I recall hunting with a friend from high school who was one of the participants on a party permit... We backpacked into the mountains near Arkville the night before the season opened. The permit had to physically be in the possession of the person hunting for the doe and Steve had it. He shot a doe... there was a special large wide band that had to be placed on the carcass and a form to complete. It took us hours to get that deer down the mountain through a foot plus of snow... He dragged and I juggled two rifles and my backpack.
An amusing story from that trip was that from where we set up camp in a hemlock grove, at the base of a cliff, we heard a bunch of guys talking... 8 of them as I recall. They had enough equipment for an army! They choose a spot where there wasn't any snow--the wind had blown it all away! They had cases of beer with them and we were uneasy with that scene and Steve went over to find out what they were doing. Turns out two were camping and the rest were going to meet there for lunch the next day. With that we decided to invite them to stay in the grove with us so we knew what they were doing. I was camping with a poncho for a shelter and Steve had a tarp. They thought we were nuts... We had fun with them though.
It was rather windy and they had an umbrella tent. Through our afternoon scouting we knew there was a bobcat den along the base of the cliff not far from where we were camped. We convinced them to set up their tent real close to the base of the cliff so the wind couldn't catch it. Later on, after dark, one of them was looking around with his flashlight and saw the den--we had pretty much stuffed their tent into the entrance! We told them what it was... Shortly after that, by the light of the fire, we could see the cat's eyes circling our camp. They stayed up all night sitting by the fire with their flashlights and guns. Steve and I slept soundly.
At lunch time the next day the camp was full. Most of the guys in that party had Remington semi-auto .30-06s. I had a Remington 700 BDL in .30-06 and I heard them talking about all the shots they took and some saying they were almost being out of ammo... it sounded like a war zone up there with 5 round bursts of fire! One of the guys begged me for ammo... I finally relented and explained that they were reloads that were partially sized to fit my gun's chamber... they might not cycle through his semi-auto. Factory ammo was $4.50 a box and I was reloading them for about $1.80. At a dollar a round I sold him 3 of the 5 rounds I had... I figured I only needed one.
Though I never hunted there again because it was like a war zone, I miss those days! LOL
