Feeding the Rat (AKA GrantK's elk hunting obsession)

[GrantK]

So after failing to get a better option off the reissue list, I'm a couple of days into a CO OTC hunt... so far I've been hunting from home, perks of living in the middle of OTC land...

I scouted the prior weekend and after work for a couple of nights leading up to the season and had a couple of bulls located, nothing big but a couple that I would consider "big enough" The only downside was the incoming weather that was slated to hit Friday night and was going to likely throw all of that scouting out of the window...

I knew it was going to be interesting when I woke up at midnight to the drumming of rain on the metal roof, that isn't good, my plan A spot that had 2 good bulls in it is down a road that can become impassable if it gets wet enough, hopefully it cools down and turns to snow... I woke up at 4:30 to continuing rain, well, let's see how this is going to go... I head up the road and don't even make it a mile before I get stuck on flat ground, guess I'm on to plan B...

I get turned around and head to my second option, there is snow on the road for this one but the mud under it is completely unfrozen and a road usually passable in a passenger car is sporty in a Tacoma with the back axle locked... I make it to the parking and head up the trail in about 4" of slush, visibility is low and I'm moving along way too fast trying to get up through the low clouds when I look up and see tan right on the trail...

Elk! no wait, that's a huge tail! it turned out a mountain lion was doing the exact thing I was coming the opposite way on the trail and we got to about 40 yards before both seeing each other at the same time, how cool! day is already made...

 

[Green Hunter]

I appreciate many of your photos. Thank you for sharing

 

[Dsnow9]

So after failing to get a better option off the reissue list, I'm a couple of days into a CO OTC hunt... so far I've been hunting from home, perks of living in the middle of OTC land...

I scouted the prior weekend and after work for a couple of nights leading up to the season and had a couple of bulls located, nothing big but a couple that I would consider "big enough" The only downside was the incoming weather that was slated to hit Friday night and was going to likely throw all of that scouting out of the window...

I knew it was going to be interesting when I woke up at midnight to the drumming of rain on the metal roof, that isn't good, my plan A spot that had 2 good bulls in it is down a road that can become impassable if it gets wet enough, hopefully it cools down and turns to snow... I woke up at 4:30 to continuing rain, well, let's see how this is going to go... I head up the road and don't even make it a mile before I get stuck on flat ground, guess I'm on to plan B...

I get turned around and head to my second option, there is snow on the road for this one but the mud under it is completely unfrozen and a road usually passable in a passenger car is sporty in a Tacoma with the back axle locked... I make it to the parking and head up the trail in about 4" of slush, visibility is low and I'm moving along way too fast trying to get up through the low clouds when I look up and see tan right on the trail...

Elk! no wait, that's a huge tail! it turned out a mountain lion was doing the exact thing I was coming the opposite way on the trail and we got to about 40 yards before both seeing each other at the same time, how cool! day is already made...

Get some man! Looking forward to what you scratch up!

You didn’t want to gamble and try and get a 4th season tag?!?!? Lol

 

[GrantK]

I continued along seeing a ton of deer but no sign of elk... finally, about 4 miles in I found 4 sets of elk tracks crossing a meadow, I followed them as they were heading into some pretty huntable country, unfortunately, they were not stopping and the snow is still falling, I eventually lose the tracks in the fresh snow, now a long, long way from the truck, I beelined straight down until I caught a trail and enjoy an easy walk back to the truck, zero elk seen for the morning of day one.

 

[GrantK]

Get some man! Looking forward to what you scratch up!

You didn’t want to gamble and try and get a 4th season tag?!?!? Lol

4th season tag for a certain couple of units is exactly what I wanted, unfortunately, those have been in mighty short supply this year... there will probably be 10 of them this week now that I have a tag in hand...

 

[GrantK]

for the evening of day one I headed to one of my all-time favorite spots, unfortunately, visibility was about 30' and I didn't turn up anything of note, the rain was turning to snow even at lower elevations so I planned to hit some low country in the morning, I changed my plan on the fly driving in for morning 2 as visibility was again about 30' no glassing for me I guess...I walked a long loop through some pinion country but didn't find anything stirring other than a very cold-looking black bear...

 

[WNC2500]

Good luck @GrantK
Enjoying following along!

