npaden
Well-known member
Day 5 - We talked it through the night before and we were running low on fuel with all the driving back and forth so we decided to hunt the big meadow we had been in the afternoon before for the morning hunt because it was only a 2 1/2 mile drive from camp to get to that trailhead.
We got up at 5:00 and left the trailer with breakfast and lunch packed at 5:15. Got to the meadow about 15 minutes before shooting light and settled down to wait.
Of course as it started to get light it became evident that there weren’t any elk in the meadow. We sat a little bit, I cow called a few times and then I decided it wouldn’t hurt anything to throw out a few bugles so I did. And actually got a response! Of course where we were setup it had a kind of echo and I thought I heard it to the southwest and my son thought it was to the northwest. I got another response and we both still heard it from different directions. Got a third response and my son was right, it was from the northwest.
We grabbed our gear and headed that way and I was cow calling and bugling a little but no response. We got into the timber a ways and maybe 10 minutes later got another response. He wasn’t sounding too interested but if we could keep him talking we had a chance. About 10 minutes later we got one more response and that was it. We were in fairly heavy timber with no openings so we didn’t think we had much of a chance just blindly heading after him so we hung out and called a few more times and then headed back to camp.
I had a line on some private property to hunt and we had actually talked to the guy about hunting it the day before but we were still hopeful to find something on public but we were out of gas (technically the truck was out of gas but we were both getting pretty beat as well) so we decided to break camp for a third time and head that way.
Our trip down was another fairly eventful trip down the mountain on a MUCH steeper gravel road with 2 stops to cool off the brakes. I should have done it earlier but I finally put some wheel chalks on the trailer so I could put my truck into 4wd Low to let the engine braking work on such a steep slow road. My truck has to be in neutral to go into 4wd Low and that’s pretty hard to do on a steep decline pulling a trailer. Once I got into 4wd low that solved all my issues and the rest of the way down was a piece of cake. I just don’t spend enough time in the mountains to think through not just relying 100% on my brakes whenever I want to. I don’t think we ever got in a true dangerous situation but I’m pretty sure I accelerated the useful life of my brake pads quite a bit.
Okay, back to the hunting. As we get about down the mountain I get cell service and the guy that had the private property had responded to a couple voicemails I had left and let me know that there was going to be another youth hunter hunting his property that night. We had originally talked to him about hunting it on day 4 and he had told us that there was another youth hunter going to be hunting it later in the week so we were not surprised that it wasn’t available that evening. We had also just seen some elk the night before and decided we would try that again.
I told my wife we were going to go back up top for that evening hunt and she looked at me like she wanted to kill me. She thought I was going to drag the trailer back up and down with us but I had had enough of that as well and we were going to leave to trailer at the bottom just drive to truck up and down the mountain.
We got to town, gassed up and headed over to a state park and got checked into the campground with electricity, water and everything! The drawback was that the camp spots were just a big parking lot with lines to divide up the spots and they were right next to each other.
We got the trailer parked and unhitched and headed back up the mountain to the same spot again for that nights hunt. The crazy thing was that because it was mostly on pavement it took less time to get there from the state park at the bottom of the mountain than it had from where we had the trailer parked way back in there the last couple nights.
We actually got there early enough we were able to drive around a little to get a somewhat better feel for the overall lay of the land. Some very good looking spots, but since we had actually seen elk there the night before we would go ahead and stick to the same spot.
We got setup in the same exact spot as the night before and this time we didn’t get distracted by the deer coming into water or the odd sounds behind us, we spotted the first elk up in the treeline just before sunset! A group of 6 or 7 were just hanging out waiting for it to get dark.
We spotted another group of 5 or 6 much closer and 2 of them were actually headed down toward the water with about 15 minutes before shooting light ended and a truck comes driving down the road, stops, then starts driving again. The elk zipped back into the trees. That is the worst part about the spot, it is right off the road just a few hundred yards. There isn’t a lot of traffic but the traffic that there was was at almost exactly the wrong time for us.
Dark starts approaching pretty rapidly and I’m seeing some elk moving our way but it isn’t looking like they are going to make it fast enough but it is going to be close. Then they hang up in a small group of trees about 600 yards away and just stand there. Shooting light ends and they come racing down the hill to the water again. Shooting light ended at 7:56 that night and the elk hit the water at 8:01! It’s like they had a stopwatch up there on the hill that went off the second shooting light was over.
It was tough to talk my son out of shooting one again as visible light was still pretty good out there in the open with good optics. We could very clearly see them as long as 15 minutes after shooting light. I guess I don’t hunt the earlier seasons enough to notice it because once you get into November legal shooting light and visible shooting light seem to match up pretty well, but in mid September you can see pretty darn good well past shooting light.
So here we are again, sitting 150 yards away from 7 cow and calf elk splashing around in the water. But this time it didn’t stop with them leaving about as quickly as they came in. This time another 6 came in about 5 minutes later, then another 12 a few minutes after that and then a few more then a few more and I am pretty sure there were 40 head of elk within 200 yards of us for over 45 minutes. It was a very cool experience for both of us as they were cow calling constantly and the calves were running around and splashing in the water and a coyote showed up at one point and we had a few elk on our side of the water less than 100 yards away!
There was one bull that bugled 5 or 6 times but he didn’t seem to come to the water with the rest of them, he hung back on the other side of the road even though by then it was pretty well full dark.
We gave up on letting them all leave before we pulled out and decided to leave almost a full hour after dark when there was still a few elk down at the water. We crept out and I don’t think we spooked them because we still heard a few cow calls down by the water as we were walking out.
It was a very cool experience, but my son is really looking forward to actually connecting on one instead of just watching and listening to them in the dark.
We headed back down the mountain and made plans to be back at it before first light the next morning.
