A family man's 2018 season log

Monday (you came how far?!):

I get down 3/4 of the way into the drainage, lightly cow calling my way in.

At this point I'm now quite a ways below the bull on the main ridge that I assumed was the one from the previous night. He was still bugling and seemed to be picking up on my cow calls occasionally.

I hit a open section of the sub-ridge I was on and decided to work the bull a bit for fun. He was pretty responsive to my calls, and in fairly short order, sounded like he was dropping off the main ridge down toward me... Did I mention how steep this is??

After a bit it became clear that he was very much headed my way!

So, on the off chance he had a cow or two in tow (not high expectations based on last nights events) I relocated a bit and set up.

The bull would have to finish dropping down the face of the main ridge, cross a small feeder creek and then climb back UP the sub-ridge I was on. Where I was set up I had a decent view of area leading into the feeder creek from my sub ridge.

As he was working down into the feeder creek I would call a little bit to keep him coming. Once he hit the bottom of the creek I stop calling and just let the bull do his thing.

Eventually I catch sight of him about 150 yards out and he's coming in on a string (I had not uttered a peep for at least 10 minutes by the way)... he's all alone though.

So, I put the gun down and grabbed the phone to record what would happen.

For some reason the phone wouldn't record video though but I grabbed some pictures.

At 60 yards out I could hear the bull panting hard as he's climbing up my sub-ridge and he's clearly on a mission...

At 15 yards I can see his antler tips over the patch of brush I was nestled in:

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At ~7 yards he looks right at me and doesn't see a thing (he looked at me a number of times actually):

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At 5 yards he was even with me on the hill side:

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At this point, I don't want him to catch my wind so I yelp at him. He bolts off to 25 yards or so, then eventually wanders off without really spooking:

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Now that was one DESPERATE bull!

He had covered close to a mile, dropped at least 700 ft of elevation, and gained another 150+ up to the ridge I was on...

I'm kinda glad there was no cows in there though, because that pack out would have been a leg burner!

That was fun though! During my last solo hunt in 2004 I had another bull to just about that close, maybe a touch closer (in the dark of course), and you forget how BIG of an animal they are until you can hear them breathing.

Anyway, onward to finish crossing the drainage!
 
Monday Afternoon/Evening:

After the adventure with the small 6x6, I dropped the rest of the way down into the deep drainage. The last 100 yards was so steep that I was either holding on to brush to keep from sliding or walking on downed trees to move to another slightly less steep spot where I could drop further without loosing complete control.

I re-fueled and re-hydrated a bit and started the climb up to the other elk. That was a grunt too... I took a old mining/atv trail that climbed up a side creek and gained me the first 600 feet of elevation.

I was then started side-hilling and easing in above where I had the other bull bedded. He was still occasionally bugling. I was able to work within about 200 yards of where he was at and did some cow calling. He would occasionally answer but seemed pretty content to stay put, and was actually much more interested in resuming his bugling contest with the bull I had left on the other side of the drainage.

I settled in for at well over an hour, closer to 2 actually, waiting to hopefully hear some cow activity and/or draw something in. Nothing ended up making itself seen or heard, and I wasn't at all convinced there was any cows around so I decided to head on out instead of push my luck by trying to get in tighter.

It took a couple more hours to climb the rest of the way out of the drainage and hoof it back to the truck, getting back early evening.
 
Now what?:

I had a choice on my hands; do I stay and continue to work the area, or head out and make plans to come back for the last weekend of season?

I was very conflicted.

On the one hand with the apparent lack of a cohesive herd in the area I had a ton of doubt in my mind if the elk were really in the area much (yet), or at least not grouped up. Weighing in on this side of the coin was also an experience I had in that area deer hunting in early October last year; there was a good sized herd in full rut mode. Well past what I would consider normal 'prime' time of mid September. So maybe these elk just rutted latter than "normal" and finding one or more herds to work would be better in a week or so?

On the other hand there were SOME elk there already, and maybe some other tactic, either using what few glassing points I could find and maybe doing some cold cow-calling setups would work.

