Long time poster, fourth hunt, first elk. I'm from Alabama and this will be my first time to post about a successful elk hunt after four attempts to apply what I learned from Jacobsen and Newberg. I've hunted twice in Wyoming and twice in Colorado all four times with my two sons (I have a third who's just now getting old enough to come with us). I've always purchased a youth tag (except once in WY when the Special draw was at such a discount of $1,300) with the hopes of getting them one first and the fourth time was a charm.
I posted about my e-scout plan for Wyoming General W here. We applied as a party with another father/son duo with 8 points since we had no idea what point creep was going to do. I had a plan to split up glassing assignments, but they did not want to split up and were averse to trusting GoHunt maps. Since he had the most points, I offered him 'first right to refuse' any elk we saw. He hunted elk before, but it was from a base camp and driving around glassing from a truck. This would be their first time to backpack into the woods and hunt elk this way. We started out with four llamas, but due to a combination of high confidence in filling both bull tags and after I saw how much extra stuff they brought, I added two (2) more llamas.
The first night we got there, unpacking and repacking Llamas was a new experience for us. It took longer than expected. We ended up hiking in the dark through a basin that had no named trail through it, lots of deadfall, and unexpected steep inclines. The thinner air added to the shock. We ran into outfitters on horses who were coming in the opposite direction. Man, they move so fast through thick forest!
We only made it halfway up the drainage that I expected to go, so we set up camp in the dark and continued on the next morning. The morning hike was wonderful and we made it to our new camp within a decent time, and even saw a couple of grouse. My pellet gun (for quiet discharge) scope was smashed and it turned out to be way off. We were not able to capitalize on them this time.
That evening, I had a good glass location within one mile of camp, but it was a steep climb greeted with 35-40 mph winds at the top. With jeans and sweatpants on, two guys wanted to go back to camp at 5PM. My son vouched for them since he had thin nylon pants and no long underwear at the time. We found a good base camp with water and feed for the llamas. Stream water was close by as well:
The stars on the first night were terrific and my phone surprised me after I turned the flash off:
My family and I are avid fans of the Outdoor Boys on YouTube. During our last stop at the grocery, he insisted that he get the ingredients to make the same bread Luke makes when he goes camping. So we cooked that up and it was fabulous!
No elk yet, but we saw lots of sign on the way in, but it did seem slightly old. Here's the basin we glassed the first night:
The next couple of days we glassed and glassed three (3) areas that I swore would be productive from my research coupled with confirmation from a biologist that they were good for the first half of October. We were entering a transition from rut to post rut and continued to focus on north-facing slopes. Here are a few of these areas we glassed:
On the fourth day of the hunt, we went to a location that had numerous springs (not shown on any map) emerging from various locations on north-facing slopes, about 10-15 meadows within the trees of these slopes, and was the second-most remote corner of the unit. Later in the hunt, we also found two unmarked waterfalls (20' and 5' high) located in an obscure cut within this basin. You can't see them unless you are right on them.
As we side-hilled to a central knob that jutted up in the middle of this basin, we saw two (2) older raghorns moving through from left to right as if they were initially spooked, but initial shock wearing off and slowing to a steady gallop. They eventually moved down to a willow-filled drainage and around a bend, out of sight. We decided to glass from the open hillside and watch for a while.
As we sat, we saw a cow moose by herself meandering from right to left by the willows and grass above them. Suddenly, one of the elk from the first group of two darted out the opposite direction and began to slow down after seeing the cow moose. The two made eye contact and the cow moose kept following him. The bull elk kept looking back at the cow and running away as if he was trying to tell her, "dude, lady! not my type!". These comical interactions lasted for a few minutes until they disappeared into the timber. About 20 minutes later, we moved on to get to the knob we intended to glass.
As we crested the knob, we saw an outfitter on horseback with a second pack horse behind him and circled around various islands of timber. We assume someone shot one of the two bulls and were trailing it. We figured we didn't hear the shot since it was on the other side of the steep knob.
The outfitter ended up disappearing and we thought this basin was going to be dead, but continued to glass and watch anyway.
From this knob, we glassed to the south while facing a wide, gentle, north-facing slope. At about 9AM, we saw a group of six elk to our 10 o'clock feeding in the shade. It looked like there were two (2) raghorns in this group; just under a mile from us.
