Earning it on the front end

[Bluffgruff]

Me:
"Man, without being able to find a truck/trailer combo, you're my best option."
"You willing to do this if I cover all the costs?"
"And owe you huge?"

The Beard:
"Yes when will you need me there 4 ish?"

These lines are the final bit of a long text exchange between me and the main character of this story from about 11 months ago. He never asked for anything in return, but I owed him huge.

At the conclusion of that adventure, he had been up close to 24 hours, driven through a blizzard towing a hapless truck over 2 Colorado passes to dump me and the truck and a bison at my house safe and sound. I owed him huge.

Revisit that story here.

On the long drive, among innumerable other topics, we talked about his hunting wishlist, and an elk was sitting close to the top. He had never killed an elk, cow or bull, despite chasing for several years. I had even been on the other side of a rock from him with a clear 180 yard shot at a massive cow elk several years before. She blew out before appearing in his field of view. He had walked the mountains and timber with several tags in several units, but could never quite bring home an elk.

I said I'd work on a strategy to get him a good tag, and what I came up with worked.

Come November, he has a good tag in his pocket and is cruising to his unit on a windy, late fall day. He's two days ahead of me, and, since I'm still learning from my experiences, he has strict instructions not to shoot anything until I join him. Nothing at all. Don't even load your rifle.

He arrives to the sights, quirks, and realities of late season hunting. Climbing up from the valley into the trees, the snow deepens, the roads deteriorate. He can't plow through the drifts to the e-scouted campsite, but finds a good one just short of it. A bull moose greets him at a small creek crossing. He's elk hunting again.

 

[Dsnow9]

This has the makings for a good one already!

 

[duckhunt]

This has the makings for a good one already!

This

 

[Bluffgruff]

The next day, he's up early to walk to a glassing knob. He gets passed on a sxs by a guide and his client. Surely there's something they think is worth pursuing up here. He glasses through the wind and bitter cold into the early afternoon, but only only sees moose, and the guide digging out the drifts repeatedly each time they pass his hill. He reposition on the face a few times to avoid the 20-40mph gusts, but sticks it out, much better than I would have.

I finally arrive late in the afternoon. It's a beautiful snow covered scene, and I'm hoping the last several years of late season elk hunting have given me the tools to make our hunt successful.


This guy has made quite the camp. I realize this is hunt 9 or 10 for me for the year, and I haven't really unpacked since August, but this is only his second hunt, and he went all out. Camper, heater, pre-made dinners, lunches, snacks, everything is ready.

On arrival, I toss my bedroll and a couple extra items in the camper and he tosses his rifle and hunting pack in my pickup and we head off to glass the last hour of the day. We find some deer, and realize the roads are going to make this incredibly tough to access more than just a few miles of the main road. We return to the camper, and dig into pork adobada tacos.





The next morning, we have a plan to return to his glassing hill, trying to beat the guide and his client, but we're just a touch behind. They pass through just as we're loading up. We also have to park several hundred yards shy of the snow drift from the day before in my pickup, but they're able to cruise up to the drift in their side by side. As we walk up to the guide, he and his client and brother digging out the drift for the 3rd time in 24 hours, he greets us jovially. We talk for a few minutes. They're after something special, but I assure him we're just after something representative. While we're talking, he locks onto something through the trees over my shoulder, "Is that a bull??" I whip around and pull up my binos. Through a tiny gap in the trees, there's a definite yellow body, branch antlered, decent size, 6x6 at least, but I have no context for it. The guide thinks it's the 7x7 he's been chasing. Finders keepers in this game, so we help the guide get his client's attention 50 yards up the road, and hopeful that the bull isn't alone, we follow them up to a shooting position, 500 yards from the bull. After a few minutes, the client puts a great shot into the bull from 500 yards, then another insurance shot as he wobbles a few more steps. I ask the guide if he wants help with breaking it down, but with his brother up the hill, he declines. He also says he'll ask his brother to take a good look around for us. This bull isn't mine to share, but to say it's impressive is an understatement: 7x7, long tines, long beams, the bull of a lifetime for most people. This guide turns out to be quite generous, and freely gives us info on a few additional spots, and as of the next day, the free use of a side by side he isn't using. If I ever want or need a guide, I'll hire this guy. He isn't cheap, but character counts more than money in my book.

We continue up the road to the hill, meet up with and talk to the brother, who gives us the location of a group of bulls just off public that might be worth watching. We thank him and move up the hill. We spot the group of bulls and tuck in out of the wind to watch them and look for more.