 

[GrantK]

For the afternoon of day 2 I decided to roll the dice on getting into my preferred spot, worst case I would have to wait for the road to freeze up and drive out late...
The mud was epic but I was able to get through the worst of it and drop into the creek bottom, unfortunately just short of the bottom of the hill, still about a mile from public land someone had managed to get a full size truck with street tires completely stuck sideways across the road, fortunately it was visible before committing to the last hill, unfortunately I burned 45 minutes getting myself back up the hill and turned around, getting stuck a couple times but managing to work myself out... when season is over I'm going to be due for a $100 carwash...

After all of that excitement I was late to yet another plan B spot, but managed to glass up elk pretty much immediately after getting out of the truck, I threw my pack on and hoofed it but came up a couple hundred yards short of getting a shot, I can't say I was trying too hard, I think there was a legal bull but couldn't confirm...

The sunset on the other hand....

 

[GrantK]

Day 3
I had to work in the morning, but I got out of the office in time to glass one of my favorite sanctuary spots, when I got to my glassing knob I could see elk with the naked eye, this should be good! unfortunately, it was a herd of cows without a bull, unusual in this zone, if there are elk to be found they are usually bachelor bulls...

Day 4
I decided to glass the same zone on my way to work, this spot usually gets better as the season goes on and elk get pushed out of the easier places, I figured that there was a good chance a bull would move in overnight as there was already elk in the area. I glassed up a couple decent deer but no elk at all, as i was getting ready to leave i got a text from a friend hunting a large drainage about ten miles up, "Bull Down!" I texted back that I would get work wrapped up and head up to help...

 

[GrantK]

I managed to get work wrapped up by about 1:00 and headed up to the trailhead, picking my friends girlfriend up on the way as she had not been able to get her truck up the road to help, we passed a second friend packing his elk out lower down on the road, looks like I should have taken the day off, elk were moving everywhere.

as we headed up the trail we ran into my friend coming down with the next to last load of his elk, it turned out he had managed to get a bull literally standing in the hiking trail .8 miles up from the truck, he told me to forget about packing and go grab my rifle as he had just passed a bull on his last trip back to the truck... I walked back and got set up to hunt feeling bad about not packing but also figuring that I might be able to get a bull within a mile of the truck with two packers around... we made it back to his bull and I set out to see if I could locate the other bull that had walked into the packout, I wasn't able to turn that one up but I glassed up a large herd across the canyon in some of the nastiest country in the unit.

I weighed my options and decided I didn't have enough time to drop all the way to the valley floor and navigate the cliffs to get to them before dark so I continued up through some aspen groves until dark, finding a ton of really fresh elk sign but no elk on my side.

 

[GrantK]

a couple of the elk trails from earlier in the day...

 

[GrantK]

Day 5
I spent most of the day getting caught up at work and snuck in a short hike to a glassing spot just before dark, no elk seen but I was able to check off most of a drainage for the next day...

Day 6
I finally committed to just taking a day off, pretty much hunting my opening day plan that was derailed by the weather, walking a ridge that allowed me to glass two drainages that are usually productive, as it got light I could make out two huge herds of elk on a private ranch at the bottom of the mountain, probably 350-400 elk total, not really ideal, I was hoping more elk would be up in the snow...

I continued walking and glassing, turning up 3 small bulls in a terrible spot, I decided not to pursue them and kept on going, spotting a small herd with what looked like a good bull another couple miles up the drainage, I took off trying to get a better look and ran into a couple guys packing up camp right in the middle of the primary saddle elk use to get between drainages, typical OTC action...

I managed to sneak into close to where I had glassed the herd and found these...

 

[GrantK]

the big cat had come through after I glassed up the herd and had pushed them into a giant north-facing dark timber hillside, I followed for a while and realized that there were half the elk in the county in the timber, unfortunately for me I'd spent a bit of time in this timber patch and knew it better than I really want to, visibility is about 30' throughout the entire thing and it's all but unhuntable, you can hear elk getting up and walking around you every couple hundred yards but you can't see them...

I detoured back to the grassy hillside that elk like to feed on if they are in that timber and sure enough, there had been a few elk.

Unfortunately, nothing was from that day, everything was old and melted out... I put the timber hillside on the list as an unpleasant last-ditch option and headed back to the trailhead.

