He was a was an odd bull - a big 6(ish) on one side and basically 3 points on the other with no actual browtine. The spot he died in was wonderful - a nice flat open meadow, shaded for most of the morning and nearby lots of all day shade. The weather was starting to look a little dreary and...
As night fell the bugles kicked off and continued off an on for a lot of the night - the moon was nearly full that night. They sounded like they were just below me and I could hear fighting in the middle of the night. I was pretty much thinking I could probably shoot one from my tent in the...
At this point we decided to head back to the glassing knob. We had too many options we thought going into the evening. We could see if anything fed out onto the cleanings behind the glassing knob, we could glass for elk to feed out in the lower clearings below and to our left, or we could...
I returned to camp and we decided to drop off into this northern section and get up on a knob that would put us into striking distance of a few of the different areas he had seen elk. I contemplated leaving my own camp thinking maybe this area was too far for me to kill anything myself Wednesday...
After some excellent pizza and a beer our friend headed home and the two of us headed back up to the trail head. We loaded up packs for a two night effort with the plan to get up on and camp on the ridge above the general area the 6x6 had been in in though further down drainage in the hopes...
While the two of them chilled at camp I made my way back to the kill site and then up to the top of the ridge as I had never seen down into the area on the other side. We were fairly far from the truck at this point - 6 or so miles and 3k’ above the trail head so although I kinda wanted to hunt...
We got into position at first light approached. The spot proved to be a great shooting point for the clearing I had seen him in the day before but as the light improved it was clear there were no elk there. The black bear passing through that clearing the night before probably didn’t help. We...
The next morning (Friday) we hiked back out the ridge in the dark and took up our same respective spots as the night before. Morning typically being better than evenings (elk seem to generally feed later into the light time wise than they do feed out before dark - in my experience anyway) we...
I enjoy the hunt story write ups most of all so will go ahead and add our elk hunt to the mix again this year.
My hunting buddy and I both had first rifle bull tags this year and a this was gonna be the year we filled not one but both tags - or at least that was our mindset going in.
Getting...
Well all the meat I took home does look totally normal so no one would know if it were at the grocery store - suppose that happens in commercial settings. But I take your overall point about risk/reward.
I spoke to CPW while dropping off lymph nodes and they seemed to think as have others I have asked that it’s probably okay but should be cooked fully. Probably won’t do any steaks with it then. Suggestions for well cooked items? Stew meat and taco meat both come to mind.
Hey,
This has been discussed before but here is mine. Shot a bull elk this morning - after taking one side off and thinking his hind quarter looked a bit odd I flipped him over and found that he had a wound in that sides hind. Possibly an antler stab. Skinning revealed a lot of very...
I had plans to take my now 8 year old on our longest multi night backpack trip today this year in the Indian peaks with permits secured and everything. But after drawing a goat tag I decided we better do that trip in the goat unit and look for goats.
When the week arrived the weather...