In the end, I decided that I would actually head back to first part of area #1 for the morning to check it to see if any more elk had moved through. Then depending on how that went, head back to UT and return the last weekend of September to area #2.

The funny part about that was that after I made that decision and head down the hill I get a call from my wife that the oven heating element had burnt out (literally caught on fire). We're renting and the landlords were very responsive and were already making plans to get it fixed, but still it made both of us laugh that something like that had to happen when I was away...

I spent another night down at my in-laws and got to share the stories of the encounters I had since Saturday.
 
Tuesday Morning (and beyond): (not going home completely empty handed ;))

First thing in the morning I return to the core ridges of area #1 to look for tracks and glass the drainages at first light. Still nothing new had passed through and I couldn't turn anything up glassing either.

BUT, as luck would have it, in the last glassing spot I set up at, a grouse litterally flew up into a tree 40 yards in front of me while I was sitting there...

I had enough grouse encounters over the last few days and I did need to unload my muzzleloader before heading home so I took the shot. It wasn't my best shot placement, but hey, I had some timber chicken to bring home!

I headed back to the truck and packed it all up and hit the road.

Getting home, and even now, I still have some doubts in the back of my mind that maybe I should have stayed and worked area #2 harder. But, whats done is done, and the good news is that on my return trip, my wife and boys are coming too.

My family will stay with my in-laws and I'll hunt for a couple days. The nice thing about that is it makes it WAY easier for me to hit it hard during the day when I can get back to my family at night.

So, anyway, thanks for following along so far! I know my stories are a bit long and detailed, but I hope I've broken them up into digestible servings for you all!

More to come in a couple weeks!
 
So, change of plans... I had a death in the family and I'll be making a quick trip back to Minnesota the first week of October for the memorial service.

My wife and I worked through the scheduling and timing for everything and we've decided to head back up to Idaho this weekend instead of next weekend (more time to process an elk if I end up getting one, etc).

So I'll hit it for a couple more days and that'll probably be it for the cow season. To be continued!
 
Saturday 9/22: (late to the party)

We arrived back at my in-laws Friday evening.

I headed back up to area #2 first thing Saturday morning. I planned to hunt lower on the main ridge system I'd hunted the Sunday/Monday prior. This portion of the ridge is fairly open on the top and south face with large brush-fields diving off the north and east faces. It was the last area I had not spent any time in yet, and its hard to hunt with the elk having great escape cover on the north/east face.

I arrive well before daylight and park on the same brushed in road I had used on Sunday when I ran into the bull nosing the cow around. I head in and notice at least one set of atv/utv tracks on the road that were not there earlier in the week. Oh well, in we go and this time I need to go in quite a bit further than I had on Monday to get below the open portion of the ridge.

Once I get below the open portion of the ridge I started a stiff 700 ft climb to the top. Along the way up I hit quite a bit of fresh deer sign and have one deer snort at me (they heard me, but never saw or winded me) and some older elk sign.

It took a while to climb up and I spend a bit of time glassing some adjacent country:

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Eventually I make the top of the ridge and ease my way through the edge of the brush patches headed back up the main ridge toward the areas I had hunted earlier in the week.

Quickly I start finding a lot more old elk-sign, guessing it to be ~2 weeks old. The further I worked up the ridge, the more old elk sign I found.

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Eventually I start hitting really torn up portions of the ridge. There are multiple places where brush has been just thrashed:

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And all of it at least 2 weeks old...

At this point I could tell my guess about the rut not taking off yet was very incorrect. Clearly a herd had already been in the area and using it hard, but much earlier in the season. And so goes trying to time the rut... Sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes not so much.

I worked up the ridge further, but the only fresh sign I found was a couple sets of bear tracks.

I eventually decided to head back to the first water-hole/wallow I had checked on the Sunday afternoon. This time with the plan to sit it as long as I could stand it.

My reasoning was simple, with little rut activity going on, no fresh sign, and glassing not being the most effective in the area mid-day, sitting water had to be more productive than randomly wandering through the brush trying not to bump something.

