Independence Mountain, Colorado Camping and Hunting Adventure of 2001

    Well, this story begins with my son wanting to take me up to one of his hunting areas in northwestern Colorado. I have had enough time to completely outfit my camper to our needs, and make whatever modifications to it as needed to be able to handle 5 people. This is a rather large pop-up type camper, with a king and queen size pull-out beds front and rear, and a wrap-around couch that makes into another bed for my 6-year-old granddaughter. My dog, Blaze, sleeps with me or the couch when its not in use. The dinette can also be folded down and made into a child's bed. Unfortunately, my wife had to work on this first of many trips. It takes a little over two hours to drive from Longmont up to the NW corner of Colorado.

    So we packed up the camper and headed north. My son's wife and granddaughter took their vehicle, and my son rode with me since I have never been to where we are going. We finally got off the blacktop roads and onto dirt roads, a sign that the end is near, or so I thought.          

We still had another 30 minute drive. 

Independence Mountain is at 9800 feet. have no idea what elevation the dirt road is but when my son said up there in those trees up on top of that mountain is where we are headed. I said what trees? all I see is dirt on a steep slope. He said wait until you get up there...the aspen trees are nearly 2 feet in diameter. The only aspen trees I have seen were in the Rocky Mountain National Park, and those were only 6 inches in diameter. He said turn here. I slowed down and made the turn and then looked up at the slope in the dirt road. My son said it is a bit of a climb.... an understatement!!

    Normally my truck has had no problem towing this 2300 pound camper before now. The motor in my Ford F-150 was a V6 with a 5-speed manual stick shift. So I had a little momentum when I turned so I left it in second gear and began the slow arduous climb. We got up about halfway when the road got steeper, so I jammed it into first gear and kept the RPM's up. We got to a point where I was not sure if this truck had enough balls to pull that camper up this steep loose gravel slope. I looked behind me and Wendy, my son's wife, was real close to the back of the camper and now the ole RPM's were beginning to rapidly diminish. Right at the point where I thought the motor was going to stall out, I slipped the clutch and got some RPM's back and at this point, it was not to take it easy...we're going to the top or else.

    Well, we finally made it up to where the road leveled off and my son said we are now at the top of Independence Mountain. So we drove a little bit down the road to where they had camped before and we pulled in and made a circle up under those enormous aspen trees. This site was right next to an open meadow. This site had an outhouse toilet without the walls...so it was kinda bare all. It was a good thing that it was back away a hundred yards from the camp.

So, Wendy and Brittney, my granddaughter set up the inside of the camper while my son and I  got our firewood squared away and tables and chairs out around the fire pit.

    Time for some lunch and a much needed soft chair that was not moving, and was on a level plane. We relaxed the remainder of the afternoon, made a campfire and dinner. I'm the only one that drinks coffee and that's OK... just more for me.

    This time of the year was early September and bow hunting season was will at the open next month. So we had plenty of time to scout the area looking for animal signs of movement. The chance of actually seeing any animals was pretty non-existent, with a 6-year-old along. We didn't see any, to no surprise, but did see where the animals traveled from place to place. So we set up a couple of tree stands in a couple of likely locations, so everything would be in place when the bow hunting season opened. The rest of the weekend went well and we packed up, hooked up the camper, when all of a sudden, it hit me...we now have to go down this mountain with 2300 pounds pushing all the way down. My son mentioned another road that might be a little better as it is not as steep....well, why didn't we go up that damn road then?

    Now that trip number one is in the bag, and I now know what to expect, I needed more HP out of this motor. So off to the muffler shop I went. We cut out the single cat converter and muffler and installed one size larger in diameter Cats (2 of them) and 2 open flow mufflers and larger diameter tailpipes. She sounds really good, but more than anything, all of that expense should have gained me at least 20 more HP.....and it did. I guess that car dealership in Longmont where I bought this truck, that made a $1500.00 price tag mistake paid off, as the HP increase nearly cost me $500.00. This V6 motor is large, nearly the same CU/Liters as that of the smaller V8 motor. So I already had pretty of good torque, it just needed a little boost on the low end to get up that steep grade. My exhaust plan paid off, as now this truck really pulls and does not stall out.