 

[GrantK]

I miscalculated how far I was from the truck and ended up getting back too late to make it to my planned evening spot, I decided to glass a lowland oak hill that occasionally has elk that was on my way home, as I pulled up to the glassing spot I could see elk with the naked eye again... this time it was a bull and about 10 cows, not really the bull I was looking for but he was 200 yards from the road, I feel like it's poor form to pass an elk that can be loaded whole in the truck... I parked out of sight and eased in, somehow the bull managed to disappear onto the adjacent private land in the 5 minutes he was out of sight... oh well, at least I saw a couple legal bulls...

 

[GrantK]

Day 7
I decided I was getting desperate enough to make a play on the big herd I had glassed on day 4, I spent a fair amount of time on google earth trying to find a way through the cliffs that guarded them from an approach from below, armed with a plan that shouldn't require ropes or ice climbing I figured I should at least confirm they were still there before I committed.

I hiked up to the glassing spot I had located them from and started gridding the hillside, zero elk to be found, and zero elk to be seen on my side either... I stayed with it for about 3 hours and finally picked up a lone elk 4 miles down the canyon, I was able to get the spotter on it and confirm it was a bull, but it was in another basin that as far as I knew was pretty much unapproachable from below barring climbing a frozen waterfall due to a 150' cliff band that runs along the entire side of the drainage.

I wasn't really intending to try to get on that bull but then I thought "would @MtnElk and @Dsnow9 let that one walk?" it's not going anywhere and nobody else is hunting it...

I rolled back to my house to see if I could figure a way to get to it... after some extensive looking at Google Earth it did appear that there was a sneaky way up an avalanche chute and then a traverse across the tops of some big cliffs that would put me at a shooting spot... and it looked like I could get down the next drainage without ropes if I did succeed in killing the bull in the basin I thought he was in...

I drove back in and headed up...

this was the first 1200' of elevation in 0.3 miles.

 

[GrantK]

then for the slippery part...

I eased across the final slide path and popped out on a point that was beyond all expectations as far as a perfect shooting location, the far hillside was completely visible and the farthest point was only 400 yards away, if the bull was in here he was in trouble, I eased up behind a deadfall that was the perfect rifle rest and started glassing...

 

[GrantK]

the bull had apparently read the script and was feeding broadside in some timber at 300 yards, directly above the gray cliff.

I made myself a nice benchrest out of the fallen log and my pack and waited for the bull to feed out, after about 10 minutes he did, and I settled the crosshairs and squeezed, I was able to watch the impact and the bull dropped on the spot, then one kick slowly started him sliding toward the cliff, Uh-oh! I put a second shot into him in an effort to get him to stop moving, unfortunately, he had just enough get up and go to slowly slide over the edge... I had a brief moment of panic visualising having to go get ropes when he hung up about 20' down, fortunately he had one more kick in him and dislodged himself to drop the rest of the way into the bottom of the basin and out of sight...

 

[GrantK]

it took a while to get to the bottom of the basin as I pretty much had to downclimb a 30' cliff, I was wishing I had brought crampons and an ice axe as the creek was completely frozen and super treacherous in microspikes...

when I arrived where the bull should have been I couldn't find anything, it took a bit of climbing to find this.

not really the "as they lay" I wanted...
I was able to get the bull out of the tree, unfortunately he hung up laying on his rack on a 45 degree rock slope and I couldn't budge him, no grip and grin for this one...

 

[npaden]

That looks like a fun job to get him out and cut up. Maybe some rope and pulleys would have helped.

Looks like a good bull from that angle!

 

[GrantK]

what ensued was possibly the worst elk quartering experience I have ever had, and I've quartered a lot of elk...
the bull had dug a tine into a crack in the rock and was laying entirely on that tine, I had to remove all 4 quarters from that position before I could get the weight off of the rack and roll the rest of the carcass around enough to get to backstraps and tenderloins, all in the dark on a ridiculously steep rock face... and I wasn't 100% sure I could get down the creek drainage below...

I was arranging for friends to come pack in the morning on my zoleo while I was working, and I asked my brother, a Google Earth Wizzard to double check my thought that I could get down the creek drainage, he responded with" it probably goes?" not really what I wanted to hear but good as I was going to get, I loaded up pretty light so I wouldn't be totally screwed if it didn't go and headed down...