Lil Carny's Hunting Adventures on Youtube

My daughter whom we affectionately call "Lil Carny" (as in little carnivore), started expressing an interest in hunting and specifically my hunting adventures. She always ran out to meet me when I came home wondering if I had gotten anything. She would stick her fingers in the mouth, squish the eyes, play with the tongue, much to Mom's displeasure. Eventually, around 7 years old, she would cry if I didn't take her hunting with me. And I did, some of the times. We sat together waiting for bears, and drove roads looking for monster muleys.

Most of the time was spent trying to keep her quiet, and more than once we heard bears run off.


My daughter's own hunting adventures came when she turned 10. We started out shooting doves, then on to deer, elk, turkeys, bears, and even a cougar.





We have created a YOUTUBE CHANNEL, "Lil Carny" that we hope will get kids engaged in the outdoors, and not so much on their electronics. We hope we can get our Monster Muley community to help us spread the good message, that the outdoors is WAY funner (is that a word?) than staring at a screen.

I will continue to add videos of her adventures on here, or you and any kids you can think of, can go directly to her channel.

This year, with 2 elk tags, deer tags, and a bighorn sheep tag, we plan on getting her fun filled hunting adventures in 4k.

Thank you!

First video: Lil Carny's first try at Bear hunting!

The finale (part 2) of Lil Carny's bear hunting adventures. Check it out and spread the good word. Let's get kids hunting again!

So, I will try to summarize what has happened thus far. In August, I got a chance to try and shoot an antelope with my bow, and I had one day to get it done. Fortunately, I did! A spot and stalk got me to 55 yards. Good start so far!


I was also able to check my trail cam for elk sign.


I had plenty and was excited about elk season.

Labor day was Ginger's and my first trip out for sheep. We had my friend Trent and his wife and kid come out and stay as well. That gave us the ability to split up and look for sheep. 4 days, and no rams were spotted. However, we did see plenty of Ewes and Lambs, and small Rams. They are everywhere and are certainly a distraction.




We glassed a lot of country, but never found any mature rams.




We even killed some Chickens (grouse). We laughed cause she just couldn't seem to kill one with my 12 ga. finally she got a big blue! I rocked 2 with 2 rock throws!





We also found an old mine building that was the house for some deer, one of which we affectionately name Elliot!





No mature rams though.

A couple of weekends of elk hunting was all I could muster because of the loss of an employee and lots of work. We did come close, with a 40 yard standoff whereby the bull wouldn't come out of the jackpines.

So, Lil' Carny and I couldn't wait to get back to the sheep area, which was about 7 hours away. I decided to take her out of school for the first week of October until the last day of Season on the 13th. We figured we'd get it done the first few days, shoot some birds, catch some fish, and maybe even deer hunt. Boy were we wrong.
We went an additional 8 days without laying eyes on a mature ram, coupled with the first 4 days, that's 12 days without a mature ram. We hiked our butts off trying to find one. We scaled hills, and put ourselves in some pretty dicey spots.







One day we had the privilege to have lunch with the previous outfitter in that unit. Gary has probably taken more sheep than anybody off that mountain. He suggested going up to the top, which is a lookout and moving down about 1200' to a glassing knob. I had been there before on previous sheep hunts, but always struck out, as there is a lot of land to cover. His knowledge would definitely help though. The top of the lookout is at 8200' and the bottom at 2900'. We drove our truck to the bottom on the main road, and then rode our UTV up to the top. So, if we shot one, we'd be able to take it to the bottom. Otherwise, the plan was to hike back out the 1200' ascent to the UTV and ride it back down. The UTV trail to the top was 50 minutes, and the truck route was 2.5 hours. So, we wanted to be judicious with our decisions. We drove the UTV in, then hiked down and spent all day (after losing a pack out of the back and having to drive back for it). About 5:30 PM I started hearing some cracking noises a long way off. I told Ginger to be quiet and we listened. Sure enough we heard the cracking noise again and determined we had Rams headbutting! It sounded like a long way down there, and I said "should we go for it?" She said "yeah let's go". I said it's at least 2000' below us, we'll have to walk all the way out to the truck.
We started our way down, only to realize we had probably bitten off more than we could chew. It took us 2 hours to get down to where we thought the Rams were. It was basically dark when we got to the spot we thought they were. This was a major quad workout, and with about a 30 lb pack (optics, gun, etc.), I was already feeling the Burn (not the Bern). But, nothing to do but keep on going.

We had completely lost the trail (basically didn't exist in the middle), and we got cliffed out in some cuts and had to backtrack. I really contemplated staying put all night, because you do not want to improvise here, as the last 1000' is shear rock, and you can easily die. We NEEDED to be on the trail. After some searching, we finally found the trail (or what had been), and 4 hours later, we ended up at the truck near midnight. Completely exhausted.
Next morning we slept in. Now, we had to drive the 2.5 hours up to the lookout, and pick up our UTV. On the way, we met some guys on ATV's scouting for deer and elk. They informed us of a tree across the road that there was NO way to get around or pull off the road. I didn't have a chainsaw either "duh". They said "we'll load one of our ATV's up, and ride together and I'll drive your UTV down". Which sounded good until we beat them down (we had a 2 hour drive, there's was and hour). I knew there was a problem. We drove all the way to the start of the ATV trail and waited. After a half an hour, I started to unload their ATV to go and find them. Here they came. They had a flat on the ATV and had to patch it with 8 plugs! Thanks Steve!

We did have other cool experiences on our big hikes. On one hike, we walked up on a bear feeding on a deer kill. When I say "walked up", I mean to 15' or so. She was sooo fat from eating the deer, she could barely waddle up the mountain away from us.
That'll be in our next video.