Didn’t get many pictures that day for some reason. Here is one showing the smoke from the fire to the west where we had originally planned on hunting.
We got up at 5:00 and left the trailer with breakfast and lunch packed at 5:15. Got to the meadow about 15 minutes before shooting light and settled down to wait.
Of course as it started to get light it became evident that there weren’t any elk in the meadow. We sat a little bit, I cow called a few times and then I decided it wouldn’t hurt anything to throw out a few bugles so I did. And actually got a response! Of course where we were setup it had a kind of echo and I thought I heard it to the southwest and my son thought it was to the northwest. I got another response and we both still heard it from different directions. Got a third response and my son was right, it was from the northwest.
We grabbed our gear and headed that way and I was cow calling and bugling a little but no response. We got into the timber a ways and maybe 10 minutes later got another response. He wasn’t sounding too interested but if we could keep him talking we had a chance. About 10 minutes later we got one more response and that was it. We were in fairly heavy timber with no openings so we didn’t think we had much of a chance just blindly heading after him so we hung out and called a few more times and then headed back to camp.
I had a line on some private property to hunt and we had actually talked to the guy about hunting it the day before but we were still hopeful to find something on public but we were out of gas (technically the truck was out of gas but we were both getting pretty beat as well) so we decided to break camp for a third time and head that way.
Our trip down was another fairly eventful trip down the mountain on a MUCH steeper gravel road with 2 stops to cool off the brakes. I should have done it earlier but I finally put some wheel chalks on the trailer so I could put my truck into 4wd Low to let the engine braking work on such a steep slow road. My truck has to be in neutral to go into 4wd Low and that’s pretty hard to do on a steep decline pulling a trailer. Once I got into 4wd low that solved all my issues and the rest of the way down was a piece of cake. I just don’t spend enough time in the mountains to think through not just relying 100% on my brakes whenever I want to. I don’t think we ever got in a true dangerous situation but I’m pretty sure I accelerated the useful life of my brake pads quite a bit.
Okay, back to the hunting. As we get about down the mountain I get cell service and the guy that had the private property had responded to a couple voicemails I had left and let me know that there was going to be another youth hunter hunting his property that night. We had originally talked to him about hunting it on day 4 and he had told us that there was another youth hunter going to be hunting it later in the week so we were not surprised that it wasn’t available that evening. We had also just seen some elk the night before and decided we would try that again.
I told my wife we were going to go back up top for that evening hunt and she looked at me like she wanted to kill me. She thought I was going to drag the trailer back up and down with us but I had had enough of that as well and we were going to leave to trailer at the bottom just drive to truck up and down the mountain.
We got to town, gassed up and headed over to a state park and got checked into the campground with electricity, water and everything! The drawback was that the camp spots were just a big parking lot with lines to divide up the spots and they were right next to each other.
We got the trailer parked and unhitched and headed back up the mountain to the same spot again for that nights hunt. The crazy thing was that because it was mostly on pavement it took less time to get there from the state park at the bottom of the mountain than it had from where we had the trailer parked way back in there the last couple nights.
We actually got there early enough we were able to drive around a little to get a somewhat better feel for the overall lay of the land. Some very good looking spots, but since we had actually seen elk there the night before we would go ahead and stick to the same spot.
We got setup in the same exact spot as the night before and this time we didn’t get distracted by the deer coming into water or the odd sounds behind us, we spotted the first elk up in the treeline just before sunset! A group of 6 or 7 were just hanging out waiting for it to get dark.
We spotted another group of 5 or 6 much closer and 2 of them were actually headed down toward the water with about 15 minutes before shooting light ended and a truck comes driving down the road, stops, then starts driving again. The elk zipped back into the trees. That is the worst part about the spot, it is right off the road just a few hundred yards. There isn’t a lot of traffic but the traffic that there was was at almost exactly the wrong time for us.
Dark starts approaching pretty rapidly and I’m seeing some elk moving our way but it isn’t looking like they are going to make it fast enough but it is going to be close. Then they hang up in a small group of trees about 600 yards away and just stand there. Shooting light ends and they come racing down the hill to the water again. Shooting light ended at 7:56 that night and the elk hit the water at 8:01! It’s like they had a stopwatch up there on the hill that went off the second shooting light was over.
It was tough to talk my son out of shooting one again as visible light was still pretty good out there in the open with good optics. We could very clearly see them as long as 15 minutes after shooting light. I guess I don’t hunt the earlier seasons enough to notice it because once you get into November legal shooting light and visible shooting light seem to match up pretty well, but in mid September you can see pretty darn good well past shooting light.
So here we are again, sitting 150 yards away from 7 cow and calf elk splashing around in the water. But this time it didn’t stop with them leaving about as quickly as they came in. This time another 6 came in about 5 minutes later, then another 12 a few minutes after that and then a few more then a few more and I am pretty sure there were 40 head of elk within 200 yards of us for over 45 minutes. It was a very cool experience for both of us as they were cow calling constantly and the calves were running around and splashing in the water and a coyote showed up at one point and we had a few elk on our side of the water less than 100 yards away!
There was one bull that bugled 5 or 6 times but he didn’t seem to come to the water with the rest of them, he hung back on the other side of the road even though by then it was pretty well full dark.
We gave up on letting them all leave before we pulled out and decided to leave almost a full hour after dark when there was still a few elk down at the water. We crept out and I don’t think we spooked them because we still heard a few cow calls down by the water as we were walking out.
It was a very cool experience, but my son is really looking forward to actually connecting on one instead of just watching and listening to them in the dark.
We headed back down the mountain and made plans to be back at it before first light the next morning.
Didn’t get many pictures that day for some reason. Here is one showing the smoke from the fire to the west where we had originally planned on hunting.
