I went down with my dad last spring. We were looking for rockchucks, jackrabbits, and coyotes. It was late June and we caught snow and rain for the first couple of days. A warm day was in the high 30's. A friend with plenty of time in Nevada hunting made some notes on a map for us.
We drove along the east side of the Rubies on a backroad and down into Utah and Arizona just for warmer weather. We came back up into Nevada at the beginning of the second week. We drove the length of the East Humbolt Range and towed an ATV trailer through a pass on the north end. It got a little damaged but we made it through. I did have to get out and guide him through some washed out roadway. Quite an adventure! We spent a night in the Snake mountains and also a night NE of Paradise Valley in the hills near an old mining camp. I'm into a little prospecting now and then (so is dad) and actually found a rock with some nice color in it there. There was an old 5 seat outhouse that looked like it'd be full of snakes by July and the remains of an old bucket line that used to run up the slope there.
We ranged from the ET highway and Tonapah to the south to the Utah border on the east and Denio to the northwest. We drove up to Jarbridge at one point which is the only place we saw a rockchuck and it was in a state campground. I can't even recall the names of all the mountains we drove along and through and I'm sure I'm mixing up the order that it happened in. The only warm day we spent 20 miles north of Tonapah where it was windy and 90. We shot all day in an old gravel pit and cruised around on the atv.
One sunny day we caught a wind storm and thought the camper would be blown off the road. That was the day we ran into either cicadas or locusts on the road. During the storm we were heading along a range south of Elko. We were on a 2 lane rural highway that eventually turned to rough dirt and came out at a big mining operation near Elko. Anyway, it was pretty amazing to not be able to see the road much for 10 miles. Must have been billions of them crossing the road. Crunchy buggers with a 1 ton Dodge rolling over them.
I'm going to say that we spent 7-8 days camping and calling coyotes. Aside from the rockchuck and 2-3 roadkill jackrabbits, we found nothing to shoot at but paper. Not once in Oregon, Nevada, Utah, or Northern Arizona did we hear or see a coyote. We didn't see antelope, deer, or elk to speak of either.
Perhaps it was the late spring or just a bad year. It was still a fun trip, just not how we had hoped it would be. I think dad spent $1800 on diesel which was over $5 a gallon.
Memories I'll take to the grave unless I lose my mind first
. I'm living to do it again!