On the way into the water I cross another set of bear tracks and a set of boot tracks that were a couple days old. Its rare that I seem human sign that area, so that didn't bode well and easily could explain the lack of fresh elk sign.

I arrived a bit past noon and set up where I had a good view of the area around the water:

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I gave myself the goal of staying until at least 3PM (which was going to be a stretch for my patience).

At 2:30ish I just about convinced myself to call it good, but with a last effort of self control I decided to give it another 15 minutes. Not shortly after I heard movement from my right and here comes a little spike into the water!

In Idaho, a spike counts as antlerless if his spikes are less than 6" long, and from 100 yards out he looked close to legal. He was moving fairly quickly to the water but I got a good enough look at him through the binos to see that both spikes were a bit too long. One maybe 9" and the other 11" or so...

Bummer, but at least I was seeing an elk! He watered quickly and eventually moved out of the area. Now I had some motivation and continued the sit until 4PM. Nothing else showed itself and at that point I really had enough sitting and started the hike back to the road and truck.

On the way hiking up the road a UTV caught up to me (and that's who made the tracks!). The guy was on his way out after hunting a bear bait all day. He offered me a ride back to my truck and we chatted for a while. He had been in the area a bit working his bear baits and he confirmed the elk had been heavily using the open portion of the ridge 3 weeks before. He also confirmed that there were quite a few people hunting the area, way more than usual, with camp up on the main ridge road that had been there since the beginning of September (I had seen the camp earlier that week).

We finished our chat and I packed up the truck to head back down to my in-laws for the night.

The bear hunter had given me the last bit of info I needed to close the chapter on area #2 this year. There was too much human presence, the elk seemingly relocated/dispersed and the likely the rut activity cooled off that I needed a new plan. Even though that was disappointing (I really didn't have much for a plan C/D yet) it was still a great day in the woods, I hunted hard and felt good about a change of scenery.
 
Sunday 9/23: (plan C/D/E/F??)

With scratch area #2 off the list, and deciding to not return to spot #1 either, I needed a new location.

I had a few other spots I could try to hunt, but all of them had some draw-backs.

The first being I have never hunted any of them for elk in early season before!

Beyond that some of them were harder to access (2000+ ft climbs in from the bottom, or 1500 ft+ dropping in) or had been very dry in the past and were likely to be far worse this year.

I did have the little area near area #1 that I had hunted last Sunday where I spooked the lone cow out of her bed. I wanted to save that for my last-ditch effort on Monday morning before we headed back down to Utah (that and I passed out before I could call and get the OK to head back in on Sunday).

Eventually Sunday morning I decided on a long-shot: it was an area adjacent to a spot I had deer hunted at least 8 years ago. I had never been in the area to hunt elk, but it offered a good combination of moderately limited access (maybe very limited) and a good mix of vegetation and water. There was also a couple creeks that had blown out the road a few years back that may have permanently blocked access to the area, which would only help if other people couldn't get into the area. The only real disadvantage was that the spot was a solid 2 1/2 hrs away from my in-laws.

Oh, I did have some pictures from Sunday but my phone hard-reset Monday morning and it looks like I lost them, just a wall of text for this day!

I headed out. As I drove into the area, the first thing I noticed was that it had burned since I had been there last. I vaguely recalled that happening when I thought really hard about it, but it didn't occur to me when I looked the spot over on Google Earth that morning. It looked fairly well recovered so far, so that was good.

Both creeks that I saw were blown out had been repaired and I was able to drive directly into the area I wanted to hunt (and so could other folks).

I headed down a spur road and on the way I passed a couple different trucks parked along the road but they were a ways from the area I wanted to hunt.

The spur road showed signs that it had been worked on (downed trees removed, etc) sometime earlier that year, so I was able to get all the way in to the bottom of the ridge I wanted to hunt. The road then took a turn and continued back up and around the one side of the basin, my plan was to hunt the other side of that basin.