    Now it's the opening weekend of bowhunting in Colorado and my son has a tag for a Mule Deer Buck and a Bull Elk. So it's time to repeat those 4 paragraphs above and set up camp on top of Independence Mountain. Only this time there

was a slight wrinkle. Ya see it snowed up there...not much maybe 3 to 4 inches on the ground. My truck came with wide track rain type tires which is not an aggressive tread for snow. It was a good thing we brought along snow chains. We got a little way thru that open meadow but when I tried to turn to line up to get back up under those large aspen trees, we bogged down. Great, I got more HP and can't use any of it in this wet snow. So the chains went on and we made it into our location, then the chains came off. The camp was set up quickly as a fire was started in record time. Actually, it wasn't all that cold at the moment, but we knew that it would get near freezing at night. We had plenty of firewood and the camper's heater was such that it would run you plumb out of that camper.

    The next morning I dropped off my son at his tree stand and I drove down the road and parked off to the side and walked over to the other tree stand and got up in it. I don't have a license for bow hunting in Colorado nor a special permit for an out of state hunter. So I just watched and watched and watched some more. I saw nothing but tree rats giving our position to the other animals, as they sure were loud that morning. You often wonder about those things...do animals actually warn other animals of impending danger?

    Today is Sunday and Wendy and Brittney had to go back to Longmont in their vehicle while my son and I planned on staying the full week. They left around 1 pm and so we thought that we might do some scouting in another area. We actually saw a couple of nice Mule Deer bucks up on a hillside feeding and not paying much attention to us. But as soon as we stopped and that door opens they knew they needed to mozy on up the mountain. We moved on up the road some more and we were driving on a narrow clear-cut logging road when my son said,

“ Dad, don’t stop…slow down and I’ll get out”. I kept driving very slow, as looked into the rearview mirror to see him at full draw. But then I had to go around a turn in the road. I kept going slow and then saw a huge buck running thru the woods. I backed up and motioned to my son to get back in the truck. He waved me back, so I backed up to where he was.

    He was grinning, and said I’ve got a big buck down. It appears that there were two large bucks lying down behind a brush pile, just 20 feet off the side of the road. These brush piles give the animals a place to sit out in the afternoon sun and yet remain hidden...or so they thought. All my son could see were the tops of the antlers sticking up above the brush pile. When the two bucks realized something was up, they stood up and my son had an easy 8-yard bow shot. The buck spun around and ran down the sloping mountainside to the bottom and fell over. The weird thing was, I found the arrow right where he shot the buck, just lying on the ground as if he had put it there. But the old thing was, that it was pointing back towards the road…kinda odd I thought. The arrow must have gone all the way thru the body and fell out when the buck spun around. That arrow did the trick, as the buck ran out of fluids right at the bottom of the slope.

    So I went up to my truck to get my camera and get some photos before moving the deer. Then I looked up the side of this hill, as  it was about 30 to 40 feet up a steep grade, and we would need to find a way to get this big boy up to the road. Now I guess it was a good thing that I had about 200 feet of rope in the truck’s toolbox for emergencies and this was one of those emergencies. It's hard enough for two people to drag a 200-pound deer across the ground let alone try to drag it up a steep incline. This buck was much too large for the both of us to try and drag up the mountain slope up to the road. 

    Now I guess it was a good thing that I had about 200 feet of rope in the truck’s toolbox for emergencies and this was one of those emergencies. The buck’s antlers were in full velvet and we didn't want to damage them by putting a rope around them. So I made a loop in the rope to put around the deer's head. This would give us a pulling point. I went up that slope with rope in hand and attached it to the trailer hitch and told my son to lift upwards on the base of the horns to keep the head well above the ground and let the truck do the pulling. It worked like a charm. This deer was a 10 point (eastern count) and could very well be a 12 point if the brow tines developed that year, they should have. 

    My son took the deer meat and the head with the full skin cape attached down to the meat processor in Fort Collins and the head to the taxidermists. We stayed for a few more days up on Independence Mountain just because we were already set up for a longer camping period...might as well make the most of it.

    I had a full neck mount done for his birthday and now I have to look at this deer every morning when I wake up, as it hangs on my bedroom wall…my son doesn’t have any place to hang it at his house. So I’m reminded daily of a wonderful camping trip and of his Mule Deer Buck.

J. Michael