As many of you know, this is such a special time of year. Some people think of fall and think of pumpkin spice coffee, pumpkin pies, and basically anything pumpkin flavored.

But most of you that are reading this would likely tend to think of colder temperatures, hunting season, and our favorite time of year...the whitetail rut!

Well, that's exactly what we've been thinking here at Review This Thing. If you keep up with us on social media, you probably already have a great idea as to where we've been and what we've been doing. But if you haven't been keeping up (you definitely should), Adrian and I have spent the better part of the past month in the field hunting and testing gear for you all.

Our first trip of the fall was a wonderful elk hunting adventure to Montana.

We've been planning that trip for two years and the time finally arrived for us to be gone. It was a truly amazing trip on which we spent the better part of about eight days hunting and trudging through snow covered hills in search of a legal bull for each of us.

While we weren't able to return with elk meat to fill our freezer, we did return with amazing stories to fill our memory banks for years to come. And most of those memories involve catching our balance while walking on steep hillsides!

Of course, one of our favorite memories was warming up by the fire under the bough of a tree while waiting on visibility to improve so that hopefully, just hopefully we could catch an elk (or ten) walking through a well used saddle transition area.

After returning from our Montana trip, we had to quickly shift gears and get ready for a deer hunting trip! The past several years, we have been blessed with the opportunity to be on the ground (or in a tree stand) for opening day and week of the Missouri rifle deer hunting season.

And this year was no different. We had to come home, wash clothes, and re-organize our gear before hitting the road to Missouri.

The main difference this year was that in that short time frame between hunts, we also began our initial testing of a new Sako S20 Hunter in .308 and topped with a Burris Veracity PH 4-20x50 scope. Like we mentioned above, we both love hunting and the outdoors, but we also love these trips because it gives us the opportunity to test guns and gear for you!

The trip to Missouri gave us a little deer season redemption after not bringing home elk meat from Montana. We both were able to harvest great bucks while using new to us rifles and ammunition.

I (Robbie) was carrying the same Bergara Crest rifle chambered in 6.5 PRC that we carried while in Montana. It has a Vortex Razor HD LHT 3-15x42 scope attached that we have been testing and shooting a lot this fall while getting ready for elk hunting.

In the Crest, I was using custom loaded Hornady 143 ELD-X bullets from Pendleton Ammunition. These are the same bullets that Adrian literally shot the same hole with at 200 yards in her video about the Vortex Fury HD 5000 AB binoculars.

Adrian opted for the Sako S20 Hunter chambered in .308. As mentioned above, we're testing a Burris Veracity PH 4-20x50 scope on this rifle. While we hadn't been shooting this rifle in our testing near as much as the Bergara Crest, she was fully confident in the rifle and scope combination while using the Norma Whitetail factory ammunition.

If you've watched many of our CVA Cascade Ammo testing videos, you know we've been impressed with the Norma Whitetail factory loads and it's no surprise they grouped really well from the S20 Hunter also.

We've also been testing the Sako Powerhead Blade copper ammunition from the Sako S20 Hunter. We haven't harvested many deer with copper ammo, but have read and heard great results of terminal performance on animals.

After harvesting her buck on the second day of rifle season, Adrian switched ammo and was able to fill her doe tag on a large mature doe while using the Powerhead Blades. I think we both were impressed with how quickly and cleanly these copper bullets helped fill that tag.

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We've had a great past few weeks of hunting and testing out gear on the road and while at home. We learned a lot of new things and got some great footage to bring you guys in the near future. While being thankful for the harvests and loss of freezer space, the friendships and memories gained along the way are the biggest blessings of all.