I parked and started the hike. I planned to hike for the morning/mid day, looking for sign and listening for any bugles, then loop back down to the truck later that afternoon.

The ridge, after the burn, was now very open compared to what it looked like on Google earth. Not that big of a deal, but it made for a hot climb in spots.

Working up the ridge I found a fair amount of fresh deer sign and some fairly old elk sign. As I worked higher up the ridge I also spotted a camp set-up a couple ridges back over near where the two other trucks were parked. Clearly more than a few folks were in the general area too.

It took a couple hours to climb up the ridge, and eventually I hit the spur road again. The clearing work on the road continued past that point well in to the head of the next drainage, at least 3 more miles distant. There wasn't a lot of fresh vehicle tracks on the road at least.

I hiked a bit further up the road occasionally bugling and glassing the burn a little bit. Eventually the heat of the day and the long drive back to my in-laws pushed me to head back down the road not having cut a fresh track or heard anything.

On the way out I bumped into a guy on an atv out scouting for deer. He apparently hunted that country regularly and has had good success in the October/November deer/elk seasons. Clearly the animals were in there later in the year, but I wasn't turning them up that day if they were there now.

We went our separate ways and I got back to the truck and got back to my in-laws that evening.

While I didn't get into animals, and I can't say I loved that long drive, it was nice to try out new country.
 
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Sunday Morning 9/24: (last chance!)

Sunday night I got permission and made plans to head back into the small section of state land where I have access through private near area #1.

The area where I had spooked the cow out last Sunday had a small open ridge adjacent to it just barely close enough for a shot. I planned to hike up in the dark and sit on that adjacent ridge hoping to catch the cow later that morning.

I arrived and headed up the ridge at 5:30AM. It was finally cold that morning, down in the high 20's. I tried to pace myself climbing the ridges but I still sweated a bit too much. I hit the spot on the adjacent ridge to the bedding area and settle in.

And got colder, and colder. I had a couple spare layers and eventually threw everything on, but man, that was chilly just sitting there.

I was in a position where I could watch some other open ridges on the other side of the little ridge I posted up on. As it got light enough to see I saw a small muley buck a couple sub ridges over accompanied by a fawn (I assume there was another doe in there too but never saw her). I also saw 3 more does a sub ridge closer working their way up into the timber too.

Sunrise came and I warmed up eventually.

The more I looked at the bedding area ridge I thought I would be unlikely to see the cow if she showed up. The majority of the bedding area was just over the ridge in the timber from my vantage point:

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I decided I needed to give the bedding area some time, and maybe sneak back to that ridge and try calling later in the morning. I headed out and worked my way up the main ridge for a bit. I eventually eased my way back across the main ridge to over look the back-side. This is the side of the main ridge that dives down the creek below and is generally a steep brushy mess (and where most of the deer bed in the day I assume).

Staying fairly high on the back-side of the ridge I worked my way back down toward the subridge with the bedding area. Looking at my map I noticed there was a ridge on the OTHER side of the bedding area, on the backside of the main ridge, that MAY give a better view into the bedding area. It looked better than where I had been earlier that morning at least, but I wasn't sure how close I could get for a possible shot.

I worked down the back ridge and could see the timber with the bedding area just fine. Unfortunately the ridge I was on was almost completely open. Once I broke over the crest of the ridge I picked out a sage brush to set up near and started glassing.

Literally not more than 2 minutes after sitting down a (the?) cow steps out in the open!

uc


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I ranged her: 167 yards... That is 40 more yards that I REALLY wanted, and 27 more yards than my max practice distance. My bullet REALLY starts to drop at 125+ and I just wasn't prepared to take that kind of shot.

Being stuck out in the open I tried a couple quiet cow calls, trying to project the sound into the head of the little draw the separated us. My hope was to draw her within the range I was a bit more comfortable with.

Unfortunately that didn't work and the cow spent the next 20 minutes burning holes into the portion of the ridge I was on.

Eventually she went back to feeding and dropped behind some brush. I hustle down the hill (and managed to forget my bugle tube up on the ridge).

