Montana Snowstorm!

Our unseasonably warm dry weather ended a few days ago.  Montana was hit with a fun, snowy, cold storm!  Although inconvenient this is really what Montana is about!  Our good friend Noah invited us out to a ranch that he has permission to hunt and we readily agreed.  The weather was still pretty socked in and there is a solid foot of snow on the ground but we had doe tags for the area, and enjoy spending time with Noah and his family.  Kimber stayed back with Grandma, but we had Dane and Noah's two kids, Kaylie and Kyle!  

As we were following Noah on the way out, this was the view out the window of the truck.  It was just solid white!  We couldn't see where the snow ended and sky began!  It really shows how someone could get lost on a day like that!

As we turned off the paved road to drive down the dirt road leading to where we were going to hunt I watched Noah's full size truck breaking through the snow.  My first question to Clint was "did we bring a tow strap?"  He assured me that he brought a tow strap and then we discussed the fact that if we get into some deep drifts then we would call it and turn around.  (Hopefully before we got stuck!)

We followed a while, but when we turned and started to skirt the top of a coulee I saw that Noah's front bumper was pushing snow.  I mentioned to Clint I was feeling a little nervous about the potential for both trucks to get stuck and he agreed, so after chatting with Noah we hopped in with him and his kids for the remainder of the drive.  

Upon arrival we all piled out and headed off towards a large coulee.    Here is the crew!

I was bringing up the rear, herding kids and helping Dane in the deep snow.  Noah and Clint crawled over the edge to peek into the coulee and the kids and I slowly made our way to where they were.  The kids and I could see deer making their way up the far side of the coulee and while we were pointing and chatting I heard Clint shoot.  Then the guys peeked over the edge and waved me forward.  There was a yearling still in the bottom, but after thinking for a moment I decided I would pass.  Clint then headed back to the truck for the meat packs and Noah and I were going to head down, field dress the deer and wait for Clint.  As I was falling back from Noah with the three kids, I looked down the steep sides into the coulee and realized that getting all three kids down might be a challenge, but getting them all back up might be too much!  So we decided to turn around and head back to the truck while the guys went down to the deer.  (A choice we later decided was super smart!)

Here is Clint headed up out of the bottom with a deer on his back.  

You can see that the snow was pretty deep, I'm sure that hauling that deer up on his back was quite the job!

When they got to the top, Noah took over on the meat pack and hauled the deer out the rest of the way!  The sun was just setting and it was quite the beautiful sight!

On days like these we are again reminded how fortunate we are...  Good friends, beautiful sunsets, and fun hunts in the snow!  It doesn't get much better than this!