The next was on another leg and lung crusher. We hiked up some old mining roads got on a trail, and went into two major Canyons to look for sheep. Nearly 3000' feet vertically and 8.5 miles. We were walking along, and I couldn't find the trail. I started looking for it using my bino's when I spotted some tines pointed up. I smiled and said "found a shed!" We walked over to it, and started looking for the match. After a bit of looking, I finally spotted it with my bino's again. I said, "I'll film you picking it up". She walked over, then past the shed with me yelling "NO, it's right above you! Like 5' above you". I couldn't understand what she was doing but she walked right over to ANOTHER shed! Then she picked up the match that I had seen, and kept going another 10' and picked up a 3rd antler! 3 antlers in 15 seconds! Crazy.

So, we were finally down to our last 3 days. We had heard of some half curl rams, and wanted to check them out. Next morning we found them. They were pretty young, but Ginger decided she'd be happy with one. A poorly executed stalk, where we got caught by a Ewe on her feet had all of the sheep running up hill away from us. We gave chase for another 500' vertical, but I knew it was over.

That evening, we found a good full curl ram across the Salmon river. We had about an hour to blow a a raft, slide and pull it over the rocks to the water, get in it, and get across the river, and up the Canyon he was in. We were EXCITED. But, I couldn't turn him up. Just lost him. That's when Ginger started sobbing. We had worked so darn hard up until then. That night we were hopeful we could turn that ram back up.

Next morning found us looking for him. A couple days previously we had met some old guys out deer hunting (the deer season started on the 10th). They said "by gosh, we are going to stop deer hunting and find her a Ram". So, as we were now looking for the Ram across the river, "Grandpa John" as he wanted to be called came sliding to a stop yelling "follow me, we found her some Rams". We barely could keep up, which was hysterical because he drove so slow previously. We came up to a very excited "Grandpa Kenneth", whom was yelling at us to get follow him. We went up to find about 20 sheep, with 2 bigger half curls in the herds already chasing Ewes. When I say Bigger, I mean bigger than the ones from the previous day. I said "not as big as the full curl, but would you be happy with one of them?" She said "yeah Dad, I would". Ginger had to shoot my .257 because her gun had some missing screws from our "death hikes". The Ram bedded and she shot him at about 100 yards right in his bed. He rolled over and it was over. Finally.

Thought I'd finish off our 2021 season as we are at the end now. I got in a couple days of deer hunting after the Ram hunt ended from the Friday the 29th to Sunday the 31st of October. After helping my buddy Brian get a buck on Saturday morning. I spotted a decent 4x4 with an extra bedded at the top of a ridge about a mile away that afternoon.

I had same friend drop me off and I headed up the hill after him. He would spot from the truck as I made my stalk. Making it to just about 350 yards from the buck I got pinned down by a doe and fawn. I settled in for an hour+ wait for him to stand. Finally he did, and I shot, nothing. Shot again, nothing. He just stood there feeding. I must be shooting over I thought. I dialed down 5 minutes, nothing. Again, another 10 minutes, nothing... Not sure why I didn't figure it out, probably because I was in panic mode. But, Brian had inadvertently turned my turret 360 degrees! I had showed him my set up, and he had been fiddling with it! The long walk of shame down the hill was horrible. He had that morning said "all I need is my 30-06 and a 3x9". That night I told him "I'm going to sleep in and in the morning go see if I see the buck, if I do, I'll call you and bring your gun" because at that moment I still didn't know what was going on with mine. Next morning (Halloween) I got up a little after sunrise, drove over and started scoping the hill. I ended up finding 6 bucks already chasing does. 2 were 4x4's. I called Brian, he said he'd come. But he took his sweet time, and meanwhile, another hunter showed up. He was looking over the same hill. I said "you're probably going to shoot that 4x4 aren't you", after telling him the story from yesterday (he'd heard all the shooting). He said "what 4x4, all I've seen is a 2x3". Um, second mistake in 24 hours. Brian shows up right after he shot the 4x4 or maybe a different buck (couldn't tell). Another guy on top of the mountain shot the second 4x4. I felt like I had my chances, so I wasn't all that mad. We drove around the back side of that mountain and into some canyons. I saw some does and said "deer, right there". He said buck!! I said "which one"? He said "what do you mean which one"? "He's right there!" Turns out he could see down into the ravine (I couldn't from driver side). Once we worked that out, the buck had taken off. I grabbed Brian's gun, ran down the trail after them. A quick off hand shot and a miss at about 150 yards. Darn, run some more. I make some noises and the buck stops at 280 yards, I sit down with grab a sage branch as a hold (very flimsy), and drill the buck with a little Kentucky holdover. A second shot anchors it for good.

Ginger had a Late Season Bull hunt in Arizona that started the day after Thanksgiving. We had planned a couple of days of scouting, but I was just too busy with work. We got there after the 15 hour drive to find out the hotel had canceled our reservation. A couple of scouting hours later I had it re-booked, at a much higher rate. With only about an hour left in the day we took off, headed for a map scouted area, unloaded the side x side, with 20 minutes of life left. 10 minutes after heading out we were shocked to find a real nice 6x6 feeding with out a care in the world at 125 yards. 12 hours to go and he'd be dead! Well, next morning we headed towards a water hole I thought he might be going to. He wasn't there but we did see a few groups of cows. We ended up finding some elk the night of the second day of the hunt. As I wanted to make sure she didn't miss more school days if possible, and even though she really wanted a 6x6 or bigger (after seeing the bull the first night), we decided this bull was big enough.

One shot with her 6.5 and he was down for good. It took us till about midnight to quarter and pack him to the side x side. I flew her home Monday, and she only missed one day of school!