I snuck down to within 60 or so yards near where I saw her last, but just slightly around the corner of the ridge. I called a bit hoping to get her curious enough to come back up and give me a nice easy 50 yard shot.

I couldn't hear any movement and feeling like the clock was ticking a bit, I started to ease forward. And then I saw the state property boundary sign, crap....

The cow was well on to that section of private now, and also apparenly headed into the steep nasty brush on top of that. Now I sorta had a "we have permission so you have permission" thing on that section of private, but I just couldn't push it.

So, knowing that my season was pretty well done, I hiked back up, grabbed my bugle tube, took one last look over the area:

uc


and headed out, packed up the family and got home last night.

Ending any season without filling a tag is always a touch disappointing. But I hunted hard (for me at least) for 7 (ish) days, got into elk and had some awesome encounters. I have to say I end my cow season satisfied.

It was also good to get a solid dose of reality in preparation for my November buck hunt for a couple reasons; I hope I'll be a bit more mentally prepared for that hunt so I navigate the emotional highs/lows better and not having a cow in the freezer will make me a bit less choosy when looking for a buck.

For October, among other things, I'll be out spending some time with my rifles making sure I'm very comfortable past 300 yards (I'm not really a long-range hunter, so 400+ is a poke for me) and making plans for November.

I'll post up any thing relevant that comes up!
 
Great read so far, hunting with a muzzleloader in ID can be a blast and drive you nuts at the same time. Best of luck on your Nov deer hunt!
 
Pre Buck Hunt Update

My buck season is closing in and I thought I'd throw an update out there for you all.

First I've been burning some powder in my Tikka 270 attempting to get comfortable past 300 yards. I have to say, the gun is doing great!

uc


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The loose nut behind the trigger, well, lets just say he is usually in WAY too much of a hurry to get shots off and accuracy suffers for it, especially at 300+.

Right now I plan to hold my max range to 300-350 yards in field conditions with the 270. I have another shooting round coming up and we'll see if I can re-cement in my mechanics and extend that out to 400 yards, but with only one session I'm not super convinced that'll happen.

I'm also prepping my Winchester M70 30-06 as a backup. With my current loads, the 270 has the better accuracy out of the two guns, but (right now at least) I can generally shoot the 30-06 better in most conditions. I'm not planning to use the 06 as my primary gun because the scope is fairly limited for work past 300 yards (compared to the one on the 270) and its not really an all-weather gun where the 270 is. I like to have both ready though, so we'll see how it pans out during the hunt.

It does occur to me that there could be some irony with the focus I'm putting on extending my range; I won't be the least bit surprised that I end up taking a deer at 100 yards of less, just because that's how it seems to work out...

Moving along, for the hunt I'll be heading up for 4 1/2 days at the start of November, with an option to head back up the week of Thanksgiving hit the tail end of the season if I don't get something that first trip.

Based on what I've heard from a few folks it sounds like I'll have some good opportunities to look over a few bucks on this hunt. BUT with no elk in the freezer I keep repeating "don't pass on the first day that which you would shoot on the last" in my head, we'll see if it sticks though ;). In all honesty, I've settled my expectations around taking a nice mature buck and having a good time looking for one. It doesn't need to have perfect scoring potential, etc to qualify. Now, with that said, I may or may not have 4 pictures of 200+" live bucks set up in the house where I do my dry firing practice (it pays to be prepared right??).

For the first hunt my dad and uncle will be joining me coming all the way down from north Idaho, which I'm really excited about. They are coming along to check out cool country (neither have spent any time in the unit I'm hunting), look for some chuckars (or any other legal game birds) and provide moral support (AKA giving me considerable grief for any good sized deer I'm foolish enough to pass on!) There's also a good chance a buddy or three from the Boise area might come down for a day and either chase birds or follow me around looking for a buck. I also expect them to partake in the moral support ;).

For now, while I'm not as amped up (yet) as I was going into elk season, I'm looking forward to what I hope is a really fun hunt.
 
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