ccard257

give us a little more info. Kids, what were you planning to do before, etc.?

some generalities:

like all national parks, it's become very popular and so you'll need to do some advance planning as a result. Unless you get there super early, you'll need a timed entry pass and if you want to go down bear lakes road you'll need to make sure to get a pass that includes that and still plan to get there early and likely take a shuttle to your trailhead.

The trails around the bear lake road area are generally very crowded but they are very pretty. Avoid hiking the trails on the east side of this area where they run a bunch of commercial horseback day trips as these trails are pretty much completely covered in horse shite. If you want more seclusion, hike something that is not off of trail ridge or bear lake roads.

Estes mid summer is too crowded/touristy for my taste. We mostly camp when we are in the park, but when we have needed a hotel we stayed at the Gateway Inn in Grand Lake.

If you have kids, you might also look at staying at one of the YMCA properties. There is one in Estes that we have never stayed at, but we have stayed at Snow Mountain Ranch near Frasier several times and always enjoy it. A little further from RMNP, but it's a pretty spot with lots to do on property.

I’ve got a Kimber Montana in .280ai and it would be the last rifle I parted with outside of the sentimental ones. I Can’t imagine shooting that round if I didn’t hand load. I guess if you don’t practice much it’s doable

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go ahead and sleep on our team

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yep, that's still the plan :cheers:

I don't know about the NO area, but flies are plenty easy to order. The pultz poppers and sliders are AWESOME for topwater.

purchase here

clousers are great and you can get them pretty much anywhere.

Bennet's lunch/brunch money is another good one. I used to order directly from him but I think you can get them from most places that sell online now.

I can’t remember if the first was one or two nights but we basically told them we had had enough and were leaving.

Second we had at some hippie birthing center with a midwife :lol:
We were home about 4 hours after the birth. Highly recommend.

take a look at seek outside. I've got the divide 4800 as a "mainly for lightweight backpacking but can also handle hunting/meat hauling" pack. They have some other models that flip that balance and are designed for hunting first. Made in Colorado.

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3” TSS out of a 20ga used to be something I dreaded patterning

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they don't bother me in my gun, but I've put a few through my kid's 20 that has a youth LOP stock on it. The knuckle on my thumb hits my cheekbone without fail :lol:

The Saturday show was incredible. Damn near perfect set list too.

Robot. No idea why.

Get a reloading press and roll your own.

I think a lot of it comes down to how much you practice. When I was growing up, my dad was the stereotypical shoot 3 rounds before the season to make sure it's still on paper and call it a year type of hunter so as a result I was too. I was shaking nervous for every deer I shot, even when I starting shooting a little more. Then sometime in my mid-late 20's I decided I needed to really learn how to shoot and started spending significant time doing that and the nervousness went away seemingly overnight. Now I will still get butterflies when I first spot something exciting but they immediately go away when I get behind the rifle as my brain shifts from "hunting" to "shooting."

I started archery last year with lots of practice and found the same thing. Lots of excitement before the shot and after the hit, but from the decision to get ready to draw to the release my brain went to "shooting" mode.