We stay up for several hours, but when they bed well into private land, we move back to the truck with the plan to try some other areas for the evening and to return in the morning.

We chain up at camp, grab some snacks, and head to the other side of what we can drive to in the unit

Christmas Tree hunting here would be epic, and the weekend traffic a few days later proves that other people think so too!

From our next vantage, we see some deer, but no elk.




On our way back to the truck at sunset, right at it, up the hill, I see a suspicious rock, not 500 yards away in the trees. It's moving. It's an elk. My initial thought is that it's a cow, but my partner says he can see antlers. We move up 50 yards and I put the spotter on it. It IS a bull, a former 6x6, missing 5 or 6 tines. The bull moves up a bit to the right towards a saddle and we lose sight of him. I think I see another elk with him, but can't get an angle, so we cut up the hill towards where we think he's headed. Crunchy snow, deep drifts up to our thighs, and fading light are against us, and as I crest the hill, I think we've missed him, but my buddy, 5 yards behind me, hisses that there's an elk in the tiny bowl to our left, not 50 yards away. I sneak back to him and get my binos on the bull, hoping it's a second elk but the bull there is the broken 6x6, all of 42 yards away.

A quick discussion ensues regarding this sure thing versus hunting the next 5 days, looking for something better. I'm very strongly against shooting this bull, but I don't want to impose my goals on the hunter. I shake my head, this isn't the right bull. The bull spots us, and after a short stare down, with us trying to retreat without him spooking, he decides he's had enough and runs off up the ridgeline. I feel confident we'll find a better bull, but I still wonder if this one was good enough.

We return to the truck and grind back up the hill towards camp. We make it, but I'm glad we chained up! Tonight's dinner is pork sausage fried rice. The camper makes sleeping very comfortable in the frigid temps and howling wind. The next day, we'll head back to check the bulls playing the border game, hoping they've moved onto public land.

 

[Pahoundsman]

Definitely shaping up to be a great story!

 

[cgasner1]

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wtf lady I’ve been waiting for this thread.

 

[Lostinthewoods]

wtf lady I’ve been waiting for this thread.

She gone

 

[cgasner1]

She gone

For a day or two or permanent ban I was hoping to pick up some gun powder from her before the boot

 

[kansasdad]

For a day or two or permanent ban I was hoping to pick up some gun powder from her before the boot

Gunpowder too? All is saw was crypto recovery services.

 

[cgasner1]

Gunpowder too? All is saw was crypto recovery services.

‘‘Twas a joke

 

[EastTNHunter]

Patiently waiting

 

[rjthehunter]

Great so far!!!

 

[Bluffgruff]

Patiently waiting

Patience will be rewarded, likely with nightly installments.

 

[Khunter]

Terrific so far. thx.

 

[Bluffgruff]

Around the dinner table, we decide to see if we can, in fact, borrow a side by side, and the guide said he'd drop it off mid morning the next day. What sorcery IS this??

With that on the table, we drift off to sleep to the roar of the heater and the hum of the generator outside.

The next morning, our routine of cereal and coffee, and at least one of us having to visit the latrine in the dark continues. When it's 10 degrees and the wind is howling, the trips are short, shovel in hand and often bear spray on bino harness in case we encounter any unwelcome bathroom visitors.

We load up and drive along the snowy two-track, still chained up, just rears though because Toyota makes a stupid upper control arm. We ease as close as possible to the drift from the day before, back in off the road, and start walking, cresting an open saddle just as daylight is spilling over the mountain.



A small muley buck is in the clearing, and stots away through the flawless snow field. The day before, we had found and briefly followed the tracks of a bull elk coming through this saddle, but it appeared to be the deceased 7x7, so we had abandoned the track. All of that tromping had been drifted in overnight, and our tracks were no more.

Arriving at our new, lower, glassing knob, I quickly scan the open hill below us, working around the long, tree-covered hill to cover the close terrain before moving to the end that looks towards the private land and the bulls from the day before. Nothing in sight close by, but the outfitter had reported bulls in that area on several prior days, so we remain vigilant. On the north end, I find the bulls are still across the boundary, 800 yards or so, 9 or 10 of them today, but definitely a few new antlers. The broken 7x3, the large 6x6, and the smaller 6x6s are all there.