20 minutes later, another group of eight elk skylined to our 2 o'clock, slowly filtering over the rim of the basin into the next unit. We saw two (2) bulls in this group; one looked nice with whale tales on the tips. I assume a 6 point, but it was too far away to count. These were about 1.5 miles away as the crow flies.
More to come...
I posted about my e-scout plan for Wyoming General W here. We applied as a party with another father/son duo with 8 points since we had no idea what point creep was going to do. I had a plan to split up glassing assignments, but they did not want to split up and were averse to trusting GoHunt maps. Since he had the most points, I offered him 'first right to refuse' any elk we saw. He hunted elk before, but it was from a base camp and driving around glassing from a truck. This would be their first time to backpack into the woods and hunt elk this way. We started out with four llamas, but due to a combination of high confidence in filling both bull tags and after I saw how much extra stuff they brought, I added two (2) more llamas.
The first night we got there, unpacking and repacking Llamas was a new experience for us. It took longer than expected. We ended up hiking in the dark through a basin that had no named trail through it, lots of deadfall, and unexpected steep inclines. The thinner air added to the shock. We ran into outfitters on horses who were coming in the opposite direction. Man, they move so fast through thick forest!
We only made it halfway up the drainage that I expected to go, so we set up camp in the dark and continued on the next morning. The morning hike was wonderful and we made it to our new camp within a decent time, and even saw a couple of grouse. My pellet gun (for quiet discharge) scope was smashed and it turned out to be way off. We were not able to capitalize on them this time.
That evening, I had a good glass location within one mile of camp, but it was a steep climb greeted with 35-40 mph winds at the top. With jeans and sweatpants on, two guys wanted to go back to camp at 5PM. My son vouched for them since he had thin nylon pants and no long underwear at the time. We found a good base camp with water and feed for the llamas. Stream water was close by as well:
The stars on the first night were terrific and my phone surprised me after I turned the flash off:
My family and I are avid fans of the Outdoor Boys on YouTube. During our last stop at the grocery, he insisted that he get the ingredients to make the same bread Luke makes when he goes camping. So we cooked that up and it was fabulous!
No elk yet, but we saw lots of sign on the way in, but it did seem slightly old. Here's the basin we glassed the first night:
The next couple of days we glassed and glassed three (3) areas that I swore would be productive from my research coupled with confirmation from a biologist that they were good for the first half of October. We were entering a transition from rut to post rut and continued to focus on north-facing slopes. Here are a few of these areas we glassed:
On the fourth day of the hunt, we went to a location that had numerous springs (not shown on any map) emerging from various locations on north-facing slopes, about 10-15 meadows within the trees of these slopes, and was the second-most remote corner of the unit. Later in the hunt, we also found two unmarked waterfalls (20' and 5' high) located in an obscure cut within this basin. You can't see them unless you are right on them.
As we side-hilled to a central knob that jutted up in the middle of this basin, we saw two (2) older raghorns moving through from left to right as if they were initially spooked, but initial shock wearing off and slowing to a steady gallop. They eventually moved down to a willow-filled drainage and around a bend, out of sight. We decided to glass from the open hillside and watch for a while.
As we sat, we saw a cow moose by herself meandering from right to left by the willows and grass above them. Suddenly, one of the elk from the first group of two darted out the opposite direction and began to slow down after seeing the cow moose. The two made eye contact and the cow moose kept following him. The bull elk kept looking back at the cow and running away as if he was trying to tell her, "dude, lady! not my type!". These comical interactions lasted for a few minutes until they disappeared into the timber. About 20 minutes later, we moved on to get to the knob we intended to glass.
As we crested the knob, we saw an outfitter on horseback with a second pack horse behind him and circled around various islands of timber. We assume someone shot one of the two bulls and were trailing it. We figured we didn't hear the shot since it was on the other side of the steep knob.
The outfitter ended up disappearing and we thought this basin was going to be dead, but continued to glass and watch anyway.
From this knob, we glassed to the south while facing a wide, gentle, north-facing slope. At about 9AM, we saw a group of six elk to our 10 o'clock feeding in the shade. It looked like there were two (2) raghorns in this group; just under a mile from us.
20 minutes later, another group of eight elk skylined to our 2 o'clock, slowly filtering over the rim of the basin into the next unit. We saw two (2) bulls in this group; one looked nice with whale tales on the tips. I assume a 6 point, but it was too far away to count. These were about 1.5 miles away as the crow flies.
More to come...
