ida homer
Well-known member
Long winded, if you have some time to kill.
In 2016, me and my main hunting buddy drew a late September rifle tag in WY for bulls. It’s actually somewhat easy to draw. There’s nothing like chasing bulls with a rifle during the rut. After the rut I’m about convinced that bulls 4 years and older simply vanish off the face of the planet. It takes someone more skilled and seasoned than me to find the bachelor groups post rut, that’s for sure. So we were definitely excited for the draw results.
My buddy was still stationed in Texas at the time so scouting was my duty. I was able to make 2 trips to the unit to glass in July and August. Another buddy previously had the tag so that short cut us the lay of the land and which roads were accessible, etc. I knew that if I could find the areas with good numbers of cows, that should attract multiple bulls come September.
There was a neat basin up around 10,500’ that I had been eyeing on Google Earth for months, so that would be my first trip in July. It would be a real mf’er to get up to it and likely much more effort than necessary, but it seemed like the kind of place that you might find a big bull and not lot eyes on a single other boot track. Distance and topography barriers. My brother was able to join. Unfortunately it was during one of the hotter weeks of the summer, when it’s 104F in town and 88 up on the mountain kind of hot. I hate scouting when it’s that hot, as you should consider yourself lucky to spot a single animal during daylight. Plus it’s a long damn wait from sunrise to sunset, that’s for sure. Often times in those conditions the wait is all for nothing since they don’t even come out to feed until it's too dark to glass. At least that's what I've found.
We started the hike at 5am. It was a 3100’ gradual long climb from the truck in the heat. We carried a lot of water up the hill since we didn't know the water situation up there yet. We should have started hiking at 3am, as by lunch time it was in the high 80's at 9500'. I don’t remember making it to where we wanted to glass from until around 3pm. We setup our pup tents and glassed until dark. No critters spotted that evening.
The next morning I only spotted one cow and a calf. We found some really old sign and a couple good reliable water sources. I knew that it would have to be very promising to consider packing an elk out of this area, since warm weather is still a good possibility in September. We didn't find any old rubs or any bull tracks.
It’s too bad because it was truly trophy country, and it looked even better in person than it did on GE. Grassy meadows, a couple peaks above over 11k, good flowing water, distance, topography, no wolf sign, etc. But so it goes, there’s a lot more country where they ain’t, than where they is, as Randy likes to say. Not tough enough to sit out another 8 hour day in the heat up high. So we bailed for lower country. Down low I glassed up a couple groups of about 15 cows a piece which was good, but the access almost seemed too easy since they were easily visible from an old skid road. That wrapped up the first scouting trip.
In 2016, me and my main hunting buddy drew a late September rifle tag in WY for bulls. It’s actually somewhat easy to draw. There’s nothing like chasing bulls with a rifle during the rut. After the rut I’m about convinced that bulls 4 years and older simply vanish off the face of the planet. It takes someone more skilled and seasoned than me to find the bachelor groups post rut, that’s for sure. So we were definitely excited for the draw results.
My buddy was still stationed in Texas at the time so scouting was my duty. I was able to make 2 trips to the unit to glass in July and August. Another buddy previously had the tag so that short cut us the lay of the land and which roads were accessible, etc. I knew that if I could find the areas with good numbers of cows, that should attract multiple bulls come September.
There was a neat basin up around 10,500’ that I had been eyeing on Google Earth for months, so that would be my first trip in July. It would be a real mf’er to get up to it and likely much more effort than necessary, but it seemed like the kind of place that you might find a big bull and not lot eyes on a single other boot track. Distance and topography barriers. My brother was able to join. Unfortunately it was during one of the hotter weeks of the summer, when it’s 104F in town and 88 up on the mountain kind of hot. I hate scouting when it’s that hot, as you should consider yourself lucky to spot a single animal during daylight. Plus it’s a long damn wait from sunrise to sunset, that’s for sure. Often times in those conditions the wait is all for nothing since they don’t even come out to feed until it's too dark to glass. At least that's what I've found.
We started the hike at 5am. It was a 3100’ gradual long climb from the truck in the heat. We carried a lot of water up the hill since we didn't know the water situation up there yet. We should have started hiking at 3am, as by lunch time it was in the high 80's at 9500'. I don’t remember making it to where we wanted to glass from until around 3pm. We setup our pup tents and glassed until dark. No critters spotted that evening.
The next morning I only spotted one cow and a calf. We found some really old sign and a couple good reliable water sources. I knew that it would have to be very promising to consider packing an elk out of this area, since warm weather is still a good possibility in September. We didn't find any old rubs or any bull tracks.
It’s too bad because it was truly trophy country, and it looked even better in person than it did on GE. Grassy meadows, a couple peaks above over 11k, good flowing water, distance, topography, no wolf sign, etc. But so it goes, there’s a lot more country where they ain’t, than where they is, as Randy likes to say. Not tough enough to sit out another 8 hour day in the heat up high. So we bailed for lower country. Down low I glassed up a couple groups of about 15 cows a piece which was good, but the access almost seemed too easy since they were easily visible from an old skid road. That wrapped up the first scouting trip.