As the morning gets going, they move from the marshy lake beds they seem to prefer to feed in, towards the boundary. They weave in and out of gullies, ponds, marshes, openings, and conifers, and we lose them about 300 yards from the line, still on private. There's no way to tell if they crossed into public without walking the line, and that seems too risky.

We back out, head to the truck, and check a different vantage on our way to pick up the sxs. From this hill, it appears we could follow the bulls progress closer to the line, but they have all bedded for the day. We CAN see the sxs, sitting at the paved road several miles away, so we opt to forego any additional procrastinating and drive my truck to the bottom. The sxs is ready to go with a full tank of gas, a 5 gallon gas can, a shovel, chains and an enclosed cab. I don't know what I did to deserve this luxury, so it must have been my buddy's karma carrying through.

We ease back up the hill, drop my truck, and proceed east, glassing along the way. We turn up 7 bighorns in the cliffs above us, rutting a little. There are 2-3 rams, 2 being adult, but they're so far away it's hard to get good pictures.


Further on, we meet up with some climbers on the road who have been scaling the cliffs above, an obviously stuck 2wd passenger van, allegedly with 6 adult occupants who could push it out, per the climbers' report, and a sweet double wide ice fishing shack being used as a winter camp. We get all the way to the end of the road after some shoveling of another drift. At this point, we have driven through what looks like the most and best sign, but it seems to be mostly moose and deer, with limited elk droppings to confirm those mid-sized tracks as our target species. At the end of the road, we can walk our altitude band east, drive back west and glass from the road, or hike up and get eyes on a number of wind-blown ridges above us. My best feeling is the ridges, so without veto from my buddy, up we go. It takes an hour to reach a good barren knoll. We pass moose, deer, lion, and maybe elk tracks on the way up the 600 feet in 2/3rds of a mile. Once up, we have a commanding view, but the wind is howling. No wonder the windward sides are skinny on snow. We stop to layer up behind a rock.



We glass all sides, but only turn up deer until it's just after sunset. I stand up to check the other side of the ridge before packing up.




Far below, 2 miles away, a yellow blotch is walking the line between timber and open parks. It's a bull, for sure, but he disappears before I can get the spotter on him. He's on private, but not by a lot. I mark him for later.

We scramble, slide, slip, and scoot down the ridgeline, which somehow became much steeper on the way down, despite being heart attack steep on the way up. Arriving at the side by side just at good dark with headlamps on. This is just a training run. We ride back to the drift, dig out a bit more, and manage to churn back to camp without getting stuck again. The 2wd van (scattered conifer branches tell the tale of getting unstuck) and the climbers are gone, but the ice fishing shack is still there. Dinner is Italian wedding soup, almost solid from the cold, initially, but hearty and filling after a while in the pot.


I'm starting to get spoiled, here. I never eat this well on hunts.

We spend some time discussing goals and dreams again, among many other things. The guy just wants his first elk, understandably, and doesn't really care what size. Mentally stepping back and looking at the big picture, I'm feeling confident; we have already seen elk, in multiple spots, and with several more days to find the right one. We're having fun watching the big bachelor herd of bulls every morning, and we've barely scratched the surface of the terrain during prime glassing time.

Tomorrow, we'll try the bulls on the line one more time, but the bull from this evening has us formulating the next plan.

 

[Bluffgruff]

I'm pretty sure we slept through our alarms. It's the weekend, the hunter's 530am work alarm is off, I must have turned mine off in my sleep an hour ago. It's okay, this happens to me all the time. 30 minutes is plenty of time to get dressed and chug coffee, and we are pretty much on time for the half mile drive to the new glassing cliff. The bulls are in their starting blocks out in the dry lakes, maybe 13 today. The big 6x6 is still there, we think. They're starting to run together and look the same.


My buddy finds a brand new bull closer, a small broken 5x5, apparently alone, but he quickly disappears into the thick evergreens several hundred yards into private land. The other bulls disappear as well, definitely the farthest from the boundary yet. This is frustrating. We need a new plan, and some new bulls. Surely there are some hardy beasts in the hills between us and the sheep mountain. We gather up our things, ride towards the big drifted saddle, attempt to pass the drift, but stall and begin sliding towards the steep embankment. We reappraise our need to continue, and backup to park just down hill. While we're preparing for the next training hike, two extremely youthful hunters pull up in a smaller side by side. They're also hunting bulls. After a few minutes of hunter's chit chat where absolutely no useful facts are shared, they attempt the drift, with the same result, and return down to the main road. We start our hike up the hill through intermittent crusted snow and deep powder. We weave along the saddle to an open ridgeline, which eventually flattens for a spell, where we find several bull elk beds in a small cluster of pines, out of sight of just about everywhere.

