of pain for the next couple of days.

We did managed to finish putting in our Hunter's Specialties VitaRack Fall Mix plots here by the house! So that's a good thing!! We are expected to get like 2 inches of rain today though, so hopefully it won't flood it!!

Joe and Zendal returned from Renfro's Alsakan Adventures up in Alaska! They each shot a really nice bull moose on a do-it-yourself hunt!! They said it was hard work and a lot of sweat, but they would go back in a heartbeat!! Thanks Wade for having them up there!! The moose footage is awesome!! We are getting some great moose footage and MOOSE MANIA 2 is going to be awesome next year!!!

Freddy and Robery North (Posse) are going to be heading up to Kashabowie Outposts with Fern in Ontario for a moose hunt too!! Scott Wolfe & Bill Ball (both Posse) are up there right now trying for the big swamp donkeys!! :-)

Ralph and I are trying to get everything caught up here, seeing as how we were home for about 12 hours between our Colorado and Yukon hunts! Don't worry, we are not complaining!! We are geting a few things done in the office this miornng and then a packing we will go!! Ralph talked with Peter Palmer, from Mirage Outfitters up in Quebec, yesterday and he told Ralph that there was snow all week in Kuujjuaq and that some of the hunters couldn't fly out of town due to the weather!! They are keeping their eyes on the situation and hopefully the weather will break a little and allow us to fly into a camp on Saturday!! I am thinking I better bring my SHE Outdoor C4 suit!! (Ralph is laughing at me!!) Oh well, better warm, dry and maybe over packed then cold & wet!! :-)

I did call our cell phone company to find out why my data service doesn't work in Canada and that I was going to change companies. They swear up and down that if we take our battery out of our phone for 5 minutes and then turn it back on that it should work. Hmmm... well I guess we will give it a try this weekend, if not maybe we need to make a change.

OK, I think I have rambled on long enough!! Better get to work!! Have a great week!! Vicki & Ralph

Back at the Mac!! Moose hunting!!

Ralph and I are in Whitehorse, Yukon right now. We just flew back out of our MacMillan River Adventures moose camp and had a great time!!

We flew in on the 13th and I had my bull down by the 15th!! I shot my moose at 5 feet from me!! WOW, what a rush!! He is a beautiful bull, heck I don't even know how long my Beman was actually off of my Hoyt before it hit him!! :)

Ralph shot his bull a couple of days later at about 12 yards!! Yes, his bull is bigger then mine. Steve (our guide), Ralph and I walked up to his bull with Steve using the boat paddle as an antler and really got the bull worked up!! He was mad, thankfully Ralph shot him!! :)

It has been a great trip, we met new friends, the Cross brothers - Greg & Steve, and we spent sometime with the new outfitter & his wife, Don & Jackie Lind. The weather was a hair warm, and the bulls weren't moving as much as we had seen in the past, but it was an awesome hunt!
We love the Yukon!!!

We heard that Joe & Zendal, who are in Alaska at Renfro's Alaskan Adventure's moose hunting, Zendal shot a nice moose!! Yea Z!!! Congrats!!! We also heard that Gary got his first elk in Colorado with Winterhawk Outfitters!! Congrats Gary!! I heard he pulled a Freddy and started to cry!! :)

We have some traveling to do before we get home later this week. We wish everyone well!! God Bless!!

Our hunting season has begun!!

It is crazy already and the season has just begun!! I (Vicki) shot a beautiful bull elk on Sept. 8th, last Tuesday at the Cielo Vista Ranch in Colorado! Wow! He ended up scoring 358 6/8" 6x6!! We took pictures of him and then went into town to get Ralph an elk tag. He hunted Wednesday night and Thursday morning, he had a few encounters, but nothing to shoot at. Then we went back to the camp and I turned on my phone, there was a text message from Ralph's Mom, it just stated that we fly out to Whitehorse on Saturday, not Sunday like we were thinking!! Yikes!! Can you say 'throw EVERYTHING into the truck and drive like mad back to Illinois!!!
We arrived at home yesterday about 4:30pm!! We played with RJ the rest of the day and evening.

This morning Mom picked up RJ for the Boy Scouting Event that the Hoffman Estates, IL Cabela's was having today! We washed socks & undies, re-packed, made sure batteries were charged, cut up the Elk backstraps, loaded up the turck and left our house at 11am this morning for the airport!!

We are now sitting in the Vancouver, BC airport waiting for our 10:55pm flight to Whitehorse!! We get into Whitehiorse around 1am, then look for Don Lind from MacMillan River Adventures at the airport. If he couldn't make it, he told us to take the shuttle to the hotel and be ready to fly out tomorrow am for camp!!

As the saying goes..... 'Who needs sleep?' Hopefully we will have some great news to post when we get off of the Mac Millan River!!

Be safe and God Bless!!!

Ralph & Vicki

Cielo Vista - Colorado! Elk hunt

All I can say right now is THANK YOU all at Cielo Vista for getting that elk monkey off my back!! This was my 6th elk hunt and finally I got an elk! Not just an elk, a beautiful bull!! We will update more later wjen we get better phne service!! Wow!!!!!!! Thank you Lord!!!

It's Hunting Season!!!!! First to Colorado for elk!!

It is finally here!! Hunting season!! Yea!! We are trying to get everything packed up and ready to go to head out for Colorado tomorrow! (Wednesday 9/2) We will be hunting at Cielo Vista in Colorado for elk!! We can't wait!!

We have been shooting our Hoyt's non-stop and they are ready to go!! I hope that we will be ready to leave out tomorrow! There is so much that need to be done before we leave, because this is the start of the hunting season and we won't be in the studio too much from now until mid-January!! Trust me, we are not complaining!!

Ralph and I won't have cell phone service or internet while in Colorado and we will be back home around the 11th. If we are succesful, we will make sure someone posts the news up here for us!! We will be able to post on the drive home, as well!!

We then fly out on the 13th for Whitehorse, Yukon!! MOOSE hunting!!! Yes, the MacMillan River is calling us back and we cannot wait to get there!! Again, we won't have cell or interent service, but we will have a satellite phone and we will make sure someone posts on here if we are successful!!

We also have Joe & Zendal leaving out for Renfro's Alaskan Adventures for a drop moose camp on the 15th of September. Gary is also leaving out for Colorado in the middle of September for an elk hunt with Winterhawk Outfitters!! The boys are going to be busy!! Then comes deer hunting for the guys!!

We want to wish everyone a safe & succesful hunting season!! May God bless all of you!!

Vicki & Ralph!!