This tree looks like a bear scratching post. Or porcupine food. Scratching post is a better story.



At the top of the ridge the wind has tortured some other trees, to death even.



We glass and glass, hike through drifts on the other side, and sidle around the hill top, but can't turn up any elk.

We return the way we came, saving energy, a tiny bit, for the evening hunt. I'm pretty tired, but there's no quitting.


Right at the end of the hike, instead of walking an extra couple hundred yards of deep crusted snow, I dive off through 30 feet of thigh deep drifts to the road below. I end up on my butt a few times, but make it okay, behind me, the same snow covered log finds my friend's boot and trips him into a twisting sit-down with a pop and some pain in his ankle. I am trying to take a picture at that moment, and catch the ending pose.


I don't want to panic, but I'm a little worried we'll be hunting exclusively from the side by side the rest of the trip. He walks it off, obviously uncomfortable, but still moving. I figure as long as his boot stays tight, it won't swell much, so we plod on to the sxs.

We grab lunch at the camper, the usual fancy pastami and provolone on white with banana peppers. We even have mustard and mayo. I never remember to bring or buy those on my solo hunts. I sometimes don't even have groceries on my hunts. Dehy and bars are scattered in my gear so I always get by, but I digress.

After lunch, we settle on hidden road number 1 for our afternoon frolic. Technically open for several miles, a short drive from the timber shaded entrance, it is drifted in so bad we have to shovel to reverse to get unstuck. No recent boot prints continue beyond this point. This has me feeling optimistic. The road might as well be closed if no one can drive in, and no one has walked in, so it feels like the perfect sanctuary.

My buddy, ankle holding up okay for now, and I walk quickly to ensure we arrive at a glassing spot before too late. The tracks in the snow tell some fantastic stories. Moose meander in and out of the trees, snowshoe hares twist skeins of yarn-like trails, coyotes and bobcats lay down perfectly synchronized tracks in the compacted snow of other animals' tracks, and a cat of some kind chases a snowshoe hair, clawing the snow in several wild zigzags.


It's a good couple miles through 6-12" of snow, and it's starting to get late when we climb to the top of a wind swept butte. This hill overlooks a protrusion of public land in a couple directions, including where the mystery bull ghosted in and out of the trees the afternoon before, and one of the spots mentioned by the guide two days before.

After a few minutes, the hunter spots 2 bulls way down in a corner on a south facing slope, just on private land. They're both pretty good, but one is special looking compared to most of the bulls we've been looking at, a really nice, well developed 6x6 without any broken points. The other is a bit smaller, with his right 4th broken just above the beam.




I get the spotter on them for some video, then return to glassing. This spot looks too good to only have two bulls, and when I pan east, I see a handful of bulls well over on private land around some seriously green looking ground. The mirage prevents me from getting a good look, so I wrap around the hill 50 yards and realize what's going on: A homeowner has tossed out a big bale of what looks like alfalfa hay, and seven bulls are just going to town.


Ug. They're probably there til the hay is gone, or one gets shot, or spring happens.

A few more minutes of glassing fails to turn anything else up.

Darkness has been coming on rapidly this week. The sun sets and it feels like it's totally black a few minutes later. The moon is rising around midnight, so that's no help in navigation, and with no trail until we get to a saddle about 500 yards south, we try to get to that mark before the daylight fades. Once on the path, we wind through to the road, and follow our tracks to the side by side. It starts snowing hard on the drive back, making visibility extremely poor. Through the flakes, a young mule deer buck in the left track ahead makes a 14-juke attempt to fake us out, never moving his rear feet as he bounced his front to and fro, until we were just a few yards away, having to slow down to avoid running him over. This was a long day with many miles covered. My buddy's ankle is pretty bruised, too. We pop ibuprofen to go along with leftovers and a beer; we'll need all the help we can get tomorrow.

 

[Carl 9.3x62]

Well?

 

[winmag]

He’s a bit weighed down at the moment, on another adventure that will likely have its own thread in the near future.

 

[Bluffgruff]

Sorry for the interruption, this program will return in a couple days.

 

[BAKPAKR]

Sorry for the interruption, this program will return in a couple days.

I like the new avatar photo. Congrats!